Tag: hypocrisy

DEA Slammed Over Post Commemorating Nixon’s Drug War Legacy On First Day Of Black History Month

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is facing criticism over its decision to commemorate President Richard Nixon’s drug war legacy in a social media post that coincided with the beginning of Black History Month.

DEA’s Throwback Thursday (or TBT) post on X featured a picture of Nixon receiving a “certificate of special honor” from the International Narcotic Enforcement Officers’ Association in December 1970 “in recognition of the outstanding loyalty and contribution to support narcotic law enforcement.”

Advocates blasted the homage as tone-deaf, memorializing a president whose own domestic policy advisor would later disclose that his boss promoted punitive drug laws in large part to target his political “enemies,” namely “the anti-war left and Black people.”

DEA didn’t necessarily endorse or provide commentary beyond sharing the moment in history—but the TBT post quickly incited criticism given the timing in connection to Black History Month.

It was also about six months after the photo of Nixon was taken that he’d infamously declare a war on drugs, fueling a mass incarceration movement that would have racially disparate impacts lasting generations into the modern day.

As the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) pointed out, 1970 also marked the year that Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), codifying broad drug criminalization in a way that has long empowered DEA and is actively being reviewed by the agency as it weighs a marijuana rescheduling recommendation from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

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Snopes REVERSES ‘fact check’ claiming Joe Biden didn’t wear hard hat backwards

Misinformation hall-monitor website Snopes was forced to reverse a fact-check on Saturday after making the false claim the Joe Biden did not wear a hard hat backwards during a recent photo-op with construction workers.

When Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) posted the photo of Biden to X with several other construction workers, users responded slamming Biden for wearing the hard hat backwards.  

One user zoomed into the photo and posted, “Why his hard hat is wore backward?” 

Others were quick to respond to Biden’s often middle-class image that is portrayed in media, saying, “Hat backwards because ‘he’s a man of the people.'” 

“He’s never done a hard days work has he,” the X user continued.  

The post from Klobuchar started to gain traction and has been seen over 2.4 million times as of Saturday afternoon. As the photo went viral, Snopes was quick to publish a fact-check of claims that the Biden had been wearing the construction gear wrong.  

In a now changed post, Snopes writers said, “The photo is genuine. And it does look, at first glance, like Biden was wearing that hard hat backwards. But after comparing it to other photos and videos of the same event, we were forced to reach the opposite conclusion: The hat on Biden’s head was facing forward, bill to the front, not backward.” The media company rated the claim it was backwards as “false” in their reporting when published on Jan. 26. 

By Saturday afternoon, Snopes had reversed course on the claim after posting the fact-check on X with the caption, “Folks are saying Biden was wearing his hard hat backwards in the photo op with Sen. Amy Klobuchar and some construction workers in Superior, Wisconsin. But was he?” 

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Migrant family with two young children camp in the freezing cold outside the NYC offices of billionaire George Soros, 93, who poured at least $47 million into backing loose immigration policies and open border

A migrant family with two young children have camped in the freezing cold outside the New York City offices of billionaire George Soros, 93, who poured at least $47 million into backing loose immigration policies and open borders.

Shocking footage captures the woman and two young children sitting on the busy sidewalk outside the headquarters of the Open Society Foundation, a nonprofit organization established by far-left billionaire Soros in Midtown Manhattan.

Consultant Jason Curtis Anderson, who shared the video on X, formerly Twitter, stated that the mother, an Asian migrant, has been there with her two babies for more than a week.

Anderson, who works nearby, wrote alongside the video: ‘An Asian immigrant and her two small children currently live on the sidewalk in front of the NYC headquarters of Open Society Foundation.’

The family’s presence on the streets of Manhattan came as city officials have struggled to accommodate migrants surging from the U.S.-Mexico border, with thousands sleeping in tents outside the city’s largest migrant shelter.

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Correcting The Record On Marijuana Prisoners Left Behind By Biden’s Pardons

On October 6, 2022, President Joe Biden issued a historic general pardon for all previous crimes of simple marijuana possession in violation of federal law and the D.C. Code, both of which are misdemeanors. A few weeks ago, the president extended the general pardon to cover offenses for marijuana use and attempted simple possession, which are also misdemeanors.

In all likelihood, the most important part of the president’s October 2022 action wasn’t the general pardon, but instead his ordering an administrative review of marijuana’s treatment under the federal government’s master drug scheme, the Controlled Substances Act. As just confirmed last week, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s scientific evaluation supports rescheduling marijuana—from a federal regime of absolute prohibition (Schedule I) to one of medical prescription pursuant to federal regulations (Schedule III)—which is now under final review by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Over the course of more than a year, President Biden has touted his general pardon as an example of “keeping my promise” on campaign pledges to decriminalize marijuana, to free incarcerated marijuana offenders and to expunge marijuana convictions. “My Administration has taken action,” a 2023 executive order claimed, to “correct our country’s failed approach to marijuana.”

Certainly, President Biden has made a bolder statement on marijuana reform than any voiced by his predecessors—save perhaps President Jimmy Carter, whose 1979 call for marijuana decriminalization went unheeded. The Biden administration deserves a lot of credit for the general pardon, the prospect of administrative rescheduling and other steps in support of reform. Indeed, just describing prohibition as “America’s failed approach to marijuana” is historically meaningful.

But let’s be clear: None of the administration’s actions has released a single marijuana offender from prison.

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Philly police oversight group hasn’t investigated any complaints since it started

The Citizens Police Oversight Commission hasn’t investigated a single citizen complaint of police misconduct since it was created in 2021, the watchdog agency’s leadership has acknowledged to Axios.

Why it matters: For now, all citizen complaints of police misconduct are still turned over to police internal affairs.

  • The agency’s director of investigations, Jamison Rogers, tells Axios he’s in the process of putting together an investigative unit. He acknowledged that redirecting complaints back to the police isn’t ideal because some residents who turn to the CPOC don’t have faith in internal affairs.
  • The commission’s mission is to improve police officer conduct and accountability and restore community trust in the department.

By the numbers: CPOC received 137 citizen complaints in 2023, including one involving officers who responded to a call about a distressed woman who was later killed in a hit-and-run.

  • About a quarter of the complaints included allegations that police officers had committed physical abuse, civil rights violations, falsification, sexual misconduct, drug use, or some other crime, per city data.
  • The agency has sole discretion over which misconduct complaints it investigates, per city law.

Driving the news: Some commissioners and residents told Axios they’re concerned that CPOC isn’t further along, but commission leaders say they’re confident in the process and hope to hire more than a dozen investigators over the next eight months.

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The Newly Unveiled HHS Rationale for Rescheduling Marijuana Underlines Drug Warriors’ Dishonesty

Last week, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Houston lawyer Matthew Zorn, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealed the rationale for its August 2023 recommendation that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act. The document not only contradicts the position that the DEA has long taken on this issue; it contradicts the position that HHS itself took in 2016, when the DEA rejected a 2011 rescheduling petition. The reversal shows that marijuana’s classification has always been a political question rather than a legal or scientific matter.

On October 7, 2022, the same day he announced a mass pardon for people convicted of simple marijuana possession under federal law, President Joe Biden instructed HHS and Attorney General Merrick Garland to “initiate the administrative process to review expeditiously how marijuana is scheduled under federal law.” Biden noted that Schedule I, which includes “heroin and LSD,” is “the classification meant for the most dangerous substances” and is “even higher than the classification of fentanyl and methamphetamine—the drugs that are driving our overdose epidemic.” On Twitter, he reiterated that “we classify marijuana at the same level as heroin” and treat it as “more serious than fentanyl,” which he said “makes no sense.”

In short, it was clear that Biden did not expect HHS to confirm its previous position that marijuana belongs in Schedule I. He expected HHS to recommend that marijuana be moved to a lower schedule, which is what it ultimately did. As the details of the HHS recommendation clarify, that decision was not based on new scientific evidence. It was based on a reinterpretation of the criteria for Schedule I that could have been implemented much sooner if HHS and the DEA had been open to it, or if a previous president had encouraged it.

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Joe Biden Fails to Congratulate Taiwan’s President-Elect: ‘We Don’t Support Independence’

President Joe Biden offered no words of congratulations or support to Taiwanese President-elect Lai Ching-te following his election victory on Saturday, telling reporters simply that America does “not support independence.”

Lai, of the anti-communist Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), defeated two leftist rivals on Saturday to hand his party an unprecedented third term in power. Lai is currently the vice president of the country and will succeed current DPP President Tsai Ing-wen.

Taiwan is a sovereign nation with its own government and civil institutions wholly independent of the Chinese Communist Party. Despite this reality, Beijing insists that Taiwan is a province of China and its government is a rogue “separatist” organization. The Chinese government forces countries to choose between recognition of Taiwan’s sovereignty or diplomatic ties with China, so most of the world’s nations do not maintain formal ties with Taiwan. At press time, only 12 countries in the world recognize Taiwanese sovereignty, following Nauru’s abandonment of Taipei this weekend in the aftermath of Lai’s election. America is not one of the 12; former President Jimmy Carter abandoned Taiwan to forge ties with the Communist Party in 1979.

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Teacher’s Union Sues to Stop New York Congestion Pricing Plan

When the New York Legislature first approved a plan to toll drivers entering congested lower Manhattan in 2019, interest groups scrambled to get their own special exemptions to the forthcoming tolls.

Now, with all the exemptions handed out, the toll schedules set, and final implementation just around the corner, everyone who didn’t get their requested carve-out is suing to halt the whole congestion pricing scheme.

On Thursday, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), which represents teachers in New York City’s public school system, along with Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella and individual teachers filed a federal lawsuit accusing federal and New York transportation officials of failing to conduct an adequate environmental review of its congestion pricing program. Their lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

“Federal, state and city transportation authorities conducted a rushed and hurried approval process for the congestion pricing plan,” said the union on X (formerly Twitter). “The current plan would not eliminate air and noise pollution or traffic, but would simply shift that pollution and traffic to the surrounding areas.”

The teachers’ lawsuit follows New Jersey’s earlier environmental lawsuit challenging congestion pricing filed last summer. Both argue that federal highway officials greenlit New York’s tolling program without conducting a thorough enough environmental analysis, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

NEPA requires that federal officials study the environmental effects of decisions they make—whether those are big decisions (like funding a new highway) or small ones (like approving a new vape device).

In New York’s case, federal sign-off of congestion pricing was required before the state could impose tolls on federally funded highways entering Manhattan.

Because NEPA allows third parties to sue over allegedly inadequate environmental studies, it’s become a favorite tool of environmentalists, slow growth activists, and garden variety NIMBY (not in my backyard) trying to stop or delay infrastructure projects.

To head off these legal challenges, federal agencies and their state partners will produce voluminous “litigation-proof” documents that attempt to leave no impact unexamined.

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Israel’s Genocide Betrays the Holocaust

Israel’s lebensraum master plan for Gaza, borrowed from the Nazi’s depopulation of Jewish ghettos, is clear.

Destroy infrastructure, medical facilities and sanitation, including access to clean water. Block shipments of food and fuel. Unleash indiscriminate industrial violence to kill and wound hundreds a day. 

Let starvation — the U.N. estimates that more than half a million people are already starving — and epidemics of infectious diseases, along with the daily massacres and the displacement of Palestinians from their homes, turn Gaza into a mortuary.

The Palestinians are being forced to choose between death from bombs, disease, exposure or starvation or being driven from their homeland.

There will soon reach a point where death will be so ubiquitous that deportation — for those who want to live — will be the only option.

Danny Danon, Israel’s former ambassador to the U.N. and a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Israel’s Kan Bet radio that he has been contacted by “countries in Latin America and Africa that are willing to absorb refugees from the Gaza Strip.”

“We have to make it easier for Gazans to leave for other countries,” he said. “I’m talking about voluntary migration by Palestinians who want to leave.” 

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Women’s Rights Groups Protest UN Appointment Of Transgender Activist As “Women’s Champion”

The United Nations has appointed a transgender activist as a “women’s champion,” prompting women’s rights groups to express their “dismay and disappointment.”

The Times reports “Seventeen women’s rights groups have signed a letter to the charity UN Women UK expressing concern about its choice of a transgender woman as its “UK champion”.

UN Women bills itself as the “Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women,” that works “for gender equality and the empowerment of women.”

Yet they’ve appointed a biological man as the UK’s representative for women.

It seems like a direct exercise in trolling women at this point.

The person in question is Munroe Bergdorf, a model, broadcaster and transgender activist.

Campaign Group Fair Play For Women issued a statement noting “In December the UN Women’s UK committee appointed a male who presents in a highly sexualised stereotype of womanhood as an ambassador for women.”

It continues, “UN Women has made a point of demonstrating that it considers males can become women. It’s disappointing to see the UK committee go so far as to select a male to represent women. Their credibility is in tatters.”

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