Tag: Unconstitutional

Former WWE Star-Turned-Mayor Cuts The Cord With Flock

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Knox County, Tennessee, Mayor Glenn Jacobs told Flock Safety that a contract with the county sheriff was no longer valid, placing the future of over 140 cameras in doubt. The former WWE star raised questions about the contract’s validity in an August 12 letter to Alex Guth, a regional sales director for Flock Safety. In the letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, Jacobs said that the purchases and contracts exceeded the threshold requiring review by elected officials. “By our calculations, equipment and services purchased to date under the 2020 contract total $274,720, not including the $800,000 purchase made through Omnia,” Jacobs wrote.

“Clearly then, the purchases made under this contract exceed the $100,000 threshold at which the contract must receive County Commission approval in order to be valid and legally binding.” “Therefore, in my role as Chief Executive of the County, this is to inform you that I do not believe the 2020 contract between Knox County and your company is valid and there is no current service agreement in place,” Jacobs continued, adding that the letter also served as a notice that the county would not be renewing the contact. Flock did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF. “The lack of transparency surrounding Flock’s rollout is one of the most troubling aspects about all this,” Jacobs posted Saturday on X. “It sure seems like there was a sprint towards a fait accompli before the public took notice.”

Jacobs told DCNF investigative reporter Emily Kopp in a video posted to YouTube August 5 that he initially thought Flock cameras were similar to other license plate readers. “I thought they were license plate readers, right? The old drive by and the [camera] takes a picture of your [license plate] and if it’s on some sort of list, stolen car, Amber Alert, whatever, gets a hit, reports it to the police,” the former WWE star said. “What I discovered is these things are completely different than that. Instead of a passive system where, again, a car drives by and the other, they’re looking at the license plates, but they only report when they get a hit on something that the police are looking for, what these cameras do is these cameras are an active system that’s pulling data from every car that drives by. ”

“They take a snapshot, then it uses AI to not only store the data place, but also create what’s called a vehicular fingerprint, and that’s make model color of the car, distinguishing features such as roof racks, even bumper stickers,” Jacobs continued. The cameras, which use artificial intelligence to automatically read license plates, have drawn controversy over privacy concerns, particularly those sited near gun stores and gun ranges. At least two establishments tied to the firearms industry have discontinued the use of Flock cameras initially purchased to enhance safety. Social media posts noted a Flock camera outside Gun Commanders, a firearms dealer in Cleveland, Georgia, triggering a firestorm of protest.

The store’s owner confirmed to the DCNF he had deactivated the camera. “When I installed the system more than a year ago, my intentions were simple and sincere: to help protect my employees, my customers, and my business from theft and violent crime. Before making that decision, I took the time to understand how the system worked and the privacy safeguards that were in place, including extremely limited data retention,” Mike Carter told the DCNF in response to an earlier inquiry on the social media posts regarding the camera. “At no time was the camera installed to monitor, track, or infringe upon the rights or privacy of law-abiding gun owners.”

“After listening to our customers and considering the impact this controversy has had on our staff, our families, and our business, I have decided to remove the Flock camera from our property,” Carter added. “Effective immediately, the camera has been rendered inoperable and is no longer functioning. It is currently in the process of being permanently removed from our property.” Eagle Sports Range, a range and federally licensed dealer operating in Cudahy, Wisconsin, also took its cameras down after installing them in 2023, according to WISN, a Milwaukee-area TV station.

Source: Former WWE Star-Turned-Mayor Cuts The Cord With Flock | The Daily Caller

For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.
Hebrews 4:15

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SCOTUS Could Strike Down EPA’s Unconstitutional Overreach

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The EPA under the Biden Administration crafted a cap-and-trade scheme to allocate market share in the multibillion-dollar hydrofluorocarbons industry — including to “new market participants” based on the promotion of “equity.” Now, one of the businesses the EPA rendered a market-share loser under the federal agency’s unconstitutional take-over of the hydrofluorocarbon industry seeks review by the Supreme Court. And that pending petition represents a sleeper case that could implode much of the administrative state if it makes it onto the high court’s docket next term. Next Thursday, the Supreme Court will conference over the pending petition for review, called a petition for certiorari, in the case of RMS of Georgia, LLC, dba Choice Refrigerants v. EPA.

The petitioner, known more widely as Choice Refrigerants, is a small business operating out of Georgia which invested in patented blends of refrigerants for air conditioning and other products in the early 2000s. At the time, the EPA encouraged the development of hydrofluorocarbons to replace the ozone-depleting refrigerants then on the market. In December of 2020, Congress passed a statute called the AIM Act, short for the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act of 2020, which mandated a phasedown in the United States of hydrofluorocarbons using a cap-and-trade program. The AIM Act provided for a phased elimination of 85% of hydrofluorocarbons produced in, or imported to, the United States. While Congress detailed in the AIM Act the cap for each phase of the plan to reduce hydrofluorocarbons, the statute provided no direction for the EPA to decide who should receive “allowances” under the law.

With no guidance from Congress, the EPA invented its own standards for doling out allowances, with the EPA reserving millions of allowances for “new entrants.” The EPA’s final rule from October 5, 2021, also expressly provided multiple times that, in allocating market share, it could consider “equity.” The EPA later issued a final rule in July of 2023 to cover allocation of hydrofluorocarbons from 2024 through 2028. That final rule continued to provide for allowances to “new market” entrants, prejudicing Choice Refrigerants and other businesses to the advantage of those deemed worthy by the Biden Administration. When Choice Refrigerants challenged the EPA’s scheme, the EPA initially defended its allocation of market-share by claiming it “was free to issue the allowances in a reasonable manner, reasonably explained,” based on Chevron deference. However, the Supreme Court would later overrule the Chevron doctrine — a doctrine which required courts to defer to an agency’s interpretation of a statute so long as it was reasonable. 

Source: SCOTUS Could Strike Down EPA’s Unconstitutional Overreach

You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
Leviticus 19:17-18

Hunted for Following Jesus

In some communities, Muslims who leave Islam to follow Christ face rejection, threats, violence, and even death because of their faith. For Muslim-background believers, choosing to follow Jesus can place their lives…

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Great Value and Trader Joe Fruit Recall

October 02, 2026. Frutas y Hortalizas del Sur S.A., San Carlos, Chile expands its previously initiated recalls on July 3, 2026 and September 3,2026 recall of frozen organic IQF blueberries and berry…

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Self-Defense: Another “Luxury” the Poor Can Do Without

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“to the point about pricing poor people out of owning firearms, I think poor people don’t benefit from owning firearms.” Dr. Anthony D. Douglas

Many years ago, Otis McDonald, a 76-year old retiree living in a high-crime area of Chicago testified that he had “been robbed numerous times in his Morgan Park home; [he’d] witnessed too many crimes to count and …been threatened with pistols around his home.” The gangbangers and drug dealers had “taken over” his neighborhood, and he wanted to keep a handgun in his own home to protect himself, something that Chicago law at the time prohibited. Mr. McDonald was the named plaintiff in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the landmark challenge to the handgun ban, and his experiences helped persuade the United States Supreme Court to overturn the law as a violation of the Second Amendment.

The Court dismissed Chicago’s and other municipalities’ arguments as “at war with our central holding in Heller: that the Second Amendment protects a personal right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, most notably for self-defense within the home.”     A University of Chicago trauma doctor, testifying before the Illinois House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, is seeking to turn back the clock. Responding to concerns over pricing lower-income gun buyers out of the market, Dr. Anthony D. Douglas declared that “to the point about pricing poor people out of owning firearms, I think poor people don’t benefit from owning firearms.” This “concern about poor people being able to, are benefit from owning firearms or being put out of being able to afford firearms is, I think, we are a little bit distracted from what poor people and poor communities actually need.” 

Dr. Douglas is “the mastermind behind HB3320/ SB2279,” the Responsibility in Firearm Legislation (RIFL) Act. This 122-page legislation would, if passed, require firearm manufacturers in Illinois to obtain a RIFL license, and distribute license fees proceeds to “victims of firearms” (“firearm injury” means any gun-related injury, suicide or homicide). License fees would be set at an amount estimated to be “equal to the public health costs and financial burdens borne by the State and its residents as a result of firearm injuries,” using the incidence of firearm injuries in the previous year; however, in the first year the total annual aggregate fee would be capped at $866,000,000.  Each licensee would be required to pay the portion of the total annual aggregate fee equal to the market share of the firearm manufacturer. A program established under the law would compensate “victims of firearms” for all direct costs incurred as a result of firearm injury for up to three years post-event, which payments would be tax-exempt. Anyone suffering a firearm injury (including out-of-state residents), their next of kin, legal guardian, dependent, first-degree relative, second-degree relative, and employer could qualify as “eligible victims.”

License fees, in reality a “punishment tax,” would add at least $1,600 to the cost of each firearm sold in the state, according to a lobbyist for the Illinois State Rifle Association. Guns for self-defense or subsistence hunting would become unaffordable luxuries for the poor and eventually, for just about everyone, once the legislation destroys the Second Amendment in Illinois.  Dr. Douglas and other bill supporters argue that the gun industry should “pay for the bloodshed it helps to create” by shifting “the direct costs away from taxpayers and place[] them where they belong: on the gun industry.” Manufacturers would “pay according to how frequently their products are recovered in injuries and deaths in Illinois. If their products are never recovered, they pay nothing…The logic that ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’ is passé.” Besides driving up prices, and creating new fees and bureaucracy, the bills seek to override the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which protects the heavily-regulated gun industry from liability for a third party’s criminal misuse of their products.

The legislation also ignores the pesky logical issue that violent crime is, in fact, the product of gangs and criminals and enabled by soft-on-crime public officials advocating “non-punitive” justice, all of which have nothing to do with the gun industry and none of whom will share the financial burden imposed by the RIFL Act. An inconvenient truth at odds with Dr. Douglas’s narrative is that Chicago’s poor and minorities, in common with those throughout America, remain the most at risk of crime and violence and therefore have, if anything, an even more pressing need for the tools of self-defense than most. The Illinois Policy Institute, a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) research organization, notes that minority communities in the city’s South Side and West Side face poverty rates “of nearly three times the citywide average,” and an analysis shows, further, that “low-income areas of the city and Black and Hispanic Chicagoans are much more likely to experience crime.”

Source: NRA-ILA | Self-Defense: Another “Luxury” the Poor Can Do Without

Do not say, “Why were the former days better than these?” For you do not inquire wisely concerning this.
Ecclesiastes 7:10

Plague in Russia?

Russian authorities have sought to allay global worries over the death of a young woman who worked at a Siberian anti-plague laboratory. But moves to isolate her contacts and introduce new disease-control…

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by Drink of Jesus

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News From Chicago

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Breaking News from around Chicago

2 men shot and killed in Greater Grand Crossing

Around 11:20 a.m., Chicago police said a group of give men approached two other men in the 7800 block of South Calumet Avenue and fired shots.  Police said it is unclear how many people in the group fired shots.  A 37-year-old man was pronounced dead a the scene with a gunshot wound.  Police said a 44-year-old man was taken to the University of Chicago Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. 

Source: 2 men shot and killed in Greater Grand Crossing – CBS Chicago

12 tornadoes were produced in Indiana, Illinois during severe storms in early March, weather service says

The National Weather Service confirmed on Tuesday that 12 tornadoes were produced across Illinois and northern Indiana during a series of severe storms earlier this month. The supercell produced 10 tornadoes in Illinois and two others in northern Indiana on March 10. The most powerful tornado was an EF-3 in Kankakee County. Updated information indicated that the tornado had 160 mph winds, with a width of 15 football fields, and the path length stretched over 35 miles, according to the NWS.

Source: 12 tornadoes were produced in Indiana, Illinois during severe storms in early March, weather service says – CBS Chicago

2 men stabbed during fight on CTA Red Line train on Chicago’s South Side

Chicago police said just before 1:30 a.m., two men were riding the train in the 200 block of W. 47th St when another man approached. Police said the men got into an argument when the other man took out a sharpt object and attacked both victim.  Both victims were stabbed in the neck and taken to the University of Chicago Hospital in fair conditon. 

Source: 2 men stabbed during fight on CTA Red Line train on Chicago’s South Side – CBS Chicago

Man, 67, killed in shooting on Chicago’s Near West Side

A 67-year-old man was killed Tuesday afternoon in a shooting on Chicago’s Near West Side.

The shooting transpired at Madison and Leavitt streets, about three blocks west of the United Center. Chicago police said that at about 12:49 p.m. the man was walking on the street when he was approached by two armed suspects who pulled out guns and opened fire.

Source: Man, 67, killed in shooting on Chicago’s Near West Side – CBS Chicago

Crash-and-grab burglars smash into Chicago’s Golden Apple restaurant while it’s open

Police said three burglars crashed a gray Jeep Grand Cherokee through the front of the restaurant, and then stole an ATM once they were inside. The burglars escaped with it in a waiting black sport-utility vehicle, police said.

Source: Crash-and-grab burglars smash into Chicago’s Golden Apple restaurant while it’s open – CBS Chicago

6 wounded, including 2 Illinois State University students, in Normal, Illinois shooting

Normal police said on social media that at 2:40 a.m., they were called for multiple shots fired in the 700 block of Franklin Avenue Officers found several people outside who had been shot. Police said all six victims suffered non-life-threatening injuries, though they did not specify each victim’s condition. The victims included two juvenile boys, two men, and two women, police said. Illinois State University police said on social media that two of those injured were students at the university.

Source: 6 wounded, including 2 Illinois State University students, in Normal, Illinois shooting – CBS Chicago

He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, And he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.
Proverbs 16:32

Kemp expands fuel relief for Georgia farmers and truckers

Georgia is giving truckers and farmers more time and flexibility as high fuel costs continue to strain their budgets. Gov. Brian Kemp has extended the state’s motor fuel tax suspension through Nov. 5 and temporarily waived state penalties for using off-road “dyed” diesel in vehicles traveling on public roads. The changes are part of an…

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Twin baby girls separated in NICUs at 2 Boston hospitals. Parents pleading to get them back together.

Premature twin baby girls are separated, hospitalized in two different neonatal intensive care units in Boston. The parents, from Canton, Massachusetts, say they know the babies are getting the vital care they need, but it’s nearly impossible to support both girls equally when they’re apart. “It’s difficult. They’re in a glass enclosure with feeding tubes…

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FBI arrests alleged Chinese agent at LAX after she allegedly surveilled son of Taiwanese president

The FBI arrested a suspected Chinese agent at Los Angeles International Airport after she allegedly surveilled the Taiwanese president’s U.S.-based son, law enforcement sources told CBS News. Wanying “Heather” Zhang, an Irvine, California, realtor, was cuffed by federal law enforcement on Sunday before she boarded a flight to Shanghai, China, from LAX, on a charge…

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Skateboarder ends 1,200-mile journey

Skyler King has completed his 1,200-mile journey from Oxford to New York City on a skateboard. He left Oxford on Aug. 1 and arrived in NYC on Sept. 12. King made the trip to honor his late brother while raising awareness and support for suicide prevention and mental health. The trip, called “Push for Prevention,”…

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Baby rhino and baby zebra raised together after losing their moms

Since 1977, the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust has led one of the biggest rescue and rehabilitation wildlife operations in East Africa. Although they specialize in elephant care, their sanctuaries are home to a variety of animals that arrive orphaned or injured, including giraffes, zebras, and rhinos.  “Rhinos are special animals,” Edwin, a keeper at the Sheldrick…

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Christian Persecution September 25-October 2 2026

Recent reporting (roughly September 25–October 2, 2026) on Christian persecution centers on continued lethal violence in Nigeria, house-church detentions in China, and related pressures elsewhere. Nigeria Attacks attributed to Fulani militants continued in Plateau State’s Barkin Ladi area and nearby communities. Around September 19–20, gunmen killed a Baptist pastor (Samuel Nandi) and others while they…

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DPS arrests man for threatening ‘violent attack’ on Texas Capitol

The Texas Department of Public Safety arrested a Bexar County man Wednesday in connection with the threat of a “violent attack” on the Texas Capitol. He has since been charged federally with possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Keep Watching 4 DPS special agents worked alongside the FBI and local law enforcement to…

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SpaceX launches Starship on giant rocket’s first flight to orbit

SpaceX launched the company’s Super Heavy-Starship on its first flight to orbit Monday — an abbreviated three-hour mission that marked a major step toward perfecting the world’s most powerful rocket for commercial flights and NASA moon missions. One of the Starship upper stage’s six Raptor engines shut down early during the climb to an initially…

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Street preachers sue Chicago over ‘unconstitutional’ arrests

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Chicago has been sued over the arrests of Christian street preachers in a case alleging unconstitutional enforcement of city regulations against religious speech, according to a U S legal advocacy

Source: Street preachers sue Chicago over ‘unconstitutional’ arrests | U.S.

Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
James 4:7

Christians Came Together to Help Defeat UK’s Assisted Dying Bill

When Alicia Edmund heard the Parliament vote count for the UK’s assisted dying bill last week—286 noes to 270 ayes—her immediate reaction was shock. The bill had been defeated.   As head of policy for the Evangelical Alliance in the UK, Edmund had spent countless hours in the past two years briefing evangelicals on how…

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Trump and Rubio question U.K. handling of possible plot against air base after 5 men released on bail

President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have criticized British counterterror police’s handling of a possible plot targeting a U.K. air base used by U.S. forces, with Rubio calling it a “very serious” incident and alleging that it “clearly involved” a foreign actor, and the president suggesting it “might be” Iran. Five British nationals,…

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Rat birth control program expanding to Albany Park

Chicago is consistently named one of the “rattiest” cities in America and an effort to change that is expanding. As more communities are turning to rat birth control, community leaders on the Northwest Side are trying something new — getting neighbors involved. A community info session was held on Tuesday night a few weeks ahead…

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Boil water advisory continues for Village of Romeo

A boil water advisory continues until further notice in the Village of Romeo in Macomb County, Michigan, where a water main break occurred on Saturday. While the water main break was isolated and water pressure restored over the weekend, village officials said a boil water advisory remains in effect until further notice. When a boil water advisory…

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