Tag: police state

Congressman Delivers ‘Angry’ Floor Speech About Stalled Federal Marijuana Reform, But Says It’s ‘Not Too Late’ To Act

It’s “not too late” for the current Congress to pass sensible marijuana reform legislation and end the “insane” prohibitionist policies of the war on drugs, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) says.

In an impassioned speech on the House floor on Thursday, the founding member of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus said he is both “sad” and “angry” over the continued federal inaction on marijuana reform, arguing that it’s “time for Congress to stop making this problem worse.”

“I’ve been working for 50 years leading the effort to end the failed, unfair, cynical, dangerous war on drugs that targeted Black people, that discouraged the illegal use of a therapeutic good—something that could have enriched our economy but instead criminalized behavior,” he said.

Blumenauer, who is retiring at the end of this year but still plans to be involved in advancing the issue, said members have seen stories about the potential harms of cannabis for vulnerable populations—but that’s precisely why they should support a legal regulatory framework to mitigate risks.

“We don’t have a system that regulates it, that taxes it, that keeps it out of the hands of children,” he said. “No neighborhood drug dealer looks for identification, and they’re perfectly happy to sell kids other more dangerous and potent drugs. We don’t have to do this.”

The congressman, who is also sponsoring a newly reintroduced resolution alongside Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) promoting equity in state cannabis markets, pointed out that the House under Democratic control has previously passed comprehensive legalization legislation, as well as proposals to address the unique financial challenges of the marijuana industry. But none of those have yet been enacted into law.

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Poland Issues Military Order You Have 6 hrs to Report for Service

As of yesterday, Poland has issued a new directive that if you are called for military service, you have just 6 hours to report. The penalty for failure to report is three years in prison. If you cannot make it there in 6 hours, call the commander and explain why. If you fail to show up and avoid military service, you will be imprisoned for five years.

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‘HOME DESK’: THE FOREIGN OFFICE’S COVERT PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN INSIDE BRITAIN

The UK Foreign Office conducted covert propaganda operations inside the UK during the Cold War, recently declassified files show. 

It sought to challenge and discredit leading journalists at television’s World In Action programme, intellectuals such as Eric Hobsbawm and the leaders of some of Britain’s largest trade unions. 

The government body responsible was a highly secretive unit called the Home Desk, a part of Britain’s Cold War propaganda arm, the Information Research Department (IRD), which was housed within the Foreign Office.

The Home Desk’s modus operandi was to collect information on “subversive” individuals and organisations from open and secret sources, ranging from newspaper clippings and books to MI5 moles and classified material.

It would then pass this information to trusted contacts in the British press, parliament, think tanks, universities, and other private networks in an effort to discredit the activities of “subversive” leftists in Britain.

The Home Desk was kept entirely hidden from the public, and its funding was not subject to parliamentary oversight. Outside of a small clique of high-ranking British ministers, diplomats, and intelligence agents, the Home Desk simply did not exist.

Its ultimate target was the British public. The recently declassified record allows us to peel back a layer of these secret operations.

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Ohio SWAT Team Raids Wrong House, Seriously Injures Baby With Flashbang Grenade, Denies Responsibility

Courtney Price was at home on Wednesday taking care of her one-year-old son, Waylon, when they experienced a terrifying and traumatic altercation with local law enforcement. What should have been an ordinary day took a turn for the worse when SWAT officers broke into the home, searching for a suspect.

In the aftermath of the raid, it was revealed that law enforcement had targeted the wrong home, and tragically, their actions resulted in the baby sustaining injuries. The events that unfolded left the family shaken and seeking justice for Waylon’s suffering.

Price told RedState that she had been staying with her aunt Redia and her husband for one week before the incident occurred. She recounted her experience, describing how she stood petrified as the police burst into her aunt Redia’s home, throwing a flashbang grenade into the residence and breaking windows. She was feeding her son, who has a condition requiring the use of a G-tube because he cannot eat by mouth. A little after 2 pm, she “started hearing very loud pings on the door,” and went to see what was happening.

I got up and started walking towards the door, and all I could see was a bunch of police because we were in a split-level house, so I was at the top of the steps there. All I could see was a bunch of police, and they were already hitting the door. I was trying to get to the door to open it, but I didn’t want to get hit, so I just froze on the steps. They busted it down and busted the windows out all at the same time. I was standing there, I froze. I really wanted to run to my baby and just help him because I see all that smoke getting on him. There were handguns pointed at me [with the officers] saying, ‘Get down, put your hands up, come down here.’ So I went down. They grabbed me and took me outside, put me in handcuffs.

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Minnesota Officials Form Interagency Plan To Rein In Sales Of High-THC Marijuana Being Sold As Legal Hemp

Minnesota’s cannabis regulators say they have a plan to fill a gap in state law that could be letting some hemp retailers sell marijuana flower without consequence.

Charlene Briner, the interim director of the new Office of Cannabis Management, said Thursday that she is working with other agencies to provide a temporary method to inspect and test raw cannabis flower to make sure it does not violate current law.

She said the agency will look into using inspectors from the Office of Medical Cannabis and the Department of Agriculture to exercise the Office of Cannabis Management’s authority to stop the sale of cannabis flower that is illegal marijuana masquerading as legal hemp.

“OCM is evaluating how to leverage existing enforcement capacity at the Office of Medical Cannabis to act on OCM’s behalf and how we can develop capacity to test raw cannabis flower,” Briner said.

“We’ll be sharing more about those plans as we put them in place,” she said.

To be legal to sell now, hemp flower must contain only 0.3 percent delta-9 THC or less. Such hemp plants do not have enough THC to be intoxicating when eaten or smoked. But by processing the hemp for edibles and beverages, the THC content can be enhanced to produce an intoxicating effect.

Some hemp retailers and smoke shops have been selling raw cannabis flower that might or might not exceed those legal limits. Hemp inspectors have not acted against such sales—or even to test the flower—because while the Office of Medical Cannabis regulates hemp sales, the law doesn’t give it any authority over unprocessed flower.

The loophole became public late last year when former Office of Medical Cannabis director Chris Tholkes discussed it on the national podcast Weed Wonks. She said her inspectors have seen sales of raw cannabis flower that the stores claim is legal hemp but that the inspectors suspect is not.

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Democrats Bring Bill to Prohibit Armed Citizen Militias

Democrat lawmakers are advancing legislation intended to prevent privately organized paramilitary and militia group activities within the United States.

Introduced by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Thursday, the bill dubbed the “Preventing Private Paramilitary Activity Act” would prohibit privately organized groups from “publicly patrolling, drilling, or engaging in harmful or deadly paramilitary techniques,” “interfering with or interrupting government proceedings,” or “interfering with the exercise of someone else’s constitutional rights,” according to Mr. Markey.

Their bills defines a “private paramilitary organization” as “any group of 3 or more persons associating under a command structure for the purpose of functioning in public or training to function in public as a combat, combat support, law enforcement, or security services unit.” The bill states acting with or on behalf of such a private paramilitary organization while armed with a firearm, explosive, incendiary device, or other dangerous weapon, and engaging in patrolling, training, interfering with government or constitutional rights, or assuming the functions of law enforcement without official authority.

The bill makes exceptions for members of the National Guard and other military reserve components, state guard forces, and members of other federal or state-organized groups to train in and apply paramilitary, law enforcement, and security service activity. The bill also allows for the organization of groups formed solely to conduct military reenactments, “bona-fide veterans organization with no intent to engage” in the aforementioned prohibited activities, and students in government or state-authorized educational institutions that teach military science.

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‘Nothing short of grave robbery’: 2 families allege bodies of Alabama prison inmates were returned missing organs

Two families have claimed that when the Alabama Department of Corrections returned the bodies of their loved ones who died in prison, they were found to be missing one or more internal organs, court documents show.

When Charles Edward Singleton died at age 74, he was incarcerated at the Hamilton Aged and Infirmed Center in Hamilton, about 90 miles northwest of Birmingham.

The chaplain of the prison told his family the corrections department would take care of funeral arrangements, according to an affidavit signed January 3 by Singleton’s daughter, Charlene Drake.

Drake said she told the chaplain the family wanted to make the arrangements and asked that the body be transported to a funeral home. But when Singleton’s body arrived, the funeral director informed her “it would be difficult to prepare his body for viewing, as his body was already in a noticeable state of decomposition” and his internal organs, including his brain, were missing, the affidavit said.

The funeral director said the organs are normally placed in a bag and put back in the body after an autopsy, but not in Singleton’s case, according to the affidavit.

The Alabama Department of Corrections told CNN it does not comment on pending litigation, nor does it authorize or perform autopsies.

“Once an inmate dies, the body is transported to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences or (the University of Alabama at Birmingham) for autopsy, depending on several factors, including but not limited to region and whether the death is unlawful, suspicious, or unnatural,” the department said in a statement.

Drake’s affidavit was filed in support of a federal lawsuit filed by the family of Brandon Clay Dotson, who was found dead at age 43 in Ventress Correctional Facility in Clayton on November 16, 2023.

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Former L.A. County deputy sentenced to 30 days in jail for fatal 2019 shooting

A former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy will serve 30 days in jail in connection with a fatal 2019 shooting in which authorities fired more than 30 rounds into the back of a moving car, under the terms of a plea deal reached Friday in a downtown L.A. courtroom.

Andrew Lyons pleaded no contest to assault with a firearm and assault under color of authority in the killing of 24-year-old Ryan Twyman outside a Willowbrook apartment complex in June 2019. The case marks the first time in roughly two decades that an L.A. County law enforcement officer has been sentenced to jail or prison for an on-duty shooting.

Lyons also was placed on two years’ probation. He must give up his certification as a peace officer in California under the terms of the deal, meaning he can never serve as a law enforcement officer in the state again.

The former deputy initially was charged with voluntary manslaughter and assault with a semiautomatic firearm against Lyons in 2022, nearly three years after he and another deputy, Christopher Muse, shot and killed Twyman. Muse was not charged in the shooting.

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Fauci Admits to Arbitrary Rules That Boosted Mass Surveillance and Suppressed Opinions

Some people may have already forgotten – but not so long ago billions of law-abiding citizens around the world basically got put under house arrest.

When they were able to go outside, they had to wear masks, and keep 6-feet “social” distance (known as “2-meter rule” in Europe).

Not to put too fine a point on it – but, it turns out the “science” behind this was pretty much arbitrary.

And, we learned this from none other than Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The distancing rule was just one of the Covid-era restrictions explained and enforced as coming from “authoritative” medical sources and therefore based on science.

To make matters worse, the dystopian measures included employing mass surveillance technology, enlisting tech companies big and small to enforce the rules, and relentlessly censoring not only critics, but also merely people asking questions, all over the internet.

Anthony Fauci was the face, albeit very controversial even in the “pandemic heyday” of this “medical authoritativeness” in the US – and now, his Covid legacy has just gotten even worse.

Fauci this week appeared before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic; while the sessions were held behind closed doors, an official statement posted by the House Oversight Committee cited him as making some fairly shocking statements.

Evidently asked to explain “the origin” of the 6-feet rule, euphemistically referred to as a recommendation, Fauci said that it was “likely not based on any data.”

Maybe it was based on – common sense? Also unlikely, since Fauci went on to say the guidance “sort of just appeared.”

Out of thin air? So just like the supposed origin of the virus? That was another major narrative which, if challenged, got people branded as conspiracy theorists.

“He (Fauci) testified that the lab leak hypothesis – which was often suppressed – was, in fact, not a conspiracy theory,” Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup is quoted as saying.

Some of Fauci’s answers also saw this former high ranking federal official saying he “does not recall” the specifics of the very Covid policies he had been actively imposing on the population.

“Dr. Fauci’s transcribed interview revealed systemic failures in our public health system and shed light on serious procedural concerns with our public health authority,” said Wenstrup, adding, “It is clear that dissenting opinions were often not considered or suppressed completely. Should a future pandemic arise, America’s response must be guided by scientific facts and conclusive data.”

Astounding as all of this may be, it could prove to be a teachable moment, particularly in terms of citizens thinking twice before again allowing mass surveillance to spread under cover of fear mongering.

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