Tag: police state

House Committee Will Consider Protecting State Medical Psilocybin Laws From Federal Interference Under New Amendment

A pair of Democratic congressmen have filed an amendment to a large-scale spending bill that would prohibit the use of federal funds to interfere with state and local laws allowing the use and sale of psilocybin for medical purposes.

Reps. Robert Garcia (D-CA) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) are seeking to attach the psychedelics measure to appropriations legislation covering Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS). It will be up to the House Rules Committee to determine whether the amendment will be made in order for a floor vote.

The members separately introduced standalone legislation in September to prevent federal interference in any jurisdiction that legalizes the psychedelic.

The new CJS amendment, meanwhile, states that no appropriated funds under the spending bill “may be used to prevent any State, the District of Columbia, any territory, commonwealth or possession of the United States, or any unit of local government from implementing its own laws authorizing the use, distribution, sale, possession, research, or cultivation of medical psilocybin.”

That language is similar to an existing CJS rider that has been annually renewed each year since 2014 prohibiting the use of federal funds to interfere in state medical marijuana programs. Efforts to expand that protection to cover adult-use cannabis laws have passed the House on several occasions but have never been enacted into law.

“I just think that there’s an opportunity to have a more progressive worldview on legalization and on [preventing] harm to people that are, in many ways, receiving huge medicinal benefits or recreational benefits” from cannabis and psychedelics, Garcia told Marijuana Moment in a phone interview on Tuesday before the psilocybin amendment was publicly posted.

If the psychedelics appropriations measure is cleared for the floor and ultimately enacted, it would specifically focus on medical psilocybin laws, so its practical impact may be limited in the short-term given that no states have explicitly authorized it as a therapeutic in the way they have for marijuana, with qualifying conditions and doctor recommendations, for example.

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Masks required in certain settings again in California

Beginning on Wednesday, lots of people heading into doctor’s offices or hospitals across the Bay Area will be required to mask up.

In some parts of California, masks will be required in hospitals and skilled nursing facilities in an effort to limit the spread of RSV, the flu and COVID. The mandate will last until the end of flu season in March.

Marin County and Santa Clara counties require everyone who enters medical facilities to mask up.  Alameda, San Mateo, Contra Costa, and Sonoma counties will require health care workers to mask up in patient care areas. 

In California, COVID positivity rates were on the rise starting in July, and peaked in late August. According to the Mercury News, wastewater data shows medium levels of COVID in all of Santa Clara County’s sewer sheds at the end of October, down from high transmission range over the last two months.

Dr. Peter Chin-Hong told KTVU medical professional don’t know what is going to happen during this flu season, so they’re opting to take a precautious approach. 

Though, not everyone in the health care industry agrees. 

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It Begins. Biden’s DOJ Starts Arresting Trump Supporters Who Stood Outside the US Capitol and Committed No Violence – Despite Registered Rallies on Capitol Grounds that Day

On October 13, 2022, the FBI testified that they were using geo-tracking data to identify Trump supporters who had gathered near the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

A bombshell report by the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) revealed the “vast, secretive” partnership between private companies and the federal government to surveil and track the movements of millions of Americans.

According to the EFF, the intel alphabet agencies, including ICE, the FBI, US Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of Defense (DoD), as well as state and local law enforcement, are being funneled hordes of private cell phone location data by private brokers who harvest the information.

This is the same tactic that Gregg Phillips, Catherine Engelbrecht, and True The Vote used for their investigation into the mail-in ballot dropbox fraud during the 2020 election. The cell phone location data collected by this group was used to identify the network of Democrat operatives who committed mass election fraud, as seen in the recently-released documentary “2000 Mules.”

The FBI was alleged to have used this data to identify patriotic protesters who traveled to Washington DC on January 6, 2021, to support President Trump and the US Constitution.

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Teenage Trick-Or-Treaters Are Too Scary For These Cities

Every year, it seems like the controversies surrounding Halloween keep getting stupider.

Last year, fears about “rainbow fentanyl” caused panic over brightly colored pills supposedly designed as candy. This year, parents online expressed horror over the “switch witch” (a clever, if cruel way to throw away your kid’s candy haul), and a New Jersey school district announced its baffling decision to cancel Halloween celebrations over concern for the minority of kids who don’t celebrate the holiday.

But there’s also another Halloween debate that has long gotten out of hand: How old is too old to go trick-or-treating? While this seems like a question for parents, some local governments have handed down their own decrees about just who gets to participate in Halloween candy collecting.

According to a recent NPR story, kids over 14 in Chesapeake, Virginia, caught trick-or-treating can be charged with a misdemeanor. Until 2019, they apparently faced six months in jail.

In nearby Norfolk, Suffolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach, kids over 12 are barred from trick-or-treating. Rayne, Louisiana, and Jacksonville, Illinois, also ban teenage trick-or-treaters. In Belleville, Illinois, they can get slapped with a $1,000 fine.

How often these laws are enforced is unclear. However, it doesn’t seem like local police departments are rigorously verifying the age of trick-or-treaters.

“Officers do not spend Halloween night ‘carding’ trick-or-treaters, nor are they actively seeking ‘over age’ participants,” one Chesapeake spokesperson told Today in 2019.

It’s not entirely clear why these cities have enacted age limits on trick-or-treating; the most common—though often vaguely phrased—reasoning seems to be an attempt to halt teenage crime.

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Former Fox Reporter Faces Contempt Charge After Refusing To Reveal FBI Source

Former Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge (now with CBS) is facing a contempt charge after refusing to comply with a court order to reveal a confidential source’s identity.

The source had provided information about an FBI investigation into a Chinese American scientist, Yanping Chen – whose lawyers asked the court to hold Herridge in contempt because she “refused to answer questions regarding the identity of her confidential source(s) and other aspects of her reporting process and editorial decision-making.”

The case stems from three reports published by Fox News starting in 2017, which revealed that the FBI had been investigationg Ms. Chen, a naturalized US citizen who founded and owned a university attended by multiple US military personnel. Chen was informed in 2016 that she wouldn’t be charged, the Epoch Times reports.

Yet in 2018, the Department of Defense moved to stop helping to pay the tuition for military members who wanted to attend Chen’s university. Chen sued the FBI, who she claimed had leaked the previously private information to Herridge.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that Chen’s “need for the requested evidence overcomes Herridge’s qualified First Amendment privilege.”

Cooper said on Oct. 27 that Herridge would likely be held in contempt unless she coughs up her source.

“With contempt proceedings now teed up, one of two outcomes appears likely: Either Herridge will be held in contempt in the near future and can immediately appeal that order, or, as sometimes occurs in these cases, the sources may release Herridge from the privilege rather than watch her undergo the consequences of contempt,” Cooper, and Obama appointee, wrote in the ruling which rejected Herridge’s request to reconsider his earlier refusal to stay proceedings pending appeal.

Ms. Herridge hasn’t commented on the matter, and her deposition, taken in September, hasn’t been made public. Meanwhile, lawyers for Ms. Herridge didn’t respond to a request for comment. Fox News and CBS News also didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Ms. Herridge’s lawyers had said that the judge’s August order contained language indicating that he thought he was forced to require contempt before an appeal but that the court actually had the discretion to certify an appeal ahead of a contempt ruling. -Epoch Times

“The court should exercise its discretion to avoid forcing Ms. Herridge to suffer a contempt sanction as the price for securing review of her First Amendment rights,” said Herridge’s lawyers.

Several press freedom groups have voiced objections to Cooper’s decision.

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UK Police Arrest Women Who Attended Gaza Protest Wearing Paraglider-Print Shirts

London police have made the latest in a series of arrests related to the repeated Gaza and Hamas protests in recent weeks, now arresting two women on suspicion of terrorism offences for wearing prints of paragliders stuck to their clothing at a rally.

Two women, aged 29 and 44 years old surrendered themselves to police and were arrested “on suspicion of inviting support for a proscribed organisation” under the Terrorism Act after the Metropolitan Police published their images in an appeal for information. The pair are being held at a police station, the force said.

Images of four people had been published by police on the 27th relating to “Pro-Palestine” protests on October 14th and 21st, with three of those being women wearing print-outs of paragliders taped to their clothes. The fourth was a man carrying a “I fully support Hamas” placard.

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American XL Bully dogs are officially banned following spate of attacks: Owning one without exemption certificate will be a criminal offence from February

American XL bully dogs are now officially banned – with offences established to outlaw the sale, breeding and giving away of the dogs and walking them off-lead.

The ban was promised by prime minister Rishi Sunak following a spate of high-profile attacks earlier this year including the savaging of an 11-year-old girl and the death of a man in Staffordshire at the hands of two of the dangerous dogs.

Defra says that under the new rules, which come into effect from December 31, it will be illegal to ‘breed, sell, advertise, exchange, gift, rehome, abandon or allow XL Bully dogs to stray’ in England and Wales.

From the same date, existing XL Bully owners must keep their dogs on a lead and muzzled in public; the government is advising people to start training their dogs to wear a muzzle and walk on a lead comfortably, if they aren’t already trained. 

And from February 1, owning an XL Bully will be outlawed altogether unless owners register their animal on the Index of Exempted Dogs. The government says it has ‘staggered’ the dates to give existing owners time to prepare for the laws to come in.

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UK GOVERNMENT APOLOGIZES AFTER COUNTER DISINFORMATION UNIT GOT CAUGHT LYING, MONITORING JOURNALISTS’ SPEECH

Those who may have a penchant for English literature, may also be aware of this quote from “The Witch of Edmonton” – “(…) This were a fine reign; To do ill, and not hear of it again.”

But even to those who lack that interest, this might seem like a succinct way to describe some of the ways politicians, and whole national cabinets – apologize, or, “apologize” – regarding certain fundamental mistakes they made/are making.

These do at times read less like apologies and more like, “can we please move on”? Fit for individuals perhaps – but is it ever, for states and governments?

Well, if talkTV host Julia Hartley-Brewer wanted a “formal apology” from the UK government, she has it. You see – the said government is either “sorry” for inflicting pain on Hartley-Brewer, or just upset because their “counter-disinformation unit” (formally – “Rapid Response Unit“) got caught, pants down, spreading actual disinformation.

Who’s to say?

However, who knew being a mere vaccine (Covid, specifically) skeptic (as juxtaposed to “anti-vaxxer”) came to be considered one and the same, equal to “spreading misinformation”? What will happen to science itself? The UK cabinet is aware – right? – that there is no science without skepticism?

In the meanwhile, Julia Hartley-Brewer, as far as the UK government, is no longer a “vaccine skeptic.” She has received an apology. But of far more interest to the general public, that label was slapped on the journalist as she was included in what Big Brother Watch rights group says was “a secret report on vaccine hesitancy sent across UK government recipients – and even to the US government.”

The saddest – or the most alarming part of this story is that Hartley-Brewer could hardly be considered any kind of skeptic to begin with. And yet – she made it to “the list.”

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Budtender At New York City’s First Legal Cannabis Store Jailed On Marijuana Charges

An employee of the city’s first legal marijuana dispensary is being held on Rikers Island on a cannabis-related felony charge in a striking example of how pot, despite being legal in New York state, can still drag people into the criminal justice system as it remains illegal under federal law and those of several states.

When police pulled over 33-year-old Jumal George in Brooklyn on October 11 as he was driving to a friend’s house after a shift as a lead budtender at the Housing Works Cannabis Co., they found he was driving without a license—and that he had a warrant against him in Pennsylvania. The charges there stemmed from several cannabis-related charges he was arrested for back in 2021.

His fiancée, Audra Ramos, told THE CITY that he had left his license at home. “A little mistake was made, but he was fixing it,” she said, noting that George had made trips back to Pennsylvania to deal with the charges there but missed a hearing after one of the dates was moved up suddenly last year. That’s when the warrant was issued.

When police pulled him over in New York, George was detained. Two days later, he was sentenced to seven days at Rikers for the license charge.

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Wider War Will Bring Inevitable Attempts At Martial Law In America

Not long ago at the height of fear over the global pandemic the US underwent a change that many people argued would never happen. For years I have heard people say that authoritarian controls in America are “tinfoil hat conspiracy theory” and doom mongering – All the prepping, all the talk of community organizing, all the guns and the gear and the training were for nothing.

Then…the covid agenda hit like a freight train.

Our constitutional rights were no longer set in stone, but mere guidelines that government officials could bend or break in the name of “public health safety.” Laws no longer had to be passed through a series of checks and balances; mandates could be implemented as if they were laws without public oversight and enforced unilaterally.

There was talk (primarily among Democrats) of severe punishments for people who refused the pointless covid vaccines. They wanted vaccine passports, they wanted prison time for those that spoke publicly against the vax, they wanted people’s jobs taken away, they wanted their children taken away, and there were even plans to build covid detention centers to segregate and lock up “vax deniers.”

It boggles the mind, but this was serious debate within the US and it was all triggered in the span of a year. Nearly half the country was willing to abandon the Bill of Rights over a virus with a survival rate of 99.8%. The conspiracy theorists were right all along; our freedoms rest on a razor’s edge and preparing to survive and fight for those freedoms is perfectly rational.

Luckily, the covid agenda failed. The mandates were ultimately blocked by red states and in many rural areas they were barely enforced at all. Biden’s vaccine passport attempt was stopped cold by the Supreme Court, but I have long believed that the Supreme Court made this decision exactly because of the level of public resistance.  They knew if they pressed the issue, civil war was on the table.

Medical authoritarianism collapsed because conservatives and independents were not onboard and they could not be shamed into compliance.

But what happens when there is a crisis that DOES scare conservatives? What happens when the political right perceives a true threat? Does freedom then become untenable?

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