Phoenix, Flagstaff, and even Lake Havasu certainly have their share of great local breweries, but according to BeerAdvocate, our state's hoppy pride and joy comes from Tucson.

Cool Material pulled stats from the well-known beer rating site and the results are in: Arizona's highest rated beer is the Dragoon IPA. The local brew got an average rating on 4.17 out of 5 on the site, giving it the lead. The site describes the IPA's flavor as "lots of pine and lots of bitterness." According to Dragoon, the beer is " a true West Coast IPA–it is pale in color, with bracing bitterness, high alcohol content (about 7.3% abv) and a fruity/floral/citrus hop aroma" that pairs well with both pho and pizza. Sold.

Unfortunately, even at 4.17 the beer doesn't make the top 250 highest rated brews in the country, which probably just means us Arizonans aren't voting enough on BeerAdvocate. It's also one of the two brews Dragoon distributes year round, which could explain its popularity over their other options. 

A few hours ago, after 90 days living in sanctuary at a Tucson church, Francisco Perez Cordova walked out of there relieved to know his deportation order had been gutted.

Francisco is the father of five U.S. citizen children and has no criminal background, making him eligible for President Obama’s deferred action for parents program. He gets to stay in the country with a work permit for the next three years - and we’ll see what happens from there.

Francisco was placed in removal proceedings in 2009. A family member called the Pima County Sheriff Department to report a burglary. Instead of looking into the crime, the deputies reported the family to Border Patrol.

At noon today, Francisco stood at the podium of the worship room inside St. Francis United Methodist Church, and thanked supporters for the overwhelming warmth during the three months he sat and waited to hopefully hear he’d get to stay home with his wife and children.

“You guys have a special part of my heart,” he said, while his two toddlers played on the carpet behind him. The words and tears were simultaneous. “You changed my whole life. When I came here, I was so scared of what was going to happen, how long…It was so difficult to come here and leave my family.”

I spoke to his wife, Sarai Milla, after the ceremony for a couple of minutes outside.

“I feel so happy, blessed by God, my children are going to have their father at home,” she said in Spanish. “More than gifts, more than toys, for Christmas they wanted their father to be with us.”

Yesterday, Arizona officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement finally decided to close Francisco’s case. This is about a month after Obama announced his immigration changes.

His attorney, Margo Cowan, had an issue with the wait. In a statement, she said ICE refused to kill the removal, even knowing that Francisco qualified to stay.
She was at the church today, alongside Francisco’s family, the Rev. Jim Wiltbank and a big room full of community supporters, to celebrate Francisco’s departure a day before Christmas.

“I went to my house, slept in my bed, saw my family…Now, I get to say good-bye so that you can go home and sleep in your bed, and be in your house and be with your family and I could not be happier…that is such a joy for me,” said Wiltbank, who’s been at Francisco’s side day in and day out since he asked for sanctuary.

While thrilled that Francisco is safe, Cowan and others reminded us that about 900,000 people live with fear should their deportation orders solidify and they are forced to leave families, friends and entire lives on this side of the border.

“We must broaden our concept of sanctuary, to a universal concept, our barrios must be sanctuaries, our homes must be sanctuaries, our workplaces…our schools must be sanctuaries, our community must be safe,” Cowan said.

Not too far from St. Francis, a mother of two, Rosa Robles Loreto, is still in sanctuary at Southside Presbyterian Church. She doesn’t qualify for Obama’s relief.

Her husband and two kids were at today’s celebration. They brought Francisco red roses to congratulate him in Rosa’s name.

Cowan, who is also Rosa’s attorney, pleaded the Department of Homeland Security to also let her stay. It’s been more than four months since Rosa moved into Southside Presbyterian.

What’s next for Francisco’s family? Sarai said they want to go on a family vacation. “Maybe take the kids to Disney World…”

I will hopefully be catching up with Francisco and his family in about a month to see how life after sanctuary is treating them.

You might be at the point right now where you've had about as much Christmas stuff as you can possibly stand. Well, you'll want to make room for one more dose of holly jolly when you hear about Scott & Co.'s egg nog cocktail.

Blending traditional nog components like milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and a "liberal use of nutmeg" grated freshly into and on top of the cocktail, Ryan Sunderman says they like to pre-batch a large amount of the drink and whip it up in a blender to give it a light, airy, and frothy consistency. With El Dorado spiced rum for depth and richness and Amontillado sherry to add complexity and nuttiness, the finished product is rich, but still balanced and drinkable. 

As part of the bar's rotating line-up of weekend specials, you can get a cup of nog this Friday and Saturday for $4. Sunderman explains the craft bar introduced punch-style specials to offer guests something they can have cheaply and quickly.

"It's almost like an appetizer," Sunderman says.

Upcoming specials planned for Scott & Co. punches include a wassail and a mulled wine, but you can get the last of the egg nog this weekend. If you're interested in attempting to make your own tomorrow, you can approximate Scott & Co.'s recipe by blending these two Jeffrey Morgenthaler recipes. 

For the past 31 years, gay and bisexual men have been banned from donating blood.

Today, the Food and Drug Administration said they wouldn't oppose replacing the rule with a new policy that would make it OK for gay and bisexual men to donate IF they haven't had sex in the past year. Hmmm...What if you're in a long-term relationship? It's still assumed you may have a disease?

It sounds pretty discriminatory to me. Continuing to dwell into people's sexual orientation and all.

The American Civil Liberties Union wasn't happy about the celibacy request, either.

An ACLU press release said:

It turns out James Franco and Seth Rogen’s controversial film “The Interview” will be coming out after all, despite threats from a hacker group claiming “9/11-style attacks” on theatres that screen the film. Joining other art house movie theatres is Tucson's own Loft Cinema. The movie will premiere on Christmas and continue in a regular engagement starting on Friday, Dec. 26.

Jeff Yanc, programming director for the Loft, said he's "really excited to have 'The Interview.' It's a great opportunity for free expression."

Yanc said the team at the Loft had been working on securing the film since last week.

"Sony said it would be available to independent theaters and that's us," Yanc said.

According to Entertainment Weekly, “The Interview” has an unreasonably high IMDB rating right now, despite no one actually getting to see it. Thanks to 4chan, the film has a perfect 10 rating from over 35,000 votes. Whether that perfect rating will keep once audiences actually view the film remains to be seen.

You can buy tickets and get more information on showtimes by visiting The Loft's website.

It’s time to get your last Switch-sponsored laughs in before 2015 comes. The bi-monthly comedy event, hosted by Jacob Breckenridge and Henry Barajas, is taking over the Club Congress stage tonight.

"Honestly, 2014 has been one of the best years in the history of Tucson comedy," Barajas says. "The Switch is not your traditional show. There's a different experience every time."

With a strong improv element, The Switch is known for comedy off the cuff. Barajas says this setup gives the comedians the opportunity to try out different things.

"It gives the comedians to the chance to abandon their sets and try something new," he says. "Sometimes comedians create new material on the spot and it's something they can include in their set."

You can text in your suggestions for proposed topics by texting your ideas to 477-2221 throughout the show. Otherwise, just head to Club Congress tonight for the free event. Other featured comedians for tonight include Tucson and Phoenix area performers like Tyler Ten Haken, Zackry Colston, Nick Joseph, Anthony Desamito, Molly Dean, Chet Coxworthy, Emmet Andrews, Josiah Osego, Jamie Sanderson, Steve Marek, Andrew Horneman, Ben Dietzel, and Mikey Dean. The 21 and over comedy show starts at 9 p.m.

After it took convicted murderer Joseph Wood nearly two hours and a lot of doses of lethal injection drugs to die over the summer, those who witnessed the execution were so traumatized—according to their testimonials, the guy kept gasping for air, choking, etc.—the state had to mandate an independent investigation into how people are being put to death. 

Wood's lawyers said his execution was botched, but a report said it wasn't.

Still, now the state Department of Corrections won't administer the two-drug combination it had been using.

The Associated Press reports:

The state Department of  Corrections will instead try to obtain drugs that were successfully used for many years but have become obsolete and difficult to obtain. If the state cannot get those drugs, it will use a different three-drug combination that will include midazolam, the sedative used in Wood's death.

The state now has put other executions on hold, while it waits to get other drugs for the process.

In 2011, European pharmaceutical companies stopped supplying the U.S. with the key component in lethal injections, sodium thiopental—in part because of the EU's stance against death penalty—which led Arizona and other states to find different options for the execution cocktail. And that, now we know, didn't work out.

Walter Dean Burnham and Thomas Ferguson examine the 2014 turnout and conclude that it was about as bad as it gets in the modern age:

The real story is much uglier: 2014 was fundamentally a democratic debacle. It likely heralds a new stage in the disintegration of the American political order.

Though Republicans jubilate now, the trend is probably as threatening to them as it is to the Democrats. The reason is stark: Increasing numbers of average Americans can no longer stomach voting for parties that only pretend to represent their interests.

So they stayed home, in quite extraordinary numbers. A full accounting of all votes cast in 2014 is still weeks, perhaps months away; it takes that long for all the returns to come in, especially in races in which incumbents faced no challenger or a recount was required. Some high stakes state elections also attract a few more voters than House contests held at the same time, which makes working off unofficial tabulations of a state’s “total vote” even trickier. But our cautious guess is that turnout in this year’s Congressional races will finally weigh in at around 36 percent of the potential electorate that had legal rights to cast a ballot.

That’s a shocking statistic. Put aside for a moment all talk of 1942 and absolute levels of turnout. Instead focus on changes in turnout between presidential elections and the next off-year election. Across the whole sweep of American history, the momentous dimensions of what has just happened stand out in bold relief. The drop off in voting turnout from the presidential election of 2012 to 2014 is the second largest of all time — 24 percentage points. Only 1942’s decline from 1940 was bigger — 29 percentage points. But then there was an excuse. Millions of Americans were hurriedly fanning out across the globe to wage total war. (World War I showed a similar pattern — turnout in the off year elections of 1918 fell 22 points from 1916’s presidential race, marking the fourth largest decline ever. Which leads naturally to the question of the third largest.

It's time to put on your most embarrassingly festive seasonal garb and hit the streets of downtown for a beer lover's pub crawl sponsored by Dragoon Brewing Co. Beginning at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 24, you can join other merry drinkers on a trek around the city for beer. 

The planned stops and brews are as follows:
1) Tap & Bottle: Dragoon's Stonghold Session Ale
2) R Bar: Dragoon's Bicas Brown Ale
3) The Tap Room at Hotel Congress: Dragoon's Scout Porter
4) Playground: Dragoon's Biere del Bal Belgian-Style Quad

You can get a wristband to join in on the crawl for $10 at any of the participating bars, as well as Dragoon's Tap Room located at 1859 W. Grant Road Suite #111. The wristband also gets you $1 off each special Dragoon beer at the crawl stops and all of the proceeds go to the Southern Arizona Disabled Firefighter Foundation. 

Young immigrants under Obama's DACA program started showing up at DMVs around Arizona today.

I went to a couple of them in Tucson - one in the northwest side of town and the other in the southeast - hoping to see big groups of Dreamers waiting for the written or driving test, maybe walking out with a license, permit or certificate at hand. Surprisingly, their presence was not obvious. At least at the two locations I went to. But then again, for many it was just a matter of finally being able to get the documentation, which was long overdue. 

I did meet a 16-year-old young woman at the DMV on Broadmont Drive in southeast Tucson. She was standing in line waiting to take a test for a driver's permit. She plans to get a license in six months. Her mom was sitting near her with a friend for some moral support.

Last week, a U.S. District Court judge told the state to stop enforcing Brewer's "no licenses for Dreamers" policy, and shortly after the Arizona Department of Transportation sent out a release saying they could issue one starting Dec. 22. Needless to say Brewer was pissed, and bowed to ask the U.S. Supreme Court - AGAIN - to take on the case. But her term ends in less than three weeks, so this may be up to Gov.-elect Doug Ducey, who should be sworn in the first week of January.

So, all of this week, AZDOT is expecting "heavier-than-normal traffic"  - since about 22,000 Dreamers were immediately affected by the district court judge's preliminary injunction. I contacted an agency spokesperson for today's figures, but the email said, "We're not able to pull those numbers."

The Arizona Dream Act Coalition posted in a Facebook group a checklist of stuff Dreamers need to bring to the DMV: An unexpired DACA card, Social Security card, a DMV approved vehicle, and either $25 for a driver's license or $12 for an ID card.

Last week, I spoke with a Dreamer who plans to get his license in the next few days. His story will be on next week's issue of the Weekly.