Tag: police state

New York can’t stop churchgoers from bringing guns to worship: appeals court

An appeals court panel has ruled against a New York law that prohibits the carrying of firearms into houses of worship, upholding a lower court decision that blocked the law from taking effect.

On Friday, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit released a 261-page opinion regarding four cases centered on multiple challenges to New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act.

Regarding the Act’s provision banning concealed carry in places of worship, the panel ruled that “Plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged that the CCIA burdens their sincerely held religious practice.”

“CCIA is not neutral because it allows the owners of many forms of private property, including many types of retail businesses open to the public, to decide for themselves whether to allow firearms on the premises while denying the same autonomy to places of worship,” stated the ruling.

“By adopting a law that applies differently as to places of worship (alongside the other enumerated sensitive places) than to most other privately owned businesses and properties, the CCIA is, on its face, neither neutral nor generally applicable.”

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Congress Prepares To Reauthorize a Warrantless Domestic Spying Program the FBI Abused

Congress is gearing up for a potential showdown over the expected reauthorization of a warrantless domestic spying program that’s been misused by the FBI and widely criticized by civil libertarians.

That surveillance program—authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—was created after 9/11 with the intention of tracking foreign spies and potential terrorists. But it has predictably morphed into a way for law enforcement agencies to get a warrantless peek at Americans’ phone records, emails, and other electronic communications—the FBI ran more than 3.3 million queries through the Section 702 database in 2021, according to an annual transparency report.

With the program set to expire at the end of this year, Congress has a rare opportunity to reform Section 702 by, at the very least, prohibiting law enforcement from using it to snoop on Americans. So far, that doesn’t seem to be happening.

The Senate voted Thursday to advance the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and the 3,000-page bill contains a “clean” reauthorization of Section 702, according to Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah), a longtime critic of the surveillance program.

“After all we’ve learned about the FBI in recent years, the fact that some members of Congress are still willing to reauthorize FISA 702 without reforms—not even a warrant requirement for “backdoor” surveillance of Americans—makes me wonder if they’re illiterate,” Lee posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday.

Lee says he intends to vote against the NDAA when it comes to the Senate floor for a final vote. He likely won’t be the only Republican to do so, but rolling the Section 702 reauthorization into the larger military spending bill means it will be difficult to prevent its passage.

Instead, the fight will be over the language that gets added to the NDAA. While the Senate is moving forward will full reauthorization, there are competing proposals drafted in the House.

The House Judiciary Committee approved a bill on Wednesday to reauthorize Section 702 with the added requirement that the FBI and other intelligence agencies obtain a warrant before using the program to obtain information about Americans.

“The overwhelming, bipartisan vote in favor of this legislation confirms a mutual interest in protecting our Fourth Amendment privacy rights from rogue intelligence actors,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R–Ariz.), chairman of the House subcommittee on federal surveillance issues, said in a statement. “Any effort to stall consideration or pass a clean extension of the current FISA authorities is a punishment of the American people.”

However, the House Intelligence Committee passed its own version of a Section 702 reauthorization on Thursday. That bill would only require that the FBI establish probable cause before searching the Section 702 database for information about Americans, Roll Call reported.

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The West Is Taking Draconian Measures to Silence Free Speech

Western culture has valued free speech as a necessary check on overreaching centralized power for centuries.  Yet we’re watching the ability to speak freely disappear before our eyes.

Imagine going to federal prison for a meme.

Douglass Mackey, also known by his Twitter name Ricky Vaughn, is going to jail for memes mocking Hillary Clinton back in 2016.  He made fake memes telling people to vote from home via text messages. Mackey insisted in court that he was just sh*tposting. He didn’t think anyone would be stupid enough to actually fall for it.

But never underestimate the power of stupid!  At least 4900 people did call the prank number to vote for Hillary. The federal government did not find it funny and sentenced Mackey to seven months in prison.

What’s happening in Ireland is even worse.

This is bad, but it’s mild compared to what Ireland has planned.  In November 2022, the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence and Hatred or Hate Offences) Bill 2022 was initiated in Ireland’s legislature.

Section 10 (1) (a) states that a person will be found guilty of an offense if he “prepares or possesses material that is likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or a group of persons on account of their protected characteristics or any of those characteristics with a view to the material being communicated to the public or a section of the public, whether by himself or herself or another person.”

These incredibly vague and potentially broad offenses can land individuals jail time and hefty fines. The police will have the authority to search homes and confiscate devices under the new law.  They could search citizens’ devices for offensive memes.  Possessing movies with offensive jokes will be punishable.  Will everyone in Ireland have to destroy their copies of Hot Shots Part Deux and Tropic Thunder?

As ridiculous as it sounds, this law is most of the way through the Irish legislature already.  It had been facing some resistance from the public. Irish senators have been hearing a lot about it from their constituents. There had been some hope that the law would be heavily amended or retracted, but that was before the Dublin riots.

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Colorado Governor Says Marijuana Prohibition Created A ‘Chicken And The Egg’ Research Dilemma That’s Blocked Federal Reform

The governor of Colorado says that while marijuana reform is “not really a partisan issue” anymore, there are still “stodgy nanny state Republicans who want to control it.” Meanwhile, he says, ongoing prohibition has inhibited research into the science of cannabis that’s kept it strictly criminalized at the federal level.

Gov. Jared Polis (D) is hoping that will change sooner rather than later. He and the governors of five other states sent a letter to President Joe Biden this week, urging officials to reschedule marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) by the end of the year.

In an interview that aired on Fox News Radio’s “The Guy Benson Show” on Thursday, Polis said he would’ve liked to see a federal policy change five or 10 years ago as states such as Colorado enacted adult-use legalization, but he theorized that prohibition itself created a “chicken and the egg” situation that has effectively stymied reform by making it harder to conduct research on the effects of cannabis, a stalemate that has been reinforced by congressional politics.

The administrative marijuana scheduling review that Biden directed last year could help break that policy logjam, he said. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has already determined that cannabis should be moved from Schedule I t0 Schedule III, and now it’s up to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to make a final determination.

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Report: Insider Blows the Whistle on ‘Cyber Threat Intelligence League’ Domestic Censorship Program

A whistleblower has reportedly brought to light startling revelations about the Pentagon’s involvement in a domestic censorship program, as detailed in newly disclosed files from the Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL).

Public reports that according to a whistleblower’s files, the Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL), previously thought to be an independent entity, was heavily influenced by government and military personnel. This involvement is far more extensive than previously known, as evidenced by Slack messages and other internal communications.

The CTIL Slack channels, specifically those tagged for “disinformation” and “law enforcement escalation,” reportedly included current and former FBI employees, Michigan Cyber Command Center personnel, members of the US Defense Digital Service (DDS), and representatives from at least one European government. The DDS, headquartered at the Pentagon and established in 2015, has been particularly highlighted for its role in these operations.

According to Public, the latest whistleblower files from CTIL reveal that the organization worked with both governments and social media companies to censor Americans:

The new whistleblower’s files provide insight into the group’s inner workings, which Terp described as a “parallel effort.” Neither we nor the whistleblower know what the “parallel effort” refers to.

In these new files, Eric Brogdon, a cybersecurity director for a private firm, and others appear to have attempted to interfere with physical gatherings, with Brogdon implying that he had the ability to get social media users suspended. When one member shared news about a call for anti-lockdown protests, Brogdon responded, “Let me see if I can get the Facebook user suspended.”

This is the second report on CTIL published by Public. As Breitbart News previously reported:

The CTIL documents fill gaps left by previous disclosures, painting a detailed portrait of the so-called “Censorship Industrial Complex.” This network, comprising over 100 government agencies and NGOs, has been instrumental in pushing for censorship on social media platforms and spreading targeted propaganda. The documents include detailed accounts of digital censorship programs, military and intelligence community involvement, partnerships with civil society organizations and media, and the deployment of covert techniques like sock puppet accounts.

The whistleblower’s revelations highlight the pivotal role of CTIL in the creation and expansion of the Censorship Industrial Complex. Spearheaded by Sara-Jayne “SJ” Terp, a former UK defense researcher, and others, CTIL developed a comprehensive censorship framework in 2019. This framework was later adopted by various governmental and non-governmental organizations, including DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The Department of Defense, in a public statement, mentioned the merging of DDS with other agencies into the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) in 2022. They claimed CDAO currently has no involvement with CTIL activities, nor awareness of past projects that predate the merger.

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Medical Marijuana Growers And Caregivers Can Own Guns, But Patients Can’t, FBI Says In Little-Noticed Memo

Being a state-registered medical marijuana caregiver or grower doesn’t automatically disqualify a person from owning a firearm, the FBI says. But merely possessing a medical cannabis card as a patient does render a person ineligible.

Amid the growing tension between federal gun policies and the ever-expanding state marijuana legalization movement, a little-noticed FBI memo from 2019 offers a lens into the byzantine legal interpretations surrounding cannabis and firearms—an issue that’s recently been raised in multiple federal court cases.

The government has several different ways it assesses firearm eligibility in the context of cannabis, according to the memo from FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division, which was briefly noted in a report from The New York Times last week. In some cases, that involves affirmatively restricting gun rights based on activities or documentation that doesn’t necessarily mean a person is an active marijuana consumer.

At their core, the federal rules say that being an “unlawful user” of a controlled substance, including marijuana, means a person cannot buy or possess a gun. Would-be gun purchasers are required to disclose such use as part of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) form before making a purchase, and lying on that form is a felony offense.

The statute behind that prohibition has been challenged in a number of federal courts over the past couple of years, with more than one judicial body determining that the restriction is unconstitutional. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has steadfastly defended the ban, however, contending that medical marijuana patients and everyday consumers pose unique dangers to society that justify withholding Second Amendment rights.

But the federal government’s interpretation of the policy is apparently more nuanced, as evidenced by the memo from CJIS’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System Section that’s gone largely unscrutinized since being published more than four years ago.

A person’s firearm eligibility is partly determined by whether their use of a controlled substance is deemed “current.” FBI says that’s “not limited to the use of drugs on a particular day, or within a matter of days or weeks before, but rather that the unlawful use has occurred recently enough to indicate the individual is actively engaged in such conduct.”

“ATF has determined that the present time is represented by the time frame of within the past 12 months,” the memo says.

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Feds Release 250+ Pages Of Redacted Documents On Marijuana Rescheduling Recommendation, Detailing Cannabis’s Medical Value

More than three months after news leaked that the U.S. Health and Human Services Department (HHS) was recommending that marijuana be moved to Schedule III under the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), the agency has finally released a tranche of documents related to its recommendation and the detailed review it undertook on cannabis’s accepted medical value.

Among the materials newly made public are correspondence from HHS officials to Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram as well explanations of the health agency’s reasoning for the recommended change after conducting a required eight-factor analysis under the CSA. Most pages are heavily redacted, however, and some were withheld completely.

The documents were posted online Thursday by attorneys Shane Pennington and Matt Zorn, coauthors of the blog On Drugs. Zorn previously submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain the records.

“We haven’t had a chance to wade through it all,” the two lawyers wrote, “but are putting it up here now and will follow up as soon as we’ve studied everything more deeply.”

In response to the FOIA request, HHS “reviewed 252 pages of records,” releasing just two pages in their entirety. Another 236 were redacted in part, while 14 pages were withheld completely. All the released documents are embedded at the end of this article.

Broadly, the documents outline new scientific information that’s come to light in recent years subsequent to an earlier denial of a rescheduling petition, which HHS suggests might now necessitate rescheduling marijuana.

“The current review is largely focused on modern scientific considerations on whether marijuana has a CAMU [currently accepted medical use] and on new epidemiological data related to the abuse of marijuana in the years since the 2015 HHS” evaluation of marijuana under the CSA’s eight-factor analysis.

HHS also notes that it “analyzed considerable data related to the abuse potential of marijuana,” but added that it’s a complicated consideration.

“Determining the abuse potential of a substance is complex with many dimensions,” HHS wrote, “and no single test or assessment provides a complete characterization. Thus, no single measure of abuse potential is ideal.”

Most subsequent pages of the document were withheld completely.

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Federal Tax Filers Beware: Underpayment Penalty Has More Than Doubled

One of the Internal Revenue Service’s fangs has quietly grown much sharper, as the interest rate charged on the underpayment of federal income taxes has soared from 3% to 8% in less than two years. If you’re not sure if you’re hitting the right pace, it’s time to double-check your situation to make sure you don’t throw any more money into Uncle Sam’s rathole than you must. 

While many taxpayers focus on the annual April deadline, the federal income tax actually works on a “pay as you go” basis, in which the government demands recurring bites out of your income, with those bites rising and and falling in proportion to what you’re earning over the course of the tax year. If the math comes out wrong enough when you file, the IRS will penalize you by demanding you pay interest on money you were supposed to have forked out earlier.

In August, the IRS announced that the interest penalty charged against underpayments was rising to 8% for the calendar quarter that started Oct. 1. The rate isn’t set on a bureaucrat’s whim — per the Internal Revenue Code, it’s calculated each quarter by adding 3% to the “federal short-term rate.” Thus, the higher rate is a reflection of the surge in interest rates. As recently as the first quarter of 2022 — when the Fed’s zero interest rate policy was still in place — the rate was just 3%.  For the first three quarters of 2023, it was 7%.  

Most people whose income is almost entirely derived from regular employment satisfy the pay-as-you-go system through the income tax that employers withhold from each paycheck. Assuming they’ve filled out their IRS W-4 forms correctly, those workers typically don’t run afoul of underpayment penalties. However, regular employees who receive big bonuses or equity compensation might find the regular withholding formula doesn’t cough up enough money to please the IRS. If you want to play with the numbers on your own, you might check out the IRS’s online Tax Withholding Estimator — though ZeroHedge sure isn’t guaranteeing its accuracy. 

For many people, avoiding underpayment penalties requires making quarterly estimated tax payments directly to the IRS, or significantly adjusting their employee withholding. That’s true of anyone with significant income from anything other than regular employment, including the self-employed, gig economy workers, and people with substantial investment income from things like interest, dividends and capital gains. Note: The 2023 surge in yields on money market funds and some bank accounts may cause a surprise underpayment penalty for those who’d grown accustomed to earning near-zero on their cash. 

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The Media Is Hyping Up ‘Carbon Passports’ To Restrict Travel

A talking point that is now everywhere in the media is the notion that in the near future travel is highly likely to be restricted through the introduction of so called ‘carbon passports’.

Last week, CNN ran a piece created by something called ‘The Conversation,’ which had the headline “It’s time to limit how often we can travel abroad – ‘carbon passports’ may be the answer”

Within this “analysis,” readers were told that record-breaking heatwaves, wildfires and extreme weather events are being driven in part by people going on holiday.

“Tourism is part of the problem,” the piece asserts, adding “The tourism sector generates around one-tenth of the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving the climate crisis.”

It then goes on to suggest that the introduction of carbon passports which would see every “traveler being assigned a yearly carbon allowance that they cannot exceed,” could “ration” travel.

“This concept may seem extreme,” the writer states before telling you that it isn’t and it’s a probably a good idea because of how on the verge of collapse the environment is.

“Boiling temperatures will probably diminish the allure of traditional beach destinations,” anyway, claims the author.

This isn’t just one alarmist story languishing somewhere in the dark depths of CNN’s website, it’s everywhere.

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Documents Show DHS Agency “Real-Time Narrative Tracking” of Social Media Posts in 2020

Judicial Watch has come forward with newly acquired evidence of an intriguing alliance during the US 2020 election. The investigative body was able to obtain, via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit, a series of records demonstrating a comprehensive synergy between the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) and a controversial entity, the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP).

These files reveal a concerted effort to execute “real-time narrative tracking” on principal social media networks during the critical days leading up to the 2020 election. Interestingly, these records illustrate instances of social media post “takedowns” and an intentional avoidance of creating public records that would be subject to the FOIA process.

These records also allow us a peek into the operations of EIP. Originally known as the Election Misinformation Partnership, it invested in monitoring online election discourse round the clock, especially prioritizing “disinformation that is going viral.”

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