Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

New Database Documents Over 100 Cases of Cops Abusing Flock Surveillance Cameras

A new database launched Wednesday that details more than 100 cases of alleged abuse by law enforcement officers using Flock Safety’s nationwide camera network is adding fresh urgency to the growing backlash against automated license plate readers.

The database, published by the Institute for Justice (IJ)—a libertarian nonprofit public interest law firm based in Arlington, Virginia—documents “romantic stalking, wrongful stops and detentions, non-law enforcement use, and other types of misconduct.”

“Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) were sold to American communities as a targeted tool for catching car thieves and finding missing people,” IJ said in an introduction to the database. “What they actually purchased has grown into something far broader and more frightening: an AI-powered network of cameras that photograph and log the movement of every driver who passes, whether or not they are suspected of any crime.”

“Companies like Flock Safety have now blanketed thousands of communities with ALPRs, quietly assembling powerful mass surveillance systems that can reconstruct where people have been, when, and how often, all without a warrant,” the institute continued. “This dragnet surveillance threatens the freedoms the Fourth Amendment was adopted to protect. These concerns aren’t just abstractions: Every day, innocent people are harmed by officials’ abuse and misuse of these ALPRs.”

“When the government can track the everyday movements of ordinary people—to their jobs, their churches, their doctors, their protests—it holds a kind of power over private life that the Constitution does not allow,” IJ added.

Among the cases highlighted in the database are those of a Florida sheriff’s deputy who allegedly used an ALPR to track and pull over a woman after seeing her at a television shoot, a Texas deputy who reportedly searched tens of thousands of Flock cameras while trying to locate a woman who had allegedly obtained a medication abortion, and a Georgia police chief who reportedly tracked his former girlfriend and her teenage daughter hundreds of times.

The database’s authors warn that even those 100-plus cases may represent only a fraction of the actual misconduct. Officers often provide vague explanations when searching ALPR databases, making systematic detection of abuse difficult. In one case in Norfolk, Virginia, for example, IJ found that three generic search terms accounted for nearly one-third of roughly 230,000 searches over two years. One officer repeatedly entered “la la la la” as a justification without apparently attracting scrutiny.

Keep reading

Fauci was not a mad scientist, but a mere bureaucrat granted unlimited power

For decades, Fauci was a career government health bureaucrat of unexceptional ability whose primary skill involved accumulated more power than any unelected American of his generation. He then used those skills to smother risk calculations and create consensus that any intelligent and wise adult would have rejected wholeheartedly.

On Monday, Senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul released the first text chain from what we hope are a series of communications recovered from Fauci’s government-issued iPhone, which HHS finally handed over on August 5 in response to Johnson’s request. His phone is said to hold more than 34,000 texts and 522 voicemails. Quite suspiciously, it only contains three saved contacts, which probably means that it was tampered with. I do hope that government officials can secure the data that was possibly deleted.

The senators released something of a bombshell that discusses January 2021 communications between Fauci, then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, and future Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. This was just days after former President Biden’s inauguration. The subject is pregnant women and the mRNA injections. In it, Fauci writes that the supposedly “safe and effective” shot “theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.”

One week later, Fauci went in front of cameras and said the vaccines had “no red flags” regarding pregnant women. He later said that there was “no indication whatsoever” of increased adverse events in pregnant women. By September, Walensky and her comrades in the Biden Government Health bureaucracy were strongly recommending vaccination before or during pregnancy.

If Fauci and his goons were level-headed and honest with the public, they would have said something along the lines of “we do not yet know if it’s totally safe, but we think covid is bad, so decide for yourself.”

Instead, they demanded compliance.

In another text in the chain, we get insight into Fauci’s mindset. It becomes clear that he is justifying the risk of miscarriage by declaring “COVID-19 can be a serious disease especially in pregnancy.”

Keep reading

USS Abraham Lincoln sailors tried to jump overboard amid extended deployment – reports

Military families and Congress members are sounding the alarm about an intensifying mental health crisis onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as its 5,000 sailors and marines endure a record-breaking deployment at sea tied to the war with Iran.

Two leading specialist military papers, the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes, are reporting that there have been multiple attempts by sailors to jump overboard as poor conditions and mental stresses on the Lincoln reach the breaking point. The crew is in its ninth month at sea, and has spent 250 days consecutively without making land – a record for an aircraft carrier in modern times.

Worried families vented their anxieties about loved ones onboard the Lincoln at an emotional town hall meeting with navy leaders in San Diego last Thursday, Stars and Stripes reported. One spouse among the 200 or so family members said that her husband had texted her that day saying “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow”.

The families’ worries were expressed directly to navy leadership, represented at the town hall by the acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, and other top officials.

A woman at the meeting told Cao that the navy had “broken trust between us and the leadership”, the paper reported.

The Navy Times gave details of thwarted suicide attempts onboard the aircraft carrier during the current deployment. Annabelle Loma told the outlet that her husband had tried to jump overboard after his spell at sea kept being extended.

“He’s scared. He thinks he’ll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out his 13-year career is ruined, just like that,” she said.

The paper quoted another sailor’s wife whose husband was involved in a separate incident onboard the Lincoln in which he prevented a fellow crew member from jumping, grabbing them and bringing them back on deck.

Mike Levin, a Democratic member of Congress from California, has sounded the alarm over conditions onboard the warship, which is in its fifth month of combat operations against Iran. He described the lot of the crew on X as “moldy showers, broken toilets, laundry down for weeks, long stretches with no hot water, a meal that came down to half a cup of rice and two tortillas. No soap, deodorant, or toothpaste.”

Jason Crow, a Democratic Congress member from Colorado who is a former army ranger having served in Afghanistan and Iraq, has warned that the strain on service members and their families on the Lincoln is “building week by week”.

The current crunch has been months in the making. The warship left San Diego on 21 November and was originally intended for the Pacific but was redirected to the Middle East once the US-Israel war with Iran began.

Since then, MS Now revealed, the 5,000-plus crew has had only two days on land, in Guam in December and Oman in July. The deployment was scheduled to end in May but has been extended a couple of times amid the ongoing war.

Keep reading

ICE refuses to disclose records on Ilhan Omar fraud probe, cites ongoing ‘enforcement proceedings’

The federal government is refusing to turn over records related to an investigation conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement into allegations of immigration fraud by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., citing a legal exemption for ongoing investigations. 

Just the News filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the records in January, seeking the records pertaining to any investigations conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement into the allegations that Rep. Omar, who represents Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, married a relative in order to help him remain in the country. 

Omar has denied the allegations. No court records, DNA evidence, or other documentary proof has ever substantiated that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, Omar’s legal husband from 2009–2017, was her biological brother.

“ICE has determined that the information you requested is being withheld in full pursuant to Title 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(A). Disclosure of any responsive records at this time could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings,” ICE told Just the News in response to the FOIA in May. 

The FOIA exemption cited by the agency “applies to records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes when their release could disrupt such proceedings,” the reply reads. 

You can read the letter below: 

Final Response 2026-ICFO-11295 3 (1).pdf

The Department of Justice guidelines for invoking exemption 7(A) say that doing so requires a two-step assessment. “First, there must be a ‘reasonable likelihood’ of a pending or contemplated law enforcement proceeding,” the guidance says. “Second, release of the information must be reasonably expected to cause some articulable harm to that proceeding.” 

Harm includes things such as exposing the case to witness tampering or tipping off suspects, according to the guidance. The exemption makes no distinction between criminal, civil, and administrative cases. 

Omar’s office did not respond to a request for comment. 

Keep reading

Trump State Department Axes Biden-Era Initiative That Sought to Spread DEI Around the World

Trump administration reforms have ended efforts to turn the State Department into a DEI sales force.

Biden-era guidelines that ordered diplomats to push a diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility policies agenda on foreign governments have been scrapped, according to Fox News.

“Under the Trump Administration, America’s diplomats are tasked with advocating for our national interests on the world stage — not demonstrating adherence to woke political dogmas,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said.

“The State Department is implementing sweeping reforms to the Foreign Service to prioritize merit, refocus training on tangible diplomatic skills, and prepare our nation’s diplomats to deliver America’s answer to our most pressing challenges,” he said.

Biden administration rules spoke of having State Department leaders “raise social inclusion, racial/gender equity, disability, and LGBTQI+ issues with high-level host country interlocutors, especially in countries where these issues are problematic.”

Keep reading

Canadian families now spend more on taxes than food, housing and clothing combined: Fraser Institute

The average Canadian family is now handing over nearly 42% of its income in taxes, more than it spends on food, housing and clothing combined, according to a new Fraser Institute study.

The think tank’s 2026 edition of its Canadian Consumer Tax Index, released Thursday, estimates the average Canadian family earned $121,111 in 2025 and paid $50,721 in total taxes, equivalent to 41.9% of its income.

By comparison, food, shelter and clothing combined consumed 36% of the average family’s income.

The study includes more than just income taxes in its calculation. It measures the total tax burden imposed on Canadian families, including income, payroll, sales, property, fuel, carbon, alcohol and other taxes paid directly or indirectly.

The Fraser Institute says the tax burden has grown substantially faster than the cost of basic necessities over the past six decades.

Since 1961, the average family’s total tax bill has increased 2,928%, compared with a 2,349% increase in shelter costs, a 952% increase in food costs and a 526% increase in clothing costs.

Taxes have also increased more than three times as quickly as the Consumer Price Index, which rose 946% over the same period.

The contrast with 1961 is particularly stark.

That year, the average Canadian family earned $5,000 and paid $1,675, or 33.5% of its income, in taxes. Basic necessities consumed 56.5% of family income.

Today, those proportions have effectively reversed, with taxes consuming a substantially larger share of family budgets while necessities take a smaller share.

The report comes as Canadian households continue to struggle with affordability, housing costs and debt.

The Fraser Institute’s findings also follow new federal insolvency figures showing 150,505 Canadians and businesses filed for insolvency during the 12 months ending in June 2026, putting filings near levels last experienced around the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

The study was authored by Fraser Institute analysts Grady Munro and Jake Fuss.

Keep reading

High School English Teacher Brought to Tears as He Reveals Some Seniors in His Class Cannot Write a SINGLE SENTENCE

A high school English teacher took to social media to share his concerns about the state of education in the U.S.  He was brought to tears as he revealed that in his class, he has seniors who cannot write a single sentence.

“I literally broke down in the middle of class because I’m teaching seniors,” he shared. “These kids are leaving high school and going to college, hopefully, after they finish.”

“We had two paragraphs to read, one sentence, complete, to write. I gave them the sentence stems. I basically completed the sentence for them in the model.”

“These are 17 and 18-year-old kids, and they couldn’t fill in four words. Four words.”

“I gave them the scenario. We annotated together. I gave them the answers before we even had the problem.”

“And they couldn’t do it.”

“I don’t know. I simply don’t know where the problem is.”

Keep reading

PBS broadcaster loses access to 50TB of data comprising 70 years of TV history after contracted cloud storage vendor goes defunct — public TV channel sues Iron Mountain data center, which hosts archival materials, to ensure preservation

Nine PBS is afraid that it will lose over 70 years of archival materials and programming after its contracted cloud storage vendor has apparently gone out of business. According to Current, the channel used Open Source Storage, or OSS, for storing over 50TB of data — but it suddenly lost access to its data earlier this year. Nine PBS has been working with OSS and its predecessor since 2019 and intended to renew its contract on March 6 of this year. The company never responded and abruptly cut off the station’s data access even though it still had 30 days to retrieve its data after the contract ended.

The station dug a little bit deeper when it discovered that the OSS website no longer existed and was listed as delinquent under the Colorado Secretary of State. It also discovered that OSS utilized Iron Mountain’s services, so it sent a demand letter to the latter to preserve its data and to “pay any reasonable costs associated with its demand.” At the time, Iron Mountain did not confirm or deny that it possessed Nine PBS’ data.

Keep reading

Ex-Cop Accused of Plotting to Kill Black People in Mass Shooting at New Orleans Jazz Fest QUIETLY RELEASED After Grand Jury Refuses to Indict — Law Enforcement NOT Aware of His Release

A former police officer accused of planning a racially motivated mass shooting at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (Jazz Fest) was quietly released from custody in June after a grand jury declined to indict him.

Christopher Gillum, 45, a former Chapel Hill police officer, had been held without bond following his dramatic April 22 arrest in Destin, Florida.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, authorities claimed he was heading to Louisiana to carry out a mass shooting targeting Black people at a large festival, widely understood to be the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (Jazz Fest), which draws hundreds of thousands, and then commit “suicide by cop.”

A Louisiana grand jury in June declined to indict Gillum on a state “terrorizing” charge that carried a potential 15-year sentence. He was released shortly afterward.

His attorney, Dylan Utley, confirmed Gillum faces no charges in any other jurisdiction. The release went completely unreported until AP broke the story this week.

According to a statement from Lester Duhe, spokesperson for Republican Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, Gillum’s family has taken him “to a treatment facility out of the state.” He is not facing additional criminal charges.

Duhe pointed to major jurisdictional problems that sank the case: “The threat relayed to a family member actually occurred in North Carolina. The defendant never entered the State of Louisiana until after his arrest.”

Keep reading

Police Launch Live Facial Recognition Trial at London Subway Stations

It was a busy week for the cameras. Nobody, we were assured, would have their face read without the option of going somewhere else instead.

That was the promise at Victoria Underground on Tuesday, where British Transport Police switched on live facial recognition and, with the manners of a good host, laid on “alternative routes” and clear signage so that everyone could make “informed choices about passing through.”

The choice on offer being to let a police computer check your face against a watchlist, or to find some other way into the station, on a Tuesday, at the start of a trial booked to run four months.

The scale is where courtesy starts to sing. TfL’s own draft annual report logs over 1.2 billion passenger journeys in the year, around 3.3 million a day, and since most of those are the same tired people going to work and trudging home again, the honest figure for faces passing a lens on any given day is merely hundreds of thousands, possibly the far side of a million. Each of them, presumably, informed.

The weekend before, Greater Manchester Police had taken the same idea to the Manchester Caribbean Carnival, a party going strong since 1971, where the Manchester Evening News reckoned 60,000 people would turn out across two days of parade, soca and steelpan. The force said the cameras produced 34 alerts and 11 arrests, and that a missing child was found, which is the part no one with a heart wants to be sour about.

Then, emboldened, GMP put out a press release on Tuesday to tell us all how splendidly it is going. 641,000 faces were scanned across 56 deployments. 208 alerts. That’s to say that 99.97 percent of everyone the force has ever photographed at one of these things set off precisely nothing, roughly one ping for every 3,082 law-abiding citizens run through the machine.

Was anyone asked? No, but signage was provided.

Keep reading