Tag: indiana

Porn Sites Must Block VPNs To Comply With Indiana’s Age-Verification Law, State Suggests in New Lawsuit

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita is suing dozens of porn websites, claiming that they are in violation of the state’s age-verification law and seeking “injunctive relief, civil penalties, and recovery of costs incurred to investigate and maintain the action.”

Last year, Indiana Senate Bill 17 mandated that websites featuring “material harmful to minors” must verify that visitors are age 18 or above. Rather than start checking IDs, Aylo—the parent company of Pornhub and an array of other adult websites—responded by blocking access for Indiana residents.

Now, Indiana says this is not good enough. To successfully comply, Pornhub and other Aylo platforms (which include Brazzers, Youporn, and Redtube, among others) must also block virtual private networks and other tools that allow internet users to mask their IP addresses, the state suggests.

This is an insane—and frighteningly dystopian—interpretation of the law.

Broad Anti-Privacy Logic

In a section of the suit detailing how Aylo allegedly violated the age-check law, Indiana notes that last July, “an investigator employed by the Office of the Indiana Attorney General (‘OAG Investigator’) accessed Pornhub.com from Indiana using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) with a Chicago, Illinois IP address.”

“Defendants have not implemented any reasonable form of age verification on its website Pornhub.com,” the suit states. It goes on to detail how Indiana investigators also accessed Brazzers.com, Faketaxi.com, Spicevids.com, and other adult websites using a VPN.

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Trans Teen Confesses to Planned Valentine’s Day Mass Shooting in Honor of Parkland Shooter

A transgender teenager has admitted to planning a mass shooting attack at an Indiana high school back in February meant to take place on Valentine’s Day.

Trinity Shockley, 18, is planning to plead guilty to felony conspiracy to commit murder and will receive 12 and a half years in prison, along with five years of probation, The New York Post reported.

Police said Shockley was arrested after they received a tip that she had an AR-15 and had bought a bulletproof vest.

The tipster added that Shockley was obsessed with the idea of mass shootings.

Shockley identifies as a man and uses the name “Jamie,” according to The New York Post.

Authorities performed a search of her home and found a bizarre shrine dedicated to Parkland, Florida shooter Nikolas Cruz, among other gunmen.

They also discovered she chose Valentine’s Day for the attack because it synced up with the day the Parkland massacre occurred, back in 2018.

The Post reported that Shockley will be “barred from researching school shooters for life” and will have “all her electronic devices” monitored by special software.

In addition, she will be unable to ever own a gun and must pay for counseling.

Shockley is expected to make an official plea on Nov. 24.

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Indiana Governor Calls Special Session to Redraw Congressional Maps

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican, on Oct. 27 called for state lawmakers to return to Indianapolis for a special session to redraw the state’s congressional districts in an escalation of a growing multi-state, mid-cycle redistricting showdown.

President Donald Trump has increased pressure on Republican governors to call special legislative sessions to draw new congressional maps to give the GOP additional House seats in next year’s midterms, a key election in which the incumbent party in the White House historically loses seats in Congress.

The multi-state redistricting battle kicked off with Texas and Missouri, and now California Democrats have responded with a voter proposition to consider their own redistricting plan to blunt the GOP’s impact.

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe, a Republican, signed his state’s congressional redistricting bill into law on Sept. 28. California voters will vote in November on Proposition 50, which would allow the state government to redraw its districts in response to Republican gerrymandering in other states. Former President Barack Obama recently joined California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, in endorsing the ballot measure.

While lawmakers in Indiana had been more hesitant about redrawing their congressional maps and had held off for weeks on engaging in the effort, Braun is now calling for the Indiana General Assembly to convene on Nov. 3.

The plan would likely involve targeting the state’s First Congressional District that spans Gary and nearby cities in Indiana’s northwest corner near Chicago. Rep. Frank Mrvan (D-Ind.) has held the seat for three terms and is running for reelection next year.

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Killer’s Death A Cover-Up? Investigators Reopen Cold Case…

Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison is questioning whether notorious serial killer Herb Baumeister’s 1996 death was actually suicide, reopening one of America’s most disturbing cold cases that authorities prematurely closed nearly three decades ago.

Coroner Challenges Decades-Old Death Ruling

Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison has publicly questioned the circumstances surrounding Herb Baumeister’s 1996 death in Canada, which was officially ruled a suicide. Jellison’s renewed investigation focuses on whether law enforcement adequately examined all aspects of Baumeister’s death before declaring the case closed. The coroner’s skepticism stems from the abrupt halt of the investigation immediately following Baumeister’s death, despite thousands of unidentified human remains at Fox Hollow Farm. This represents a concerning pattern where justice is denied simply because a suspect dies before trial.

Massive Crime Scene Reveals Investigation Failures

Fox Hollow Farm in Westfield, Indiana, contains the second-largest collection of unidentified human remains in the United States, exceeded only by the World Trade Center site. Baumeister allegedly killed numerous men throughout the 1990s, with only eight victims officially identified before the investigation ceased. The Hamilton County Coroner’s Office now uses advanced forensic genealogy through GenGenies to match DNA from bone fragments to living relatives across the nation. This technological breakthrough exposes how poorly the original investigation served victims’ families, who deserved thorough identification efforts regardless of the suspect’s fate.

Modern Technology Delivers Overdue Justice

Jellison’s office has successfully identified two additional victims using DNA analysis and genealogy techniques unavailable in the 1990s, with three more identifications pending verification. GenGenies provides these specialized forensic services at no cost, demonstrating the private sector’s commitment to solving cold cases abandoned by government agencies. The renewed investigation leverages cutting-edge technology to provide closure for families who waited nearly thirty years for answers. This progress highlights how institutional accountability and modern forensic methods can resurrect cases that bureaucratic inertia left to gather dust.

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Indiana U. professor supports transparency unless it applies to people like him

A new Indiana law requiring public university professors to post their syllabi online “threatens academic freedom,” according to an Indiana University Bloomington professor who is involved in government transparency efforts.

The law, included in a budget passed in May, “almost certainly will have a chilling effect on professors,” according to Professor Gerry Lanosga.

Beginning this school year, professors must post their syllabi online for not just students to see, but the entire public, which includes the taxpayers who actually fund the operations of the university. 

Yet for Professor Lanosga (pictured), this amounts to “surveillance,” according to comments he gave the student newspaper. He also joked “Maybe the impact on posting them to the public is that students may read it more.”

The media studies professor said he has nothing to hide, even though he opposes the law.

“It isn’t inherently bad — faculty don’t have anything to hide in their syllabi and people will comply with the law,” Lanosga said. “But what is the rationale? What are the motives? It hasn’t been made clear,” he told the Indiana Daily Student.

The rationale is that public university professors are supposed to serve, well, the public. They are paid by taxpayers to teach classes and conduct research. The secondary principle is that the work of public employees should be generally available to the public. 

Lanosga should know this since he specifically lists “freedom of information” as an interest on his faculty bio, he won the “Investigative Reporters and Editors’ Freedom of Information Medal,” and serves on the board of the Indiana Coalition for Open Government. 

Instructors have some flexibility to reveal certain information just to enrolled students, according to the student newspaper. A good law leaves some room for exceptions.

But in general, the work of public professors should be free and open to the taxpayers. There are other benefits as well – perhaps prospective high school students want to know what they will learn in a political science, chemistry, or economics class if they attend IU.

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School district must convince jury it can fire Christians for not using students’ transgender names

Two months before the Supreme Court dramatically expanded employers’ obligations to grant religious accommodations to employees, rejecting a throwaway line in a 1977 ruling that was widely used to deny accommodations, a Chicago-based federal appeals court ruled that calling students by their last names for the sake of religious conscience was a fireable offense.

Two years later, the same three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cleaned the egg off its face after reviewing former music teacher John Kluge’s second loss in district court in light of the High Court’s precedent for former postal worker Gerald Groff.

Indiana’s Brownsburg Community Schools Corp. will have to convince a jury that it yanked Kluge’s yearlong last-name accommodation and ordered him to either resign or address transgender students by their preferred names and pronouns, in violation of his Christian faith, because the district would have otherwise suffered “substantial increased costs.”

“Because material factual disputes exist, we reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the school on Kluge’s accommodation claim and remand for further proceedings,” said the majority opinion by Judge Michael Brennan, joined by Judge Amy St. Eve, both nominated by President Trump.

They cited “insufficient evidence to conclude that calling students by their last names, without more, would inflict emotional harm on a reasonable person,” and that Brownsburg hadn’t shown Kluge’s practice resulted in emotional distress “under an objective standard.”

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Military Bases in Indiana, New Jersey Will Be Converted to Migrant Holding Centers

The Secretary of Defense has confirmed that a military base in Indiana and another in New Jersey will be converted to house detained immigrants who are awaiting deportation.

Since Trump came into office this year, the administration has added sixty facilities to the list of those used to house migrants marked for deportation, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

Now, two more are being added to that list. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth supplied a letter to Congress to inform them that Camp Atterbury in central Indiana and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey will be available “for temporary use by the Department of Homeland Security to house illegal aliens,” the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported.

In the letter, Hegseth insisted that turning space over to immigration enforcement “will not negatively affect military training, operations, readiness, or other military requirements, including National Guard and Reserve readiness.”

The timeline to begin shipping migrants to the bases has not been determined.

Camp Atterbury already has facilities to accommodate 7,000 in its dorm-style housing for families, and open barracks for singles. The buildings are equipped with central heating and air conditioning, and bathroom facilities.

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County prosecutor explains why charges against 3 local men who put cats into trash compactor have been dropped

Elkhart County Prosecutor Vicki Elaine Becker announced the formal charges against three former Jayco employees filed earlier this week, stemming from alleged animal cruelty at Jayco, have been dismissed due to the need for further investigation and clarification of facts and circumstances documented during the investigation.

Becker says a scrivener’s error, which was found in the Probable Cause Affidavit filed in support of the original charges, provoked additional investigative questions.

The county prosecutor says that error attributed a statement to Devon Miller as follows:

“Ptl. Yutzy spoke with Devon Miller, the vice president of operation at Jayco, who indicated the men acted in the company’s best interest by placing the live cats into the trash compactor.”

Becker says the phrase is not accurate and there is “no evidence documented in the police investigation to suggest that Mr. Miller endorsed, or approved of, the decisions or the behaviors of the three employees.”

Once the prosecutor’s office was notified of the discrepancy, officials made further inquiries regarding the facts and circumstances of the allegations.

The prosecuting attorney is “awaiting the results of that additional investigation, which has impacted the veracity of the original charging decision.”

Becker says a Motion to Dismiss each case was filed before anyone’s liberty was affected by an arrest.

Officials say until the additional information can be meaningfully considered, any amended charging decision will not be made.

The county prosecutor’s office added no interviews will be afforded at this time as they await further evidence before any additional official actions will be undertaken.

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Trans baby killer filed $3.5M lawsuit against Trump for ‘transphobic’ views that led to alleged sexual assaults behind bars

A transgender woman convicted of killing her infant filed a handwritten lawsuit against President Trump, claiming his “transphobic hate speech” fueled repeated instances of sexual assault she endured at an all-male prison in Indiana.

Autumn Cordellionè, also known as Jonathan C. Richardson, alleged that the president’s “extremist rhetoric” emboldened her assailants to violently assault and rape her in January shortly after she was transferred from protective custody to Westville Correctional Facility to serve out her 55-year sentence.

She said Trump is “negligent due his alleged knowledge that others may act on his words,” the baby killer scribbled in the 13-page suit filed in the Southern District of Indiana on April 1.

Cordellionè is seeking $3.5 million in damages from the commander in chief.

“President Trump has vowed to defend biological women from gender ideology extremism and restore biological truth to the Federal government,” a White House spokesperson told The Post when asked to comment on the lawsuit.

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Resolution wants Indiana House of Representatives to ‘submit’ to Jesus Christ

A resolution put forth by an Indiana legislator this week asks the state’s House of Representatives to “humbly submit its ways to the Lord, Jesus Christ.”

Written by Republican Rep. Joanna King and co-authored by 20 others, House Resolution 53 – “recognizing the importance of repentance” – invokes the Founding Fathers and their supposed reliance on “almighty God” when establishing the eventual U.S. government. It then calls for the House to “individually and corporately” uphold “biblical principles.”

King submitted the resolution on Tuesday, when it was referred to the committee on courts and criminal code. As of Thursday, it hadn’t been scheduled for a hearing.

No Evansville-area lawmakers signed on as co-authors. The 21 listed included 20 Republicans and one Democrat.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution specifically bars legislators from passing any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” Indiana’s own constitution follows suit.

“No preference shall be given, by law, to any creed, religious society, or mode of worship,” Article 1, Section 4 reads in part.

In this case it’s not a law, but a resolution, which wouldn’t carry the same weight. Resolutions are largely symbolic and don’t alter existing code.

Kylie Glatfelter, a spokeswoman for King, said she’d pass on questions from the Courier & Press. As of Thursday morning, she hadn’t responded.

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