Police State

Pearl Clutching

Trump excluded certain left leaning members of the MSM from the White House grounds. The left is losing their collective minds, claiming this to be an unprecedented assault on the First Amendment, and of course making comparisons to Hitler, their standard accusation. They have almost completely memory holed the fact that both Obama and Biden did the same thing.

In October 2009, amid a feud in which White House officials (including Communications Director Anita Dunn) publicly described Fox News as not a legitimate news organization but more like “the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party” and said they would treat it “the way we would treat an opponent,” even while saying the network’s point of view was “ultimately destructive” to the nation, then ordered the Treasury Department to exclude a Fox journalist from a multi-network interview pool.

Obama’s administration was widely criticized by journalists (including from outlets not aligned with Fox) for tight control of information, fewer formal press conferences than many predecessors, restricted photographer access (favoring official White House images), delays or stonewalling on FOIA, and “blackballing” or limiting access for some critical reporters at agencies.

Obama’s efforts to plug leaks and persecute leakers even exceeded those of George W. Bush’s administration. The administration prosecuted Stephen Kim, a former State Department official, merely for discussing a classified report about North Korea with Fox News reporter James Rosen, even going so far as to seize Associated Press phone records for two months and used the FBI to conduct surveillance on James Rosen (naming him as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in one case) and New York Times reporter James Risen while trying to identify sources.

Even in earlier times, the actions were hardly unprecedented:

  • Woodrow Wilson investigated journalists critical of his administration by invoking the espionage act of 1917.
  • During the late 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt harassed activists, including members of the press, who sought to keep the United States out of the war raging in Europe.
  • Richard Nixon went to great lengths attempting to prevent the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers because those documents exposed how US policymakers repeatedly lied to Congress and the American people about the Vietnam War.

Cato institute has a lengthy article about the abuses of opposing press outlets by Presidents. As for my blog, I detailed how the Bush administration and Republicans used laws against pornography. One of the Florida enforcers of this is none other than Sheriff Grady Judd.

Christopher Michael Wilson was investigated by Judd because he ran a website that allowed people to post nude pictures of women on the site, and it required a credit card to access so that the Wilson would know that people accessing the site were adults. Military men deployed in the Iraq war complained that they could not do so while in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, because the web servers in those countries blocked credit cards from being processed by companies who promoted pornography. Because of this, Wilson allowed members proving they were deployed by posting pictures from the war zone to have access to the site. Because of those pictures, the site became a photo journal that chronicled the Iraq war. It was one of the first sites to publish the Abu Grhaib pictures that so embarrassed former President Bush. The pictures being posted to that site caused major problems for the Bush administration.

Judd arrested Wilson on 301 counts of distributing pornography, even though Wilson did not post the pictures, he merely ran a site where people posted content, and the servers were not in Polk County (they were in the Netherlands). A plea deal was reached where Wilson had to turn the website over to Judd.

Even though the charges themselves were over pornography, according to Judd, the investigation was because of the Iraq pictures, also according to Judd.

Don’t forget that Grady Judd is also one of the Sheriffs who broke the law in 2011 when they lobbied the state legislators to defeat the open carry law. I am one of the few people not on the left who think Judd is a grandstanding, authoritarian asshole. He also has previously engaged in arresting people who are critical of his policies, including arresting one woman for “lewd activity in the presence of a minor” because her neighbor and his child heard a “sexual sounding noise” coming from the woman’s home 48 days earlier. Of course, it was only a coincidence that the woman had been critical of the sheriff and his policies. The charges were dropped, but the woman had to sign an agreement to stop criticizing the sheriff.

Yeah, so using political power to silence dissent is nothing new. It’s been going on as long as we have had a nation. Both parties do it, but each claims the other is the evil one. I have news for you: they both are evil, power grabbing assholes who will stop at nothing to gain power.

By Divemedic, ago

Death Penalty

This case is a prime reason why I oppose the death penalty. Not in theory, but because I don’t trust the government with the power of life and death.

A former state forensic scientist on Tuesday was sentenced to 10 years in state prison after altering more than 1,000 samples in labs that prosecutors say could have disproportionately affected sexual assault victims over many years.

In this particular case, she made the DNA appear to not match, resulting in people who were guilty being able to walk free, but that isn’t going to be the case with every nutball in government service with the power to alter test results. For example:

  • The FBI Lab underwent massive restructuring in the late 1990s following a whistleblower report by Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, who exposed flawed scientific testimonies and contamination within the lab.
  • In 2004, former FBI biologist Jacqueline M. Blake pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor charge for providing false statements in her laboratory reports.
  • A massive 2015 joint review by the FBI and the Innocence Project revealed an even deeper systemic issue: for over two decades before 2000, microscopic hair comparison examiners from the FBI gave flawed, scientifically invalid testimony in over 95% of the trials reviewed, contributing to numerous wrongful convictions across the United States.

It’s a certainty that at least some people have been sentenced to death for crimes they did not commit. If we execute even one innocent person, we are all collectively murderers. I just cannot support that.

By Divemedic, ago

To the Commenter Who Just Tried to Post Stupidity

If you come to this website and urge or ask me to commit an act against the law, I am not going to post it. If you email that same idea to me, I am going to toss it in the trash. As much as I like my readers, I don’t know any of you well enough to entertain or allow such ideas, even if I were wanting to break the law (which I am not).

I’ve had a few of them through the years. A guy offered to sell me a full auto M2 carbine for $1500. Swore up and down he wasn’t a cop. Yeah. Another guy actually came to my house and asked me to build him an AR with some unlawful features. That’s what happened at Ruby Ridge, I am not dumb.

In 2022, someone came on this blog and suggested we form a group and take some kinetic action against some lefty targets. They were specific about details. They were dumb enough to post that comment from an IP that traces back to a Federal Law enforcement office in the DC area. For Christ’s sake, the Feds in that case were too stupid to even spoof an IP?

All of this happened in the same time frame that the ATF was looking for people to sick their informants on. Like this poor guy who got busted for having an SBR when he took a friend to the range, but the friend was being forced to inform on other shooters. In this case, the informant was an illegal immigrant who was cutting a deal:

In her complaint, Shaw never says why she targeted Mejia, or why the informant was sent to his home.

The informant, or CHS, wasn’t paid for setting up Mejia. Instead, they were cooperating with the FBI to avoid prosecution by ICE.

No one here is going to tell you about how they are plotting violence, or how they are flouting the law. This blog is being run in the public eye. I am not stupid enough to be locked up in a cell without bail, getting beaten every day while I await a trial that isn’t going to happen. This blog gets a couple of million hits a year, and I am certain some of them are law enforcement. I will not break the law on this blog or anywhere else, and I will not join in with your militia group or your little club. If there are ten of you in the club, I would bet at least six of you are informing on the others, but likely don’t even know the others are informants as well.

Like this case, where 13 people in Orlando had their charges dropped after an informant was paid $40,000 to set them up. For that kind of cash, there are informants out there who routinely trick people into breaking the law. Those informants make a living at it. Two or three of those cases a year, and a person can make a pretty good living for almost no effort.

Anyone who has been paying attention to the J6 case know that the Feds operate by getting you to say inflammatory, illegal things and then framing you for it.

I recently read the book about the OKC bombing and how McVeigh was actually a Federal informant. In fact, there were several informants located in the circles McVeigh was traveling.

Then there is this:

There is an old saying I repeat on this blog from time to time: How do you spot the Fed or the police informant? He is the one urging you to break the law.

Nice try, though.

EDITED TO ADD:

And if you AREN’T a Fed or an informant, I would apologize for that, but you are stupid. This blog is read by the PUBLIC. Why would you advertise in my comments about your future illegal adventures? So even if you aren’t a Fed, and I was in the mood to break the law, I would not want to have anything to do with you or your activities because you are too stupid to remain uncaught.

By Divemedic, ago

Test

Anyone who bleats about law and order when someone destroys a Flock camera would have turned in colonists for dumping tea in the harbor

and they will turn you in if your guns are illegal.

pussies.

By Divemedic, ago

Illegal Alien Gonna Arrest You

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. ICE agents arrested a New Orleans police recruit back in January. He was set to graduate and become a police officer. He had already been issued a gun despite the fact that he could not legally carry a weapon as an illegal alien under Federal law. Larry Temah originally entered the United States legally in 2015 on a visitor visa from Cameroon.

In 2016, he was granted conditional residency after marrying a U.S. citizen. However, in 2022, his application for permanent residency was denied due to fraud. Temah was ordered to appear in immigration court three times but continued to disregard U.S. law by not showing up, resulting in the immigration judge ordering him removed in absentia. He did not have valid work authorization.

It’s a felony for a person who is an illegal alien to possess a firearm or ammunition. Think about that- the cop who is arresting you may just in fact be a felon.

It should come as no surprise- the police chief of New Orleans is a DEI hire herself- she was the police chief of Oakland until 2020, when she got fired. She ran over two people with her car back in 2024. Did I mention she gets paid $340k a year?

This opens a bigger can of worms: When an illegal immigrant cop comes to confiscate your guns and arrest you while themselves committing the felony of unlawful firearms possession, is it legal to resist with force? What about their fellow cops? How many of THEM will side with their illegal immigrant police brethren? Isn’t that an accessory?

Sworn to uphold the law, my ass. However, I am betting when shit does go sideways, these illegal immigrant cops will be loyal to whoever is writing their paychecks.

By Divemedic, ago

Lying By Omission

Police are now being instructed to hide the fact that a Flock camera was used in your case.

Meanwhile, I live in a town so small that half of it doesn’t even have water/sewer service.

But we just got three Flock cameras. There aren’t even 2000 people in this town. A quarter of my property tax bill pays for police and Flock cameras. I can’t wait to vote to cut taxes in November.

EDITED TO ADD: Some people chose to engage in petty personal attacks in comments. All comments to this post have been locked.

By Divemedic, ago

Infosec

As much as I disagree with and detest those Antifa asshats and everything they stand for, this news item grabbed my attention. Sam Tunick was stopped for interrogation in Atlanta’s airport while on the way home from vacation in the Dominican Republic. What he didn’t know is the feds put him on a terrorism watchlist because of his association with the protests of Cop City.

The agents took him to a room and began an inspection, but all their questions were centered on child sexual abuse images. (If the Feds want you, they always allege some sort of child porn charges. Ask the Branch Davidians how that plays out.) Tunick asked four times during the interrogation to speak with a lawyer, but was refused access to an attorney each time. Additionally, the agents produced no warrant and did not read Tunick his rights. They tried to use the “port of entry” exception to search him and his belongings.

Agent Findley and several others repeatedly asked Tunick to open his phone during the interrogation, telling him they would seize it if he did not. When he finally provided a passcode, “the screen went blank, flashed several times and the phone appeared to restart”, according to the motion.

It turns out the phone was a Google Pixel running GrapheneOS. One of the security features the OS has is a “duress” code that, if entered, resets the phone to factory settings and wipes the memory. It’s such an issue that police in the EU assume you are a criminal if you have this OS installed. Anyhow, the Feds have charged him with a Federal felony:

On or about January 24, 2025, in the Northern District of Georgia, the defendant, SAMUEL TUNICK, before and during the search for and seizure of property by Customs and Border Patrol Tactical Terrorism Response Team Supervisory Officer L.C., a person authorized to make such search and seizure, did knowingly destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, and otherwise take any action to delete the digital contents of a Google Pixel cellular phone, for the purpose of preventing and impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take said property into its custody and control, in violation of Title 18, Untied [sic] States Code, Section 2232(a).

Duress passwords exist for scenarios like border crossings, where individuals face immense pressure to unlock devices without traditional legal protections. The US has long maintained that routine border searches don’t require warrants, creating what civil liberties groups call a “Constitution-free zone” for travelers’ digital lives. A 2019 federal court ruling found suspicionless phone searches at borders violated the Fourth Amendment, but the government continues doing it anyway.

I don’t have a problem with this. I am less afraid of criminals than I am the government, who seems to overlook this kind of behavior if you have certain connections. Remember Hillary Clinton and Bleachbit?

Jury nullification is a thing. That’s all I will say about that.

By Divemedic, ago

Choosing Sides

I believe that the government agents: cops, firefighters, bureaucrats, whatever, all fall into one of three camps.

  • They are siding with the commies
  • They are siding with traditional America
  • They side with whoever they need to side with in order to keep their pensions and pay

Case in point:

In Augusta, Maine on October 18, 2025 there was a No Kings rally on the Memorial Bridge. A man shows up dressed in an American Flag costume with a BYRNA pepper ball gun (which is legal to possess in Maine) to counter-protest. The lefty protesters call 911 screaming “HE’S GOT A GUN.”

The cops immediately handcuff the man and place him under arrest. They refuse to tell him why he is being arrested, only saying that he will find out what the charges were when he gets to the police station. As soon as they arrive at the station, the police simply release the cuffs and tell him he is free to go, no charges.

The officers later admitted they removed him in handcuffs to prevent the mob from becoming violent.

To those officers who read this blog, especially those who have criticism for what I have to say: Is this something you support? Would you silence one side, violating their constitutional rights and your own oath, simply to prevent the mob from becoming violent? If the answers to either of those questions are yes, then we know where the police stand.

Read about the encounter here:

By Divemedic, ago

Wickard

In the first half of the 20th Century, the Supreme Court stretched the intent of the Constitution beyond all recognition. The historical shift that permanently expanded federal power occurred during the New Deal Era (1937). Before that point, the Supreme Court strictly limited Congress by drawing sharp lines between “local” production (like manufacturing, farming, and mining) and “interstate” commerce (the actual shipping of goods).

Frustrated by repeated legal defeats, President Roosevelt proposed the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937. This plan would allow him to add up to six new, sympathetic justices to the Supreme Court. While Congress rejected the plan, the threat of packing the Court heavily pressured the sitting justices to rule his way more often. Justice Owen Roberts, a supposedly conservative justice, shifted his vote in a landmark labor case, creating a new majority that favored the expansion of Federal power. The new lever that allowed the Federal Government to insert it’s abnormally large nose into everyone’s affairs was the commerce clause.

The Constitution grants the Federal government the power to regulate commerce through the “commerce clause.” The Commerce Clause refers to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian Tribes.”

As with many things, they use the commerce clause to get their hands on powers they otherwise wouldn’t have. There were a few cases involving the commerce clause that came before it, but the one doing the most damage to state’s rights was Wickard v. Filburn (1942). I’ve blogged on this case a couple of times. That case concerned a farmer that was growing wheat for use on his own farm. He contended that he was not subject to the limits that the Federal Government had placed on wheat production, because his wheat was not sold, so it could not be regulated as commerce, let alone “interstate” commerce (described in the Constitution as “Commerce… among the several states”). The Supreme Court disagreed. They held that because he was growing his own wheat, he did not buy wheat from someone else. Since he did not buy someone else’s wheat, this affected interstate commerce and made his wheat subject to the regulations.

This court case basically says that the Feds can rule over anyone they please, without worrying about enumerated powers. All they have to do is play “six degrees of separation” to show that the behavior they wish to dictate affected interstate commerce in some way, no matter how tenuous.

The reason I bring this up today is because Justice Thomas’ concurrence in United States v. Hemani, in which he urged courts to reconsider the constitutional foundation of federal law. Thomas argued that goes too far, writing the Commerce Clause authorizes Congress only “to regulate the buying and selling of goods and services trafficked across state lines,” not “activities wholly separated from business, such as gun possession.”

This is an opinion that anyone with half a brain could see, what the gun ban crowd calls “common sense.” If I carve a toy out of wood and give it to my child, I didn’t affect interstate commerce, but those who would increase Federal powers would say it does. The same goes for making my own firearm at home, or for a felon who possesses a firearm. None of those activities affect interstate commerce, and are thus state law issues and none of the Federal government’s business.

“Congress cannot regulate the possession of every thing that ever traveled across state lines,” Thomas wrote, warning that such an interpretation risks converting Congress’ limited commerce authority into “a general police power of the sort retained by the States.”

Judge Stephen Higginson said striking down Section 922(g) would be “a significant departure from existing, settled, and binding Commerce Clause jurisprudence” and could “mark the start of a new, severely contracted Commerce Clause era.”

“Can the federal government no longer criminalize possession of child pornography? Of explosive materials? Of biological weapons?” Higginson asked. “Past the Title 18 level, do we lose regulations on financial transactions? On intellectual property? On endangered species?”

If the financial transactions, intellectual property, or child pornography crosses state lines, then yes, the Federal government may criminalize it. If not, then that would be up to the states. No one is saying these things shouldn’t be illegal- I am saying that it should be up to each state to make their own laws.

That’s what is meant by a Republic- each member of the republic retains its own identity.

By Divemedic, ago