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.

The government is open, but a hemp industry shutdown has just begun

The funding bill to end the longest government shutdown in American history was not simply a “yes” or “no” to reopen the government. Tucked away in the bill, on page 163, in Title VII of Division B, was a provision to shut down the hemp industry. It wipes out the regulatory frameworks adopted by several states, takes away consumer choice and destroys the livelihoods of hemp farmers.

This could not come at a worse time for our farmers. Costs have increased while prices for crops have declined. Farm bankruptcies are rising. For many farmers, planting hemp offered them a lifeline. Hemp can be used for textiles, rope, insulation, composite wood, paper, grain and in CBD products, and growing hemp helped farmers to mitigate the loses they’ve endured during this season of hardship.

But that lifeline is about to be extinguished.

Nearly 100% of hemp products currently sold will be illegal

The justification for this hemp ban, we are told, is that some bad actors are skirting the legal limits by enhancing the concentrations of THC in their products. The hemp industry and I had already come to the negotiating table, in good faith, to discuss reforms that prevent “juicing up” hemp products with purely synthetic cannabinoids of unknown origin.

Dozens of states have already instituted age limits and set THC levels for such products. I have no objection to many of these reforms. In fact, during negotiations, I expressly stated I would accept a federal ban on synthetic THC, as well as reasonable per serving limits. All along, my objective was to find an agreement that would protect consumers from bad actors while still allowing the hemp industry to thrive.

But the provision that was inserted into the government funding bill makes illegal any hemp product that contains more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per container. That would be nearly 100% of hemp products currently sold. This is so low that it takes away any of the benefit of the current products intended to manage pain or other conditions.

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House Will Vote on Repealing Funding Provision Allowing Senators to Sue Over Phone Searches

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced on Nov. 12 that the House will soon vote on legislation to repeal a provision of a deal to end the shutdown that allows senators to sue if the government illegally obtains their electronic records.

The provision in question creates a civil right of action to sue the U.S. government if a senator’s digital data, generated in the course of their official duties, is illegally accessed by the Executive Branch. Senators could recover a minimum of $500,000 per violation.

Congress passed the measure on Wednesday as part of a legislative package to reopen the government.

“House Republicans are introducing standalone legislation to repeal this provision that was included by the Senate in the government funding bill. We are putting this legislation on the fast track suspension calendar in the House for next week,” Johnson wrote on social media.

The provision was inserted into the government funding bill at the behest of several Republican senators whose phone data was accessed by the Department of Justice under the Biden administration during Special Counsel Jack Smith’s “Arctic Frost” probe and criminal investigation of President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The senators whose data was accessed include Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.).

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German States Expand Police Powers to Train AI Surveillance Systems with Personal Data

Several German states are preparing to widen police powers by allowing personal data to be used in the training of surveillance technologies.

North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg are introducing legislative changes that would let police feed identifiable information such as names and facial images into commercial AI systems.

Both drafts permit this even when anonymization or pseudonymization is bypassed because the police consider it “impossible” or achievable only with “disproportionate effort.”

Hamburg adopted similar rules earlier this year, and its example appears to have encouraged other regions to follow. These developments together mark a clear move toward normalizing the use of personal information as fuel for surveillance algorithms.

The chain reaction began in Bavaria, where police in early 2024 tested Palantir’s surveillance software with real personal data.

The experiment drew objections from the state’s data protection authority, but still served as a model for others.

Hamburg used the same idea in January 2025 to amend its laws, granting permission to train “learning IT systems” on data from bystanders. Now Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia plan to adopt nearly identical language.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, police would be allowed to upload clear identifiers such as names or faces into commercial systems like Palantir’s and to refine behavioral or facial recognition programs with real, unaltered data.

Bettina Gayk, the state’s data protection officer, warned that “the proposed regulation addresses significant constitutional concerns.”

She argued that using data from people listed as victims or complainants was excessive and added that “products from commercial providers are improved with the help of state-collected and stored data,” which she found unacceptable.

The state government has embedded this expansion of surveillance powers into a broader revision of the Police Act, a change initially required by the Federal Constitutional Court.

The court had previously ruled that long-term video monitoring under the existing law violated the Basic Law.

Instead of narrowing these powers, the new draft introduces a clause allowing police to “develop, review, change or train IT products” with personal data.

This wording effectively enables continued use of Palantir’s data analysis platform while avoiding the constitutional limits the court demanded.

Across North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg, and Hamburg, the outcome will be similar: personal data can be used for training as soon as anonymization is judged to be disproportionately difficult, with the assessment left to police discretion.

Gayk has urged that the use of non-anonymized data be prohibited entirely, warning that the exceptions are written so broadly that “they will ultimately not lead to any restrictions in practice.”

Baden-Württemberg’s green-black coalition plans to pass its bill this week.

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California DMV Admits to Illegally Issuing 17,000 Commercial Licenses to “Dangerous Foreign Drivers”

California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has confessed to illegally handing out 17,000 non-domiciled Commercial Driver’s Licenses (CDLs) to dangerous foreign drivers who have no business operating massive semitrucks or school buses on American roads.

According to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean P. Duffy, the discovery came as part of an ongoing audit by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).

According to the Department of Transportation, each of the 17,000 non-domiciled CDL holders has been issued notice that their license will expire within 60 days, as it no longer meets federal requirements.

FMCSA is now requiring the California DMV to hand over a full audit of all non-domiciled CDLs to verify that every unlawfully issued license is revoked and that the state corrects the systemic failures that allowed this fraud to occur.

Federal auditors found that over one in four foreign driver records sampled in California failed to comply with federal law, including CDLs that extended beyond the expiration of a foreign worker’s visa, a blatant violation of federal safety regulations.

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Newsom’s Former Chief of Staff Indicted on Public Corruption Charges

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, was indicted by a federal grand jury on 23 charges related to public corruption, according to a Nov. 12 statement from the Department of Justice.

U.S. Attorney Eric Grant alleged that Williamson, 53, of Carmichael, California, committed bank and wire fraud, conspired to defraud the government and obstruct justice, filed false tax returns, and made false statements to investigators.

“This is a crucial step in an ongoing political corruption investigation that began more than three years ago,” Grant said in the statement. “As it always has, the U.S. Attorney’s Office will continue to work tirelessly with our law enforcement partners to protect the people of California from political corruption.”

According to the charges, Williamson allegedly helped divert about $225,000 in funds from a “dormant political campaign” to an associate’s personal account using a money laundering scheme to fund a “no-show job” between February 2022 and September 2024.

She is also charged with conspiring to create illegitimate, backdated contracts to thwart a federal investigation into Paycheck Protection Loans made to a business he owned.

Williamson also allegedly filed false tax returns, deducting luxury purchases of home goods and handbags, as well as private jet flights and hotel stays, according to the indictment.

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Israel wants to implement the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners. Here’s what you need to know. 

Israel is one step closer to passing a law that would allow Israeli courts to sentence Palestinian prisoners to death. On Monday, the Israeli Knesset passed the bill in a first reading with a majority of 39 votes in favor against 16 in opposition. The bill was presented as “exceptional” law, under a special status that allows it to be passed only with the majority of votes cast, and not the majority of the Knesset members, which is why absentees and abstentions were not counted. It still needs to pass two more readings before entering into force.

The law applies to individuals who are convicted for acts that led to the death of Israelis, if the acts were motivated by “racism or hostility towards the public” and “committed with the objective of harming the state of Israel or the rebirth of the Jewish people,” making it applicable exclusively to Palestinians. It was introduced by Knesset member Limor Son Har-Melech from the ultra-nationalist “Jewish Power” party with a strong support base by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, like Har-Melech herself.

The party is led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, a key ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government coalition. The death penalty for Palestinian prisoners has been a main political demand of Ben-Gvir, who has been behind the worsening of detention conditions of Palestinian prisoners in recent years.

Israel does have the death penalty in its law, but has only been considered applicable in rare situations of grave crimes, like genocide, and was applied once in 1962 against former Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann. The new law introduces three new stipulations which indicate the intention is to use the death penalty on Palestinians.

First, the bill’s wording allows the death penalty on individuals convicted of killing Israelis on “nationalistic or racist” grounds. This limits its application to non-Israelis and employs the euphamism of “nationalistic” crimes which is commonly used to describe Palestinian attacks against Israelis. Second, since it applies to Palestinians in the occupied territory, it gives Israeli military courts, who are the ones who issue penal sentences against Palestinians under occupation the power to put Palestinians to death. Third, it allows the death sentence to be given with a simple majority of judges, and not by consensus.

Even still, Ben-Gvir continues to push to loosen the law’s application even more to give Israeli forces the authority to execute Palestinians in the field. The law has several opponents, including Yair Lapid’s opposition “There is future” party, and the orthodox Haridi representatives. The opponents to the law abstained from voting, and many lawmakers were absent. But since it was introduced as an exceptional bill, requiring only a majority of votes cast, it passed.

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ICE to Deploy Palantir’s ImmigrationOS AI to Track Migrants’ Movements

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is moving forward with ImmigrationOS, a new AI system built by Palantir Technologies to give officers near real-time visibility into immigrants’ movements and sharpen enforcement priorities nationwide. The agency awarded Palantir a $30 million contract in early 2025, with a working prototype due by September 25, 2025 and an initial operating period of at least two years, according to agency planning documents and contract disclosures. ICE frames the system as a way to speed removals of people already prioritized for enforcement, better track self-deportations, and coordinate federal data that now sits in disconnected silos.

What ImmigrationOS is meant to do

ImmigrationOS is designed to pull together a wide range of government-held records to sort, flag, and route cases to officers in the field. ICE officials say the tool will help them focus on individuals linked to transnational criminal organizations, violent offenders, documented gang members, and those who have overstayed visas.

The system is also built to register when people leave the United States on their own, so field offices can avoid wasted detention and travel costs on cases that no longer require action. While the agency describes the platform as a needed modernization step, civil liberties groups warn that an AI-driven system with sweeping data inputs risks mistakes that could touch the lives of lawful residents and even U.S. citizens.

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Minneapolis Dem Carjacked After Winning Election on ‘Restorative Justice’ Platform

Minneapolis City Councilman Jamal Osman was carjacked Monday night, just days after winning reelection on a platform that emphasized criminal justice reform and alternative responses to crime.

Police Chief Brian O’Hara confirmed the incident Tuesday, saying two juveniles — ages 15 and 16 — were arrested after stealing Osman’s car and crashing it shortly afterward.

According to police, the suspects approached Osman, threatened him with mace, and stole his vehicle.

The two teens then collided with several cars and a fire hydrant before fleeing on foot.

Officers later captured both suspects, who are being held pending charges.

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Israel destroys over 1,500 buildings in Gaza since start of ceasefire

The Israeli military has destroyed more than 1,500 buildings in the Gaza Strip since the ceasefire deal was reached last month, according to new satellite images – the latest of which was captured on 8 November.

The images, analyzed by BBC Verify, show that the Israeli army has wiped out entire neighborhoods in less than a month, mainly through demolitions. 

“The destruction of buildings in Gaza by the Israeli military has been continuing on a huge scale,” the investigation says. 

The BBC used a change-detection algorithm to analyze radar photos – taken before and after US President Donald Trump’s ‘peace plan’ came into effect – which revealed the scale of damage and the number of visibly destroyed buildings.

The images show buildings beyond the Yellow Line, the perimeter to which Israeli forces agreed to withdraw their troops as part of the agreement.

Many of the demolished buildings did not appear to have sustained damage before their destruction, for example, near Rafah, Khan Yunis, and parts of Gaza City. 

“According to the agreement, all terror infrastructure, including tunnels, is to be dismantled throughout Gaza. Israel is acting in response to threats, violations, and terror infrastructure,” the Israeli army claims. 

Trump’s ceasefire plan calls for the destruction of all “terror infrastructure” under the “supervision of independent monitors.”

However, the satellite imagery and testimonies from Palestinians confirm the destruction of civilian homes and residential sites.

“This is definitely a violation of the ceasefire,” Dr. H. A. Hellyer of the UK-based RUSI think tank told BBC. “But [Washington] DC is unwilling to recognize it as such, insisting that the ceasefire has to hold, even when it isn’t actually holding.”

Hugh Lovatt, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said these demolitions would continue to pose a problem until Israel withdraws from Gaza, and could jeopardize the ceasefire.

Yet the US plan allows Israel to maintain a presence in the strip until the resistance is completely disarmed. 

“Ultimately, the sense that Israel is stalling its withdrawal and looking to create new permanent facts on the ground, as it has in the West Bank, will become an increasingly greater threat to the maintenance of the ceasefire,” Lovatt added. 

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Calling It ‘Biden’s FBI’ Diminishes The Real Threat Of A Bureaucracy Gone Wild

Sen. Chuck Grassley’s latest revelations regarding Operation Arctic Frost demonstrate that the weaponization of our government is far more dangerous than previously understood. However, what is truly infuriating is the Republican reflex to attach Biden’s name to abuses carried out by the FBI, CIA, or any one of our endless alphabet agencies. Framing it as “Biden’s FBI” or “Biden’s CIA” misses the point entirely and diminishes the severity of the structural threat.

These labels make Operation Arctic Frost and other abuses sound like political controversies. They ignore the grave reality that it is the product of a permanent bureaucracy that is so powerful, it operates as an unelected “fourth branch of government” that seems to be unencumbered by the Constitution.

It also demonstrates a judiciary gone rogue, where some judges like James Boasberg elevate ideology over the Constitution. These judges shield a bureaucracy that routinely violates the rights of the American people with impunity. Calling it “Biden’s FBI” implies that if Republicans are in power, the problem will fix itself. The hard truth is it won’t, and we can see it hasn’t. The corruption didn’t begin under Biden, and it won’t end under a Republican administration.

There is clear evidence that the bureaucracy operates independently of the administration regardless of which party controls the White House. For Republicans to think that President Trump’s return to office will make the bureaucracy suddenly obey constitutional limits is dangerously naïve.

Just look at President Trump’s first term. Not only did the bureaucracy target him, but it also went after his allies and millions of ordinary Americans, including Catholics and parents concerned about their children’s education. Operation Crossfire Hurricane was an “insurance policy” in case Donald Trump won the presidency. When the Russian collusion narrative collapsed, the bureaucracy pivoted to a new front. A leaked phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky became the next weapon. They were determined to remove a duly elected president by any means necessary.

Even while Trump was still president, the permanent bureaucracy pivoted to censorship and information warfare to target him and his supporters. Several federal agencies pressured tech companies to censor Americans on a wide variety of topics, including Covid and elections. In addition, the FBI sought to suppress and discredit the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, even though it had been authenticated and in their possession for more than a year. Subsequently, 51 intelligence officials colluded to mislead the American public and falsely claimed it was Russian disinformation.

And it wasn’t just the law enforcement and intelligence community engaging in these abuses. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS), responsible for delivering mail, not surveilling Americans, got into the mix through its ICOP program to monitor Americans’ online activity. The Stanford Election Integrity Partnership was nothing more than a DHS-run operation to silence millions of Americans online under the pretense of combating “misinformation.”

A plethora of other examples exist, and while the abuses escalated under the Biden administration, we cannot ignore that this weaponization has unfolded over decades. It’s rooted in a bureaucracy that has amassed so much power and operates with impunity because of a feckless legislative branch that refuses to exercise meaningful oversight. The entrenched bureaucracy is also aided and abetted by ideological judges who legitimize actions that blatantly violate both the Constitution and the public trust.

I have watched the endless parade of Republican lawmakers express outrage over the latest revelations. They call for more investigations and demand accountability, but accountability without reform is meaningless. Congress has the power to rein these agencies in, yet little has been done in the way of meaningful legislation.

Firing a few bad actors, holding another round of hearings, or implementing internal reforms that can be easily undone by the next administration, won’t stop the bureaucracy that has come to view itself outside of constitutional constraints. Congress must also impeach and remove Judge James Boasberg. The rule of law collapses when the judiciary abandons its role as a neutral arbiter and check on executive power. It seems that the very institutions designed to protect liberty have become the greatest threat to it.

This isn’t about who sits in the Oval Office. It’s about a permanent government that disregards the separation of powers and our system of checks and balances.

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