Tag: pennsylvania

Metaphysical Shop Owner’s Lawsuit Over Pennsylvania Fortune Telling Ban Moves Ahead

Following a legal victory earlier this summer, a metaphysical shop owner’s lawsuit over Pennsylvania’s ban on fortune telling could go to trial next year. The compelling case dates back to October of 2023 when the Serpent’s Key Shoppe and Sanctuary in the community of Hanover received an unexpected visit from the borough’s police chief, Chad Martin. Rather than picking up some occult supplies, the lawman instead offered a rather worrisome warning to owner Beck Ravenswood about the possibility of legal trouble should they violate the state’s 165-year-old law against divination. “He informed me basically he is not here to arrest me or press charges,” the shop owner recounted at the time, “however, if he ever gets a report from anyone, he will be back on my doorstep.”

The incident understandably did not sit well with Ravenswood, who filed a civil rights lawsuit against Martin and the town of Hanover in August of 2024. Nearly two years later, the case is still winding its way through the legal system, with the shop owner recently securing a significant legal victory. “The DA’s office had been trying to dismiss my case,” Ravenswood explained to a local media outlet, “saying it wasn’t important enough for the court to rule on.” However, they received word in June that the request had been rejected. “Judge Wilson finally looked at the evidence and said there’s a compelling argument here, and we need to determine what is really at the heart of this lawsuit,” Ravenswood said, “is it about witchcraft, or is it about freedom of speech? That’s really what it is.”

In a conference call between the parties on Wednesday, a discovery deadline was set for November 30th, and what the shop owner has cleverly taken to calling the ‘Hanover Witch Trial’ was added to the court’s calendar for June of 2027. That said, Ravenswood’s attorney reportedly indicated that they intend to request a summary judgment on the constitutionality of the law, which could eliminate the soothsaying ban once and for all without the need for any further court proceedings. Meanwhile, regardless of how the case ultimately unfolds, the antiquated restriction may not be on the books for much longer, as a state legislator introduced a still-in-committee bill that would repeal the restriction last June.

Keep reading

Residents of one state paying for politics in their electric bills

When families in Central Pennsylvania open their electric bills, they need an explanation for why electricity keeps getting more expensive. Come November, voters will surely have this issue top of mind.

A quick look on the Pennsylvania 10th Congressional candidate’s websites shows stark contrast. U.S. Rep. Scott Perry addresses this concern and acknowledges, “The Biden-Harris anti-American energy policies threaten our national security and have ruined our economy. America must be energy independent to grow our economy and maintain our security.” He correctly states he, “supports a blended energy portfolio that includes the development of clean energy technologies and using our vast energy resources – to reduce our dependence on foreign energy, turn around the economy, create jobs, reduce inflation, make energy more affordable, and preserve our environment.”

And on Janelle Stelson’s website? Nothing. Even with the find feature on and searching the word “energy,” it’s not mentioned once.

Janelle Stelson may not have released a detailed energy plan, but she has aligned herself with the broader Biden-era Democratic energy agenda on several social media posts. That matters because the policies that came out of the Biden-era White House, combined with policies pushed in Pennsylvania by Govs. Tom Wolf and Josh Shapiro, have made electricity more expensive for consumers. These policies have taken reliable baseload power offline, discouraged investment in new natural gas generation, and created uncertainty for the very projects Pennsylvania needs to keep the lights on and prices affordable.

The answer is pretty straightforward: energy markets run on supply and demand. When government policies make it harder to build and maintain reliable power generation, supply gets tighter. When supply gets tighter and demand keeps growing, prices go up. That is exactly what Pennsylvanians are feeling now.

Because new baseload energy production requires massive investments, the energy cost crunch can’t break or be fixed overnight. The Obama Clean Power Plan began the federal push to force coal-fired power plants and natural gas plants off the grid. Don’t take my word for it: In a 2008 interview President Obama admitted himself that, “my cap-and-trade program will cause electricity rates to necessarily skyrocket.” The Biden Administration charted a similar course with a new round of regulations aimed at coal and natural gas plants, including rules that would have required major emissions reductions from existing coal plants and new baseload gas plants. EPA has since described those Biden-era regulations as costly rules that raised costs and threatened grid reliability. Ms. Stelson said she supported these policies.

Keep reading

Butler, PA: Two Years Without FBI Investigation on Alleged Shooter

July 13, 2026, marks the two-year anniversary of the attempted assassination of then candidate Donald Trump at Butler, PA and, after numerous official investigations and no transparency by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the public is none the wiser about who the shooter was.

The U.S. Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Office of the Inspector General of the DHS, the Pennsylvania State Police/Butler County officials including the coroner, the Senate Homeland Security and Judiciary Committees, the House of Representatives Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump and the lead investigative body, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), all investigated what happened in Butler, Pa on July 13th.

The problem with all those august institution’s conclusions is that none can, or will, provide basic information about the identity of the alleged shooter, making it extraordinarily difficult to conclude who did what, where and when. The FBI, as the lead investigative body of the alleged shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, has been the least cooperative or transparent.

The FBI began its decent into transparency hell during FBI Director, Christopher Wray’s, tenure when the Congressional Task Force Chairman, PA Representative, Mike Kelly, wrote “the FBI stonewalled” the investigation, refusing to share crucial files that was the result of either “deliberate” obstruction or pure “incompetence.”  Without the often-requested transparency from the Biden FBI, all the above investigations were completed, but the lack of transparency from the FBI on the Butler shooting continued into the Trump Administration with Kash Patel.

Remember it was FBI Director Kash Patel who said “I pledge full transparency with Congress. Hundreds of lawmakers’ questions to the FBI have gone unanswered. That will not happen if I am confirmed, and all appropriate requests for information will be responded to expeditiously and fully.”  Patel also said, “The American people deserve an FBI that is transparent, accountable, and committed to justice…” Apparently Patel’s promises don’t include any information dealing with the Butler shooting investigation.

Judicial Watch, a conservative investigative group, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in July of 2025, requesting comprehensive investigative files relating to the alleged shooter, Crooks. Judicial Watch was successful in its FOIA request, and the FBI has been supplying the organization with heavily redacted documents for a few months. With an admitted 75 thousand documents on the case, at the rate of current release most people alive today won’t be alive by the time the FBI completes the document dump to Judicial Watch. Worse though is that the few documents being released are so heavily redacted that little information is gained from their release. So, what information has been withheld and what is needed to provide the truth to the American people?

While there are too many questions that need to be answered in this limited space, there are a few that stand out, like, for instance, what physical evidence (DNA, dental or blood-based test) were conducted to identify the alleged shooter? Currently, no information has been provided by any of the released investigations about how the recovered body, lying on the AGR Building roof, was identified and by whom. Oddly, enough, none of the official investigations mention that the alleged shooter’s body lay on the AGR Building roof all night, until 6a.m. the morning after the shooting. How does a thorough investigation miss such an important piece of information, especially when it comes to chain of custody issues?

Keep reading

2028 Democrat Presidential Hopeful Exposes Party Civil War Against Its Socialist Wing

Gov. Josh Shapiro sat down with Dana Bash on CNN’s State of the Union this weekend and said the quiet part out loud: his party is being overrun by its socialist and far left flank.

Bash pressed Shapiro on Darializa Avila Chevalier, who won the Democratic congressional primary in New York’s 13th congressional district last month while running as an open socialist.

Chevalier’s platform includes abolishing prisons, opening the borders, ending deportations, and granting mercy even to violent criminals. 

Bash also noted that Chevalier attended a pro-Palestinian rally on October 8, 2023, one day after Hamas terrorists slaughtered, raped, and kidnapped their way across southern Israel.

According to Bash, that rally featured antisemitic rhetoric defending the attack. Bash asked Shapiro how he feels, as a Democrat, about someone with those views heading to Congress.

Shapiro tried to have it both ways.

“Well, her district voted for her,” he said. But that statement also came with a convenient disclaimer. “But I have profound differences from that particular candidate, based on the citations that you read there. And she’s not someone who, you know, seemingly, I would agree with on many things, or that we share similar values. She ran on the Democratic ticket, I guess as a socialist; her voters in that district determined that she was the one they wanted representing them.”

Note the hedge. Shapiro was describing someone who wants to shield violent criminals from deportation and who reportedly stood in solidarity with people cheering a massacre of Jews. Yet, the strongest word he could summon was “seemingly.”

Bash followed up by asking what Chevalier’s win says about the Democratic Party. Here Shapiro dropped whatever remained of the diplomatic pretense. “I think that what our party has to go through, that will be very healthy, and something that we’ve not really done since the 1992 elections, is to have a battle over what we believe in,” he said.

Keep reading

Strange Findings – DHS Investigators Release Report on Secret Service Failures at Butler Assassination Attempt

On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General released its final report on Secret Service failures that preceded the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt against then-former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The report featured five key findings, the fifth of which included some strange details.

In short, the Secret Service site agent counterpart — usually a member of state or local law enforcement who coordinates event protection with the lead Secret Service agent, per NBC News — showed inappropriate deference to Trump’s staff on a question of major security-related significance.

Specifically, the report’s fifth key finding blamed the Secret Service for failing to block line of sight to President Trump.

Shortly after 6:00 p.m. on July 13, would-be assassin Thomas Crooks climbed the roof of an American Glass Research International building 155 yards away from Trump and fired eight shots, wounding Trump and killing rally attendee Corey Comperatore.

Prior to the event, the counterpart had identified that building as a threat.

“In Butler, the Secret Service site agent counterpart proposed blocking line of sight from the AGR complex to the stage where President Trump would be speaking,” the report read.

Keep reading

Democrat Nominee Chris Rabb Trashes Declaration of Independence: ‘This Is a Nation Born on Stolen Land and Stolen Labor’

Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb, the Democrat nominee for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, denounced the Declaration of Independence, capitalism, billionaires, and what he called “American exceptionalism.”

Rabb made the remarks during the “America at 250 — Trump Fascism, Historical Erasure, and the Battle Over Truth” panel, held June 26 at People’s Plaza on Independence Mall in Philadelphia. Rabb is running unopposed in Pennsylvania’s heavily Democrat 3rd Congressional District and is widely expected to win election to Congress in November.

During the discussion, Rabb argued that the Declaration of Independence did not deliver freedom to everyone and instead helped preserve the power of a privileged class.

“Those screeds that were very lofty but were notoriously catering to a performative aspect of collective genius that purposely erased indigenous and black peoples,” Rabb said.

“It created distance from an empire to help very privileged people continue that privilege and ultimately institutionalize that through the U.S. Constitution many years later. But it certainly did not provide independence to indigenous and black peoples. And we cannot talk about anything today without acknowledging that this is a nation born on stolen land & stolen labor.”

Rabb also said reparations would be one of his priorities if elected to Congress, calling himself “one of the few unapologetic reparationists going to Congress.”

According to Rabb, reparations are not simply about compensating black Americans but about reshaping society as a whole.

Keep reading

DOJ Sues States Over Alleged Failure To Turn Over Food Stamp Data

The Trump administration has sued four states, accusing them of withholding crucial data on food stamp applicants.

Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania refused to turn over information to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that would let federal officials identify fraud, Trump administration lawyers said in lawsuits filed on June 26 against the states.

Officials are asking judges to enter injunctions that would force state authorities to hand over the last five years of applications for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the food stamp program known as SNAP.

The USDA requested the SNAP data in 2025, citing an executive order from President Donald Trump that directed agencies to stop waste, fraud, and abuse, and many states complied with the request.

Data from those states showed that states had enrolled some 186,000 people in SNAP despite those people being deceased, among the discrepancies that added up to $3 billion in wasteful spending, the department said in a report.

The government spends nearly $100 billion a year on SNAP.

Keep reading

Transgender Vegan Cult Member Charged with Murdering Parents, Execution-Style, on Her 30th Birthday

A member of the Zizians cult, described by authorities as a radical collective focused on transgender ideology, veganism, and anarchism, has been charged with the first-degree murders of her parents in what prosecutors say was a planned execution.

Michelle Zajko, 33, a biological female who is “transitioning” to male, was charged on Wednesday in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, with two counts of first-degree murder in the December 31, 2022, shooting deaths of her father, Richard Zajko, 71, and mother, Rita Zajko, 69.

The murders occurred at the couple’s home in Chester Heights on the alleged killer’s 30th birthday.

Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse announced the charges at a press conference, stating that an exhaustive multi-year investigation had pieced together evidence showing Michelle Zajko was “at least in part responsible” for the deaths and did not act alone.

“We don’t have a smoking gun. It is piece after piece after piece of evidence that’s been collected painstakingly over years,” Rouse said. “But we are finally at the point where we can say beyond a doubt that Michelle Zajko was at least in part responsible for the death of her parents.”

Rouse confirmed prosecutors believe others were involved in the grisly killings.

Keep reading

Resurfaced Video Shows Democrat PA Congressional Candidate Dreams of Disarming Citizens and Police

Democrat Scranton, PA, Mayor Paige Cognetti is hoping to flip a red congressional seat blue by unseating Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-PA). But a resurfaced video from 2020 exposes a gun-grabbing posture that some voters may not be aware of.

In the video, taken from a virtual town hall, Cognetti supports disarming police and emulating Japan’s gun-control laws to take away guns from citizens.

Japan has some of the strictest gun control laws in the developed world.

The Firearms and Swords Control Law 1958 states that no one shall possess a firearm except under narrow, strictly regulated exceptions. Handguns are banned with almost no exceptions for ordinary citizens.

Cognetti told the town hall audience, “I would love to get to a world where a country where we don’t have or police don’t have firearms and where we don’t have firearms that citizens aren’t carrying them either.”

“I’ve lived in Japan for a couple years. There are no guns there and it’s lovely.”

She continued, “We don’t have to worry about some of these things because there are no guns there. That would be something that would be a great reality for us to live in.”

Cognetti repeated her fantasy during an interview with the Black Scranton Project, saying, “I do want to get to a point where we don’t have to worry about any officers having holsters or guns in them.”

“That is ideally where we get in our whole country.”

National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman Reilly Richardson told the Daily Caller News Foundation, “Political opportunist Paige Cognetti wants to rip firearms away from law-abiding citizens while simultaneously making life easier for criminals.”

“Pennsylvanians know Cognetti will go to great lengths to strip them of their constitutional rights.”

Keep reading

Drag Queen School Board Member Arrested For Child Sex Crimes Was Guest Speaker at Pennsylvania Democrat Caucus in 2024

The perfect Democrat.

New York State Police arrested a drag queen school board member on Thursday for child sex crimes.

46-year-old Travis Longo, who goes by the stage name “Anita Buffem,” was arrested and charged with four counts of endangering the welfare of a child.

According to police, Longo engaged in sexually explicit communications with a child under the age of 12.

Longo was elected vice president of the Board of Education for the Cazenovia Central School District in 2024 – and is STILL a member.

“Anita Buffem” was previously a guest speaker at the Pennsylvania Democrat Caucus in 2024.

Of course he was.

“The arrest was the result of a joint investigation conducted by members of the Troop D Bureau of Criminal Investigation (Oneida), the State Police Computer Crime Unit (Troop D), the New York State Police Special Investigations Unit, and the Madison County Child Advocacy Center,” New York State Police said in a press release.

“Investigators determined that Longo engaged in a pattern of sexually explicit communications with a child under the age of 12,” police said.

Police said there may be more victims and encouraged them to contact authorities.

“Investigators believe there may be additional victims who were contacted by Longo and ask anyone with information to contact the New York State Police at Troop D Headquarters at (315) 366-6000 and reference case number NY2600762245,” Police said.

Longo bragged about his speaking gig at the 2024 Pennsylvania Democrat Caucus.

Keep reading