Tag: police state

Idaho Governor Signs Bill Setting Mandatory Minimum Fine For Marijuana Possession

Idaho’s governor has signed a bill creating a new mandatory minimum fine for possession of marijuana.

Under the legislation approved by Gov. Brad Little (R) on Monday, adults caught with less than three ounces of cannabis will face a mandatory minimum fine of $300.

Sponsor Rep. Bruce Skaug (R), the sponsor of the measure, told a House committee last month that “we do not want this to become a marijuana state.”

On the House floor, the representative asked colleagues: “Tell me what state—anybody who debates against this bill—what state is a better place because of the passage of marijuana legalization? I submit none.”

He later told a Senate committee that “a $300 fine is not too much if you can afford to buy this marijuana and concentrate.”

“Every dollar spent on pot by someone is not spent on food, clothing, school supplies, real medicine or housing,” he said.

The new law is set to take effect on July 1.

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British Offer Up Own Citizen to Radical Islamists for Execution After He Burned Quran

At the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 14, the German defense chancellor chided Vice President J.D. Vance for expressing concern regarding the respect for free speech in Europe.

“If I understand him correctly he compares the condition of Europe with what prevails in some authoritarian regimes,” Boris Pistorius said during his remarks after Vance’s address.

“This is not acceptable. This is not the Europe where I live,” he added.

Never mind the fact that Germany not only banned two of its top political parties from the Munich Security Conference and is trying to ban one of them, period. That can always be pinned on Germany’s, ahem, history in regard to certain sociopolitical matters during the last century.

However, if this truly isn’t “the Europe where I live,” Pistorius need only look to one of the countries Vance criticized — the United Kingdom — which recently offered up one of its citizens to the whims of radical Islamists for the grave crime of desecrating a Quran.

Now, before we begin, let’s just get this out front. The man, who we will not name, is not engaging in activity we’d condone. He doesn’t appear to be in compos mentis in the video that was taken of him committing the act, and his record seems to bear that out.

However, consider what happened and the steps Britain took, and ask yourself if this is the kind of society that values freedom of speech or expression — or, rather, whether it is willing to suicidally give its dissenters over to its most violent, extremist element.

So, the facts, such as they are: The Manchester man, 47 years old, has pleaded guilty in court to a charge of “racially or religiously aggravated intentional harassment or alarm,” which is punishable under the Public Order Act of 1986.

The man was recorded holding an Israeli flag before ripping out pages from the Quran and lighting them on fire at a memorial for the victims of the 2017 Manchester terrorist attack, according to the Manchester Evening News. He had previously advertised that he would be committing the demonstration on social media and live-streamed the affair.

“The ‘trigger’ for his actions was the death of his daughter in the Israeli conflict, which had affected his mental health, the court heard on [Feb. 3],” the Evening News reported.

A victim impact statement from Fahad Iqbal, who tried to intervene, read before the court, said this: “I was quite shocked, disgusted and offended. I’m a Muslim. I still can’t believe someone would do this. When he began to burn the Quran my heart was about to break out. This is the most emotion I have ever felt.”

Meanwhile, the defender of the man who pleaded guilty pointed out the obvious: “He’s extremely distressed at the distress he’s caused others as a result of this. He needs some further help and support.”

The defender said his daughter was killed during the conflict in Israel, which contributed to his declining mental health in recent months.

The judge wasn’t terribly sympathetic, saying she was sorry the man lost his daughter, but that “the Quran is a sacred book to Muslims and treating it as you did is going to cause extreme distress.”

“This is a tolerant country, but we just do not tolerate this behavior,” she said.

He’ll be sentenced on April 29 and is out on bail with the condition he doesn’t post on social media.

The Greater Manchester Police published the man’s name and street address — as claimed by groups that have come to his defense, like the Free Speech Union. However, the man also has 20 convictions on 47 prior offenses (that don’t include religious incitement), and police often publish that information, so it was likely readily available.

The Manchester Evening News, as if giving a helping hand to anyone who might want to take extrajudicial punishment out upon him, helpfully provided that information themselves.

And, as you might expect, the Greater Manchester Police were more concerned about the effect on Muslims than on someone who might get targeted by extremist Muslims for desecrating the Quran: “We understand the deep concern this will cause within some of our diverse communities and are aware of a live video circulating,” Assistant Chief Constable Stephanie Parker said, according to Free Speech Union.

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We Caught FBI Using “Minority Report Style” Secret Form Pressuring Gun Owners To Forfeit Their Rights

Gun Owners of America just caught the FBI coercing more people into giving up their Second Amendment rights!

Thanks to a FOIA request by GOA’s lawyers, we uncovered even more evidence on the FBI’s unconstitutional and unlawful NICS Indices program.

In 2019, it was discovered that the FBI was using a document titled “NICS Indices Self-Submission Form” that purported to allow American citizens to “voluntarily” waive their Second Amendment rights. 

By completing this FBI form, law-abiding Americans allegedly “consent” for the FBI to enter their names into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, marking them as permanently prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms or ammunition.  And as the form warns, once an individual waives their rights, it’s impossible to get them back.

Now, the mere existence of this form was troubling, and it clearly violates the Second Amendment and even the Gun Control Act. But at that point, we weren’t sure how extensively the FBI was using the form, if in fact it was being used at all.

Fast-forward a few years to 2022.

GOA published our initial findings that the FBI had provided these forms to agents for use on American gun owners, who were pressured into signing and therefore “voluntarily” relinquished their rights to purchase, possess, and use firearms.

These FOIA records painted a vivid picture of FBI agents showing up to people’s homes, place of work, etc., presenting to them these forms, and “asking” them to declare themselves to be a “danger” to themselves or others, or lacking the “mental capacity to adequately contract or manage” their lives.

You can imagine how coercive these sorts of FBI visits must have been.  The FBI’s use of this secret form has occurred during recent years when the bureau has become increasingly politicized and weaponized against Americans, including gun owners.

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House Judiciary subpoenas FBI for docs pertaining to bureau’s alleged misconduct under Biden admin

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on Monday subpoenaed the FBI for information and documents related to its investigation into alleged misconduct that occurred in the bureau during the Biden administration.

The committee previously subpoenaed the bureau for the documents during the 118th Congress, but Jordan claimed former FBI Director Christopher Wray failed to produce the necessary material. 

Jordan accused the FBI of departing from its “public safety mission,” under the Biden administration and Wray’s leadership in a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel, and claimed it also “refused any real transparency or accountability for its actions.”

“When President [Donald] Trump nominated you to serve as the Director of the FBI, he rightly called you an ‘advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution’ who will ‘bring back Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity to the FBI,'” Jordan wrote. “During this critical time in the FBI’s history, when Americans deeply distrust the FBI, it is important that you succeed in restoring public confidence and creating much-needed transparency.”

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French Government Proves JD Vance Right After Silencing Conservative Broadcaster

In a recent speech at the Security Conference in Munich, Vice President JD Vance warned European leaders that the real threat to the sanctity of the west is not foreign enemies but the enemies within.  EU governments have been destroying the very values of “democracy” that they claim to defend and cherish, all in a bid to keep power in the hands of an extremist leftist oligarchy.

European officials attending the Munich conference did so with the expectation that the focus of the event would be on the Ukraine war.  Specifically, the event was supposed to be another rally party in the name of continuing the war in the name of “protecting democracy”.  Vance flipped the conference upside-down, pointing out that Europe doesn’t actually believe in democracy, not even in the way they define it. 

European officials were indignant after Vance called them out on their own stage, claiming his accusations of authoritarianism had no basis in reality.  France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot defended European policies following the criticism by Vance stating:

“Freedom of expression is guaranteed in Europe…Nobody is obliged to adopt our model, but nobody can impose theirs on us…”

This, of course, is a lie.  The French government went on to prove JD Vance right this week after they finalized a move to shut down conservative French TV station C8.  The outlet will cease broadcasting on February 28th after the Council of State, France’s top court, rejected their appeal against the removal of their frequency.

Arcom, France’s audiovisual regulator, excluded the channel in July from the shortlist of selected candidates for the reallocation of digital terrestrial television frequencies which expire at the end of the month. Arcom confirmed its decision on December 12th.

Arcom pulled up C8 for a lack of editorial control over its programming following a series of incidents on the conservative “Touche pas à mon poste” show hosted by Cyril Hanouna, who regularly criticized the progressive establishment.  The show racked up fines of over 7.5 million euros.

The closure of C8 has caused uproar among conservatives in France. The station is owned by Vincent Bolloré, a media tycoon whose conservatism and Catholicism has long made him a hate figure among the progressive left.  French officials claim that Bolloré was trying to “take over the media”, conveniently overlooking the fact that France’s state-run broadcaster (like the BBC) is staffed overwhelmingly by people who lean leftist.  C8 was one of the few broadcasters in France presenting a conservative viewpoint. 

French journalists are often fined and even fired for stepping outside the boundaries of acceptable political opinion.  There is no freedom of speech in France, just as there is no freedom of speech in most of Europe and the UK.  JD Vance was absolutely correct in his assessment in Munich. 

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Dozens Of New Jersey Marijuana Businesses Push To Legalize Home Cultivation, Despite Resistance From Governor And Legislative Leaders

Dozens of New Jersey small marijuana businesses and advocacy groups are calling on the state legislature to allow adults to cultivate their own cannabis at home—seemingly contradicting repeated claims from the governor and legislative leaders that the reform could undermine the evolving legal marketplace.

And as Gov. Phil Murphy (D) is set to term out at the end of the year, activists are drawing attention where his potential successors stand on the issue as well.

The more than 50 businesses and advocates, which formed a collective known as the New Jersey Home Grow Coalition last year, signed an open letter to Senate President Nicholas Scutari (D), rejecting the idea that the market needs more time to mature before people can be permitted to grow their own plants for personal use.

Unlike most other states that have enacted cannabis legalization, New Jersey continues to prohibit home cultivation for adults or medical marijuana patients.

“Even with our growing industry there’s no hope of access to the clean, consistent, strain-specific medicine that I need for my epilepsy,” Andrea Raible, co-founder of the NJ Homegrow Coalition, said in a press release. “Politicians are concerned with adult use profits while we are concerned with life threatening health conditions and facing prison for plants.”

In the open letter to Scutari, who has broadly championed cannabis reform but has recently resisted calls for home cultivation, the members of the New Jersey marijuana community said “discussions on home cultivation in New Jersey have stalled, attributed to allowing the industry ‘time to mature.’”

“As licensed cannabis operators, stakeholders in the industry, and relevant organizations, we respectfully disagree with this statement. The legalization of medical home cultivation will not negatively impact the legal state cannabis industry,” they said. “We firmly support the immediate legalization of medical home cultivation for patients and caregivers. We also endorse additional legislation to be introduced that allows for the legalization of personal use home cultivation safely and equitably.”

The advocates and stakeholders are voicing support for an amendment to expand a pair of bills seeking to provide for medical cannabis home cultivation, making it so the plant limit would be replaced with an allowance to “allow up to 100 square feet of mature cannabis plant grow canopy area.”

“This would allow patients and caretakers to have the ability to properly pheno-hunt and cultivate an amount that meets individual needs,” they said. “Additionally, this change would mitigate the potential for exploiting the law through the cultivation of massive cannabis plants.”

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The DEA’s Official Museum Is An ‘Embarrassment Of Reefer Madness Misinformation’

Why would anyone visit the DEA Museum? My excuse was to see all the lies and misinformation in one place. And I wanted to understand how the curators sold and sanitized the war on drugs. I was not disappointed.

On the museum website, I got a preview of how brazen it would be. An online exhibition about Harry Anslinger is called, “A Life of Service.”  For three decades, Anslinger was the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the forerunner of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). It would be hard to overstate the destructive influence the diehard prohibitionist had on national and international drug policy. He was the father of the drug war.

The exhibition introduces him as a son of immigrants who made good in America. Then we learn about his fight to stop drug use and trafficking through the Roaring ‘20s, 1940s Hollywood and the Cold War. Anslinger unleashed his agents against bootleggers, cannabis smokers, cocaine sniffers, heroin injectors and even trainers who “doped” their horses. He’s described as a fiscally responsible, no-nonsense boss who just wanted a safe, drug-free world.

In truth, Anslinger was a racist monster responsible for incalculable suffering, deaths and imprisonment. His legacy is one of targeting Black and Brown communities for draconian prison sentences over unjust drug laws. Anslinger had a perverse hatred for jazz music, and harassed the great jazz vocalist Billie Holiday to her death.

His bald-faced falsehoods are legendary. “Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality and death,” he once said. Of course, none of this made it into the exhibition.

The DEA Museum is in Arlington, Virginia, on Army Navy Drive. The location is odd; it’s at the end of a desolate pedestrian walkway on the first floor of a nondescript federal building.

Visitors are greeted by guards and a security checkpoint. I put my bag and coat through the metal detector and showed ID—a perfect way to enter a museum that celebrates drug enforcement.

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Google to be hit with EU charges of breaching Big Tech rules, sources say

Alphabet (GOOGL.O) unit Google is set to be charged with breaching EU rules aimed at checking the power of Big Tech after proposed changes to its search results failed to address the EU antitrust regulator’s concerns and those of its rivals, three people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The move by the European Commission comes amid tensions with U.S. President Donald Trump who has sided with U.S. tech giants lobbying against EU regulations and criticising fines as a form of tariff. That has in turn triggered concerns that the EU watchdog may ease up on Big Tech.

The European Commission has been investigating Google for potential breaches of the Digital Markets Act since March last year.

One probe focuses on whether Google favours its vertical search engines such as Google Shopping, Google Flights and Google Hotels over rivals, and whether it discriminates against third-party services on Google search results.

The imminent charges concerned this issue, the people said.

The EU competition watchdog declined to comment. Google referred to a December blog post by its director, EMEA competition, Oliver Bethell, who said the company is working to find a balanced solution with the Commission.

Bethell said more changes in Google’s search result format to appease rivals could result in the removal of certain helpful features.

The U.S. tech giant has in recent months announced a series of changes to search result formats in a bid to address conflicting demands from price-comparison sites, hotels, airlines and small retailers. The majority of them have dismissed the proposals as not DMA-compliant.

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New Hampshire’s ‘first black sheriff’ pleads guilty to a laundry list of felonies…

Here’s another big win for DEI hiring—Mark Brave, New Hampshire’s first black sheriff, just pled guilty to a laundry list of felonies. Shocking? No, not one bit. This is what happens when you focus on checking diversity boxes instead of hiring the best person for the job. Sadly, we see this happening everywhere these days.

Brave’s fall from grace is nothing new. Sadly, it follows a very familiar pattern if you’ve been paying attention to the left’s DEI circus. Back in August 2023, Brave was arrested for stealing nearly $19,000 in county funds. This “stand-up guy” used taxpayer money to fund his extramarital affair and bankroll romantic trips to Boston and Florida.

Mark filed bogus claims for airfare, hotels, and meals—all while conveniently covering up the fact that he wasn’t exactly traveling solo… or with his wife. He actually doctored receipts to hide the identity of his mistress.

But don’t worry—it gets worse…

Sheriff Brave flat-out lied to a grand jury. He spun stories about attending official events, meeting a US congressman, and, of course, denied his mistress was anywhere near those trips. All lies. One Boston getaway, supposedly for a “charity fundraiser,” turned out to be nothing more than a romantic dinner cruise with his side piece.

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Supreme Ct. Filing Exposes How Charlottesville Officials Enabled 2017 Violence to Suppress Speech

A new Supreme Court petition filed by political activist Warren Balogh sheds light on what he calls the ‘intentional dereliction of duty’ by Charlottesville officials during the infamous 2017 “Unite the Right” rally. The petition, appealing a lower court decision from the Fourth Circuit, raises serious constitutional questions about whether local governments can deliberately allow chaos and violence as a means of suppressing speech they dislike.

Balogh is a self-described ‘pro-white’ activist. Far-left groups use a variety of labels to describe him as a ‘white nationalist’ and other such defamatory terms. Balogh says he was at the Charlottesville rally for only one purpose: to oppose the destruction of a historical monument. The Lee monument was destroyed in 2023, despite promises by officials it would be relocated.

Balogh is appealing the Fourth Circuit’s dismissal of his claims, as part of Balogh v. Virginia, 120 F.4th 127. That appeal was decided by Chief Judge Albert Diaz, an Obama appointee. That court said that because the participants engaged in violence, they were not entitled to protection from the police, a ruling at odds with the evidence in the case.

You can read the request for Supreme Court review here.

Charlottesville’s supposed right-wing violence is the reason Joe Biden gave for running against Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

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