Tag: police state

Appeals Court Upholds Ban on Student Wearing ‘Only Two Genders’ Shirt

A U.S. appeals court on June 9 upheld a ban preventing a Massachusetts middle school student from wearing a shirt reading “There are only two genders.”

Another prohibition by school administrators, this time blocking the same student from wearing the shirt with “only two” covered by tape, on which was written “censored,” is also allowed under court precedent, according to the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

“The question here is not whether the t-shirts should have been barred. The question is who should decide whether to bar them—educators or federal judges. Based on Tinker, the cases applying it, and the specific record here, we cannot say that in this instance the Constitution assigns the sensitive (and potentially consequential) judgment about what would make ‘an environment conducive to learning’ at NMS to us rather than to the educators closest to the scene,” U.S. Circuit Judge David Barron wrote for a unanimous panel of the court.

In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969 ruled that a ban on students wearing armbands in protest against the Vietnam War violated the students’ First Amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani cited the ruling when in 2023 she ruled in favor of the administrators at the John T. Nichols Middle School (NMS) and Middleborough School District in Massachusetts against Liam Morrison (L.M.), the boy who wore the “two genders” shirt to school.

“[The school] permissibly concluded that the shirt invades the rights of others,” Judge Talwani said before quoting Tinker. “Schools can prohibit speech that is in ‘collision with the rights of others to be secure and be let alone.’”

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Tucker Carlson Investigation: FBI Interrogated and Purged Trump Supporters from Its Ranks – The Police State Is Real

The FBI is now a secret police organization that targets, humiliates, and severs ties with pro-Trump members in its ranks.

Tucker Carlson interviewed Tristan Leavitt who is the president of the group Empower Oversight in his latest interview.

Tristan Leavitt is representing an anonymous FBI whistleblower who was suspended indefinitely without pay after the Agency discovered he attended the protests on January 6, 2021 at the Ellipse and US Capitol.

Mr. Leavitt describes how Trump supporters were targeted and interrogated by the FBI for holding conservative beliefs.

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Most Consumable Hemp-Based Cannabinoid Products Would Be Banned Under Another GOP Committee’s New Bill

A GOP-led House committee has put forward a large-scale spending bill that contains language that would effectively ban most consumable hemp-derived cannabinoid products, including delta-8 THC and CBD items containing any “quantifiable” amount of THC.

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies posted the text of the legislation on Monday—just one day before a scheduled vote.

If enacted into law, cannabinoids that are “synthesized or manufactured outside of the plant” would no longer meet the definition of legal hemp.

The language is virtually identical to a provision of the 2024 Farm Bill that was attached by a separate committee late last month via an amendment from Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL).

The proposed ban faced sizable pushback from the hemp industry, though certain key marijuana businesses have joined prohibitionists in supporting the proposed policy change.

Many observers expect that the timeline for advancing the Farm Bill will be pushed back until next year, however, so the hemp provision’s inclusion in a must-pass spending bill raises the stakes for hemp industry advocates.

Supporters of the ban have described the language as a fix to a “loophole” that was created under the 2018 Farm Bill that federally legalized hemp.

While they’ve focused on the need to address public safety concerns related to unregulated “intoxicating” cannabinoid products such as delta-8 THC, some hemp industry advocates say the effect of the proposed language could be a ban on virtually all non-intoxicating CBD products as well, as most on the market contain at least trace levels of THC, consistent with the Farm Bill definition of hemp that allows for up to 0.3 percent THC by dry weight.

Hemp industry stakeholders have recognized that there’s a need to address legitimate concerns related to the unregulated market that’s proliferated since hemp was federally legalized, but the solution they’ve put forward is to enact strategic regulations to ensure product safety and prevent youth access.

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3 teens arrested for leaving scooter skid marks on painted Spokane Pride intersection

Three teenagers have been arrested after they allegedly vandalized a Pride flag-painted intersection in Spokane, Washington by leaving skid marks with the Lime scooters they were riding on.

Police received a 911 call about multiple people on scooters “causing damage to the newly painted Pride mural” on June 5 just after 9 pm, according to the Spokane Police Department.

Four suspects were reportedly seen damaging the mural, while several witnesses said that one of the subjects yelled obscenities at them before leaving the area.

Officers said the damage to the mural was “black scuff marks consistent with scooter wheels,” and that these marks were left across the mural. The mural had recently been repainted after a May 16 incident in which multiple people dumbed a liquid on the mural and set it on fire, according to KREM.

Around 30 minutes after the 911 call, officers arrested three suspects who matched witness descriptions and video surveillance.

19-year-old Ruslan V.V. Turko was charged with first-degree malicious mischief and was booked into the Spokane County Jail. Two minor suspects were issued the same charge and booked into the Spokane County Juvenile Detention Center. The charge in Washington is a class B felony.

A woman who said she witnessed the incident, Kaylee Gaines McGee, told the outlet, “we’re not gonna sit by as we watch people deliberately commit a hate crime like right in the middle of downtown.”

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Woman Faces Possible 30-Year Prison Sentence In Minnesota For Possessing Bong Water

Last year the Legislature decriminalized drug paraphernalia, even if it contains drug residue. The change represented a step back from the drug war tactics of previous decades, with an eye toward treating substance abuse as a public health problem, rather than a criminal justice concern.

But one obscure relic of the war on drug paraphernalia got overlooked, and was not included in the decriminalization bill: a provision in state law that treats bong water—the water at the bottom of a smoking device, used to cool and purify the intoxicating smoke—as a controlled substance, no different than the uncut version of whatever illicit drug the bong was used to smoke.

People don’t consume bong water, but some prosecutors still use it as evidence to charge drug defendants with more serious crimes than they otherwise would be eligible for.

Just ask Jessica Beske.

On May 8, the 43-year-old Fargo resident was pulled over for speeding on Highway 59 in Polk County, Minnesota, according to charging documents. Deputies smelled marijuana and searched the car, where they allege they found a bong, a glass jar containing a “crystal substance” and some items of paraphernalia, including pipes.

The residue on the paraphernalia tested positive for methamphetamine, as did the water in the bong and the substance in the glass jar. Deputies further reported that the bong water weighed 8 ounces and, somewhat confusingly, that the crystal substance weighed 13.2 grams “in total with the packaging.”

Beske says the “packaging” is the glass jar, and that the reason deputies included the jar in the weight is that there wasn’t a measurable quantity of substance in it. She maintains she had no drugs on her, only paraphernalia containing residue. That’s precisely the sort of offense that lawmakers decriminalized in the 2023 bill.

But the Polk County prosecutor has instead charged her with first-degree felony possession, which carries a penalty of up to 30 years in prison and a $1,000,000 fine.

It’s because of the bong water.

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US Targets Journalists Who Criticize Administration’s Foreign Policy

Scott Ritter was pulled off a NY-to-Istanbul flight yesterday by US officials and his passport confiscated in a startling new development in the government’s open drive to censor and silence critics of the Administration’s foreign policies at a time when the United States is supplying billions of dollars in arms to foment wider war in Russia, accelerate the attacks on Gazans and set the stage for war with China over Taiwan.

A Marine veteran and true American patriot, Mr. Ritter is also a noted former Chief UN weapons inspector, author and journalist.  He was enroute to Russia to attend an international conference in St. Petersburg.  

Mr. Ritter first came to my attention when he testified at a Capitol hearing I sponsored to inquire into the Bush Administration’s plans to attack Iraq. Ritter warned in August of 2002 that a case had not been made for attacking Iraq.  

Had Congress listened to Mr. Ritter, the US would have been spared the loss of thousands of our soldiers and the waste of trillions of tax dollars. Over one million Iraqis died as a result of the US attack on their country. America’s financial and moral debt will never be able to be repaid, but would not exist if we had simply looked at the evidence he presented.

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9th Circuit and COVID Jabs

A lot is going around on social media related to the 9th Circuit ruling on Health Freedom Defense Fund v. Alberto Carvalho. There is discussion online that this means mandates are done. Unfortunately – that is untrue. This very short substack is to clarify the meaning of this case.

The case is related whether the mRNA jab mandates were allowed under the law. The important point that people are discussing is the part of the case referencing Jacob v. Massachusetts – the case that is relied on to impose vaccine mandates nationally. In the current case the court essentially held that there is a plausible argument that the COVID jabs do not fall under the definition of “vaccine” as it applies in Jacobson.

In Jacobson, the court allowed a small civil penalty to be imposed if someone refused a vaccine in certain circumstances. The definition of vaccine in Jacobson recognized that to be a vaccine an intervention would necessarily prevent the spread of smallpox. In the current case the argument is that, since the COVID jabs do not prevent the transmission of COVID it is not a vaccine but rather a medical intervention. I agree with that argument but this ruling does not mean that argument was won in court.

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On the 75th Anniversary of Orwell’s ‘1984’, Five Predictions From The Book That Came True

75 years ago, George Orwell’s novel ‘1984’ was published. In the book, writing became the ultimate act of subversion and we started to see that happening in real life during the pandemic. Fortunately, enough people fought back and a few places, such as Substack, remained where we could express our opinions.

Professor Jean Seaton, Director of The Orwell Foundation, said:

“In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell posed the most terrifying of all questions: could people be brought to really believe (rather than merely pretend to believe) the lies they are told? Seventy-Five years later we are at the start of a roller-coaster experiment with our minds as we battle, rather feebly, to manage the information technologies that already do much to control us and our societies, alongside the resurgence of authoritarianism”.

The pandemic certainly showed us that people could be brought to really believe the lies that they were told.

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E.U. Censorship Laws Mostly Suppress Legal Speech

Among those who think the United States is an unseemly cesspool of unrestrained opinions voiced by those people, Europe is often touted as an alternative for speech regulation. European Union law, following in the footsteps of national legislation, imposes enforceable duties on private platforms to purge “hate speech” and “disinformation”—or else. But free speech advocates warn that these laws are clumsy and dangerous tools that threaten to muzzle expression far beyond the bounds of their nominal targets. They’re right, and they now have receipts.

In a new report, Preventing “Torrents of Hate” or Stifling Free Expression Online?, The Future of Free Speech, a think tank based at Vanderbilt University, points out that online regulation changed in 2017 with Germany’s adoption of the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG), “which aimed to combat illegal online content such as defamation, incitement, and religious insults.” That law inspired lawmakers around the world, as well as similar E.U.-wide legislation in 2022 in the Digital Services Act (DSA). “The underlying assumptions surrounding the passage of the DSA included fears that the Internet and social media platforms would become overrun with hate and illegal content,” notes the report.

But “hate” and other forms of unacceptable content are often in the eyes of the beholder. And the power to punish platforms for allowing forbidden speech encourages suppressing content.

The DSA “gives way too much power to government agencies to flag and remove potentially illegal content and to uncover data about anonymous speakers,” cautioned the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2022.

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Maryland Elementary School Tries To Force Students To Say The Pledge

It’s been over 80 years since the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that schoolchildren can’t be forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance. One Maryland elementary school, however, has yet to get the memo.

According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a First Amendment nonprofit, Twin Ridge Elementary School officials sent an email on April 26 informing staff that state law requires “all students and teachers are required ‘to stand and face the flag and while standing give an approved salute and recite in unison the pledge of allegiance.'” 

But the email failed to note that there is a clear exception to this requirement encoded in state law—not to mention a decades-old Supreme Court ruling. Maryland law explicitly states that “any student or teacher who wishes to be excused from the requirements” of the pledge law would be excused.

“While non-participation may upset others who believe the pledge is an important expressive act, that reaction cannot overcome the First Amendment’s protection of those who decide to abstain,” Stephanie Jablonsky, a senior program officer at FIRE, wrote in a legal letter to the school last week. “Peaceful refusal to endorse a specified viewpoint cannot be grounds for punishment. The same holds for teachers and staff.”

FIRE has called on Twin Ridge Elementary to “correct its April 26 directive and notify staff of their rights and their students’ rights” to not recite the pledge.

Unfortunately, this is far from the first time that public schools have attempted to force students and staff to say the Pledge of Allegiance in recent years.

In 2018, officials in a Texas school district settled with a student who was expelled for refusing to stand for the pledge. But before the case was over, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton publicly took the school’s side and attempted to intervene on their behalf in the federal case.

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