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Woke Oregon city hires MURDERER who executed teenage girl to its police review board

A convicted murderer who gunned down a 19-year-old girl has sparked community outrage after being voted back onto the city’s police review board. 

Kyle Hedquist, 47, was jailed for life without parole for murdering Nikki Thrasher in 1994. 

The Oregon native led Thrasher down a remote road and shot her in the back of the head to prevent her from telling people about a burglary spree he had embarked on. 

Hedquist was released in 2022, with former governor Kate Brown arguing that he was 17 at the time of the crime, which means ‘he shouldn’t be locked up for life.’

Now, the Salem City Council has reappointed Hedquist in a five-to-four vote on December 8, despite his 27-year sentence for the execution-style killing.

The Board reviews police conduct complaints and makes policy recommendations to the enforcement.

The 47-year-old was also appointed to the Citizens Advisory Traffic Commission and the Civil Service Commission, an advisory board that oversees traffic and fair employment issues, according to KATU2.

Board members also train with police and participate in ride-alongs to understand how officers operate. 

Backlash has erupted in the blue-state city, with rising concerns voiced by the Salem Police Employee’s Union and other council members. 

‘To think that we’re providing education on kind of how we do what we do to someone with that criminal history, it just doesn’t seem too smart,’ the association’s president Scotty Nowning told KATU2.

Nowning emphasized that the concerns stem from fixing the city’s oversight structure and are not necessarily about Hedquist. 

‘If you move him off there, if you don’t change your guardrails or what the requirements are to be on there, you could just put someone else on there with you know equal criminal history or worse,’ he told the outlet.

Salem Professional Fire Fighters Local 314 even created a website to slam the decision. 

‘As police and fire professionals in the Salem community, we are asking Salem residents to stand with us,’ the site read in part.

‘Tell [the council] to reconsider this decision and fix the mess that they created.’

Other committee members opposed Hedquist’s reappointment, but Councilor Mai Vang approved it.

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The U.S. Is Stealing From Millennials and Gen Z To Make Boomers Even Richer

For years, pointing out the obvious was considered impolite: America’s biggest, most distortionary transfer of wealth does not flow from elites to the working class. Nor does it show up as corporate welfare. It flows from the relatively young and poor to the relatively old and wealthy. It’s the defining injustice of our fiscal regime, the largest driver of our government debt, and the quiet engine behind the malaise of Millennials and Gen Z.

More than a decade ago, Reason editor at large Nick Gillespie and I wrote a piece arguing that Social Security and Medicare had together become the great cause of America’s generational inequity. We noted that senior households were wealthier than ever while young households still working to make ends meet had to prop them up further.

We also warned of the threat to a genuine social safety net. Treating every elderly person, no matter how well off, as a member of a protected class entitled to increasingly unaffordable benefits will eventually destroy a system that progressives in particular cherish.

Around that time, “Occupy Wall Street” protesters were railing against “the 1 percent.” I offered the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that they also consider occupying the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), the most powerful lobby defending the largest intergenerational wealth grab in American history.

As such, I greatly appreciated seeing Russ Greene, managing director of the Prime Mover Institute, join the fight and coin the term “Total Boomer Luxury Communism” in an important article over at the American Mind. The name sounds like a joke, but the math is sound.

American heads of households younger than 35 now have a median net worth of about $39,000 and an average net worth of more than $183,000. Those over 75 have a median net worth of roughly $335,000 and an average net worth exceeding $1.6 million. As a group, today’s seniors are the wealthiest we’ve ever had.

Many own their homes outright in markets younger families cannot afford to enter. Seniors enjoy higher rates of stock ownership and have benefited enormously from decades of rising asset values. Meanwhile, younger Americans face soaring housing costs, student loan debt, delayed family formation, and a labor market shaped by slower growth and higher federal indebtedness.

Some of this reflects natural wealth accumulation over time, and there is nothing wrong with that. But why does the modern welfare state magnify the disparity? As Green explains, “retired millionaires have become the greatest recipients of government aid,” as Social Security can redistribute up to $60,000 a year to an individual and $117,000 to a household. “Meanwhile,” Green notes, “Medicare programs are paying for golf balls, greens fees, social club memberships, horseback riding lessons, and pet food.”

Younger Americans are also on the hook for about $73 trillion in unfunded obligations projected over the next 75 years, making now the time to act. Some defenders of the status quo argue that higher taxes will fix the problem, but it would again fall on younger earners to continue redistributing benefits to the same affluent seniors, worsening the generational imbalance. The problem is not a lack of revenue; it’s a benefit structure that ignores modern demographics, modern wealth patterns, and basic fairness. Paying less to seniors who don’t need the money is the only fair reform to this dilemma.

Every time someone points these facts out, defenders respond reflexively: “But seniors paid in. They earned it.” No, not all of it. Not in any meaningful, actuarial sense.

We’ve known for decades that the system is wildly unbalanced. As Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute points out, a typical average-wage retiree in the 2030s will receive 37 percent more in Social Security benefits than they paid in taxes. Medicare is even more lopsided: Seniors routinely receive three to five times the amount they contributed.

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CIA Drone Carried Out First Known Land Strike On Venezuela 

The CIA is reported to have carried out a bombing operation within Venezuelan territory, CNN and The New York Times report in follow-up to President Trump touting that the US had knocked out “a big facility”.

CNN while citing unnamed sources, reports that the CIA conducted a drone strike on a remote dock along Venezuela’s coastline, after the US suspected the site was being used to store and transport illegal drugs, and which were supposedly bound for America.

Reports indicate the location was unoccupied at the time of the strike, which occurred earlier this month. The New York Times published a similar account based on anonymous sources, specifying that the operation took place last Wednesday.

As we detailed, President Trump had on Friday in a radio interview disclosed something which missed the attention of the US and global media. He let slip that a large land site had been knocked out by a strike from US forces in the Caribbean.

Trump may have actually assumed the attack which he disclosed publicly for the first time was already being reported on, but it had not. He was being interviewed by John Catsimatidis, the Republican billionaire who owns the WABC radio station in New York on his The Cats & Cosby Show, and the two were talking about the Venezuela campaign. 

“They have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from,” Trump said, though he did not explicitly identify the exact location or even country attacked. “Two nights ago we knocked that out.”

Interestingly, the remarks generated almost no headlines for much of that weekend. But by Monday he expanded on those remarks during a press conference, saying the target was located on Venezuela’s coast and that a “major explosion” occurred at a dock where boats were supposedly loaded with drugs.

“There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” he told reporters at Mar-a-Lago, his club and residence in Florida.

“They load the boats up with drugs. So we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area. It’s the implementation area, that’s where they implement, and that is no longer around.”

But even after this, neither CIA, nor White House, nor Pentagon would comment. Even more strange was that Venezuelan officials themselves have also remained silent, issuing no public statements regarding the alleged attack. It is perhaps the case they don’t want the population to panic, or else don’t want to give acknowledgement of a successful land strike by Washington.

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Ohio Activists Submit Signatures For Referendum To Block Lawmakers’ Move To Roll Back Marijuana Legalization And Restrict Hemp

Ohio activists announced on Monday that they’ve met an initial signature requirement to launch a campaign aimed at repealing key components of a bill the governor recently signed to scale back the state’s voter-approved marijuana law and ban the sale of consumable hemp products outside of licensed cannabis dispensaries.

Ohioans for Cannabis Choice said they’ve submitted a batch of 1,000 signatures to get the referendum process started. If the signatures are certified by the secretary of state, the campaign will then need to submit a total of about 250,000 signatures to make the ballot.

The proposed referendum would repeal the first three core sections of SB 56, a controversial bill that Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed into law earlier this month that he says is intended to crack down on the unregulated intoxicating hemp market. But the legislation would do more than restrict the sale of cannabinoid products to dispensaries.

The law also recriminalizes certain marijuana activity that was legalized under the ballot initiative voters approved in 2023, and it’d additionally remove anti-discrimination protections for cannabis consumers that were enacted under that law.

The governor additionally used his line-item veto powers to cancel a section of the bill that would have delayed the implementation of the ban on hemp beverages.

“We’re saying no to SB 56 because it recriminalizes the cannabis industry,” Wesley Bryant, a petitioner with the referendum campaign who owns the cannabis company 420 Craft Beverages, said. “SB 56 is a slap in the face to voters who overwhelmingly voted to legalize cannabis in 2023.”

Advocates and stakeholders strongly protested the now-enacted legislation, arguing that it undermines the will of voters who approved cannabis legalization and would effectively eradicate the state’s hemp industry, as there are low expectations that adults will opt for hemp-based products over marijuana when they visit a dispensary.

The pushback inspired the newly filed referendum—but the path to successfully blocking the law is narrow.

If activists reach the signature threshold by the deadline three months from now, which coincides with the same day the restrictive law is to take effect, SB 56 would not be implemented until voters got a chance to decide on the issue at the ballot.

“In filing our petitions today, we are taking a stand for Ohioans against politicians in Columbus and saying no to the government overreach of SB 56,” Bryant said.

A summary of the referendum states that “Sections 1, 2, and 3 of Am. Sub. S. B. No. 56 enact new provisions and amend and repeal existing provisions of the Ohio Revised Code that relate to the regulation, criminalization, and taxation of cannabis products, such as the sale, use, possession, cultivation, license, classification, transport, and manufacture of marijuana and certain hemp products.”

“If a majority of the voters vote to not approve Sections 1, 2, and 3 of the Act, then the enacted changes will not take effect and the prior version of the affected laws will remain in effect,” it says.

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New Year’s Eve Conspiracy Theories? Government Agency Issues Statement On Low-Flying Helicopters Spotted Over Las Vegas

In anticipation of the potential spread of conspiracy theories, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) has alerted the public to its plans to fly DOE helicopters over the Las Vegas Strip, as it plans to search for nuclear radiation leading up to this year’s New Year’s Eve celebration.

Part of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA’s) Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST), the Aerial Measuring System (AMS) will monitor the strip and surrounding areas for signs of background radiation that could point to a potential threat to the over 400,000 visitors expected to crowd the street during the annual holiday gathering.

“NNSA is making the public aware of the upcoming flights so citizens who see the low-flying aircraft are not alarmed,” the agency explained in June.

DOE Helicopters Create Radiation Map to Spot Anomalies

In a statement detailing the operation, the agency said that the flights, which began on Monday, will continue through Wednesday night’s New Year’s Eve celebrations. During each flight, the agency’s equipment-packed helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft fly directly over the 4.2-mile-long stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard, often referred to as “The Strip.”

“The public may see a Leonardo AW-139 helicopter, which is equipped with radiation-sensing technology,” the agency previously explained, adding that the helicopter will fly at “relatively low levels.”

During the Wednesday evening New Year’s Eve event known as “America’s Party,” Las Vegas authorities will close down The Strip to all vehicle traffic. At its peak, authorities will be responsible for the safety of hundreds of thousands of people as they watch an eight-minute-long firework show and an extended LED drone show.

According to the agency’s website, the DOE helicopters fly in a grid-like pattern at low altitudes of 150 to 300 feet and at an average speed of 80 miles per hour. The agency also noted that all flights of the DOE helicopters are conducted during daylight hours “to identify any unexpected radiation sources that might pose a threat during the event.”

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‘Her legs turned blue’: Nuclear plant radiation led to 12-inch blood clot in teen’s hip and deadly complications after she played in nearby creek, lawsuit says

An Ohio teenager died from complications of a bone marrow transplant after developing a “rare” genetic condition caused by radiation from a nuclear plant she lived by, her mother says in a lawsuit. The teen was diagnosed with a 12-inch blood clot in her hip and blood clots in her lungs before she died.

“Cheyenne Dunham, from birth until she was a teenager, regularly consumed food grown in a garden within close proximity to [the nuclear plant], including corn, tomatoes and beans,” lawyers for Cheyenne’s mother say in a 52-page legal complaint. “Cheyenne Dunham lived from age 4 or 5 until she was a teenager … in close proximity to [the nuclear plant]. At this home, Cheyenne Dunham played in a creek and ingested creek water.”

Cheyenne’s mother, Julia Dunham, is suing Centrus Energy in a wrongful death case for her 19-year-old daughter’s death in 2015. Julia became the administrator of Cheyenne’s estate in October and filed her complaint against Centrus Energy in late November. She says radiation from the company’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, referred to as PORTS, led to Cheyenne’s condition and health problems.

Officials shut down the plant in 2001 due to environmental concerns, including the proximity of a school just two miles away and numerous nearby homes.

On May 13, 2019, Zahn’s Corner Middle School in Piketon was “suddenly closed” after “enriched uranium” was detected inside the building, according to Julia Dunham’s complaint. Cheyenne was a student there for three years, from fourth through sixth grade.

“While at Zahn’s Corner, Cheyenne was exposed to radionuclides in excess of federal regulatory limits,” the complaint alleges. “She was also exposed to radionuclides in the Piketon community.”

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Tinker, tailor, publisher, spy: how Robert Maxwell created the academic peer review system

Publication of research results, theoretical propositions and scholarly essays is not a free-for-all. As shown by the dogmatism around climate change and Covid-19, sceptics struggle to get papers in print. The gate-keeper is the peer-review system, which people take for granted as a screening process to ensure rigour in scientific literature.

But it is not always been that way. Until at least the 1950s, the decision to publish was made by the editors of academic journals, who were typically eminent professors in their field.

Peer review, by contrast, entails the editor sending an anonymised manuscript to independent reviewers, and although the editor makes a final decision, the reviews indicate whether the submission should be accepted, revised or rejected. This may seem fair and objective, but in reality peer review has become a means of knowledge control – and as we argue here, perhaps that was always the purpose.

You may be surprised to know that the instigator of peer review was the media tycoon Robert Maxwell. In 1951, at the age of 28, the Czech emigree purchased three-quarters of Butterworth Press for about half a million pounds at current value. He renamed it as Pergamon Press, with its core business in science, technology and medicine (STM) journals, all of which instilled peer review.

According to Myer Kutz (2019), ‘Maxwell, justifiably, was one of the key figures — if not the key figure — in the rise of the commercial STM journal publishing business in the years after World War II’.

Maxwell’s company stole a march on other publishers and its influence was huge. By 1959 Pergamon was publishing 40 journals, surging to 150 by 1965. By 1996, one million peer reviewed articles had been published. Yet despite the increase in outlets, opportunities for writers with analyses or arguments contrary to the prevailing narrative are limited.

Maxwell was instrumental to peer review becoming a regime to reinforce prevailing doctrines and power.

Back in 1940, Maxwell was a penniless 16 year-old of Jewish background, having left his native land for refuge in Britain. His linguistic talents attracted him to the British intelligence services. On an assignment in Paris in 1944 he met his Huguenot wife Elisabeth. After war ended in 1945 he spent two years in occupied Germany with the Foreign Office as head of the press section.

Four years later, with no lucrative activity to his name, this young man found the money to buy an established British publishing house. According to Craig Whitney (New York Times, 1991), Maxwell made Pergamon a thriving business with ‘a bank loan and money borrowed from his wife’s family and from relatives in America’.

But how was he able to acquire Butterworth Press, initially? A clue is given by a BBC video clip (2022) on Maxwell’s links to intelligence networks. While operating as a KGB agent in Berlin, he presented himself to MI6 as having ‘established connections with leading scientists all over the world’. According to investigative journalist Tom Bower, ‘unbelievably what he really wanted was for M16 to finance him to start a publishing company’.

This point is corroborated by Desmond Bristow, former M16 officer, who states that Maxwell asked the secret security service to finance his venture. Seven years after launching Pergamon Press, Maxwell moved into Headington Hill Hall, a 53-room mansion in Oxford, which he leased from Oxford City Council.

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Fallout From Chernobyl Might Be Creating A New Kind Of Dog

Dogs are humanity’s best friend, and this is partially because we’ve bred them to better suit our preferences and needs. The Alaskan Malamute and Komondor, for example, were intentionally bred to serve specific roles (pulling sleds across the Arctic and guarding sheep from predators, respectively, in these two cases). It’s not just breeding that can produce new types of dogs, though. The harrowing damage to the ecosystem left in the infamous Chernobyl disaster’s wake may be contributing, too.

The April 1986 calamity caused ecological damage so severe that it will continue to scar the land for generations to come. In fact, according to Time, the director of the Chernobyl plant, Ihor Gramotkin, has stated that it would be “at least 20,000 years” before the plant’s immediate area would be safe again. The dangers of radiation exposure are severe, and the further scientists are able to study animals that live in the wider area, the better they can understand those effects. The local dog population has been regularly exposed for some time, as they shelter in the dangerously radioactive Semikhody train station. The area is still extremely hazardous, and Russian military activity throughout the exclusion zone could have far-reaching effects.

A 2023 study published on ScienceAdvances titled “The dogs of Chernobyl: Demographic insights into populations inhabiting the nuclear exclusion zone” investigated the DNA of some of these dogs and found that “genome-wide profiles from Chernobyl, purebred and free-breeding dogs, worldwide reveal that the individuals from the power plant and Chernobyl City are genetically distinct.”

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U.S. to commit $2 billion to U.N. humanitarian efforts, as foreign aid cuts continue

The U.S. will contribute $2 billion to U.N. humanitarian aid in 2026, the State Department said Monday, marking the latest cuts to foreign aid by the Trump administration.

The $2 billion commitment will be placed in a pooled fund that can be directed to nations or regions in crisis. Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Syria and Ukraine will reportedly be the first nations targeted for humanitarian aid assistance through the fund.

That structure is in line with U.S. demands that the U.N.’s humanitarian aid structure should be consolidated, with funds distributed to individual agencies. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, run by former British diplomat Tom Fletcher, began a “humanitarian reset” earlier this year to facilitate the change in structure.

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Mexican State Files Terrorism Charges Against Journalist over Reporting

Mexican authorities have filed terrorism and organized crime charges against a local journalist over his work as a crime reporter. The arrest and prosecution sparked widespread condemnation from international press freedom organizations over the use of law enforcement against journalists who are uncomfortable with the political elite.

The incident began on Christmas Eve, when investigators with the Veracruz Attorney General’s Office, along with soldiers from Mexico’s Army, arrested Rafael Leon Segovia, who uses the pen name Lafita Leon, on terrorism charges. According to information released from Veracruz’s AG’s Office, Leon Segovia’s arrest came following an arrest warrant and remains in custody awaiting a hearing this weekend.

It remains unclear why authorities went after the journalist. Local journalists in Mexico claim that the charges came after he recorded a video of a car crash involving the daughter of a politically connected attorney in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz. The case has sparked condemnation from the international press freedom organization Article 19.

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