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.

Trump Secretly Planned to Expand the Police State, Grant Unlimited Protections to Cops

A draft report from the Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice reveals the Trump administration’s plan to further expand the national police state, with an emphasis on supporting and expanding qualified immunity and facial recognition.

The president formed the commission via executive order in January. A federal judge recently blocked the release of the commission’s report due to a lack of diversity on the panel and evidence that it operated in secrecy in violation of public meeting laws.

The court order stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (NAACP LDF). The suit claimed the commission failed to provide proper notice of public hearing and that it gave too much influence to law enforcement interests in violation of laws dictating how federal advisory committees must operate.

According to a Reuters report, “The panel’s 18 commissioners include federal, state and local law enforcement representatives, but no civil rights advocates, defense attorneys or big-city police officials.”

Through an open records request, Reuters obtained a draft of the commission’s report, revealing a plan to further empower law enforcement in the United States. A New York Times op-ed declared, “The president’s commission was considering recommendations that could transform this nation into a dystopian police state.”

The report recommends increasing “due process” protections for police offers facing charges of misconduct, and called on the Justice Department to regularly affirm support for qualified immunity.

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10 Ways to Call Something Russian Disinformation Without Evidence

How do you call something “Russian disinformation” when you don’t have evidence it is? Let’s count the ways.

We don’t know a whole lot about how the New York Post story about Hunter Biden got into print. There are some reasons to think the material is genuine (including its cache of graphic photos and some apparent limited confirmation from people on the email chains), but in terms of sourcing, anything is possible. This material could have been hacked by any number of actors, and shopped for millions (as Time has reported), and all sorts of insidious characters – including notorious Russian partisans like Andrei Derkach – could have been behind it.

None of these details are known, however, which hasn’t stopped media companies from saying otherwise. Most major outlets began denouncing the story as foreign propaganda right away and haven’t stopped. 

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A Nonprofit With Ties to Democrats Is Sending Out Millions of Ballot Applications. Election Officials Wish It Would Stop.

Gerry Cohen had already voted, dropping off his state-issued ballot at his local post office, by the time the unsolicited mail ballot applications started showing up at his house in early September. The first one or two didn’t bother him. Cohen knows elections: He teaches election law at Duke University and is a Democratic member of the Board of Elections in Wake County, North Carolina. Sending applications directly to voters is “a good public service,” he said.

But Cohen has received at least seven unsolicited mail ballot applications since he voted — not from the state or county, but from the same get-out-the-vote group. “It’s extremely disruptive and reaches the level of a disinformation campaign,” Cohen said. “I think seven is malicious.”

The applications were from the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Voter Information, which, along with its sister organization, the Voter Participation Center, is conducting a massive campaign to register voters and promote mail-in voting. The nonprofits aim to send 340 million pieces of mail this election cycle, with a focus on two dozen key states. The groups describe themselves as nonpartisan, but they were founded by a former Democratic operative, and the organization has spent at least $47,142 this cycle to promote former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential bid and $40,065 supporting other Democrats, according to public filings.

Election officials say CVI has made a host of mistakes that have buried their offices in unnecessary paperwork and swamped them with calls from voters. Mailers from groups like CVI, which can be mistaken for official documents sent by state or local governments, are confusing voters at a time when states are racing to expand voting by mail during a pandemic, according to election officials from both parties. President Donald Trump has stoked fears of voter fraud by citing CVI’s activities.

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NXIVM Sex Cult Leader Keith Raniere Sentenced to Spend the Rest of His Days in Prison

The leader of a New York-based sex cult called NXIVM (nex-ee-um), which branded itself as a self-help group for elites, was sentenced in the Eastern District of New York on Tuesday to life in prison. Through his defense lawyers, Keith Raniere, 60, maintained until the end that he is not sorry for his conduct because he will one day show that he is not a sex-trafficker, abuser of women, possessor of child pornography, racketeer, extortionist, identity thief or obstructionist.

The NXIVM founder—known as “Vanguard,” “Master,” and “Grandmaster“—was found guilty in June 2019 on all criminal charges against him. Raniere and elite co-defendants like Seagram’s heiress Clare Bronfman (a NXIVM bankroller) or Smallville actress Allison Mack (a top recruiter) are all being punished for their roles in the conspiracy. 

Bronfman, Mack and others, unlike Raniere, entered guilty pleas and avoided sex crime charges; Bronfman was sentenced to nearly 7 years in prison, while Mack is still waiting to be sentenced. Raniere chose to fight the charges and lost. Now he’s been sentenced to 120 years in prison.

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