This is Easter week 2025. Tomorrow, Christians will observe Friday, April 18, as the day Christ was crucified, and celebrate Sunday, His resurrection. Some scholars place His death on either a Wednesday or Thursday. The dates may differ but there is little disagreement over the event. A Jewish assembly, you might say a legislative body (the Sanhedrin), conspired to kill Him. That’s a pretty blunt way to state it, but why mince words? Some people make the mistake of thinking Roman troops captured Jesus in Gethsemane. Debatable, but not true. Roman authorities would never stoop to do the work of Jewish authorities. Christ presented no threat to Rome. He was, however, a real and present danger to the Jewish hierarchy — to a high priest named Caiaphas and his predecessor/father-in-law Annas. The Jew’s Temple guards arrested Him and took Him to Caiaphas’ house to be interrogated in the dead of night. Basically, the Jewish leaders wanted to dredge up evidence to justify putting Jesus to death. They looked for false witnesses. But there was no evidence. Like present day detectives without evidence, Caiaphas counted on securing a confession. Accusingly, Caiaphas asked, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of God?” Scripture says that Christ replied, “So you say.” But He allegedly followed with ” . . . . .from this time on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right side of the Almighty.” That testimony was all the evidence Caiaphas would need. Blasphemy! Blasphemy — punishable by death according to Mosaic law. Guilty as charged, “they spat in His face and beat Him.” By today’s standards, Christ would go unnoticed. Today, people who talk with God or claim to have healing powers are judged as crackpots. Christ committed only one crime that is still “punishable” in 2025. He challenged the authority of the ruling class of 30 AD. The rest of His indictment was window dressing: He hung out with the society’s riffraff. He worked on the Sabbath by healing people. So Jesus suffered crucifixion. Why? Why wasn’t He stoned in the Garden according to Jewish law? No one really knows. But Biblical scholars suggest that the High Priests didn’t want an unremarkable stoning. They wanted a public condemnation that would forever eliminate Jesus from the public consciousness and relegate Him to the ash heap of history, dishonored and forgotten, citing Deuteronomy 21:23. “Anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse.” You know the rest. Although it was none of Rome’s business, Pilate thought he was creative, asking the crowd to choose between Barabbas and Christ. You must question: Where was Christ’s crowd during His scourging and trial? Chances are they were afraid to be seen and persecuted by the ruling Rabbis. Chances are they were at home and not even aware of His trial. Whatever details are true, Christ was doomed to die at the hands of those who despised him. They happened to be the big shots. They hated to hear “I am the Christ, son of the Blessed.” But when He accused them of hypocrisy, when He said their  rules and rituals did not come from God, the die was cast.

This week, Christians will celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. At a time like this — at all times, really, you question what Christ might think of the state of Christianity. Of church governing bodies. Of church governance. Of church & state. Of worship rituals and rules. Of denominations. Of sin. Of the Pope. Of Israel. Of anti semitism. Scholars say you can find answers in both the Old and New Testaments. Perhaps, but the best theological minds have been at it for centuries and still disagree on key issues. You can only imagine how Jesus might grade Christianity, circa 2025. Something tells you the churches would get high marks for charitable outreach and biblical study. But He also might take issue with the corporate and political structure of religions. You can’t imagine a meeting between Him and His Holiness in the Vatican. Would Jesus opt for an Armani suit and would His Holiness dress down and lose the tiara and papal ring? Sacrilege aside, you think Jesus would cast aside the showy trappings of religious symbolism much as He cast out the money changers on the temple steps. Well, imagining doesn’t help.  Christ didn’t leave behind a diary. In scripture, you won’t find conversation; you find questions and Christ’s brief replies and parables.  Perhaps the question shouldn’t be, “What would Christ think today?” Perhaps it should be, “What would Christ do?”

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Yesterday, a private health insurance carrier doubled your monthly premium. This increase follows similar decisions by another carrier who insures your vehicle and home. Simultaneously, the cost of all medical services has risen ferociously, thanks to your  Federal Government. After decades of his predecessors’ failed attempts, Lyndon (God Help Us) Johnson and his Congress pushed Medicare through and the rest is hideous socialist history. Everything that man touched was foul beyond description. For that matter, everything that government touches is some form of malfeasance. Your parents had no insurance. They were poor. By comparison to them, the poor today are rich. But your parents paid for your birth and later for the occasional Doc. You can’t recall any family member hospitalized. Little by little, things changed. Married with four children, you took part in group insurance plans at work. Those plans had one goal — protect your family against catastrophic illness. For the cost of run-of-the-mill hospital visit, in addition to your monthly premiums, you paid 20% and insurance paid 80%, with an out-of-pocket limit. You paid for years with no hospital visits. Insurance didn’t pay doctors or dentists. You paid them direct. In particular, pediatricians were a monthly expense — a necessary cost of living year after year. You didn’t begrudge the expense. But somewhere along the way, people decided they didn’t want to be responsible for the state of their health, much less pay for it. Somewhere along the way, healthcare became a right. And right on schedule, the Healthcare Industrial Complex grew exponentially, becoming a giant bureaucracy. Now, doctors submit to essentially being employees of HMO’s. A night’s stay in ER costs thousands. Pharma dominates TV, drumming disease after disease and drug after drug. As healthcare rules the national scene, the United States spends more on healthcare than any other high-income country but is the sickest country among those same nations. According to recent reports, the US has “the highest rates of deaths from avoidable or treatable causes and the highest maternal and infant death rates.” * The U.S.consumes approximately 80 percent of the global opioid supply. And coincident with RNA vaccine proliferation, all-cause mortality is through the roof. ** You can thank the Federal Government — all governments, really — for skyrocketing health costs as just one part of the 37 trillion dollar disaster plaguing America. Medicare is just one atrocity. Taxation is another. Congress taxes the hell out of people. Congress spends and spends, borrows and borrows — and when the income isn’t enough, issues more debt — keeps spending — and prints and prints more money — creating inflation. Inflation steals. It sucks more money from the people in the form of rising prices for all of life’s necessities. There is no excuse for this wrongdoing. Robin Hood’s enemy, King John, who inflicted ruinous taxes on the poor of 1377, was a cream puff compared to Congress. No one in America should pay taxes on wages. Consider what you pay — income tax, sales tax, property tax, capital gains tax, business tax and all manner of other taxes. Without an ounce of fiscal restraint, adding insult to injury, the Federal Government decides to divvy up your donations to thousands of recipients, foreign and domestic — picking winners and losers in the process. The mismanagement of the people’s money is nothing short of evil. For his crime, Bernie Madoff sat in prison for 11 years before his death. For their crimes, congressmen and congresswomen sit in revered seats in the People’s House to enjoy highly lucrative careers, jacking their jaws and voting on interminable bills that mostly place shackles on those who can least afford them. Whatever pain it causes, DOGE can’t work quickly enough to slash and burn the Fed’s size and return it to its Constitutionally enumerated jurisdiction. If Speaker Mike Johnson wants to make history, he should stand before his peers and accuse himself and his political pals for breaking their venerated oaths of office — “we, and those who came before us, are guilty of conducting a criminal charade — for driving this great country to ruin; and in doing so, we spit in the faces of those patriots who gave us their lives.” But you won’t hold your breath for that speech. He’s too busy sending emails complaining about the bad guys and the broken system. Of course, what he’s really doing is  asking for money. Duh.

* www.cnn.com/2023/01/31/health/us-health-care-spending-global-perspective/index.html

** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHpvhZFvUl4

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Insolent, irresponsible children occupying choice seats play games with life and death. That was a quick thought that popped up during the State of the Union. As you surveyed the room, a bunch of juvenile Democrats held up signs that shouted “FALSE” in response to Donald Trump’s observations and assertions. Most likely, a brilliant political consultant gave them the idea; or they got it from a family sixth grader. You have no doubt Donald knew this was not the time or place to lie, not with enemy fact checkers drooling over the opportunity to nail him. But what if he did lie? So what? The guy he replaced was (and still is) a world-class liar. Ranks right up there with the best of the best, including her eminence Hillary. Washington D.C. should erect a Liar’s Hall of Fame since that city has more illustrious liars to choose from — more of them than anywhere else on earth. Many of them were in attendance January 4, 2025. Smugly, sullenly, they sat in their assigned seats to repudiate everything Trump offered. They would not even bring themselves to show a speck of sympathy for a bereaved Mother whose daughter was murdered by an illegal alien. Keep in mind that callous disrespect as you face an even harsher reality — 75 million people voted for the leader of the left side of the congressional aisle. They also voted for spiteful lawmakers who silently renounced anything and everything that Trump believes will strengthen them and their country. For them, not one Trump policy had merit. Can that be true? Not one policy? Yes, not one. You see, Matilda, the animosity for Trump is as brutal as the slug that clipped his ear in Butler, Pa. But party hatred wasn’t always the case. For a century, the Dem and GOP Parties competed civilly for power and the perks that go with it. They co-existed — a sort of reciprocal arrangement — to enhance and protect a greedy self interest that could only be sustained by the continued growth of the Federal bureaucracy. Within the past 50 years, this cooperation exemplified the administrations of Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush 1 & 2. Even Barack Obama’s radical socialist agenda was no threat to the Beltway inner sanctum. But along came an outlier, an irreverent maverick businessman who blew up the whole shebang. In so many words, he said the Beltway was corrupt to the bone. Naturally, the political royalty went nuts. A hand grenade would have done them less damage. Fast forward. On March 4, Trump outlined the plans for his second term — essentially to roll back political corruption, bury Neo-Marxism and lift up the American people. You studied the left side occupants as he specifically mentioned the border calamity that was brought on by unrestrained mass migration. As he spoke about it, Trump couldn’t miss the deadpan, disinterested smirks. But he couldn’t or wouldn’t choose to do what you silently begged him to do — make steady eye contact and speak directly to the Democrat opposition as if they were the only people in the chamber. Too bad “the rules” didn’t let him say what needs to be said — that their boss was personally responsible for rape, murder, fentanyl and child trafficking — responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands of Americans. It wasn’t as if Biden, Harris and the Party didn’t see  their mistake and move quickly to rectify it. No. They saw the carnage and eagerly stepped on the gas, confirming premeditation. You wanted Trump to look at the hostile faces and say “every one of you sitting there is an accessory to rape, murder, and drug and child trafficking. As you leave this room, you leave with blood on your hands.” Too bad. It needs to be said. It needed to be said publicly in 2021 by the opposition Party.  It needs to be said by every politician who believes in justice. People still sitting in the seats of power in Washington have played political games with life and death. They have betrayed their oaths of office, engaged in corruption and routinely committed perjury under oath. And the highest court in the land lets them get away with it. Regardless, the State of the Union does have its rules.  So does Congress — 118 Rules comprising a Code of Conduct — also a committee on Ethics. My, my. Tell that to 12 year-old Jocelyn Nungaray’s mom.

P.S. On Jan. 4, the President made a strong case for law & order in America. Your respectful suggestion: Begin in Washington.

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