Tag: police state

PREP Act Empowers Gov’t to ‘Administer’ Drugs, Biological Products, Devices to Citizens in Secret

Big Picture: The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, codified at 42 U.S. Code § 247d–6d, grants the government extraordinary authority to deploy countermeasures during public health emergencies. These powers allow for sweeping actions that include administering drugs, devices, or biological products to populations—without requiring public knowledge or consent. Signed into law by President George W. Bush on December 30, 2005, as part of the Department of Defense appropriations bill (H.R. 2863), the PREP Act was intended to prepare the nation for biological threats but has since raised questions about accountability and transparency.

Focus: The PREP Act’s language reveals how liability immunity, broad discretion for the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), and exemptions from disclosure requirements create an alarming framework for secretive government actions.

Keep reading

Bodycam footage shows New York state correction officers beating prisoner to death

On Friday, the New York state attorney general’s office released video footage showing correction officers at the Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica, New York, beating to death a handcuffed inmate, 43-year-old Robert Brooks.

The bodycams of four of the killers recorded the horrific incident, which has been broadly viewed in the United States and internationally. He was pronounced dead the next day. Preliminary autopsy findings indicate that he died from asphyxiation due to neck compression.

Thirteen correction officers and a prison nurse have been terminated from their jobs for the killing. The FBI and the state attorney general’s office are investigating the incident, although as of this writing charges have not been brought against the guards.

In lying and insincere public statements, prominent state officials have expressed shock and horror at the killing. Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul said she was “outraged and horrified after seeing footage of the senseless killing.” New York state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) head Daniel Martuscello told the media, “This type of behavior cannot be normalized, and I will not allow it to be within DOCCS.”

Keep reading

25 Tech Laws Slated To Take Effect in 2025

When it comes to technology, free speech, and new laws, the big question going into 2025 is whether the U.S. Supreme Court will allow a TikTok ban to take effect on January 19. Along with that possible change, a bevy of lower-profile tech laws—some good, mostly bad—are slated to take effect across the U.S. in the upcoming year, with many going into effect on January 1.

For today’s newsletter, I’ve rounded up some of the most notable ones, which include bans on teens using social media (Florida and Tennessee), age verification requirements for porn websites (Florida and Tennessee), a law ordering online platforms to remove “deceptive” election-related content (California), and a law limiting law enforcement use of images collected by drones (Nevada).

This list is not comprehensive. But I looked through a lot of laws taking effect in various states, so it’s a decent overview of what’s coming.

Keep reading

Top 10 Thought Crime Stories Of 2024

We look back on the craziest stories in 2024 of people being punished for their wrong think.

  1. Chapelle resisted reeducation

Back in April, comedian Jim Breuer claimed that Dave Chapelle told him he was once “visited” by an unnamed elite group of people and told to ‘correct’ his views.

The apparent visit took place in 2005 after Chapelle’s TV show became highly popular and before the comedian opted out of fame for close to a decade.

This goes some way to explaining Chapelle’s continued refusal to bow to the woke mob.

  1. Elon Musk is Australia’s number one thought criminal

In April, an Australian Senator called for X owner Elon Musk to be jailed for life for refusing to adhere to the Australian government’s demands to remove a video of the brutal attack on a Christian Bishop in Sydney by a Muslim extremist.

Musk warned that no country should be able to demand national, let alone global content bans. 

The X owner continued to resist Australia’s authoritarian demands much to the ire of the government and the Prime Minster there.

Ultimately Elon, and freedom of speech, prevailed.

Keep reading

Two more female cops close to disgraced NYPD Chief Jeffrey Maddrey, including his driver, raked in massive OT and other perks

More female officers in disgraced top cop Jeffrey Maddrey’s orbit pulled down massive overtime and other perks, The Post has learned.

The driver for the former chief of department made an eye-popping $163,414 in OT last year — and resigned days after The Post exposed her boss’s alleged sleazy conduct at police headquarters, records show.  

Detective Ingrid Sanders was the seventh-highest overtime earner in the department, boosting her total salary last fiscal year to $352,462, records show.

That put her pay not far behind Lt. Quathisha Epps, the top earner who made $403,515, including $204,453 in OT. Epps filed an explosive Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint accusing Maddrey of giving Epps overtime shifts in exchange for sex, The Post revealed in a front-page exclusive Sunday.

On the day of the Post’s inquiry, Maddrey quit. Sanders was immediately transferred from One Police Plaza to a Queens precinct, and filed for retirement on Dec. 23, The Post found in police documents.

Sanders is a first-grade detective — the top grade — who served in the chief of department’s office since December 2022. She followed Maddrey there from the Patrol Services Bureau. She didn’t return multiple messages.

Maddrey also sought favors for second detective, Ada Reyes, The Post has learned.

Epps, Maddrey’s personnel manager, told The Post that part of her OT was devoted to taking care of Reyes.

“The overtime that he would give me he would tell me to buy her things like get her some towels and things from Walmart, a microwave, and stuff like that so she doesn’t have to come out of her pocket,” Epps said. “I make the overtime and then I give things to her.

Keep reading

DEA Fails To Release Updated Marijuana Arrest And Seizure Data, Drawing Criticism From Legalization Advocates

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is facing criticism after failing to release updated annual data on marijuana-related arrests and seizures as it has done in prior years.

The agency has been publishing and archiving the annual data from its Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program (DCE/SP) for decades, and advocates say the information is critical, especially amid heightened consideration of federal marijuana policy reform.

The last time that DEA updated the cannabis arrest and seizures figures was May 2023.

That data showed that DEA seized more than 5.7 million marijuana plants in 2022, a demonstrable increase that bucked the trend that’s been observed over recent years as the state legalization movement has expanded. However, the agency made far fewer cannabis-related arrests that year.

“At a time when voters and their elected officials nationwide are re-evaluating state and federal marijuana policies, it is inconceivable that government agencies are unwilling to provide data on the estimated costs and scope of federal marijuana prohibition in America,” NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano said in a blog post.

Keep reading

NYC Desk-Jockey Cop Used Questionable Overtime to Get Paid Same Amount as Joe Biden Last Year

The highest-paid employee of the New York City Police Department is facing an internal affairs probe after making over $400,000 last year then trying to file for retirement.

Lt. Quathisha Epps, who worked as an administrator, is under investigation over allegations that she fudged her overtime hours and endorsed her own time slips, per an exclusive report from the New York Post.

The staffer supposedly worked 1,627 hours of overtime beyond her usual shifts, putting her average at 74 hours per week. However, unnamed sources told the Post there were “complaints over her coming into work late, leaving early, or not showing up at all.”

Epps raked in $204,000 in overtime on top of her nearly $165,000 base salary, placing her salary near $400,000 and making her the highest-paid employee across the entire NYPD.

The police force has 36,000 officers and 19,000 civilian staffers, per official statistics.

And she made more than all of them.

She therefore made more than NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, in whose office she worked. Her boss made a comparatively dismal $292,000.

Epps was suspended after she filed for retirement at 51 years old, a move that will affect her pension and lose her about $12,000 per year since she is leaving just short of 20 years into her time on the force.

But she will still pull in $16,000 per month.

Keep reading

A SWAT Team Destroyed an Innocent Woman’s House. The Supreme Court Won’t Hear Her Case.

The Supreme Court last month declined to hear a case from an elderly woman whose house was destroyed by a SWAT team, leaving open the question of whether or not innocent people are constitutionally entitled to compensation when law enforcement lays waste to their property in pursuit of public safety.

In July 2020, while chasing a fugitive, police arrived at Vicki Baker’s home in McKinney, Texas. They threw dozens of tear gas grenades inside, used explosives to break the front and garage doors, and drove a tank through her backyard fence, although Baker’s daughter, Deanna Cook, had supplied them with a key to the home, a garage door opener, and the back gate code.

The suspect, Wesley Little, had previously worked for Baker as a handyman and barricaded himself inside her home while on the run from police. He had kidnapped a teenage girl, whom he released after the cops arrived. But Little himself refused to exit, prompting law enforcement to ravage the house. (He ultimately killed himself.)

Baker, who was in Montana when her house was destroyed, never contested that police acted in the best interest of the community when it sought to extract Little from her home. She took issue, however, with the subsequent response from the government, which refused to compensate her for the more than $50,000 in damages. Her homeowners insurance likewise declined to pay, as many policies explicitly do not cover damage caused by the government.

“I’ve lost everything,” she told me in 2021. “I’ve lost my chance to sell my house. I’ve lost my chance to retire without fear of how I’m going to make my regular bills.” Baker, who was undergoing treatment for stage 3 breast cancer when we spoke, had been preparing to retire with her husband in Montana. After the house was ruined, a buyer predictably withdrew. The government said she did not qualify as a “victim.”

She is not the only person with such a story. At the core of the case and those like hers is whether or not the Constitution legally obligates the government to repay people who are not suspected of criminal wrongdoing but whose property is nevertheless destroyed by police in an attempt to protect the community. The Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment promises that private property cannot be taken for public use “without just compensation,” though some lower courts have ruled that actions taken by police in stories like these operate under an exception to that rule.

Keep reading

A Liar and the Father of Lies

Since 2001 (when I started paying close attention), I have observed the United States government commit a series of massive frauds for the benefit of its cronies in the Military-Industrial Complex, Wall Street, and—most recently in 2020-2021—for the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex.

In 2016, the racketeers who run the U.S. government were threatened by the improbable election of Donald Trump, and they immediately set about trying to sabotage it. Using the FBI as their primary tool, they fabricated the story that Trump had won the election by colluding with agents of the Russian government.

On the face of it, the story was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard, and it was then that I realized that America’s so-called “educated class” is ignorant and childish. The sheer magnitude of the lie that was told twenty-four seven for months on end was stupendous to behold, and it reminded of Jesus telling the Pharisees—with stunning frankness—that they are sons of the devil.

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

I’m impressed by the great literary quality of this verse (John 8:44), and I wonder if it inspired Shakespeare when he created his villains Iago and Richard III, who are, first and foremost, liars. As Iago says of his plan to destroy Othello:

The Moor is of a free and open nature,

That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,

And will as tenderly be led by the nose. As asses are.

I have’t. It is engender’d. Hell and night

Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.

Or Richard III says about his plot to seize the English crown:

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,

By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams

To set my brother Clarence and the king

In deadly hate the one against the other.

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous. I thought of this line this morning when I read a an essay by fellow Substack authors Jeff Carlson & Hans Mahncke titled “Alexander Downer Exposes FBI’s Deceit in Opening Russia Investigation”

Keep reading

Kathy Hochul signs law that fines energy companies $75 billion for ‘climate change’

New Yorkers, beware the law of unintended consequences.

From an item at the New York Post comes the news that Kathy Hochul has just signed a new bill, “modeled after a federal law that holds polluters responsible for abandoned toxic-waste sites,” which establishes the New York Climate Superfund. This endowment will be funded by energy companies that deal in gas, oil, and coal, and the money will finance “resiliency projects,” like initiatives to shore up the coast and mitigate flooding—because obviously as every progressive and mainstream media consumer “knows,” energy that comes from “fossil fuels” cause “climate change.”

As of now, a number of companies operating in New York have been hit with $75 billion in fines, which are to be paid into the fund over the span of a decade. Per the NY Post:

The oil giant Saudi Aramco of Saudi Arabia could be slapped with the largest annual assessment of any company — $640 million a year — for emitting 31,269 million tons of greenhouse gases from 2000 to 2020.

Aramco — formally known as the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. — is owned by the Saudi Royal family.

The state-owned Mexican oil firm Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, emitted 9,512 tons of CO2 and could face an $193 million assessment for generating 9,512 million tons of greenhouse gases.

Russia’s Lukoil could be assessed with a $100 million yearly fee for spewing 4,912 millions of CO2.

The 38 companies identified as carbon polluters include American petro giants such as Exxon and Chevron as well as Shell and BP in the UK, Total Energies IES in France, Petrobras in Brazil, BHP in Australia, Glencore in Switzerland, Equinor in Norway and ENI in Italy.

Another greedy, communistic money grab. What the left doesn’t get as they cheer on the theft is that once it’s normalized for the “ultra rich” it’s then normalized for the “rich”… and then it’s normalized for the upper middle class… then the lower middle class, and so on—it’s a war on wealth, using Saul Alinsky’s infamous line about “rub[bing] raw the sores of discontent” as a vehicle.

Did you know that when the federal income tax started it only applied to less than 1% of Americans? Now look where we are.

Keep reading