Category: Uncategorized

On January 9, Pennsylvania State Senator Mike Folmer (R-Lebanon) was appointed Chair of the Senate State Government Committee. This is the committee that hears election law bills. Folmer has been the leading legislative champion of ballot access reform in Pennsylvania starting in 2009. He introduced ballot access improvement bills in 2009, 2011, and 2013, and(More)… …read more

Oregon State Senator Lee Beyer (D-Springfield) has introduced SB 328. Currently, Oregon holds its presidential primary and its primary for other office in May. The bill would keep the presidential primary in May, but would move the primary for other office to the third Tuesday of September. The bill would have no impact on minor(More)… …read more

“You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don’t know where the f*** it’s gonna take you.”
EFF.ORG
This oft-cited wisdom comes from Detective Lester Freamon, a character in the classic HBO series The Wire, which tracked how an elite task force of (fictional) Baltimore cops used electronic surveillance to bring down criminal networks. But, the sentiment is ironic to a fault: if you keep following the money, it might take you right back to the police.
Asset forfeiture has long been a topic of controversy in law enforcement. Cops and prosecutors …read more

Florida will hold a special election in April, for state representative, district 64. Only one candidate’s name will be printed on the ballot. See this story, which explains why this is happening. One-candidate elections are very common, but it is rare for a special election to have only one name on the ballot, because almost(More)… …read more

Dane County, WI — A Dane County sheriff’s deputy miraculously escaped charges of child pornography, despite being caught with child pornography, because of a cut and paste error on a warrant.
In a tragic example of the broken “justice” system, former Dane County sheriff’s deputy Jeffrey C. Hilgers, 43, had seven counts of possession of child pornography dismissed Wednesday. The judge ruled that there was a fatal cut-and-paste error on a search warrant, thereby making the discovery of the illegal images on the deputy’s computers, inadmissible.
According to the report, investigators inadvertently used a paragraph, which stated they were searching for child …read more

The Virginia Senate Campaign Subcommittee will hear SB 766 on Monday, January 19, at 2 p.m. See this article about that bill and the other bill to ease the definition of a qualified party. Thanks to Sandy Sanders for the link. …read more

Hundreds of police officers, their families, and supporters have participated in a pro-police rally in Washington, DC, at a time when tensions between police and the public are heating up nationwide.
RT.com
The rally, known as ‘End the Madness’ or ‘Sea of Blue,’ saw the streets of the US capital flooded with blue flags, as the around 600-strong crowd descended on the National Law Enforcement Memorial. Carrying “Blue Lives Matter” banners and chanting “Police, Thank you,” the crowd marched to the Capitol building.

“The only thing that we are trying to voice is get out there, wear your blue, let everyone know blue …read more

The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office announced it is looking into whether or not six NYPD officers planted guns on innocent people in order to arrest them for illegal possession of firearms.
RT.com
Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson announced the investigation after prosecutors were forced to drop a weapons case involving a man accused of having a gun outside his Brooklyn apartment. The probe will center on allegations that police officers have been planting guns on innocent people.
The man in question in this particular case, 53-year-old Jeffery Herring, was arrested last year by officers from the 67th Precinct in East Flatbush. Police said …read more

If a civilian assaults someone and deprives them of their freedom, they can not simply say it was an accident and be off the hook.
St. Ann, Missouri – Police in a town just outside of St. Louis recently assaulted and handcuffed the wrong person during a high speed chase. 22-year-old Joseph Swink was driving down the road, minding his own business last week, when his car was hit by a vehicle that was in a high speed chase with police.
Swink’s car was hit by the fleeing suspect, who continued to speed down the road after the collision. Instead of following …read more