Tag: police state

Nevada Commission Seeks Comment On Plan To Let People With Marijuana Convictions Become Police Officers

A Nevada commission will hear public comment this week on a proposal that would amend hiring standards for police officers to allow job candidates who were previously disqualified for certain marijuana-related offenses to be eligible for law enforcement positions.

The change being considered by the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) at Thursday meeting would amend regulations around hiring that currently prevent a person from becoming a peace officer if they have been convicted of an offense involving the unlawful use, sale or possession of a controlled substance.

The new language would state that the restriction doesn’t apply “to a person who has been convicted of an offense involving the unlawful use, sale, or possession of marijuana if the offense is not unlawful at the time the person submits an application for certification as a police officer.”

A notice of intent says the change would expand the pool of eligible candidates for law enforcement positions and “aid agencies in the ability to fill much needed positions.” There would be no adverse effects from the change, it says, nor additional costs to regulators.

Members of the public wishing to comment on the proposal can either appear in person at the October 26 meeting, held at 8 a.m. in Napa Room B of the Southpoint Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

Approval of the change would not mean that officers could use cannabis once employed, but it would represent a significant policy change, especially given that the current rules are written in a way that explicitly emphasizes the no-tolerance policy for marijuana.

“As with any psychoactive drug, POST strongly believes there is no room for marijuana usage in the policing profession,” the current administration manual says. “POST strongly encourages law enforcement agencies across the state to adopted [sic] policies prohibiting the on or off duty recreational or medical use of marijuana.”

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President Trump Freed Drug Offenders. Candidate Trump Wants To Kill Them.

Donald Trump can’t seem to decide whether he wants to execute drug dealers or free them from prison. The former president’s debate with himself reflects a broader clash between Republicans who think harsher criminal penalties are always better and Republicans who understand that justice requires proportionality.

Trump has long admired brutal drug warriors like Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines. Consistent with that affinity, he has repeatedly floated the idea of imposing the death penalty on drug traffickers.

Trump returned to that theme in November 2022, when he officially launched his 2024 presidential campaign. “We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” he said.

Trump reiterated that position during a June 2023 interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier, saying, “That’s the only way you’re going to stop it.” But as Baier pointed out, a policy of executing “everyone who sells drugs” is inconsistent with Trump’s record as president, which included sentencing reforms and acts of clemency aimed at reducing drug penalties that Trump described as “very unfair.”

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Ohio Ballot Measure To Legalize Marijuana Won’t Automatically Expunge Prior Convictions

Legalizing marijuana in Ohio under Issue 2 would not lead to the automatic expungement for those charged with cannabis offenses.

But the tax revenue from legalizing cannabis could address some criminal justice reform through the social equity and jobs program fund, said Tom Haren, spokesperson for the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol.

“That fund—in addition to the direct investment to disproportionately impacted communities—is designed to fund and steady criminal justice reform efforts including sentencing reform, bail reform, parole reform, record-sealing and expungement efforts,” he said.

Issue 2 is a citizen-initiative that would legalize and regulate the cultivation, manufacturing, testing and the sale of marijuana to Ohioans 21 and up.

“Citizen initiatives are limited to a single subject which makes it difficult to address lots of different things,” Haren said. “We had to be really careful around how Issue 2 was tailored.”

Under Issue 2, Ohioans could buy and possess 2.5 ounces of cannabis flower, which is slightly more than 70 grams. Currently, possessing up to 100 grams of marijuana is a minor misdemeanor that comes with a fine up to $150.

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He’s Going to Prison for Twitter Trolling. That’s Not Justice.

It took an FBI investigation, a three-week trial, and lots of taxpayer dollars, but the government finally got what it wanted this week: A Florida man is heading to federal prison for disseminating trollish memes during the 2016 election season that prosecutors alleged “deprive[d] people of their constitutional right to vote.”

In the months leading up to Election Day, Douglass Mackey, an erstwhile far-right social media influencer, posted a series of photos on his Twitter profile—which had about 58,000 followers under the name “Ricky Vaughn”—encouraging Hillary Clinton–supporters to cast their votes by phone. That obviously didn’t go so well for the people who fell for it. But however you feel about Mackey’s obnoxious brand of politics and feeble attempt at comedy, the case became about a lot more than him, raising questions about protected speech, overcriminalization, and a politicized Department of Justice.

To prosecute Mackey, the government leveraged a law from 1870, a century and change before Twitter trolling would become a sport. That legislation was passed to deter the Ku Klux Klan from trying to prevent black people from voting, as they were known to do. According to the indictment, the DOJ alleged Mackey conspired to “injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States, to wit: the right to vote.”

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Achtung! US Travel To Europe Will Require Prior Approval, Biometric Scanning

Traveling to most European countries is about to get more complicated and invasive for American citizens: In spring 2025, you’ll have to first request permission.  And you’ll be saying adieu to passport stamps and ciao to facial and fingerprint scans — and having your biometric data stored in an enormous government database. 

On Friday, an agency of the European Union announced the updated timing for the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS), which has first set to roll out in 2024. It applies to travelers from more than 60 countries that are currently exempt from visa requirements. Those countries have an aggregate population of 1.4 billion. 

As is the case today, Americans won’t need a visa, but they will need to apply in advance for permission to visit any of 30 EU countries for stays lasting up to 90 days. It will cost about $8 to apply, with requests submitted via the official ETIAS website or ETIAS mobile app. With activation of the process more than a year away, neither is yet configured to collect applications. ETIAS assures the public that most applications will be processed in minutes. 

The approval will be tied to your passport, and will be valid for up to three years or until your passport expires, whichever comes earlier. Once you have it, you’ll be able to visit as much as you want, so long as it’s a “short-term stay,” which generally means up to 90 days in a 180-day period. 

ETIAS recommends applying for permission “well in advance” of your trip, but doesn’t specify what that means. The agency does caution that the approval period “could be extended by up to 14 days if you are requested to provide additional information or documentation, or up to 30 days if you are invited to an interview.” There’s no indication where such interviews would be conducted or by whom. 

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Conservatives are increasingly knives out for the nation’s top cyber agency

An agency set up under Donald Trump to protect elections and key U.S. infrastructure from foreign hackers is now fighting off increasingly intense threats from hard-right Republicans who argue it’s gone too far and are looking for ways to rein it in.

These lawmakers insist work by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to combat online disinformation during elections singles out conservative voices and infringes upon free speech rights — an allegation the agency vehemently denies and the Biden administration is contesting in court. The accusations started in the wake of the 2020 election and are ramping up ahead of 2024, with lawmakers now calling for crippling cuts at the agency.

“CISA has blatantly violated the First Amendment and colluded with Big Tech to censor the speech of ordinary Americans,” Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which oversees CISA, said in a statement to POLITICO.

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UK government keeping files on teaching assistants’ and librarians’ internet activity

The government has been monitoring the social media accounts of “dozens” of ordinary teaching staff, including teaching assistants, and is keeping files on posts that criticise education policies, the Observer has learned.

Two weeks ago, this newspaper revealed how the Department for Education is monitoring the social media activity of some of the country’s leading education experts. Now evidence has emerged that the monitoring is much more widespread, covering even the lowest paid members of staff.

Ordinary teaching and support staff said this weekend that they were “gobsmacked” and angry after discovering that the department had files on them. Many outraged educators have rushed to submit subject access requests [SARs] compelling the DfE to release any information it holds under their name, after discovering there were files up to 60 pages long about their tweets and comments challenging government policy or the schools inspectorate, Ofsted.

Nikki Cleveland, a higher-level teaching assistant and primary school librarian, who mainly posts uncontroversial children’s book reviews, discovered from a SAR that the DfE had a file alerting colleagues to tweets from her complaining about lack of funding for school libraries and about Ofsted. She said: “I was gobsmacked that I was even on their radar.”

Cleveland expressed anger that while the department was flagging tweets about schools struggling to balance their budgets, meet the growing needs of pupils without enough staff and deal with unreasonable demands from Ofsted, “nothing has changed”.

“The whole thing makes me even more cynical that no one in the government or the DfE cares about what is happening in schools on a day-to-day basis,” she added.

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Destroying Liberty Through State Protection: The First Amendment

For a state to continue existing in any meaningful way, it must constantly seek to centralize power. Regardless of the original intentions of a state’s founders or the heritage that a state claims, if those running the state simply maintain their existing powers rather than growing them, they will find themselves circumvented. Subdivisions and organic local communities nominally under the state will develop independently from the state’s center of power, and the state’s power will, over a period lacking in centralization, be rendered negligible at best. This necessitates that the state centralize in response to any diverging localities to continue existing.

To sustain its centralization, the state relies on narratives and justifications propagated by its apologists. One of the most popular justifications for the increasing scope of power since the early modern era has been the safeguarding of rights and liberties of the people subjected to the state. Contrary to the promise, the safeguarding of rights and liberties only serves to expand the power of the state, further centralizing its domains and in time inevitably regulating the rights and liberties, eroding the cause itself. This is demonstrated no clearer than in the history of the United States, specifically in the First Amendment.

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Climate Crisis Proponents Want to Criminalize Climate Change Doubts

Climate militants seek to criminalize any opinion or facts contrary to the religion of climate change.

Will the wrong ideas about climate change get you fined, jailed, or even worse?

Could voicing an opinion that questions the facts and fictions that surround the climate change hysteria soon become illegal, as in lawfully forbidden and a criminal offense?

It’s looking like that may become the reality sooner rather than later.

It would be one thing if such a monstrous idea were restricted to a small minority of powerless climate change fanatics, tree huggers, and earth worshippers. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case.

What’s more, this unbelievable and un-American notion is so irrational that it seems impossible to believe.

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Israel slated to shut ‘pro-Hamas’ network Al Jazeera run by Qatar

The Qatar state-owned network Al Jazeera is facing intense criticism that it is assisting the Hamas terrorist movement in its war against the Jewish state, prompting the government to declare that Al Jazeera’s operation will be outlawed in Israel for transmitting “sensitive information to our enemies.” 

When asked about a ban on Al Jazeera and two additional reportedly pro-Hamas news outlets, foreign ministry spokesman, Lior Haiat, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday “The government is working on something. And it is being led by the Communications Ministry and the Defence Ministry. The idea is if they are crossing the line in assisting Hamas, we can shut out the entire channel. “

He added that the closure of a network is “directed at channels that are crossing the line in assisting Hamas.”

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