Aggregator

Donald Trump is on an insult tour of California, and today he stopped by his 17-hole championship golf course for an impromptu press conference.¹ Here's the news the New York Times doesn't report but the LA Times does: Trump said if he is elected, he would stop sending California federal firefighting aid unless Gov. Gavin ...continue reading "Trump to California: Toe the line or I’ll take away your wildfire money"

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online […]

The commander for a VFW Post in Washington, Missouri, says the state "raided" their post, searching for unregulated hemp-infused products.

In 2023, Bryan Adams released Live at the Royal Albert Hall, a box set documenting three concerts he performed at the legendary London venue in 2022. Now get ready for…

Source

In an interview Friday during his visit to St. Louis, Bayer AG CEO Bill Anderson outlined how the German agricultural-chemical conglomerate will attempt to remove what he called the "existential threat" from Roundup lawsuits.

HARDIN - A Hardin man is facing multiple charges after being arrested two consecutive days in Calhoun County by the Calhoun Sheriff's Office. The summary of his report is as follows: The Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office responded to a burglary complaint on May 22, 2024, in the 100 block of Cass Lane, initiating an investigation that would lead to multiple arrests and charges. Authorities executed a search warrant on a residence in the 400 block of West Main Street in Hardin, resulting in the arrest of Charles “Joey” Mielke, 42, of Hardin. Mielke was taken into custody for unlawful possession of methamphetamine, unlawful possession of a controlled substance, and unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia. The investigation continued, and on August 6, 2024, the Calhoun County State’s Attorney’s Office issued a felony warrant for Mielke for residential burglary. The following day, Mielke was arrested again, this time for a felony no bon

Continue Reading

One of those schools' food collection effort surpassed all four schools combined from the first two weeks!

“Thank you all again for the last 11 years,” the restaurant said on social media.

CAHOKIA HEIGHTS – The Illinois Department of Transportation today announced that pavement repairs on southbound Interstate 255 between Illinois 15 and Illinois 157 in St. Clair County will require lane closures over several weekends. Throughout construction, at least one lane will remain open at all times. Starting at 7 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 13, weather permitting, the two left lanes of southbound I-255 between Illinois 15 and Illinois 157 will be closed. One of the southbound lanes will reopen by 6 a.m. Monday, Sept. 16. Motorists can expect delays and should allow extra time for trips through this area. Drivers are urged to reduce speed, be alert for changing conditions, obey all construction signage, and refrain from using mobile devices while approaching and traveling through the work zone. For IDOT District 8 updates, follow us on the social media platform X at @IDOTDistrict8 or view area construction details on IDOT’s traveler information map on GettingAroundIllinois.com.

Continue Reading

Pearl Jam turned a jam session into a protest against gun violence during their show in Baltimore on Thursday.In fan-captured video, the grunge outfit rocks the riff to the Ted…

Source

EAST ST. LOUIS – A district judge in southern Illinois sentenced DeAyre M. Jones, a 32-year-old man from Land O’ Lakes, Fla., to 87 months in prison for making a bomb threat to Scott Air Force Base and cyberstalking an active duty Air Force member. Jones pleaded guilty to one count of interstate communication with threat to injure, one count of cyberstalking, and one count of threatening and conveying false information concerning the use of fire or an explosive. “The defendant intentionally disrupted operations at Scott Air Force Base to make a bomb threat and send harassing messages to base officials,” said U.S. Attorney Rachelle Aud Crowe. “Luckily, this incident was a false alarm, but our national security and the Air Force community depend on uninterrupted service at the base. I’m grateful to the investigators for their efforts to hold this offender accountable.” Court documents revealed that Jones used multiple fake Facebook profiles

Continue Reading

Los Angeles police and county workers remove a homeless encampment at a California state beach in August.

AP Photo/ Damian Dovarganes

In recent weeks, police across California have threatened journalists with arrests for covering evictions of homeless encampments. It’s unclear why — the journalists aren’t interfering with the evictions. But they are documenting them, and clearly officers don’t want that.

We joined a coalition of over 20 press freedom and transparency organizations to warn authorities from Los Angeles to Sacramento that their own state law supplements constitutional protection of journalists’ right to access restricted areas where newsworthy events occur.

This is not a new problem. Police also violated the same law “left and right” earlier this year to arrest journalists covering protests against the Israel-Gaza war on college campuses and elsewhere. Check out our May interview with Susan Seager, an adjunct professor of law at University of California, Irvine School of Law, for more on that.

But it’s not just one law that police are violating. As the coalition explained, federal appellate courts nationwide have also protected the First Amendment right to record police.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — the one with jurisdiction over California – has specifically ruled that even if police are entitled to disperse an unpermitted protest, encampment, or other allegedly unlawful assembly, they can’t disperse law-abiding journalists. Even the Department of Justice agrees.

Police in California have struggled repeatedly to cite any legal basis for their actions, because there is none. They’ve accused journalists of unlawfully intruding on their “work zones” — whatever that means. And they’ve claimed large areas are “crime scenes,” presumably because an allegedly unlawful encampment was set up there. That’s a tactic we also saw in Atlanta last year, when police illegally dispersed journalists covering protests against the police training facility commonly referred to as “Cop City.”

Sure, police may close off limited spaces in order to preserve evidence, but there’s no precedent for declaring large areas where low-level nonviolent offenses occurred to be “crime scenes” in order to arbitrarily banish the media for no legitimate law enforcement purpose.

Officers test these spurious legal theories at their own risk. Freelance photojournalist Jeremy Portje sued the City of Sausalito, California, as well as numerous police officials over a 2021 arrest while reporting from an encampment. Court records show the case recently settled, although the details haven't been made public.

April Ehrlich, another journalist arrested while covering an encampment sweep in 2020, also sued after the bogus charges against her were dropped. She was arrested in Oregon, not California, but Oregon also answers to the 9th Circuit.

Public radio reporter Josie Huang reached a $700,000 settlement agreement with Los Angeles County and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over her 2020 arrest. She was covering a protest, not an encampment sweep, but the same principles apply — police conduct, whether evicting people without homes or dispersing protesters, is newsworthy, and the First Amendment demands that journalists be able to cover it.

Last year, Stephanie Sugars of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), called the Los Angeles Police Department among the most “atrocious” of press freedom violators nationwide. They’ve lived up to that billing in the last year, including with the ridiculous failed lawsuits against journalist Ben Camacho for publishing pictures the police department gave him, which ended in another $300,000 settlement bill for taxpayers.

But that may have underestimated other law enforcement agencies in the state, from the San Francisco Police Department’s unlawful warrant to search an independent newsroom’s files to the revelation that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department secretly investigated reporter Maya Lau on the plainly unconstitutional theory that her source materials constitute stolen goods. And now Sacramento is getting in on the action, intimidating reporters for covering news.

Let’s hope the coalition statement gets through to the offending agencies, even though the courts and legislature have not. Otherwise, Californians will not only miss out on important news, they’ll have to continue spending their money to pay for settlements.

David Dayen and Ryan Cooper discuss this week’s debate.

Elton John got some criticism recently for comments he made about former President Donald Trump, which he's now clarifying.Variety reported that Elton was asked about Donald Trump calling North Korean…

Source

Imagine your search terms, key-strokes, private chats and photographs are being monitored every time they are sent. Millions of students across the country don’t have to imagine this deep surveillance of their most private communications: it’s a reality that comes with their school districts’ decision to install AI-powered monitoring software such as Gaggle and GoGuardian on students’ school-issued machines […]

A former member of the city's jail oversight board wants a new trial after a judge found them guilty of trespassing and resisting arrest at the downtown City Justice Center last year.