Daily Verse | Exodus 28:2
“Make sacred garments for your brother Aaron, to give him dignity and honor.”
Friday’s Reading: Exodus 29-31
Saturday’s Reading: Exodus 32-34
Friday and we end the week with more troubling news as the nation formerly known as the United States of America continues to stumble erratically like a stabbing victim in the slums of some third world stinkhole hoping he can make it to the hospital. Our government is secretly transporting young illegal alien males all over the country; a 26-year-old male child molester who pretends he’s a woman was just sentenced to two-years in a juvenile facility; almost two-million illegals have crossed our borders since Brandon ‘took’ office and arrests soared to the highest ever; the U.S. trade deficit just topped $1 trillion for the first time ever; vaccine and mask mandates continue to be pushed on unwilling citizens and therapeutics are being rationed based on race in one state; Americans, especially blacks and women, are buying guns in record numbers because of the crazy; American citizens are being held in confinement for almost a year over nothing more than walking through the halls of congress after being egged-on by a suspicious person who has not been arrested or charged; and we have dozens of agencies that act as an unaccountable bureaucracy impervious to the legislators who created them or to the people they rule.
And that’s just off the top of my head.
Add to that two stories that should anger every American and prove we’ve already crossed the Rubicon of now being a surveillance state. First up is your friendly postman USPS postal worker who shows up in rain, snow or sunshine to deliver your daily mail.
The social media surveillance program was uncovered early last year by an online news outlet that revealed the USPS has been quietly tracking and collecting the social media posts of Americans, including notes about planned protests. It is known as Internet Covert Operations Program (ICOP). Analysts dig through social media sites searching for “inflammatory” postings, which are shared across government agencies. Civil liberties experts quoted in the story questioned the legal authority of the USPS to monitor social media activity and one asked a logical question: Why would the government depend on the postal service to examine the internet for security reasons? “If the individuals they’re monitoring are carrying out or planning criminal activity that should be the purview of the FBI,” said one civil liberties authority in the piece, adding “if they’re simply engaging in lawfully protected speech, even if it’s odious or objectionable, then monitoring them on that basis raises serious constitutional concerns.”
The U.S. Post Office, which can’t keep its costs in check, is running a surveillance program on unsuspecting American citizens?
These clandestine operations within the nation’s postal service should create concern, especially for a troubled agency that has failed miserably to fulfill its mission. The USPS has long been a bastion of mismanagement and frivolous spending that has fleeced American taxpayers out of billions in the last few years alone. In 2021, the USPS reported a net loss of $4.9 billion and in 2020 a net loss of $9.2 billion. One federal audit slammed the USPS for blowing the opportunity to save nearly $22 million had it bothered to maintain its fleet of vehicles more efficiently. A few years before that the USPS blew hundreds of thousands of dollars on professional sports tickets, booze and fancy meals while it claimed to be crippled by an $8.3 billion deficit.
If there was any business being run like that, it would cease to be a business. But, like any government program, there’s an unending stream of “revenue” without consequences for poor performance, so you and I foot the bill—and in this case, they’re using our money to spy on us.
Then, there’s the U.S. Capitol Police, who shot one unarmed woman to death and may have beaten another to death during the Capitol Hill incursion on January 6 last year, and not one officer has been investigated or charged.
As part of their job in screening visitors to the U.S. Capitol (should the complex ever re-open to the public, that is), U.S. Capitol Police often rummage through backpacks and purses. Lately, they may also be rummaging through more than that: your tax records, real estate holdings, and social media posts. All without your knowledge.
Besty Woodruff Swan and Daniel Lippman broke the details this week of a new Capitol Police initiative that involves deep dives into the speech, background, and lifestyle details of who members of Congress are meeting with, including donors, Hill staff, mayors, state legislators, and other Americans exercising their First Amendment right to petition their government.
Oh.
Ohhh.
Do tell.
The Capitol, as well as the House and Senate office buildings, remain closed to visitors as they have been since early spring 2020, the longest stretch in the country’s history. It’s been longer than any closure for the Civil War, or even the 1918 outbreak of Spanish flu.
What’s happening here is that our ruling elite are separating the wheat from the chaff, the rulers from the ruled, the bourgeois from the proles. They’ve closed the buildings to We the People, the very ones who built them, and are doing virtual cavity searches on anyone who has the temerity to complain to their U.S. Senator or Representative.
This isn’t the country I grew up in and it sure as heck is not the country my parents grew up in. It just resembles it superficially.
There are some signs of life. More than 31 million people worldwide are protesting the tyranny of the covid lockdowns and mandates, more than 150,000 participated in the March for Life in Washington, D.C., and people are starting to sue irresponsible and radical officials who let criminals off with little or no penalty.
I’d love to think that this is more than just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Nah.
We’re in trouble, my friends. You really need to be thinking about what you will do when you’re forced to choose: resist the power or bow before it?
Have a good weekend.