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From an early age we are admonished to “Never judge a book by its cover.” As we begin to pay attention to our participatory democracy, we quickly learn that any initiative named by a politician cannot be accepted at face value. Throughout history, we’ve been subjected to a wide variety of catch phrases that were used to deceive the general population. Most recently these range from trickle down economics to election integrity. We also suffer from the politics of destruction as childish coercive labeling is used to derail any sincere attempt to elevate the political discourse: Terms like repugs and libtards are now in common use.

One of the biggest ongoing deceptions involves simple misnomers. The term packing is generally understood to mean to fill a container of a given size. One might pack a suitcase or cram a large number of things into a given space, such as when a makeshift shelter is packed with beds jammed side by side. Of course, once a politician exerts their distorting influence upon the language of the realm, the meanings become contorted and decidedly self-serving.

When U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to add more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, in order to obtain favorable rulings regarding New Deal legislation, his detractors described the initiative as court-packing. The sown confusion between packing and expanding persists even today and it will likely continue to distort the debate surrounding the prospect of expanding the Supreme Court to achieve an ideological balance.

It has become clear that, when one executive, over the course of one term, can replace one third of the the justices on the United States Supreme Court, the country has become highly vulnerable to tumultuous ideological swings. An administration that is able to fill three vacancies within a nine seat court is quite literally packing the Court. If ever, oh ever there was a time to consider expanding SCOTUS, it is now.

The U.S. Constitution does not define the size of the Supreme Court. In the Judiciary Act of 1869, Congress had established that the Supreme Court would consist of the chief justice and eight associate justices. The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 was the actual name of the legislative initiative proposed by Roosevelt. The central provision of the bill would have granted the president power to appoint an additional justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, up to a maximum of six, for every member of the court over the age of 70 years and 6 months that refused to retire.

During Roosevelt’s first term, the Supreme Court had struck down several New Deal measures as being unconstitutional. However, included among the cardinal precepts of the United States Constitution is the phrase “promote the general welfare.” Roosevelt sought to bring the court into better alignment with constitutional imperatives through the appointment of new justices that he hoped would rule his legislative initiatives did not exceed the constitutional authority of the government.

The bill came to be known as Roosevelt’s “court-packing plan,” a phrase coined by Edward Rumely. In 1915, Rumely bought, and became editor-in-chief and publisher of, the New York Evening Mail. He permitted his good friend Theodore Roosevelt to use the newspaper as his mouthpiece. In July 1918 Rumely was arrested and convicted of violation of the Trading with the Enemy Act. To get financing for the purchase of the newspaper. Rumely was accused of receiving financing from the German government, which Rumely denied, claiming, instead, he had received money to buy the paper from an American citizen in Germany. Either way, he was known to be sympathetic to Germany and had failed to report this when he received the money. President Coolidge granted him a presidential pardon in 1925.

Rumely was one of two founders of the Committee for Constitutional Government (CCG) who were newspaper men. The other, Frank Ernest Gannett, was an American publisher who founded the media corporation Gannett Company which now owns USA Today. The Committee opposed most, if not all, of the New Deal legislation. The organization was successful in opposing the Bills because of a large mailing list campaign targeting legal professionals. Rumely, as executive secretary, successfully dumbed down the political discourse by employing the simplistic and misleading label that characterizes court expansion as packing.

The number of cases heard annually, by the Supreme Court, has declined steadily over the past few decades. While a Court composed of Justices who share the same world view is likely to hear forty-two more cases per term than an ideologically fractured Court, a smaller docket also increases the risk that important cases will be left undecided. This, together with all the dark money that supports judicial nominations, confirmations, and accommodations puts the Court in a position to be “captured” by certain interests or actors leading to a loss of legitimacy for the institution whose strongest reservoir of power is its legitimacy.

If the Supreme Court is the unifier of law, then the Court should actively resolve as many circuit splits as possible and thus unify the law. The best way to achieve this is to expand the Court to twenty-one Justices. In that way more cases could be resolved and a minimum of seven justices could be assigned to hear and decide upon each one. This could be achieved without adversely impacting the time allotment the individual justices set-aside for their book tours.

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In this series of treatments on healthy homes we are speaking with Ramona Johnson. Ramona is president and CEO of Bridge Haven Mental Health services in Louisville, Kentucky. In this segment, we discuss coping skills in the context of the current pandemic.

In Part 2 of our interview with Ramona Johnson, we turn our attention to the special challenges that poverty and mental health challenges bring to bear, as we further explore maintaining good mental health within a threatened home.

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Could an individual attempting to navigate without the benefit of rudder, charts, sextant, knowledge of atmospheric and sea conditions or familiarity with his or her craft truly be called its master? Or, would the graduating class of 1492 vote such a person “most likely to fall off the edge of the Earth?”

To achieve any form of mastery one must not only know where they are going, but just how to get there. They must also develop a healthy respect for the obstacles, physical and psychological, along the way. Individual humans will, as a normal part of growth, continue to experience new centricities and eccentricities not unlike the paradigm shift that took place as a result of the Copernican revolution. For example, the egocentric infant is acutely aware of the mother’s revolutions about him. From his perceptual standpoint, or lay-point, he is the center of infinity, but only until he is challenged.

Like the child, whole societies must trade childlike perceptions for larger realities if they are to grow. The egocentric is traded for the family-centric. Geocentric planetary systems are traded for heliocentric ones and now, thanks to space telescopes orbiting Earth, great spiral galaxies are clearly seen to be moving about some unseen universe center. The olden prophet described this center as obscured by light, and behold, from the modern Earth astronomer’s viewpoint it has been revealed, the prophet was right. But there’s so much more to the cosmos than astrophysics. And it takes more than three-dimensional thinking to comprehend what is far more than holographic paradigm.

As a direct consequence of the Lucifer rebellion, the human masses have been conditioned for disbelief. Like fleas in a closed jar, we have practiced thought under a conceptual ceiling. And, once the lid is removed, the fleas can’t jump out of the jar due to muscle conditioning. Likewise, individual humans have limited their leaps of faith as well as their flights of fancy for reasons directly traceable to an unhealthy conditioning that yields in turn a variety of cognitive distortions obscuring truth as well as fact. This holds for the wage slave, the abused spouse, even whole societies.

As they might with a series of love affairs gone bad, our fellows oftentimes feel they can avoid the frustrations associated with misplaced faith by giving up. Upon considering their disillusionment and general skepticism, those resident on the planet, early in the third millennium point to some major personal or historical event as a significant factor contributing to a so called “loss of faith.”

There are those of us who are, to use the vernacular, simply hell bent, whose light of truth is refracted and confused to the point where its spectral array lacks definition, is muddled, or almost imperceptible. There are some whose concept of beauty is so contextualized that the greater gift itself is never beheld. And there are others of us to whom goodness is systematically disqualified so that our self-righteousness may never be challenged and our rightful inheritance is never enjoyed.

One cannot compensate for lost truth with mere facts, especially questionable facts. For those not inclined to faith there will always be reasons aplenty to support faithlessness. To those who cultivate faith or who possess a strong faith there can still be problems. Humans who place their faith in humans and human institutions are courting disappointment. There is no shortage of man-made disillusionment: from assassinations to inquisitions; from the first examples of genocide to the twentieth century holocaust; from the problem of pedophile priests and bad faith bishops to Daesh.

There is no reason to expect that the most basic human institutions are immune to such maladies. And this is evidenced by the erosion of civilized standards. Certain devotees of Lucifer and his debauched system of values have been highly successful at redefining, dumbing down virtue. Churchianity continues to sell indulgences in a variety of ways. Divorcing parents indulge their anger at the expense of their children. Powerful simpletons in government interpret freedom of religion as meaning freedom from religion. Some choose blindness to cosmic relationships and reject mercy with increasing contempt and disdain.

Until such time as those rejecting mercy have made the full choice of their own moral bankruptcy and spiritual extinction, things will get worse, not better, for the people of our Earth. Enduring justice will always be predicated on the laws that God himself has established. God is only limited by his own volition as expressed through His laws, and as they pertain to the physical universe, life, and interpersonal relationships. Lucifer did not have to violate the laws of the cosmos to understand the outcome of his folly any more than an Earth scientist must continually retest for the presence of gravity. The results were and are clearly foreseeable.

We must deliberately choose the witness over the masquerade. We must insure that the light we shine is one of quality, spectral purity, the whole light of Truth. In the prose of Jesus: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and be led to glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

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“My advice to the corporate CEOs of America is to stay out of politics.” So said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on April 5th 2021. His aids were quick to point out that he was, in no way, referring to corporate contributions. As he warns of ‘consequences’ for exercising the same corporate free speech rights McConnell championed in the Citizens United case, Mitch is finally being seen as the unprincipled individual he has always been.

While the Kentucky Baptist alleges the CEOs are being bullied, we should definitely take note of how the Business Roundtable “redefined” the Purpose of a Corporation through a statement they published in August of 2019. In the statement, that moves, at least it’s public image, away from shareholder primacy, the organization claimed to adopt a commitment to all stakeholders. While many employees, suppliers and consumers doubted the sincerity of the Roundtable members and the PR piece, it now appears the “other stakeholders” just may be calling their bluff.

To be sure, the Business Roundtable is not really “redefining” anything. Companies have always been composed of people working in company with one another. Authentic Corporations were originally composed of people associating for a common purpose and acting corporately. The more recent shell-game style corporations are decidedly inauthentic. They are the ones where outside investors have been, not only in control, but also masquerading as if they somehow represent what they see as low level functionaries, the people actually doing the work.

The Supreme Court’s series of decisions, advancing a fictitious corporate personhood, served McConnell’s interest as long as certain buffoons on the bench were willing to soil themselves as they also held “money is speech.” So which is it Mitch? Is the only acceptable speech expressed as money? Is it pleasing only when others are parroting you? Or, is it that you’ve been operating as a ventriloquist’s dummy for so long, with a mouth controlled remotely, that you now lack the ability to recognize the obvious inconsistencies within your own statements?

It is now clear that you embrace hypocrisy as a point of pride. it is also clear that your are a serious embarrassment to the faith. It was John Wycliffe who, in the preface to his Middle English translation of the bible, wrote: “The bible is about government of, by, and for the people.” It was Abraham Lincoln, the same guy you refer to when you say “the Republican Party is the party of Lincoln,” that amplified Wycliffe’s statement so eloquently at Gettysburg. And now Mitch, you have betrayed just about every principle once held the Grand Old Party.

Your real problem is that the electorate is capable of pattern recognition. And, one hundred years after that era of mass consumerism known as the Roaring Twenties, we have the ability to reprise that phenomena based upon a more Intentional Consumerism. We can be intentional about which airlines we use, which beverages we consume, which entertainment events we attend, and which representatives we choose to elect. We can vote each and every day with each dollar we spend.

If our so-called representatives are not representing us, we can insure that any inauthentic corporation contributing to their campaign, becomes the target of the most technology advanced boycott since the days of Charles Boycott. We can do the forensics on all the dark money, beginning with those businesses that conceal such expenditures. We can compensate for the attacks on net-neutrality and other assaults on the First Amendment.

Sooo, as you warn businesses about what you call “serious consequences,” you are picking a fight you can’t ultimately win. You haven’t been able to win on the merits for a very long time. That’s why you and your cohorts have to cheat. You support purging voter rolls without supporting documentation of relocation or death. You support attacks on mail-in voting and vandalizing the United States Post Office. You favor moving polling places away from marginalized neighborhoods, thus creating long lines, and making the serving of water illegal.

You have a history of supporting any form of bigoted gamesmanship that insures a black citizen never amounts to more than 3/5ths of a person in a vote tally. You have no plausible deniability with respect to your racist agenda. You said that “Parts of the private sector keep dabbling in behaving like a woke parallel government.” While you may have written off the sentient beings, within your own constituency, businesses cannot afford to write off their customer base.

You are in the habit of packaging every value proposition for simpleton consumption, but the electorate is not composed of simpletons. The emotionally charged and most intellectually stunted part of your base may be deceived by the “Stop Socialism” bumper sticker as ninety one of the Fortune 500 companies use the roads the bridges, the airports, and the air-traffic control system; and then make no meaningful contribution to the public treasury. You, Senator McConnell, are very fond of saying Kentucky punches above its weight and indeed, your state is united under the Stop Socialism banner while it citizens receive $2.41 for each and every dollar they pay in federal income taxes.

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In this treatment Dr. Bates warns of the key differences between flu gases and engine exhaust gases. We will touch upon throttle settings and turn-down ratios plus the value of insulation in the context of reclaiming heat. We will further discuss rocket stoves, and just how easy it is to make dangerous mistakes.

At this juncture we would like to express our sincere appreciation to Dr. Bates for our deep dive into gasification. In Part 1 we learned about the process of gasification. In Part 2, we considered moving vehicle engines as well as stationary engines like generators and wood stoves. In Part 3 we discussed how it can help in leveraging the waste stream. In Part 4 we asked if gasification can play a role when there are disruptions in the petroleum supply and if it can be a viable component of a sustainable future. In Part 5 we discussed certain characteristics of diesel and gas engines, using a farm tractor as a preparation system, and we again touched upon two stage wood stoves. Don’t touch that hot stove!

If you would like to check out some of the additional resources referred to in this series of treatments on gasification, you will find links at www.TheLivingCrown.org . You can also ask any follow-up questions you may have, and these will be addressed within the discussion forum. 

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The Book of Wisdom is one of the seven wisdom books comprising the Septuagint. The others are Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (Song of Solomon), Job, and Sirach. The Book of Wisdom, or the Wisdom of Solomon is included in the canon of Deuterocanonical books by the Roman Catholic Church while most Protestants consider it part of the Apocrypha.

It includes an exhortation to justice, a speech contrasting the wicked versus the just, and an exhortation to wisdom. Solomon’s speech addresses wisdom, wealth, power and prayer. The historical narrative includes references to false worship, past and future plagues, and a concluding doxology.

While there is general agreement by scholars that the book was most likely composed in Alexandria, Egypt, there is some controversy as to the authorship and the intended audience. Some attribute it to Hebrew authorship, intended for the rulers of the earth, urging them to love righteousness and seek wisdom. Others hold that the book was written by an Egyptian scribe named Amenemope as a book of instruction for his son.

Athanasius, the 20th bishop of Alexandria, wrote that the Book of Wisdom along with three other deuterocanonical books, while not being part of the Canon, “were appointed by the Fathers to be read” Whatever the book’s origins, the supreme value of wisdom is underscored throughout. Consider the following quote from the Book of Wisdom: “For from the greatness and the beauty of created things their original author, by analogy, is seen.” Now also consider the way C.S. Lewis addressed the value of “analogy” as he wrote about the limitations of a circumscribed language of the realm. I quote Lewis:

“If the richer system is to be represented in the poorer at all, this can only be by giving each element in the poorer system more than one meaning. The transposition of the richer into the poorer must, so to speak, be algebraical, not arithmetical. If you are to translate from a language which has a large vocabulary, into a language that has a small vocabulary, then you must be allowed to use several words in more than one sense. If you are to write a language with twenty two vowel sounds in an alphabet with only five vowel characters then you must be allowed to give each of those five characters more than one value. If you are making a piano version of a piece originally scored for an orchestra, then the same piano notes which represent flutes in one passage must also represent violins in another.

“As the examples show we are all quite familiar with this kind of transposition or adaptation from a richer to a poorer medium. The most familiar example of all is the art of drawing. The problem here is to represent a three-dimensional world on a flat sheet of paper. The solution is perspective, and perspective means that we must give more than one value to a two-dimensional shape. Thus in a drawing of a cube we use an acute angle to represent what is a right angle in the real world. But elsewhere an acute angle on the paper may represent what was already an acute angle in the real world: for example, the point of a spear on the gable of a house. The very same shape which you must draw to give the illusion of a straight road receding from the spectator is also the shape you draw for a dunces’ cap. As with the lines, so with the shading. Your brightest light in the picture is, in literal fact, only plain white paper: and this must do for the sun, or a lake in evening light, or snow, or human flesh.

“It is clear that in each case what is happening in the lower medium can be understood only if we know the higher medium. The instance where this knowledge is most commonly lacking is the musical one. The piano version means one thing to the musician who knows the original orchestral score and another thing to the man who hears it simply as a piano piece. But the second man would be at an even greater disadvantage if he had never heard any instrument but a piano and even doubted the existence of other instruments. Even more, we understand pictures only because we know and inhabit the three-dimensional world.

“If we can imagine a creature who perceived only two dimensions and yet could somehow be aware of the lines as he crawled over them on the paper, we shall easily see how impossible it would be for him to understand. At first he might be prepared to accept on authority our assurance that there was a world in three dimensions. But when we pointed to the lines on the paper and tried to explain, say, that “This is a road,” would he not say that the shape which we were asking him to accept as a revelation of our mysterious other world was the very same shape which, on our own showing, elsewhere meant nothing but a triangle. And soon, I think, he would say, “You keep on telling me of this other world and its unimaginable shapes which you call solid. But isn’t it very suspicious that all the shapes which you offer me as images or reflections of the solid ones turn out on inspection to be simply the old two-dimensional shapes of my own world as I have always known it? Is it not obvious that your vaunted other world, so far from being the archetype, is a dream which borrows all its elements from this one?”

Now, in light of the C.S. Lewis treatment on analogy, prayerfully consider the Jesusonian Parables and just how the direct teachings of Jesus, and his wisdom, have gracefully transcended time, space, and the paucity of human language. When, rather than promising more holy books or additional layers of ecclesiastical authority, he promised a Spirit Helper, the Spirit of Truth that would guide us into all truth, he knew what he was doing.

Prometheus is the Titan god of ancient Greece characterized by forethought. He was credited with stealing fire from the most hoity-toity of the gods and then gifting it to humanity as a cornerstone for civilization. The United States Supreme Court’s unanimous decision was published on April Fool’s Day. It rejected the chief cornerstone for our constitutionally grounded democratic republic in the Prometheus case, a case challenging a recent Federal Communications Commission decision ditching the ownership rules originally intended to elevate the public discourse.

By unanimously discounting the refiner’s fire of viewpoint diversity, the Court has once again brought attention to its lack of intellectual rigor; for it ignores the declaration of intent, the value proposition, the mission statement, and the cardinal precepts of The United States Constitution as they were so carefully delineated in the Preamble. That front matter is, arguably, the spirit of the law. The Court’s perception problem is really one of clear discernment by an increasingly honked-off public.

While Kavanaugh referred to Section 706(2)(A) of the Administrative Procedure Act, the APA, he was highly selective in the actual treatment of the way the court had arrived at its conclusion. The APA instructs courts reviewing regulation to invalidate any agency action found to be “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” The arbitrary-or- capricious test is used by judges when reviewing the factual basis for agency rule-making. Courts can overturn agency rules if they find the underlying rationale or factual assertions to be unreasonable.

In the Prometheus case, the hop-skippety-jump logic of the FCC, that was focused exclusively on gender and race diversity while ignoring the more general diversity of viewpoint factors, is clearly problematic. We are blessed with two eyes and two ears precisely because of the value of such diversity and the way it favors depth of perception. And, once we move beyond the excessively prominent head cases, there is value to considering the viewpoint of our fellow citizens as we move to form a more perfect union.

Kavanaugh wrote: “A court simply ensures that the agency has acted within a zone of reasonableness and, in particular, has reasonably considered the relevant issues and reasonably explained the decision.” The Supreme Court, throughout its history, has steadily contracted this “zone of reasonableness” in ways that run well afoul of constitutional imperatives with respect to our nation’s movement towards a more perfect union. As the framers worked meticulously to dovetail the “consent of the governed” phrasing contained within the Declaration of Independence, to that of a “We the People” initiative as reflected in the Preamble to the United States Constitution, the Justices have again “strained at gnats while swallowing camels.”

In other areas of law, consent must be properly informed. The incoherent reasoning of the Supreme Court in this case has shown its contempt for democracy and favored the prevarications of autocratic wannabes. We have seen the rise of a fictitious corporate personhood in tandem with the demise of the fairness doctrine. Our so-called independent judiciary has exhibited a high tolerance for dark money in its own nominations, confirmations, and accommodations. Is there any linkage between such covert bribery and the First Amendment hits our country has sustained through the more recent attacks attacks on net-neutrality and the ownership rules?

As we labor to make our democracy more authentic, to what extent will we tolerate deceptive practices by those occupying positions of honor and trust? When judges, masquerading as originalists and textualists, segment the constitution in such a way as to render it devoid of context, is that a deceptive practice? When legislators stand before cameras to convince the public that a bill contains something other than what it really spelled out, is that a deceptive practice? When executives selectively amplify, filter, and contextualize facts, is that a deceptive practice?

Judges operate in an arena where facts are facts and alternative facts are perjury. And yet, they seem to be entirely ok with political candidates that secure prestigious positions through perpetrating a fraud on the public. They appear to be equally sanguine when elected representatives actively deceive the electorate while holding office.

The Prometheus case is about preventing a concentration of media power within individual markets. The SCOTUS decision advances the kind of monopoly power that autocracies favor and democracies do not. As the justices work deliberately to distract us from noticing just how very far they have strayed from constitutional imperatives, their own systematized delusions, with respect to corporate personhood, proceed unabated.

What our country’s founders called “foreign potentates,” are often the ones in control of the so-called corporate persons. The addled Supremes have clearly demonstrated they lack the forethought long ago attributed to Prometheus. The court has, in effect and actual fact, converted what Marshall McLuhan once described as a “whirlpool of information” into a cesspool of disinformation.

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Again, we continue our conversation with Dr. Richard Bates and discuss the characteristics of diesel and gas engines, using a farm tractor as preparation system, sewage treatment, two stage wood stoves, and using waste heat.

In Part 6 we will discuss rocket stoves, flue gases vs, engine exhaust gases. Join us then.

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When the Son of God descended to experience the human condition as the Son of Man; in weakness made powerful by faith-submission to the will of Our Father, he directly confronted the Arch Deceiver. Our entire universe of principalities and powers, clearly and forever recognized the justice of doing, in the role of mortal flesh, those things which mercy admonished him not to do by the power of arbitrary authority. Even those fomenting spiritual wickedness in high places and the rulers of the darkness in this world saw the fairness, and were thus challenged in ways they did not anticipate.

The decision Jesus made, to live a life wholeheartedly motivated to do the will of Our Father, thus to reveal God, is our inspiration. Jesus is quoted as saying: “Why do you call me good? There is none good but God.” Contrast this humility to the brash demeanor of excessively prominent personalities. Self-confidence, self-reliance and self-sufficiency may be the bread of this world, but the faith-son does not vest ultimate faith in anyone but God.

The apostasy of the apostle who denied Jesus may have been less severe than that of the apostle who betrayed Jesus, but each of these single points of failure was a potential known to, and foretold by, Our Sovereign. The command “Go tell the apostles and Peter” inspired the forgiven apostle to become instrumental in delivering over two thousand souls to the service of the Kingdom during his highly enthusiastic Pentecost sermon.

The gospel that Jesus taught redeemed us from the superstition that we are children of the devil. Jesus gave us dignity as faith sons and daughters of God. As the Spirit of Truth came to dwell in our hearts, we became liberated from all dependence on ecclesiastical authority and pharisitic tradition. As we walk by the direct tutelage of the Spirit we too may get periodic humility lessons similar to Peter’s “Get behind me Satan” moment. For ultimately, there is none true but God, there is none beautiful but God and there is none good but God.

The supreme sovereignty of Christ Jesus comes from God, and that is why we call him Lord. As he dwelt among us, in the role of a teacher, he gave immediate attention to the liberation and inspiration of our spiritual nature. He illuminated the darkened human intellect, healed the souls of humankind, and emancipated our minds from age-old fears. He ministered to us addressing both our physical well-being and our material comfort. He lived the ideal religious life for the inspiration and edification of all within his universe.

The Supreme Values of Truth, Beauty and Goodness, belong exclusively to God. We are as fishers of men stationed along a highly intricate network designed and maintained by Our Heavenly Father. As we become authenticated; as the potentials of intellectual theology give way to actual faith; and as we come into alignment with the things, meanings and values that are the design criteria for His Universe, we will discover the keys to knowing His will in every situation.

So the next time you log into what has become known as the Internet, think about the world that Lucifer fell to. The next time you’re clearing the spam out of your mailbox, think about the deceitful practices we’ve come to accept as routine politics. The next time your electronic system freezes, think about how the tail of the dragon swept down a third of the stars from Heaven before he was bound and loosed again. And, the next time you endure a denial of service attack, get your browser hijacked or respond to an email that may or may not be from the person or institution listed as the sender, think about the value of a trusted source.

While the avowed atheist will seek some form of subjective gratification by confiding in postulates or getting in touch with his inner cookie, we can enjoy true objective satisfaction knowing the Kingdom of Heaven, our living, loving Heavenly Father is within us. We strike step with Eternity by looking to the One through Worship.

Jesus did not command us to fall into and out of some ethereal love when we feel like it. He instead commanded us to love one another as he loves us. It is our faith that informs our response to Divine leading as well as our grasp of universal values. When these become truly meaningful to us, we too can produce seed bearing fruit. The love, devotion, loyalty, fairness, honesty, hope, trust, mercy, goodness, forgiveness, tolerance and peace loving ways of the truly faithful combine in a spiritual fragrance that will unfailingly attract kindred souls. When we can thus enjoy spiritual unity without insisting upon theological uniformity, the fears and the defensiveness quickly dissolve. These are among the qualities we must develop, as individuals, if we are to advance along Eternity Road.

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Net-neutrality is the most important First Amendment issue of our time. It is the principle that all information, moving throughout the internet, should be unfiltered, unimpeded, and equally accessible to consumers. Broadband providers are specifically prohibited from blocking or degrading content. This includes sites and services that compete against their own services.

California enacted a law in 2017, that reinforced this principle after Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Ajit Pai, a former in-house Verizon attorney, rolled back federal net-neutrality regulations. The Trump Justice Department immediately sued California to overturn its law. Broadband providers, through their trade groups, followed with a request for a preliminary injunction to stop the California law while the lawsuit wound its way through the courts.

On Feb. 23rd in 2021, Judge John Mendez of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California denied the motion for a preliminary injunction. The group of internet service providers had also brought suit in 2018 to stop the state law from going into effect. The judge’s ruling cleared the way for California to enforce its net neutrality law, thereby ensuring equal access to internet content.

The trade groups suing the state said in a joint statement that they were reviewing the court decision and deliberating next steps. But they argued against state laws that create a patchwork of regulations for broadband providers.” They said “a state-by-state approach to internet regulation will confuse consumers and deter innovation, just as the importance of broadband for all has never been more apparent.”

The enactment of the California law is a move that is sure to be followed by other states in the absence of unambiguous federal regulations that will insure the free flow of information without a dollar skew. Washington, Vermont and Oregon are among a handful of states that enacted similar laws after the federal rollback of the rules.

California’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, said in a statement: “We applaud the court for affirming that California has the power to protect access to the internet.” He went on to say: “The ability of an internet service provider to block, slow down or speed up content based on a user’s ability to pay for service degrades the very idea of a competitive marketplace and the open transfer of information at the core of our increasingly digital and connected world.”

The Biden administration has made statements supporting the reinstatement of federal net neutrality rules. One month into the new administration, the Justice Department dropped its lawsuit against California’s law. The telecommunications industry’s request for a preliminary injunction was the last hurdle before that law could go into effect.

The California state senator who wrote the legislation, called the decision a victory. “The internet is at the heart of modern life. We all should be able to decide for ourselves where we go on the internet and how we access information. We cannot allow big corporations to make those decisions for us,” said Senator Scott Wiener.

Acting F.C.C. chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel, had fiercely opposed the agency’s decision in 2017 to scrap net neutrality regulations. Although she has not announced plans to reinstate federal rules, she is focused upon a mandate by Congress to bridge the digital divide for broadband access to low-income Americans. Shortly after the February 23rd court decision, the Acting Chairwoman tweeted: “Tonight a court in California decided that the state law can go into effect. This is big news for #openinternet policy.”

It bears repeating that states and municipalities have additional options to combat the industry’s assault on the First Amendment. The incumbent telecommunications companies have long lines that the upstarts do not. That mature infrastructure gives AT&T, together with the baby Bells, an unfair advantage if the long lines, stretched along railroad rights-of-way, are not regulated in accordance with common carrier statutes, as they were when what became the Bell System first gained access.

The extent to which municipalities also make public utility easements available to Internet Service Providers is clearly relevant in the context of Net-Neutrality. The Internet was created and funded to serve the public interest. First for defense, then for research, and eventually opening it up for commerce along with personal use. The Internet is a critical part of our nation’s communications infrastructure. The short-sighted gamesmanship of self-serving ISPs and politicians can have an adverse consequence related to the three flows of commerce and our country’s overall competitiveness.

One would hope that the courts will ultimately recognize the critical importance of net-neutrality but, if they don’t, any filtering, blocking, or impeding of content should be swiftly met with the state and local governments giving a more service motivated class of competitors superior access to the public utility easements and rights-of way.