Tag: south carolina

Radioactive Wasp Nest Discovered Near South Carolina Nuclear Weapon Facility

A radioactive wasp nest has been discovered near a former nuclear weapon manufacturing facility in South Carolina.

The nest was found by workers at the Savannah River Site in Aiken County, according to a report from the Department of Energy.

According to reports, the contaminated nest was found on July 3, just before 2 p.m., by Radiological Control Operations workers during routine inspections.

Located on a stanchion near a tank in the F-Area tank farm, the nest registered a staggering 100,000 disintegrations per minute (dpm), a level described as “moderately high” radiation.

Workers promptly sprayed the nest to eliminate the wasps, which were then bagged and disposed of as radiological waste.

The Associated Press reports:

The report said there is no leak from the waste tanks, and the nest was likely radioactive through what it called “onsite legacy radioactive contamination” from the residual radioactivity left from when the site was fully operational.

The watchdog group Savannah River Site Watch said the report was at best incomplete since it doesn’t detail where the contamination came from, how the wasps might have encountered it and the possibility there could be another radioactive nest if there is a leak somewhere.

Knowing the type of wasp nest could also be critical — some wasps make nest out of dirt and others use different material which could pinpoint where the contamination came from, Tom Clements, executive director of the group, wrote in a text message.

Thankfully, no contamination was detected in the surrounding ground or area, but the very presence of radioactive insects highlights the persistent threats from “onsite legacy contamination” tied to the site’s history of producing plutonium and tritium for nuclear bombs during the Cold War era.

“I’m as mad as a hornet that SRS didn’t explain where the radioactive waste came from or if there is some kind of leak from the waste tanks that the public should be aware of,” Clements told AP.

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Prosecutors say Republican South Carolina lawmaker used ‘joebidennnn69’ to send child sex material

A Republican member of the South Carolina House who prosecutors say used the screen name “joebidennnn69” has been arrested and charged with 10 counts of distributing sexual abuse material involving children.

RJ May was arrested at his Lexington County home after a lengthy investigation and was ordered Thursday by a federal judge to remain jailed until his trial.

The three-term Republican is accused of using “joebidennnn69” to exchange 220 different files of toddlers and young children involved in sex acts on the Kik social media network for about five days in spring 2024, according to court documents that graphically detailed the videos.

Each charge carries a five-to-20 year prison sentence upon conviction and prosecutors suggested May could spend over a decade in prison if found guilty.

The files were uploaded and downloaded using May’s home Wi-Fi network and his cellphone, prosecutors said. Some were hidden by the use of a private network but others were directly linked to his internet addresses.

May says someone else could have used his Wi-Fi

At his arraignment, May’s lawyer suggested someone could have used the Wi-Fi password that was shown on a board behind a photo May’s wife may have posted online. Attorney Dayne Phillips also suggested investigators didn’t link each Kik message directly to May.

Prosecutors asked that May, 38, not be given bail because he lives at home with his wife and young children, and some of the files he is accused of sharing feature children of about the same age as his.

May investigated for paid sex in Colombia

Prosecutors said they also investigated whether May used a fake name to travel to Colombia three times after finding videos on his laptop of him allegedly having sex with three women. An agent from the Department of Homeland Security testified the women appeared to be underage and were paid. U.S. agents have not been able to locate the women.

Prosecutors said May created a Facebook account with his fake name and his internet history showed him switching between his real account and the fake one and even searching his primary opponent from the fake login.

Phillips, May’s lawyer, told the courtroom that no sexual images of toddlers or young children were found directly on his laptop or cellphone.

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South Carolina Supreme Court Unanimously Upholds Law Banning Abortion at Point When Heartbeat Can Be Detected

The South Carolina Supreme Court has unanimously determined that the state can continue banning abortion at the point when a fetal heartbeat can be detected.

The law, which the court upheld on Wednesday, bans the procedure at approximately six weeks of pregnancy.

Planned Parenthood had challenged the law in court, arguing that the law should not apply until nine weeks of pregnancy.

According to the law, abortions cannot be performed once an ultrasound can detect “cardiac activity, or the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heart, within the gestational sac.”

The Associated Press reports, “The state argued that is the moment when an ultrasound detects cardiac activity. Planned Parenthood said the words after the ‘or’ mean the ban should only start after the major parts of the heart come together and ‘repetitive rhythmic contraction’ begins, which is often around nine weeks.”

The court ultimately determined that the law must be based on the intent of the general assembly, which was clearly to ban the practice at six weeks, not nine.

“We could find not one instance during the entire 2023 legislative session in which anyone connected in any way to the General Assembly framed the Act as banning abortion after approximately nine weeks,” Associate Justice John Few wrote.

The AP report also noted, “And the Supreme Court pointed out Planned Parenthood used the phrase ‘six-week ban’ more than 300 times in previous filings, as South Carolina’s 2021 ban at cardiac activity was overturned in a 3-2 decision in 2023 and then reinstated months later after the General Assembly tweaked the law and the court’s only woman who overturned the ban had to retire because of her age.”

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South Carolina trans activist arrested for threatening to assassinate Rep Nancy Mace

A trans activist in Greenville, South Carolina, has been arrested by state authorities after threatening to assassinate Rep. Nancy Mace. Samuel T. Cain, who uses the alias “Roxie,” was arrested by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division and was booked on Thursday into the Greenville County Detention Center on suspicion of threatening the life of a public official. 

A post allegedly made by Cain stated in all caps, “I’m going to assassinate Representative Nancy Mace with a gun and I’m being 100% dead a**.” The US Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina declined to prosecute.

Mace has been the target of assaults and threats of violence by left-wing agitators over her criticisms of the inclusion of trans-identified males in women’s spaces. In December, LGBTQ activist James McIntyre was arrested for assaulting a government official. 

In November, a Portland, Ore., Antifa and transgender activist by the name of Andromeda Boyle, formerly known as Joshua Ryan Matthew Boyle, was seen issuing violent threats towards Mace. 

Boyle said in an Instagram post in which Mace was tagged, “I hope that one day I do find you in that women’s bathroom, and I grab you by your ratty looking f*cking hair and drag your face down to the floor while I repeatedly bash it in until the blood’s everywhere and you’re dead.”

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Jordanian National Ahmad Jamal Khamees Alhendi Identified as Suspect Behind Greenville I-85 Shutdown; Faces Bomb Threat Charges and ICE Detainer

Ahmad Jamal Khamees Alhendi, a Jordanian national, has been identified as the suspect responsible for the hours-long shutdown of Interstate 85 near Greenville, South Carolina.

The chaos unfolded after Alhendi allegedly issued a bomb threat during a routine traffic stop on Thursday, prompting a massive law enforcement response involving SWAT teams, bomb squads, and federal agencies.

The South Carolina Department of Transportation reported severe backups near Exit 44 at White Horse Road as authorities scrambled to address the threat.

Greenville County deputies, along with the State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) bomb squad and the FBI, were deployed to neutralize the potential danger. Governor Henry McMaster confirmed that the shutdown was a precautionary measure taken “out of an abundance of caution.”

“I-85 near mile marker 44 is temporarily closed out of an abundance of caution due to a bomb threat issued during a routine traffic stop this afternoon by SC Transport Police,” Governor McMaster said.

“SCDOT and state law enforcement are on the scene, and normal I-85 traffic will resume once the tractor trailer is swept and cleared by SELD’s bomb squad.”

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Judge in South Carolina Shocks Leftists with Bombshell Ruling: Voter Rolls Are Public Record Under Federal Law

In a landmark ruling, a federal judge in South Carolina has declared that voter rolls are public records and must be made available for inspection by election integrity advocates, a decision that could set a precedent nationwide.

The ruling, issued by Judge Joseph F. Anderson Jr. of the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to election integrity.

PILF sought access to the South Carolina Statewide Voter Registration List under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993, which mandates that states maintain accurate voter rolls and make records available for public inspection.

The SEC initially denied the request.

The SEC argued that South Carolina law only permitted access to these records by qualified electors of the state, not by out-of-state organizations like PILF.

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Report: South Carolina Voters Unable to Vote Due to Internet Outage – Voters Told to Put Ballots in ‘Another Slot’

South Carolina primary voters are reportedly unable to vote due to ballot tabulators being unable to connect to the internet.

Real America’s Voice reported Saturday that poll workers are claiming that because the internet is not working, they’ve had to take primary ballots and put them into a separate bin.

Even more unbelievably, vote tabulators are not even supposed to be connected to the internet in the first place, and the media since the 2020 election have denounced claims that they were connected to the internet as baseless conspiracy theories.

According to one voter, a poll worker said “they didn’t have internet” and that he would have to take his paper ballot and “fold it and slide it into another slot. It looked kind of like a trash can.”

“So I walked out scratching my head, and there were a number of other voters that were just as confused as I was,” he told RAV reporter Michelle Backus.

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SOUTH CAROLINA BAN ON PRISONERS’ MEDIA INTERVIEWS VIOLATES FIRST AMENDMENT, LAWSUIT SAYS

South Carolina violates the First Amendment by forbidding incarcerated people from speaking with the press, according to a lawsuit filed today by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of South Carolina against the state’s Department of Corrections.

“The South Carolina Department of Corrections (“SCDC”) enforces the nation’s most restrictive policy on media access to prisoners,” the complaint says. The suit alleges that the state “bans interviews by anyone, on any topic, and by any real-time means: in person, by video, or by phone. And although correspondence by mail is allowed, publication of a prisoner’s written speech is similarly prohibited.”

According to a copy of the SCDC’s media policy, the agency prohibits “personal contact interviews with any SCDC inmate, untried county safekeeper, or death row inmate by anyone,” and bans “news and non-news media representatives” from taking photographs, or audio or video recordings of SCDC prisoners.

In a press release last summer, the SCDC said, “Inmates in the custody of the S.C. Department of Corrections are not allowed to do interviews.”

“The department believes that victims of crime should not have to see or hear the person who victimized them or their family member on the news,” the press release said. “Inmates lose the privilege of speaking to the news media when they enter SCDC.”

The press release also included a copy of a letter from an SCDC official to the attorney of Richard Murdaugh, a former lawyer convicted of murdering his wife and son. (Murdaugh maintains his innocence.) The letter scolded Murdaugh and his legal team for speaking to the press.

The department’s letter stated that, in violation of the SCDC policy, Murdaugh read excerpts of his journal to his attorney, who recorded Murdaugh’s voice and sent the audio files to the media. Murdaugh received a disciplinary infraction. The letter warned the violation could jeopardize Murdaugh’s access to his attorney.

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Mystery grows after dad and his daughter, six, are found dead near their ‘broken down truck’ in rural SC on the way to grandma’s house – as police probe call where child was screaming moments before family lost contact

Even though a coroner ruled a dad and his six-year-old daughter died of hypothermia, plenty of questions remain how they ended up stranded on the way to grandma’s house and what really happened in their final hours. 

Jason Murph, 42, and his daughter Michelle Murph were heading from Blythewood, South Carolina, to Orangeburg, South Carolina, to visit Jason’s mother – about a 65-mile ride.

Murph’s estranged wife and the young girl’s mother said the last time she heard from them was around 8pm on December 16. 

Murph told her that his car wrecked and he slid off the road and he did not know where he was. The little girl was also heard crying frantically in the background. 

Two days later, Murph’s silver Toyota Tundra was found in a field damaged and burned near Interstate 301 Calhoun County. Around 1pm, officers from the Richland County Sheriff’s Department and police K-9s found their bodies approximately 100 yards away.

A Calhoun County coroner said their autopsy results were inconclusive and the pair died from hypothermia due to the weather elements. Officials said there were no signs of foul play, but their deaths remain a mystery.  

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South Carolina found to violate rights of mentally ill in group homes

A federal investigation determined South Carolina violates the rights of mentally ill adults by placing them in overly restrictive group homes.

Some 2,000 people with serious mental illness were institutionalized in community residential care facilities, or what a report Thursday from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice calls adult care homes.

The facilities have violated the rights of people with disabilities by limiting their choice and independence while offering few opportunities to engage in the community, the report states.

South Carolina failed to provide community-based services to all residents to divert them from adult care homes, investigators determined. Once a resident is placed in a facility, the state has denied them the resources they need to return to the community.

Some mentally ill residents have remained in the facilities for up to 35 years, the report states. The average resident spends five years in an adult care home.

Kimberly Tissot, president and CEO for Able SC, applauded the Justice Department for investigating what has been a longtime problem.

“We are hopeful this will bring true changes to people with psychiatric disabilities and other disabilities in South Carolina,” Tissot said in an email. “The unjustified segregation the disability community continues to experience in South Carolina must end today.”

Of the more than 400 adult care homes in the state that Tissot said she has evaluated, she found fewer than 15 were “somewhat decent and didn’t violate any rights.”

“CRCF’s conditions are appalling and make things more difficult for someone’s well-being,” Tissot added, using an abbreviation for community residential care facilities.

A spokesman for Governor Henry McMaster did not respond to a request for comment.

The Department of Justice said it launched the probe over a year ago after receiving a complaint. Investigators reviewed documents and conducted dozens of interviews with staff, state officials and residents.

In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Olmstead v. L.C. that the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that people with disabilities be provided community-based services in the “least restrictive setting” possible. Unnecessary segregation created the assumption that disabled people were “incapable or unworthy of participating in community life,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion.

By housing residents in adult care homes rather than less restrictive settings, investigators determined, South Carolina violated the ADA’s requirements.

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