Tag: arizone

Poised To Lose Battle Over Gun Ads, City Bans All Advertising But Its Own

Spoiled brats upset at losing a game sometimes take their ball and go home so nobody can play, but can petulant politicians do the same with advertising venues? That’s the question as city officials in Flagstaff, Arizona, end advertising at the local airport rather than allow a firearms-related business to advertise its services to tourists. Well, they’re discontinuing advertising for everybody except a city agency that promotes select businesses. That’s unlikely to resolve the dispute.

Earlier this month I covered the case of Rob Wilson, who wanted to continue advertising his Timberline Firearms & Training to people visiting the high-desert community. “Officials rejected the ad, telling Wilson that its representation of shooting sports violated the city’s ban on displaying ‘violence or anti-social behavior’ and its new advertising policy against depicting guns,” I wrote.

That policy hadn’t even been approved yet. “The City’s Facility Advertising Policy remains in draft form,” Flagstaff Public Affairs Director Sarah Langley told me via email. It was scheduled for consideration at the November 14 council meeting. Langley added that part of the city’s objection is that Timberline’s new advertisement is a video, unlike the rotating still images used in past ads. Arizona’s Goldwater Institute, which represents Wilson, denies any such change and shared with me a video identical to the current one and date-stamped August 13, 2019.

Not that still vs. moving images should make a difference.

It quickly became clear that Flagstaff’s city government didn’t want Wilson’s business, or gun-related businesses in general, advertising at its facilities and was scrambling to come up with a justification. But government agencies are limited in their ability to pick who can and can’t speak on public property.

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Pilots Are Seeing Some Very Strange Things In Arizona’s Military Training Ranges

Encounters with small unidentified “objects,” sometimes in swarm-like groups of as many as eight. Sightings of other objects, including some characterized as drones, flying at altitudes up to 36,000 feet and as fast as Mach 0.75. Another apparent small drone actually hitting the canopy of an F-16 Viper causing damage. These incidents and many more, all occurred in or around various military air combat training ranges in Arizona since January 2020.

The events are described in reports from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) filed over roughly a three-year period. Overall, the data points to what are often categorized as drones, but many of which are actually unidentified objects, as well as what do appear to be drones, or uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), intruding into these restricted warning areas with alarming regularity.

Marc Cecotti, a contributor to The War Zone, has been able to obtain additional partially redacted reports about a number of these incidents from the U.S. Air Force’s Safety Center via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that provide additional insights. Cecotti, together with Adam Kehoe, another one of our contributors, had first begun to notice a clustering of reports of unusual aerial encounters in southwestern Arizona back in 2021. An interactive online tool they created for The War Zone that leverages the FAA’s public database of drone-related incident reports helped highlight that trend.

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Arizona funds research into ‘magic mushrooms’ to treat PTSD and depression

Arizona is headed toward funding the first controlled clinical trials for whole mushroom psilocybin, or “magic mushrooms,” to treat an array of health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. 

The state’s nearly $18 billion 2024 budget contains a provision providing $5 million for whole mushroom psilocybin trials. The money is the culmination of the efforts of Dr. Sue Sisely, an internal medicine physician and principal investigator at Scottsdale Research Institute, which conducts nonprofit drug development research on psychedelics, along with a bipartisan group of state legislators. 

“We’re thrilled that the research on natural mushrooms will finally be able to move forward, so this is a big achievement that finally we’re going to get objective data,” Sisely told the Arizona Mirror. “This will give us reliable insight into how these mushrooms might help or harm people. We need to learn more about how this works.”

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The Media Is Ignoring the Arizona Election Audit, But You Shouldn’t

As an American, as a combat veteran, and as someone who is committed to public service through honest, democratic elections, it was disgusting to see what happened to President Donald J. Trump during the 2020 elections. While we may not be able to go backwards, we need to understand what went wrong and root out all fraud before the next election. That’s what’s happening right now in Arizona, but the media insists on ignoring it—you shouldn’t.

According to the state-verified election results, Joe Biden won Arizona by a razor thin margin, flipping a key state that President Donald J. Trump secured in 2016 by a decisive margin. However, due to discrepancies and credible concerns of fraud, the Arizona State Senate voted to authorize and finance a full forensic audit of the election returns.

However, the process has been anything but straightforward when it comes to the election officials. They’ve resisted the effort at every turn, forcing the State Senate to take the matter to court, where a judge had to issue subpoenas for the information. It is almost like they have something to hide.

This week, the State Senate President sent a letter to the Maricopa Board of Supervisors, who is responsible for managing elections. In the letter, Senate President Karen Fann detailed “three (3) serious issues that have arisen in the course of the Senate’s ongoing audit of the returns of the November 3, 2020 general election in Maricopa County.”

The first is that the Board of Supervisors is attempting to “renege” on their commitment to comply with the subpoenas. The court-issued order to turn over specific evidence and hardware to auditors is now being ignored by the Board in a clear and actionable violation of the subpoena. Again, it’s worth wondering, why? 

Secondly, the Board of Supervisors seemingly mismanaged and mishandled ballots, which has raised significant questions. Were the ballots properly secured, as required by law? Is there proper documentation for the chain of custody of these ballots?

These aren’t meaningless process questions. These are the fundamental requirements to ensure the integrity of our elections. Maricopa County voters, the state of Arizona, and citizens across the country deserve to know the answer.

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