Blog

Biden DoD Lets Transgender Service Members Skip Deployments, Receive Indefinite Physical Fitness Waivers: Confidential Memo

The Dossier has acquired a new Department of Defense (DOD) memo that goes into great detail on the topic of “care of service members who identify as transgender.”

The document, which is not classified but has long remained unavailable to Americans, is being published here for the first time for public consumption.

The 34 page memo details the enormous perks granted to service members who identify as transgender.

At the beginning of his tenure, President Biden ended President Trump’s ban on people who identify as transgender serving in the military. Since then, the Biden Administration has granted more and more benefits to this cohort, leading to dudes like this being celebrated by the Defense Department.

Keep reading

US projected to spend $117B on nuke command and control in next decade

Operating, upgrading and maintaining the systems the U.S. Department of Defense relies upon to monitor, ready and launch devastating nuclear weapons is expected to cost $117 billion over the coming decade, according to independent analysis of federal spending plans.

The price tag for nuclear command, control and communications, or NC3, in 2023-2032 marks a $23 billion increase in costs compared to a 10-year estimate made in 2021, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report published July 14. The office updates projections every other year at the direction of lawmakers.

The CBO attributed the increase to a ramping up of nuclear modernization — including the replacement of the E-4B National Airborne Operations Center and E-6B Take Charge and Move Out aircraft — as well as certain items appearing in budgets for the first time.

Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works and RTX, until recently known as Raytheon Technologies, in April announced they would collaborate on the so-called TACAMO, which provides airborne coordination for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Keep reading

Trans former NH lawmaker faces federal charges for allegedly using daycare connections to generate child exploitation images

The first openly transgender lawmaker in the US is facing federal charges in connection with sexual exploitation at a Tyngsborough, Massachusetts daycare center. A teacher at the daycare who assisted the lawmaker in obtaining sexual pictures of the children has also been arrested and was charged in June. In a press release, the Justice Department referred to trans-identified male Stacie Laughton as “a New Hampshire woman.”

Stacie Laughton, 39, has been federally charged with one count of sexual exploitation of children and aiding and abetting by the US Attorney’s Office District of Massachusetts. Lindsay Groves, Laughton’s former girlfriend, was the alleged teacher at the center who helped Laughton, a former NH lawmaker, gather the images and has been charged with child exploitation.  

Groves allegedly used bathroom breaks for the children, such as diaper changes, to take pictures of the children in the bathroom and would send the photos to Laughton.  

There were over 2,500 text messages between Laughton and Groves on the phones obtained by the prosecution. These included at least four sexually explicit pictures of children between three and five years of age.  

According to the Boston Herald, in one alleged text from Groves, she said to Laughton, “I want to do this with you with one of my kids.” The text was in conjunction with a picture focused on the genitals of a prepubescent boy.  

Laughton allegedly responded, “I also need to be honest I mean yes that picture was hot of that little boy but you probably have gotten the picture by now that I prefer little girls (sic), but he is cute.” 

Other texts allegedly talked about the couple hooking up with each other as well as with children.  

Groves was employed by the daycare from 2017 up until June of this year, according to the Boston Herald.

Keep reading

Suspected Portland serial killer was let out early due to COVID concerns

A career criminal being eyed in the grisly murders of four Oregon women in 2022 had his sentence cut short and was released a year earlier due to concerns over COVID-19 spreading behind bars.

Jesse Lee Calhoun, 38, was among about 1,000 inmates granted clemency by Democratic former Oregon Gov. Kate Brown as fears over the spread of the pandemic swept through the nation, the Willamette Week reported.

Calhoun had been sent to prison in 2019 on a series of felony convictions, including burglary, possession of a stolen vehicle, injuring a cop and choking a police canine and was due to be jailed until June 2022.

He had also gotten time shaved off his sentence for joining inmates in fighting wildfires in the state.

This week Calhoun was identified as a person of interest in the deaths of four women — Ashley Real, 22, Bridget Webster, Kristin Smith, 22, and Charity Lynn Perry, 24 — according to Willamette Week’s sources.

Keep reading

Lawmakers Slip Censorship Provisions Into Pentagon Spending Bill

The biennial Pentagon budget reauthorization usually presents ample opportunities for wasteful spending, as lawmakers slip provisions into routine legislation that compels the government to purchase unnecessary and overpriced military equipment.

But this year, lawmakers have also quietly pushed changes to the National Defense Authorization Act that aim to silence military personnel and purge the internet of certain information.

One particularly alarming provision comes from Rep. Mike Turner, a Republican from Ohio, which prohibits the Department of Defense from engaging with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a civil rights group advocating for the separation of church and state.

MRFF represents service members of all religions and denominations, helping them report instances of inappropriate proselytizing and the presence of religious symbols in official military affairs. The organization has previously succeeded in having crusader imagery removed from a Marine squadron and a Bible taken down from display at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base near Cheyenne, Wyoming.

“It is unprecedented in American history that Congress has ever tried to basically extinguish or assassinate a civil rights organization,” said Mikey Weinstein, an attorney, and former Air Force officer who founded the group in 2005.

Under this provision, not only is Defense Department staff prohibited from communicating with MRFF or Weinstein, but the military is also barred from taking any action in response to “any claim, objection, or protest made by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation without the authority of the Secretary of Defense.”

In an interview, Weinstein raised concerns about the impact on a current case involving a Jewish cadet or midshipman at a major military academy, questioning where they would turn for assistance. He emphasized that filing a grievance or simply contacting MRFF by phone could potentially result in a court-martial.

Weinstein believes that Turner holds a grudge against MRFF ever since the organization petitioned for the removal of a Bible from Wright Patterson Air Force Base, which is located in Turner’s Ohio district. The amendment was added to the NDAA without any debate and received unanimous consent from the committee, indicating support from House Democrats as well.

The bill passed the House last Friday and now moves to the Senate, where lawmakers aim to exploit this must-pass legislation to advance another broad restriction on speech.

Senators Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, and Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, are preparing to introduce an amendment to the NDAA that would grant lawmakers extraordinary powers to censor a wide range of information on the internet.

Keep reading

US Finally Cancels Funding To Wuhan Lab

The US government has finally pulled funding from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the Obama administration offshored banned gain-of-function research, including projects to make bat covid more transmissible to humans, before a highly evolved, human-infecting bat coronavirus broke out in the same town and killed millions of people worldwide.

Then the US put the same guy involved in said research, Peter Daszak, in charge of a highly conflicted lab-leak denial.

The stated reason for the funding halt? The lab failed to provide documents concerning safety and security measures, according to a memo obtained by Bloomberg.

Keep reading

National Security Head Claims UFOs Having “Real Impact” On U.S. Air Force Pilots

Ahead of a major hearing scheduled to take place in the House next week, National Security Council Coordinator John Kirby told reporters Tuesday that UFOs are having a “real impact” on the ability of U.S. Air Force pilots to operate.

“We wouldn’t have stood up an organisation at the Pentagon to analyse and try to collect and coordinate the way these sightings are reported if we didn’t take it seriously,” Kirby said responding to a question on unidentified aerial phenomena.

“I mean, some of these phenomena we know have already had an impact on our training ranges for, you know, when pilots are out trying to do training in the air and they see these things, they’re not sure what they are and it can have an impact on their ability to perfect their skills. So it already had an impact here,” Kirby said, admitting that the military does not know “what they are.”

“Now we’re not saying what they are or what they’re not, we’re saying that there’s something our pilots are seeing, we’re saying it has had an effect on some of our training operations, and so we wanna get to the bottom of it. We wanna understand it better,” Kirby added.

Keep reading

Thanks for nothing, DEA. Fifty years later, drugs are deadlier and more abundant than ever

As of this week, the United States has “enjoyed” half a century under the thumb of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), a wing of the Department of Justice established in 1973 by former President Richard Nixon. Instead of truly addressing the deepening drug problem in the U.S., the DEA has worsened public health outcomes related to drug use, promoted racially stigmatizing policies, stomped on civil liberties and burned stacks of cash in a vain effort to control the uncontrollable.

There’s no denying the drug situation in the U.S. is dire. Approximately 1 million people have died of overdoses since 1999, many of these deaths driven by powerful opioids like illicit fentanyl and its many analogs. Nonetheless, polydrug use — the mixing of multiple substances — is a far more lethal combination than any drug on its own, as well as the true underbelly of this drug crisis disaster.

Despite decades of increased funding, more seizures and more policing, the DEA cannot seem to make a dent in this crisis. The body count from overdoses continues to rise, and there’s no end to the flow of drugs into the U.S.

Keep reading

PENTAGON JOINS ELON MUSK’S WAR AGAINST PLANE TRACKING

A TECHNOLOGY WISH LIST circulated by the U.S. military’s elite Joint Special Operations Command suggests the country’s most secretive war-fighting component shares an anxiety with the world’s richest man: Too many people can see where they’re flying their planes.

The Joint Special Operations Air Component, responsible for ferrying commandos and their gear around the world, is seeking help keeping these flights out of the public eye through a “‘Big Data’ Analysis & Feedback Tool,” according to a procurement document obtained by The Intercept. The document is one of a series of periodic releases of lists of technologies that special operations units would like to see created by the private sector.

The listing specifically calls out the risk of social media “tail watchers” and other online observers who might identify a mystery plane as a military flight. According to the document, the Joint Special Operations Air Component needs software to “leverage historical and real-time data, such as the travel histories and details of specific aircraft with correlation to open-source information, social media, and flight reporting.”

Armed with this data, the tool would help the special operations gauge how much scrutiny a given plane has received in the past and how likely it is to be connected to them by prying eyes online.

Keep reading

New York’s ‘Symbolic’ Failure In Cannabis Regulation

With cannabis legalization sweeping across the United States, state regulatory bodies face pressure and scrutiny in their efforts to build a legal industry from the ground up. When formulating regulations, they balance the needs of public health, public safety and social justice.

Fortunately, industry standards and recommendations from time-tested consensus standard organizations make some of their choices easy. Unfortunately, even when handed a “no-brainer” standard on a silver rolling tray, New York’s Cannabis Control Board (CCB) made an unforced error that will potentially harm children, patients, small business owners and the general public—groups that cannabis regulation is explicitly intended to protect.

CCB has faced extensive criticism for its “bungled rollout” of the adult-use cannabis industry and its failure to deliver on social equity commitments. One founding CCB member recently resigned amidst the controversy.

Regrettably, CCB has now mandated that all regulated cannabis packages bear a perplexing and intricate product symbol, serving as a persistent and highly visible reminder of its unwavering resistance to the unanimous advice of the cannabis policy community.

In March, CCB took less than two minutes to approve a set of labeling regulations, without any mention of a letter from dozens of stakeholder organizations urging them to reject their homemade symbol in favor of a straightforward industry standard. Marijuana Moment and other outlets publicized the letter in advance of the March CCB meeting.

Looking like a parody of “design by committee,” the New York symbol was designed by the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) and features three separate elements enclosed within a black rectangle.

Keep reading