Free Republic

Bud Light is sponsoring an all-ages Pride event and after-party featuring drag queens in Flagstaff, Arizona, according to advertisements. The June 17 after-party features several famous drag queens and will take place after Flagstaff’s 27th annual Pride in the Pines, and both events list Bud Light as a sponsor. The after-party is open to “all ages,” and participants under 16 years old require a guardian to attend, according to an online flyer. ...

Pipeline fire which started yesterday is now over 4000 acres.

Pastors who bully parishioners over masks appear to have forgotten the soul-saving mission of the church, and are instead tyrannizing those they should serve.Despite Texas Gov. Greg Abbot’s repeal of the state mask mandate, a pregnant Catholic mother was kicked out of Mass in the Diocese of Dallas for failing to wear a mask.Father Milton Ryan, pastor of Holy Trinity Catholic Parish, is alleged to have called the police while the service was underway and have the young mother threatened with arrest for trespass. Deidre Hairston returned to her pew after receiving communion, with her one-year-old baby in her arms,...

PHOENIX (AP) — The Arizona Department of Transportation is studying use of remote technology to help manage highway traffic that needs to merge when approaching a highway work zone involving at least one lane closure. ADOT says it has set up a “smart work zone" with a remotely controlled system using computers, portable message boards and sensors to provide drivers with real-time instructions based on changing circumstances. The study is being conducted at two bridge rehabilitation sites on Interstate 40 between Flagstaff and Winslow in northern Arizona. The remote system directs westbound traffic to merge into one lane well ahead...

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, issued a statement on the shooting Friday morning. “My thoughts and prayers are with families of the person who was killed and the three others who were wounded in the horrific shooting on the campus of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff early this morning,” he said. “I appreciate the efforts of all state and local law enforcement officials, first-responders and school administrators, and continue to pray for the recovery of the injured, as well as all those in the NAU community who have been impacted by this terrible tragedy.” The shooting comes the same day...

The woman who called herself "Sam" for months now knows her real nameNearly five months after showing up in a San Diego-area emergency room without any recollection of her name, age, family, or friends, a woman who calls herself “Sam” finally has an identity. Ashley Menatta, 53, never married and has sisters in Colorado and Maryland. She was born in Pennsylvania, lived in Flagstaff, Arizona and several years ago found her way to Southern California living in La Jolla, Vista, and Carlsbad. The woman’s plight captured world wide attention after our NBC 7 post went viral with a Facebook...

Jeb Bush has an explanation for his Iraq war flub - it's that he has a 'hard time' criticizing his family. Bush made the admission on Thursday at the Republican National Committee's spring meeting, held this year in Flagstaff, Arizona, according to ABC News. Acknowledging that 'there's a lot of interest out there' from press in determining how he's different from his ex-president brother George W. Bush, the White House hopeful and son of former president George H.W. Bush said: 'I'm not going to go out of my way to say that, you know, my brother did this wrong or...

Justice: A Marine veteran has been held captive in Iran since August 2011, when he was taken prisoner while visiting family and charged with spying. Does President Obama hear his plea for unconditional freedom? With the exception of deserters like Bowe Bergdahl, those who put on a uniform and serve their country seem like afterthoughts to this administration, if they're thought of at all. Just ask Andrew Tahmooressi, the Marine sergeant allowed to languish 214 days in a Mexican jail for the crime of missing a highway exit. Or now, Amir Hekmati of Flagstaff, Ariz., a Marine vet who sits...

Audience members were invited to ask the panel members questions during the second half of the meeting. The questions came from teachers, NAU students and faculty, high school students, parents and other Flagstaff residents. But many of those questions were actually thinly veiled criticisms of Thorpe and Allen’s well-documented opposition to raising corporate taxes. At times, audience members shouted “raise taxes” and snickered or groaned at Thorpe and Allen’s claims that lower taxes would fix Arizona’s economic woes by attracting businesses. So when an FUSD parent walked up to the microphone, decried how college tuition rates in Arizona have increased...

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – Officials say all services have been restored following act of vandalism that left people across northern Arizona without the use of the Internet, cellphones and landlines for several hours. During Wednesday's outages, businesses couldn't process credit card transactions, ATMs didn't function, law enforcement databases were unavailable, and even weather reports were affected in an area stretching from north of Phoenix to Flagstaff, about 100 miles away.

<p>A 24-year-old Arizona police officer and a suspect were both killed after a shootout Saturday afternoon, police said.</p> <p>Officer Tyler Stewart, 24, died at Flagstaff Medical Center after he was shot by a suspect in a domestic-violence case, the Flagstaff Police Department confirmed late Saturday in a statement.</p>

It is, of course, reason to celebrate that Flagstaff is on track to finish 2011 without a single murder inside the city. Flagstaff is hardly Mayberry, RFD, but violent crimes of all types have plummeted in recent years, thanks to more community policing and better use of neighborhood-level police reports. We'd like to think that the absence of a murder so far this year is due, in part, to those initiatives by the police and community leaders. But we are also realistic enough to know that lethal violence in a state with lax gun laws is hard to keep at...

Archaeologists long believed the volcano changed Sinagua culture. Yet because the date of the eruption remained elusive, they could not tell how fast those changes occurred. Ort, however, had a geological clock that let him make a better estimate. The Earth's magnetic north pole constantly drifts. Researchers have records of drift going back thousands of years made by measuring how certain minerals are magnetized to align with the magnetic poles as they settle in lake sediments. What Ort needed was a way to link these paleomagnetic measurements to the age of artifacts found in villages abandoned after the eruption. Ort...

What started out as a patriotic gesture intended to remember the nearly 3,000 lives lost on September 11, 2001, ended up becoming a major verbal scuffle that one North Arizona University student calls “a free speech violation.” The incident, which has likely evolved into something much larger than either side originally anticipated, occurred when students were passing out American flags on their public university campus last Friday. The Arizona Daily Sun shares more about the commemorative activity:

The investigation into the shooting death of Spc. Alyssa Peterson found her suicide came soon after she was reassigned for objecting to prisoner interrogation techniques but did not specifically give a reason for her action. A Flagstaff soldier who died in Iraq committed suicide after she refused to participate in interrogation techniques being practiced by her U.S. Army intelligence unit, according to a report about an Army investigation aired by a Flagstaff radio station. U.S. Army Spc. Alyssa R. Peterson, 27, died Sept. 15, 2003, in Tel Afar, an Iraqi city of about 350,000 residents in the northern part of...

A Flagstaff man has history in his warehouse. He's made a hobby of restoring military vehicles for 25 years. In one corner of Bill Buehler's warehouse is a 1942 Stuart Light Tank M3, once a reliable servant during landings with U.S. Marines and mobile and fast for fighting in the deserts of North Africa and the jungles of the South Pacific. Nearby is a Sexton tank, built by Canada for the British Army, and an Allis-Chalmers Sherman tank, both from World War II. Buehler also has a Humvee from the first Gulf War. "I buy and sell them," he said....

Update on the Fire near Flagtaff in the Arizona Daily Star via The Associated Press.

AP story so link ony. Careless Camper casused. Evacuations again.

Northern Arizona authorities say two Mexican nationals have been arrested for allegedly trying to disable freight trains moving through the Flagstaff area. BNSF spokeswoman Lena Kent said the first burglary was reported near Williams Friday. Crooks cut the brake hoses on a train to disable it in order to offload a shipment of televisions, but were caught in the act. All except one got away. The second burglary was reported near Winona east of Flagstaff. Again, brake hoses were cut on a BNSF train. This time, burglars wanted computer equipment from a train car.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. - It's hard to believe but Flagstaff, Ariz., has had more snow this year than either Anchorage, Alaska, or Buffalo, N.Y., the National Weather Service says. The weather service says Flagstaff has racked up more than 11 feet of snow so far and is on the way to recording one of its snowiest seasons ever, the Arizona Republic reported Friday. March usually produces a lot of snow so this winter could end up being Flagstaff's fifth snowiest, the forecasters say. "I'm ready for it to be over," said David Blanchard of the NWS. "We're all getting a little...