Tag: police state

Jailed in America for Free Speech

In the aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk, many folks who dared to express views of him and his work outside the mainstream lost their jobs, professional standing and State Department visas as they were fired or otherwise disciplined by employers or bureaucrats who concluded that anti-Kirk views could harm the employers’ businesses or were inconsistent with institutional values.

All discipline based on speech needs to be scrutinized strictly. Yet, even in states with strong public accommodations laws — laws that generally protect free speech in the workplace and in public places — at will employees can generally be disciplined for expressive activities that their bosses reasonably fear may impair the product or services they were hired to produce or deliver, or undermine the values or message of the institution with which they are affiliated.

Thus, reasonable fears of the loss of business or charitable donations due to the anti-Kirk public sentiments may lawfully result in silencing or firing those employees.

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Prosecutors Drop Charges Against Tennessee Man Over Facebook Meme

Last month, Tennessee authorities arrested a man for posting a Facebook meme, a clear violation of his First Amendment rights, and held him on a $2 million bond. This week, prosecutors dropped the case, but that doesn’t negate the weeks he spent in jail on a bogus charge.

As Reason previously reported, police arrested 61-year-old Larry Bushart for posting a meme on Facebook. In a thread about the murder of Charlie Kirk, Bushart posted a meme with a picture of President Donald Trump and the quote “We have to get over it,” which Trump said after a January 2024 shooting at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa.

Sheriff Nick Weems of nearby Perry County said Bushart intentionally posted the meme to make people think he was referring to Perry County High School. “Investigators believe Bushart was fully aware of the fear his post would cause and intentionally sought to create hysteria within the community,” Weems told The Tennesseean.

On September 21, deputies arrested Bushart at his house and booked him on a charge of Threats of Mass Violence on School Property and Activities, a felony that carries at least a year in prison. In body camera footage posted online by Liliana Segura of The Intercept, Bushart is incredulous when presented with the charge. “I don’t think I committed a crime,” he tells the officer, jokingly admitting that “I may have been an asshole.”

“That’s not illegal,” the officer replies as he leads Bushart into a cell.

Unfortunately, it was no laughing matter: A judge imposed a $2 million bond. Getting out on bail would require Bushart to come up with at least $210,000. According to the Perry County Circuit Court website, Bushart had a hearing scheduled for October 9, where he could file a motion for a reduced bond, but a court clerk told Reason that the hearing was “reset” for December 4. As a result, Bushart sat in jail for weeks.

Right away, it should have been clear how flimsy the case was. But the sheriff doubled down.

As Segura reported at The Intercept, Weems personally responded to people on Facebook suggesting Bushart was arrested because authorities misread a picture that briefly referenced a prior news event on the other side of the country. “We were very much aware of the meme being from an Iowa shooting,” Weems wrote. But it “created mass hysteria to parents and teachers…that led the normal person to conclude that he was talking about our Perry County High School.”

“Yet there were no public signs of this hysteria,” Segura notes. “Nor was there much evidence of an investigation—or any efforts to warn county schools.”

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The War on (Some) Drugs: Why Are We Still Talking About This?

Prohibition is an awful flop.
We like it.
It can’t stop what it’s meant to stop.
We like it.
It’s left a trail of graft and slime,
It don’t prohibit worth a dime,
It’s filled our land with vice and crime,
Nevertheless, we’re for it.

— “Prohibition” by Franklin P. Adams, 1931.

William Stewart Halsted is known as the “father of modern surgery.” He was one of the four founders of Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1886, and he is credited with surgical innovations including promoting antiseptic practices and the discovery that cocaine, when injected into the skin, could be used as a local anesthetic. He was also a drug addict.

Halsted’s drug use began with cocaine, and after a few failed attempts at kicking the habit, he switched to morphine. He spent more than 40 years addicted to the drug, all while maintaining one of the most distinguished careers in the history of surgery. According to Sir William Osler, one of the co-founders of Johns Hopkins, Halsted could not get through the day without a minimum of 180 milligrams of morphine. “On this,” said Osler, “he could do his work comfortably, and maintain his physical vigor.”

Halsted’s story illustrates the reality that—while perhaps not desirable—it is possible to both be addicted to narcotics and still function very well in society. Imagine if America had been in the throes of the War on (Some) Drugs in the 19th century, and instead of doing groundbreaking work as a surgeon and helping to build one of the country’s most prestigious hospitals, Halsted had been thrown into a prison cell. Who would have benefited from that outcome?

More to the point: How many Halsteds are rotting away in prison today, and what gifts are we all missing out on as a result?

In Halsted’s day, drug addiction looked very different from what it looks like today. Federal control of narcotics only came about in 1914, with the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act.

Before that, anyone could walk into a drug store and purchase medicines—and even soft drinks—that contained opium or cocaine. And some did become addicted.

But, as Mike Gray writes in Drug Crazy:

“It was not until the late 1800s that the public began to realize that some of their favorite medicines could be highly addictive. … At that time, the highest credible estimates put the number of U.S. addicts at about three people in a thousand. Others thought it was half that.” (Note: Some estimates put the number as high as one in two hundred.)

“All the leading authorities now agree,” he writes, “that addiction peaked around 1900, followed by a steady drop. The reason was simple common sense coupled with growing awareness.”

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When the Government Censored Dracula, Frankenstein, and King Kong

In 1931, Universal Studios released a pair of films that still haunt American culture. The first to emerge from the shadows was Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi as the titular vampire who creeps by night to feed on the blood of his victims. Then, shambling in the bloodsucker’s wake, came Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff as the tragic creature who was pieced together from dead body parts and brought to unnatural life by the titular mad scientist.

Some modern horror fans might find these films to be too slow or tame for their liking. But we must remember that they were genuinely frightening or disturbing to many audiences back in the day. They were so upsetting to some people, in fact, that the official censorship boards that then existed in multiple states took a page from Dr. Frankenstein and sliced off the best parts.

Today, the idea of an official state censor requiring specific cuts to a mainstream Hollywood movie in order for that movie to be shown to paying adult customers would be laughed out of court on First Amendment grounds.

But no such robust First Amendment jurisprudence existed in the 1930s. In fact, it was not until 1925 that the U.S. Supreme Court first recognized that the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech applied to the actions of state and local governments. And, as we will see, it was not until 1952 that the First Amendment’s protections against state censorship were extended to the movies.

So Dracula and Frankenstein both faced the censors’ knives when they were first released. For example, in his invaluable book, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, David J. Skal noted that Massachusetts mandated several cuts to all Sunday screenings of Dracula, including the removal of a shot “showing part of a skeleton in a casket as well as one of a beetle-like insect emerging from a miniature coffin.”

As for Frankenstein, Skal reported that one of the most commonly maimed scenes involved the creature encountering a young girl who was tossing flowers onto a lake and watching them float. Seemingly charmed by the girl’s joyful actions, the creature, behaving with a sort of child-like innocence of its own, tosses the girl onto the water to watch her float like a flower. But the girl (predictably) drowns, compounding the creature’s pathos and isolation.

Many censors objected to that upsetting scene and it was typically cut in a way that removed the sight of the creature actually tossing the girl onto the water. Yet, as Skal observed, such an edit “ironically [left] some viewers with the impression that they had been spared the spectacle of some shocking molestation.” In other words, the censors arguably made the scene even more disturbing by forcing audiences to draw their own conclusions about the full nature of the girl’s fatal meeting with the creature. The censors thus defeated the point of their own clumsy censorship.

Several years later, Frankenstein‘s even better (in my view) sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein, faced its own angry mob of censors. The “list of eliminations ordered by the Ohio Censor Board,” complained one Universal staffer, in a report quoted by Skal, were “very drastic and very harmful to the success of this picture.”

Perhaps the fullest record we have of that era’s heavy-handed government crackdown on horror movies comes from a 1933 pamphlet published by the National Council on Freedom From Censorship titled What Shocked the Censors: A Complete Record of Cuts in Motion Picture Films Ordered by the New York State Censors from January, 1932 to March, 1933.

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DHS Expands Nationwide Airport Biometric Tracking

The Department of Homeland Security has introduced a new rule that will greatly expand biometric tracking at US borders, establishing a system to photograph and identify every non-citizen who enters or leaves the country.

Although the regulation applies to non-citizens, the cameras do not distinguish citizens from non-citizens in real time.

CBP says US citizens may opt out by presenting their passports manually, and that photos of citizens are deleted within twelve hours once nationality is confirmed. However, that’s after the fact.

Starting December 26, Customs and Border Protection will have authority to take photographs of “all aliens” not only at airports and land crossings but at “any other point of departure” the agency designates.

We obtained a copy of the rule for you here.

DHS describes the change as “operational modernization.”

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Global Cybercrime Treaty Draws Criticism from Rights Groups and Tech Companies Over Surveillance Fears

Sixty-five countries, including the United States and Canada, have signed a United Nations treaty on cybercrime that threatens privacy, online research, and free expression.

The agreement, known as the UN Convention against Cybercrime, was signed in Hanoi and will take effect once 40 member states have ratified it.

Each country must complete its own ratification process. In the United States, a two-thirds Senate vote is required for approval.

The UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the treaty as an essential step in combating cybercrime, saying that “cyberspace has become fertile ground for criminals…every day, sophisticated scams defraud families, steal livelihoods, and drain billions of dollars from our economies.”

He called the Convention “a powerful, legally binding instrument to strengthen our collective defenses against cybercrime” and insisted it “cannot be used for any forms of surveillance or others that could be linked to violations of human rights.”

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which directed negotiations, has argued that the treaty includes protections for human rights and legitimate research.

But organizations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) disagree.

Before the signing, both groups urged governments not to endorse the treaty, warning that its vague definitions could allow governments to monitor citizens, prosecute security researchers, and suppress political speech.

Technology companies have also raised concerns. The Cybersecurity Tech Accord, whose members include Meta and Microsoft, described the treaty as a “surveillance treaty” that could promote government data sharing and criminalize ethical hacking.

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ECRI Pressures Ireland and Finland to Adopt New “Hate Speech” Laws and Speech Monitoring Systems

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) has issued another set of polite bureaucratic thunderbolts, this time aimed at Ireland and Finland, for not cracking down hard enough on their citizens’ conversations.

The group, operating under the Council of Europe, says both nations have been dragging their feet on what it calls “hate speech.”

In other words, they’re not censoring fast enough.

In Ireland’s case, ECRI was appalled to discover that the country’s “extremely limited” legal framework still leaves some room for public disagreement online.

The commission noted with concern that certain hate speech provisions were removed from the Criminal Justice (Hate Offences) Act 2024, and urged Dublin to correct the oversight by writing new laws to target such expression.

The report didn’t stop there. It called for a national data system to document “racist and LGBTI-phobic bullying and violence in schools” and a “comprehensive data collection” program for hate crimes and hate speech.

It even floated the idea of regulating “election-related misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy,” which it deemed “critical to limit the spread of hateful ideas.”

So the plan is clear: build a bureaucracy that tracks words, ideas, and schoolyard insults, then hand election discourse over to regulatory authorities. What could go wrong?

ECRI did find time to congratulate Ireland for its National Action Plan Against Racism and inclusion programs for Roma and Traveller communities.

But after that brief applause, the hammer came back down. Hate speech, it concluded, remains “widespread.” More laws, more oversight, more policing of conversation.

Finland’s report read like a blueprint for speech management. ECRI announced that hate speech there “has increased and reached a critical level,” though it didn’t specify what exactly counts as hate speech, or how “critical” was measured.

The group praised Finnish police for maintaining “a regular presence in a web-based gaming platform” where officers act as “game police” and talk to young users about hate speech and online crime. It’s not satire, that’s in the official report.

ECRI proposed creating a national working group to design new policies against hate speech and advised police to unify their methods for “recognition, unmasking and official recording” of hate.

Schools, it said, should install systems to track “racist and LGBTI-phobic incidents,” while even non-criminal “hate incidents” should be formally recognized and logged.

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While Germany Talks War With Russia, Romania’s Globalist Regime Conducts Mass Surveillance On Its Own People — 8,600 Secret Warrants, Zero Oversight

Germany’s globalist political class is once again talking about going to war with Russia. Officials in Berlin have suggested that Europe should “prepare for conflict,” a statement that’s raised alarms across the continent. But while Germany rattles sabers, another European Union member is already at war, not with Moscow, but with its own citizens.

Romania, one of NATO’s key Eastern members, has quietly constructed an enormous internal surveillance system under the banner of “national security.”

Documents obtained under Romania’s Freedom of Information law reveal that from the 2024 presidential elections through September 2025, the country’s Supreme Court issued 2,843 national security warrants. Every single request was approved. None were denied.

A Nation Surveilled 

Each warrant authorized Romania’s powerful intelligence agencies to monitor phone calls, intercept emails, track movements by GPS, and even enter private homes—all without notifying the citizens involved.

Experts estimate that more than 55,000 Romanians may have been surveilled under these programs, their private lives cataloged in the name of ‘protecting the state.’

During the last three years alone, Romania’s top court signed off on 8,603 such mandates, covering the tail end of President Klaus Iohannis’s term, the interim leadership of Ilie Bolojan, and the start of Nicușor Dan’s presidency.

Across administrations, one thing never changed: zero judicial oversight.

Courts Rubber-Stamp Everything

According to official responses from both the General Prosecutor’s Office and the Supreme Court, not one surveillance request was ever rejected. Every application moved seamlessly from prosecutors to judges—and was instantly approved.

That’s not oversight—it’s obedience.

Unlike the United States’ FISA Court, which modifies or rejects a portion of surveillance requests each year, Romania’s allegedly independent judiciary appears to function as a rubber stamp for intelligence operations.

Even more concerning, Romanian officials admitted they don’t know—or won’t say—how many people were targeted. The Supreme Court said it “does not hold a statistic” on the matter. The Prosecutor’s Office said the data is “not public.”

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United Nations Finally Recognizes Homeschooling — By Demanding Government Ruin It

For decades, families around the world have fought for the freedom to homeschool their children, often against hostile laws, heavy-handed bureaucracies, and, in some cases, outright persecution. I’ve walked alongside many of these families as a global advocate for homeschooling rights, challenging oppressive regimes and urging governments and international institutions to recognize what should be obvious: Parents have the fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children.

That’s why UNESCO’s new report, “Homeschooling Through a Human Rights Lens,” is significant. For the first time, a major United Nations agency has taken homeschooling seriously — not merely as an educational alternative, but as a legitimate expression of the human right to direct the upbringing of one’s children. As a member of the report’s panel of experts, I can attest to the thoughtful and at times tense dialogue that shaped the final document.

While I commend UNESCO for the report, I reject its unwarranted recommendation that calls on governments to register homeschooling families and evaluate them according to state-imposed standards. This recommendation is antithetical to the principles of liberty upon which the United States, and even the United Nations itself, was founded. American homeschoolers are rightly skeptical of any report that calls for greater regulation, but because international policymakers are influenced by international human rights notions, this report has the potential to help families who live in countries where parental freedom in education is not favored.

Millions of families have demonstrated across every continent and culture that homeschooling works — and it works well. To its credit, the UNESCO report acknowledges the diversity of homeschooling approaches, the growing body of research supporting its efficacy, and the sincere motivations of parents who choose this path. It even cautions against assuming that homeschoolers are outliers or abusers. That acknowledgment matters. For decades, the homeschooling movement, even here in the United States, has fought against statist and misbegotten assumptions. At the international level, this report marks an important shift in that conversation.

For all its positive acknowledgments, its recommendation reveals a strong assumption of state supremacy. But families are not wards of the state; they are the primary and natural educators of their children. The oldest of the United Nations’ declarations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), itself acknowledges in Article 26.3 that parents have a “prior right” to decide how their children are educated, and Article 16.3 describes the family as “the natural and fundamental group unit of society.”

Far from being a threat to educational quality or child welfare, homeschooling is often a lifeline for families seeking safety, excellence, or authenticity in education. When parents take responsibility for their children’s education, they are exercising freedom in its purest form: the freedom to order their lives according to conscience and conviction. Homeschooling reflects the principle of self-governance at the heart of our American experiment, and these basic truths are articulated in the UDHR.

While refuting Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Bartholet’s fringe view that homeschooling should be banned, I have explained that the U.N.’s “statist” worldview is rooted in a “positive rights” mindset, which sees government not merely as a protector of liberty but as the central actor in nearly every aspect of human life. Under this paradigm, rights are granted and fulfilled by government, and education becomes a public utility — monitored, managed, and molded by the state.

The dangerous assumptions here are that freedom requires supervision, parents can’t be trusted, and kids are just future workers, or worse, weapons in a war for cultural domination via compelled government indoctrination. However, our Constitution and Declaration of Independence reflect the opposite idea: that rights should limit government power. The First Amendment does not grant the right to speak; it prohibits the government from infringing on it. The Second Amendment doesn’t create a right to bear arms; it forbids the government from restricting it. Our concept of liberty assumes rights come from our Creator and governments are instituted to secure them, not to create them.

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UK Courts Block Grooming Gang Survivor from Enforcing Compensation Award: Could this be happening in America?

For Americans, the term “Grooming Gang” may seem like a distant UK issue. But the story of “Liz,” a Rotherham survivor in North England, should resonate. In March 2023, she won a £425,000 ($550,000 USD) compensation award against her rapist, Asghar Bostan, part of a Muslim Pakistani grooming gang (rape gangs). Yet, by October 2025, court delays have left her empty-handed.

These delays, coupled with fears of “Islamophobia” accusations that shielded UK gangs, mirror U.S. struggles with justice for sexual abuse victims. They raise alarms about whether similar crimes could hide in America under the same guise of political correctness. Short prison sentences, like the lenient terms often handed to UK offenders, further erode trust—a pattern Americans see in trafficking or abuse cases.

The UK’s endless inquiries, costing millions with no action, and courts that stall survivors’ justice, parallel American issues. From trafficking rings to campus assaults, both nations grapple with backlogged systems and institutional failures. Liz’s fight is a warning: justice delayed is justice denied.

A Stalled Victory with American Implications
Liz’s trauma began in the early 2000s, when she was raped as a teenager by Ashgar Bostan, a taxi driver convicted in 2018 under Operation Stovewood. This probe targeted Rotherham’s child sexual exploitation crisis from 1997 to 2013. She pursued the UK’s first private civil prosecution, funded by philanthropists including Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who raised £30,000 with Lord Vinson to cover legal costs. Her team secured a default judgment for £425,934—now about $585,000 with interest—for her lifelong trauma.

Bostan’s criminal sentence was shockingly light: just seven years for multiple rapes, with parole eligibility by 2022, reflecting a UK trend of lenient sentencing for grooming gang members.

But Liz’s win remains hollow. A charging order on Bostan’s property was granted in September 2023, finalized in November, with a sale order in October 2024. Yet, no final court date exists as of October 2025.

The 2.5-year delay mirrors U.S. court backlogs — 1.3 million pending civil cases in 2024. Elizabeth faces postponed hearings and months-long waits for fee waivers, despite judges’ “shock” at these delays. And at each stage the system demands £10,000 from her in “court fees.”

Even obtaining court transcripts is a lang drawn out expensive ordeal. Lord Pearson fought for Bostan’s 2018 trial transcripts, battling Sheffield Crown Court from December 2020 to March 2021 for the civil case. After the House of Lords Library admitted they were too expensive for them to obtain, Lord Pearson personally paid for them. Bostan’s 2024 parole breaches went unmonitored, echoing U.S. failures like Larry Nassar’s parole mishandling. With UK courts adding 500 more cases to the backlog each month, trials now stretch to 2027 — much like U.S. survivors enduring prolonged pain.

Could Grooming Gangs Hide in America?
And the pattern is not foreign to the U.S. either. In the UK, grooming gangs—largely Muslim Pakistani men targeting vulnerable white English girls—operated for decades while authorities hesitated, fearing “Islamophobia” accusations. That fear allowed abuses to fester unchecked. Short sentences, like Bostan’s seven years, enabled early releases, undermining justice and retraumatizing victims.

In the U.S., similar dynamics could conceal organized abuse. The FBI’s 2024 trafficking report highlights vulnerabilities in marginalized and underserved communities. Cases like a 2023 Minnesota trafficking ring, involving Somali-American men exploiting teenage girls, show disturbing parallels. Local officials delayed action amid community sensitivities. In cities like Minneapolis or Dearborn, fear of “Islamophobia” labels could mirror UK failures, letting exploitation go unchecked. Political correctness risks becoming a shield for predators, as it did in Rotherham.

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