Tag: police state

Alabama mother and son left ‘shocked’ after his lemonade stand was reported to state labor department

An Alabama eight-year-old had his sights set on Disney World and decided to open up a lemonade stand to help him get there. However, he and his mother received a surprising call that added a wrench in their plans.

Cam and his mother Cristal Johnson were contacted by the Alabama Labor Department over a complaint that the lemonade stand violated child labor laws. 

“Needless to say, I was very shocked and saddened by the fact that anyone found wrong in what I was trying to do. I was trying to do a good thing, give back to my community and to find out that someone insinuated that I was trying to labor minors, that was…it was pretty sad,” Cristal said on “Fox & Friends First” Thursday. 

Eight-year-old Cam said he started his lemonade stand as a way to make money to go to Disney World. 

“I tried to ask my mom, ‘can I go to the Disney World?’” Cam told host Todd Piro.

After Cam started his lemonade stand, his mother Cristal put up a flyer encouraging other kids to take up a “one-day apprenticeship” at the stand to learn the value of hard work and money.

The flyer said Cristal and Cam were looking to have two kids joins as a “smiler” and “greeter.”

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Feds charge Virginia sheriff with selling badges for campaign contributions

The sheriff of Culpeper County, Virginia faces federal charges in an alleged scheme to hand out deputy badges in exchange for campaign contributions, Reuters reported.

“In an indictment unsealed on Thursday in the Western District of Virginia, Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Howard Jenkins, 51, is accused of abusing his position by engaging in a scheme to appoint volunteers to serve as auxiliary deputy sheriffs in exchange for bribes,” reported Sarah Lynch. “Through this alleged scheme, prosecutors said he accepted at least $72,500. Three of the men who accepted deputy sheriff appointments — Rick Tariq Rahim, 55, of Great Falls; Fredric Gumbinner, 64, of Fairfax; James Metcalf, 60, of Manassas are also charged in the case.”

According to the report, Jenkins also allegedly accepted a bribe from Rahim to approve a petition to restore his right to carry a gun, in violation of the state’s residency requirements.

“The indictment alleges he authorized auxiliary deputy sheriffs to carry concealed firearms in any state without obtaining permits, encouraged them to pay bribes through other individuals, and disguised the payments as firearms purchases,” said the report. “Undercover FBI agents helped investigate the scheme by posing as people who were interested in becoming auxiliary deputy sheriffs, with one of them even pretending to have a criminal record.”

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Michigan Democrats’ ‘Hate Speech’ Law Could Imprison People For Saying ‘Frightening’ Words

In an unprecedented move, Michigan Democrats have passed a new law, House Bill 4474, which seeks to enforce prison sentences for those found guilty of uttering words deemed to be ‘frightening’ or ‘intimidating’.

The bill expands the definition of hate crimes to include intimidation or harassment based on a wide range of individual characteristics, including race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, physical or mental disability, age, ethnicity, and national origin.

Under the terms of the proposed law, a person can be found guilty of a hate crime if they are found to have intentionally intimidated or harassed another person based on any of the above-listed characteristics. Intimidation and harassment under this law can take many forms, including causing physical contact, damaging property, or making threats that could cause another individual to feel frightened, threatened, or harassed.

According to critics, the bill’s broad definition of hate crimes, including the use of ‘frightening’ words, raises concerns about potential infringement on free speech. The law could have far-reaching implications, potentially criminalizing harsh words or expressions of opinion if they are perceived as intimidating or harassing, particularly if they are based on the characteristics listed in the bill.

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Prison Ministry Group Sues Indiana Jail for Banning Amazon Books

A nonprofit prison ministry is suing an Indiana Jail after it instituted a policy that effectively banned the organization from sending books to incarcerated individuals. In their lawsuit, Unshackled Hearts argues that the policy, which prohibits books from being sent through Amazon and online distributors, violates their First Amendment rights.

Unshackled Hearts Ministries is a nonprofit organization that sends religious literature and provides spiritual counseling to prisoners in Indiana. Unshackled Hearts typically uses Amazon to order and deliver books, which the group says is an ideal way to minister to the incarcerated. 

“For the facility, a book sent by a large distributor such as Amazon is far less likely to contain contraband than a book sent by an incarcerated person’s friends or family members,” reads the complaint. “And for Unshackled Hearts, not only does Amazon offer an incredibly large selection of books on virtually every topic under the sun but it also offers free returns if, for instance, a book is rejected by a facility or a person is released or transferred prior to the book’s arrival at the facility.”

However, one jail’s policies have effectively prevented Unshackled Hearts from sending books to inmates. According to the complaint, over the past several years, the Howard County jail has made it increasingly difficult for Unshackled Hearts to carry out its mission. 

Last year, the jail enacted a policy that completely banned book donations, with narrow exceptions for “holy scripture” donated by a “verified religious organization,” educational material from a “verified education center,” and information on rehab sent by a rehab center. 

Unshackled Hearts quickly informed jail officials that the policy was unlawful. In April 2023, the jail instituted a new policy with other major issues. Howard County inmates can receive books only if they are sent directly by the publisher. Books sent through distributors and retailers, like Amazon, will no longer be accepted.

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Cop Who Avoided Jail After Killing 6-Month-Old Baby, Arrested Again… For Biting a Toddler

Former Fairfield County Police Department officer Jason Michael Colley, who escaped jail time for the 2017 death of his infant daughter due to a lenient plea deal, has once again been charged with child abuse. After finally coming to terms with the fact that this man is a threat to children, a Maryland judge recently denied bail on these new charges.

As The Free Thought Project initially reported in 2018, Colley was indicted on charges of first-degree child abuse resulting in death, first-degree child abuse causing severe physical injury, and first-degree assault following the death of his 6-month-old daughter, Harper Colley. Authorities were alerted to the infant’s injuries on September 17, 2017, and she tragically succumbed several weeks later due to “abusive head trauma.”

Frederick County’s State’s Attorney Charles Smith explained that “Abusive head trauma can detail slamming a baby down on the ground, slamming a baby on maybe a table or against a wall, something along those lines.” Smith highlighted that in Harper’s case, there was “severe brain bleeding…with that, taken together with his conflicting statements, we felt we had proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Despite maintaining his innocence, Colley conceded to the state’s evidence and entered an Alford plea. Consequently, he was handed a reduced 50-year sentence, with all but eight years suspended. In August 2022, Frederick County Circuit Judge Julia A. Martz-Fisher permitted Colley to serve his time on private house arrest, plus five years of supervised release — a deal fit for an Epstein.

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A State of Martial Law: America Is a Military Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy

“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?”—Thomas Jefferson

The government is goosestepping all over our freedoms.

Case in point: America’s founders did not want a military government ruled by force. Rather, they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. Constitution.

Yet sometime over the course of the past 240-plus years that constitutional republic has been transformed into a military dictatorship disguised as a democracy.

Most Americans seem relatively untroubled by this state of martial law.

Incredibly, when President Biden bragged about how the average citizen doesn’t stand a chance against the government’s massive arsenal of militarized firepower, it barely caused a ripple.

As Biden remarked at a fundraising event in California, “I love these guys who say the Second Amendment is—you know, the tree of liberty is water with the blood of patriots. Well, if [you] want to do that, you want to work against the government, you need an F-16.  You need something else than just an AR-15.”

The message being sent to the citizenry is clear: there is no place in our nation today for the kind of revolution our forefathers mounted against a tyrannical government.

For that matter, the government has declared an all-out war on any resistance whatsoever by the citizenry to its mandates, power grabs and abuses.

By this standard, had the Declaration of Independence been written today, it would have rendered its signers extremists or terrorists, resulting in them being placed on a government watch list, targeted for surveillance of their activities and correspondence, and potentially arrested, held indefinitely, stripped of their rights and labeled enemy combatants.

This is no longer the stuff of speculation and warning.

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Homeland agency expanded authority to wage ‘domestic surveillance and censorship,’ House report says

Secret documents obtained by the House Judiciary Committee show that a Department of Homeland Security agency “expanded its mission to surveil Americans’ speech on social media, colluded with Big Tech and government-funded third parties to censor by proxy, and tried to hide its plainly unconstitutional activities from the public,” according to an interim staff report released Monday night.

The findings add details to reporting by Just the News about the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and its work with private entities to remove, throttle and label purported misinformation on elections, Hunter Biden and COVID-19 — efforts that might even constitute election meddling and sometimes target true content.

The “severe public outcry” in spring 2022 against DHS’s Disinformation Governance Board, shuttered a few months later, so alarmed CISA and its advisors that they “tried to cover their tracks” on censorship and surveillance, which “included scrubbing CISA’s website of references to domestic ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation,'” the report says.

By outsourcing its “censorship operation” to a CISA-funded nonprofit in the wake of First Amendment litigation by Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general, CISA was “implicitly admitting that its censorship activities are unconstitutional,” House Judiciary Republicans said.

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The EU Wants To Make It Legal To Install Spyware on Journalists’ Devices

In a contentious turn, EU leaders have unveiled draft legislation permitting national security agencies to deploy spyware on journalists’ phones in certain circumstances. The move has obviously triggered an outcry from media and civil society organizations, who argue that the draft European Media Freedom Act could be a perilous weapon against the press.

Sophie in’t Veld, a Dutch Member of the European Parliament (MEP) who has been integral in the European Parliament’s inquiry into the use of Pegasus spyware against journalists and prominent figures, termed the reasoning behind the draft as mendacious. “I think what the council is doing is unacceptable. It’s also incomprehensible. Well, it’s incomprehensible if they are serious about democracy,” in’t Veld remarked.

A striking aspect of the draft’s release was the absence of an in-person meeting involving ministers in charge of media affairs, which typically precedes such announcements.

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UK drivers warned they risk £5,000 fine if they are wearing sunglasses

Drivers caught wearing sunglasses can be slapped with large fines of up to £5,000 according to the Highway Code.

Despite sunglasses helping to prevent the sun from blinding drivers, the Highway Code enforces that drivers should stop or slow down when affected by sunshine.

Experts warn that while many believe sunglasses heighten road safety, they may in fact be a risk due to the blinding glare by low light and reflections from puddles or oncoming traffic.

People caught wearing tinted lenses and visors that restrict visibility could be slapped with penalties ranging from points on their licence, unlimited fines and potentially disqualifications.

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Cops Use Phony Diagnoses To Explain Away Stun Gun Deaths

A small change in wording by medical examiners could have a big impact on how deaths in police custody are reported. In March, the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME) said “excited delirium” should not be cited as a cause of death.

“Instead,” the organization said, “NAME endorses that the underlying cause, natural or unnatural (to include trauma), for the delirious state be determined (if possible) and used for death certification.” While that guidance is not legally binding, it further undermines the concept of excited delirium, which proponents describe as a state of wild agitation or distress, often resulting from illicit drug use, that can lead to sudden cardiac arrest. NAME now joins the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association in not recognizing excited delirium as a cause of death.

The controversial term was popularized in the 1980s by a Miami forensic pathologist who was study sudden deaths of cocaine users, most of them in police custody. Nearly all “excited delirium” victims die after being tased or physically restrained by police. Since 2000, a 2017 Reuters investigation found, excited delirium had been linked to at least 276 deaths following the use of a stun gun, which suggested that electrocution, not excitement or agitation, was largely responsible.

The diagnosis has been used in other scenarios to clear police or other state actors. In 2019, three Aurora, Colorado, police officers accosted 23-year-old Elijah McClain as he was walking home from a convenience store and violently restrained him. McClain died after two paramedics diagnosed him with excited delirium and forcibly injected him with an overdose of ketamine, a powerful sedative. From January 2019 through September 2020, the Colorado Attorney General’s Office found, Aurora paramedics injected people with ketamine 22 times in response to what they perceived as excited delirium.

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