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.

Washington Examiner: Capitol Protesters Are ‘Terrorists’ Like Al Qaeda Who Must Be ‘Ruthlessly Hunted Down’

The Washington Examiner ran a hysterical column on Monday from “former” CIA officer Kevin Carroll calling for Americans who took part in the mostly peaceful protests at the Capitol to be “ruthlessly hunted down” and treated like Al Qaeda terrorists.

From The Washington Examiner, “How to fix our domestic terrorist problem”:

Democrats such as Attorney General-designate Merrick Garland and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer should use their executive and legislative power over the next 23 months to do the following five important things.

First, bring the heaviest felony charges possible on as many participants in the insurrection as the Justice Department can identify and believes it can confidently convict. We ruthlessly hunted down foreign terrorists after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and must do the same to their domestic equivalents. […]

Second, make fire and police departments that receive federal grants have their members sign commitments not to engage in acts to overthrow the government. Prosecute any who subsequently violate their oaths. We could also cut or suspend federal funding to departments that fail to introduce these measures. […]

Third, do not worry about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Rather than ban extremist chatter through government censorship or private de-platforming, use radical chat rooms as honeypots, as FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Forces have done with violent, radicalized Islamists since 2001. […]

Fourth, use the supremacy of federal law to ban “militias” beyond the National Guard. […]

Fifth, add domestic terrorism as a predicate to the material support for terrorism statute, including its civil liability provisions. This will provide new means of successful prosecutions and gradually increased deterrence against domestic terrorists. […]

Kevin Carroll served as senior counselor to the secretary of homeland security and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and as a CIA and Army officer in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen.

Carroll’s bio says he worked for a branch of The Lincoln Project.

Keep reading

AOC Wasn’t Even in the Capitol Building During Her ‘Near Death’ Experience

We’ve reported various aspects of the account of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) of what happened to her on Jan. 6 during the breach at the Capitol. But there are some very critical facts that have been missing from her story that I wanted to talk about here.

The story, as it was initially related by AOC, suggested that she was about to be assassinated by rioters in her office in a video that has been viewed over 6 million times.

Newsweek even claimed that’s what AOC said.

Ocasio-Cortez said that rioters actually entered her office, forcing her to take refuge inside her bathroom after her legislative director Geraldo Bonilla-Chavez told her to “hide, hide, run and hide.”

“And so I run back into my office,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I slam my door. There’s another kind of like back area to my office, and I open it, and there’s a closet and a bathroom. And I jump into my bathroom.”

As it turns out, however, as my colleague Bonchie reported earlier, AOC said in her Instagram drama that the person who came to her office was a Capitol Police officer. But she denigrated the officer who came to help, claiming he “didn’t feel right” and that he was looking at her “in all of this anger and hostility.” Her staffer reportedly wondered if he would have to fight the officer and suggested that he might put them in a “vulnerable situation.”

Keep reading

Death of Maryland man shows continued out-of-control nature of SWAT, no-knock raids

One of the most positive developments from last year’s political strife was a stronger focus on police abuses and no-knock raids. Some states and cities have imposed new restrictions, others are working toward greater transparency when it comes to police shootings. Unfortunately, Maryland, a state that has wrestled with some of the most egregious SWAT and no-knock cases in the country, remains mired in controversy.

The state has a long record of SWAT debacles. After police wrongfully raided a mayor’s house and killed his dogs in 2008, Maryland required police to report every SWAT raid. Between 2010 and 2014, police in Maryland conducted more than 8,000 raids, killing nine people and injuring almost a hundred civilians.

Despite controversies, statistics were no longer collected after 2014. Strong police unions have blocked numerous efforts at legislative reform. As a result, Marylanders continue to be vexed by the same kind of deadly no-knock debacles that killed Breonna Taylor last March in Louisville, Kentucky.

Duncan Lemp is one of Maryland’s latest victims.

Keep reading

CDC—No Longer Constrained By Trump—Issues Order That Makes Not Wearing A Mask On Public Transportation A Federal Crime

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, no longer restricted by the Trump administration, issued an extensive federal public health order late Friday requiring all individuals to wear masks over their mouth and nose on nearly all forms of public transportation and private ride-sharing services—and makes refusal to wear a face-covering a violation of federal law.

Keep reading