Tag: crime

Michigan AG warns on election fraud claims: A false claim of criminal activity is a crime

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) warned on Monday that a false claim of criminal activity, including election fraud, is itself a crime. 

Through a tweet, Nessel responded to former state Sen. Patrick Colbeck’s (R) comments during a Michigan Board of State Canvassers meeting that ended with the state’s election results being certified. 

Colbeck faced questions during the meeting about whether he had brought his allegations of voter fraud to the state attorney general.

Nessel confirmed in her Twitter thread that Colbeck “has never made a complaint of election fraud” to the Michigan attorney general’s office.

Keep reading

UK terrorism chief calls for ‘national debate’ on criminalizing doubts about Covid-19 vaccine

The UK’s top counter-terrorism cop has suggested society stop allowing people to question the wisdom of a rapid Covid-19 vaccine rollout, regarding such skepticism to be life-threatening “misinformation.”

Met Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu has pointedly questioned whether it is “the correct thing for society to allow” the sharing of “misinformation that could cost people’s lives” — demonizing all doubts about quickly developed Covid-19 vaccines whose potential long-term effects are not yet known and tying them to extremist radicalization efforts.

While he didn’t go so far as to call for a law to be passed banning such content, his suggestion of a “national debate” will presumably light a fire under ministers already mulling such legislation.

Basu also expressed worries about a “sharp increase in extremist material online in the last few years” during Wednesday’s press conference, warning of a “new and worrying trend in the UK” of young people being radicalized. Officials told UK media that Islamic extremists and far-right groups were using “false claims about coronavirus” to radicalize their followers. 

Social media users already wary of the rush to roll out the vaccine were disturbed by the attendant rush to criminalize criticism of it.

Keep reading

US: Disastrous Toll of Criminalizing Drug Use

The massive enforcement of laws criminalizing personal drug use and possession in the United States causes devastating harm, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a joint report released today. Enforcement ruins individual and family lives, discriminates against people of color, and undermines public health. The federal and state governments should decriminalize the personal use and possession of illicit drugs.

The 196-page report, “Every 25 Seconds: The Human Toll of Criminalizing Drug Use in the United States,” finds that enforcement of drug possession laws causes extensive and unjustifiable harm to individuals and communities across the country. The long-term consequences can separate families; exclude people from job opportunities, welfare assistance, public housing, and voting; and expose them to discrimination and stigma for a lifetime. While more people are arrested for simple drug possession in the US than for any other crime, mainstream discussions of criminal justice reform rarely question whether drug use should be criminalized at all.

“Every 25 seconds someone is funneled into the criminal justice system, accused of nothing more than possessing drugs for personal use,” said Tess Borden, Aryeh Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU and the report’s author. “These wide-scale arrests have destroyed countless lives while doing nothing to help people who struggle with dependence.”

Keep reading

Black Lives Matter is Rioting in Philly for Man Who Held a Gun to a Woman’s Head and Was Awaiting Trial For Threatening to Shoot Another

he man who was fatally shot by police after running at them with a knife, sparking violent riots in Philadelphia, previously held a gun to a woman’s head and was awaiting trial for threatening to shoot another.

Walter Wallace Jr., who was fatally shot on Monday, was also a rapper who had songs about shooting the police.

“Guns are a central theme as he rhymes about shooting people, including police,” ABC 6 reports. “Court records show Wallace was currently awaiting trial for allegedly threatening to shoot a woman and her house up.”

It gets worse.

Keep reading