The word of God to a nation’s uncaring leaders:
“Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe ourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals.
“Therefore, O shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock.”
— The prophet Ezekiel (Ez 34:2-4, 9-10)
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My wife and I have been church exiles (self-imposed) for several years. Recently we started attending an Episcopal church here in Bellingham. The Episcopal Church is a branch of the Anglican communion world-wide, having split off from Anglicanism as a result of the American revolution, but remaining very much Anglican in theology and practice.
Yesterday the United States of America attacked Syria. The attack was limited to an air force base. It was the Trump administration’s response to Syrian President Assad’s apparent use of chemical weapons against his own people.
According to Michael Flynn’s lawyer, Flynn wants immunity to testify at hearings into Russian election meddling and possible collusion with members of Trump’s campaign team. Flynn was Trump’s first National Security Advisor but was fired just a few weeks later when it came out that he had tried to hide some inappropriate and possibly illegal meetings with agents of the Russian government. A number of other Trump campaign staffers have similarly denied contacts with Russian agents and subsequently were forced to admit that they had lied.
CNN poll:
The decision by the President and the Speaker of the House to indefinitely postpone the repeal of Obamacare has significant political ramifications far beyond the fate of Obamacare. To cite one fairly obvious case, House Speaker Paul Ryan’s political career is probably toast. Watch for a rebellion in the Republican House caucus, supported by the White House, to have Ryan removed from his position as Speaker. Trump hold Ryan personally responsible for the embarrassing fiasco, and his modus operandi is “Don’t get mad, get even.”
In the first two weeks of Donald Trump’s Presidency, he issued an Executive Order banning legal immigration and legal refugees from selected mostly-muslim countries. It was blocked by the federal courts, in part because it was badly written and badly implemented, and in part because of numerous problems with legality and constitutionality.
Iowa Congressman Steve King recently tweeted a decidedly racist comment, and then doubled down on it in the face of the furor it caused. He could be ignored were his position not so startlingly reminiscent of the German Nazi’s position in the 1930’s, and were he not a United States Congressman.
The Trump administration has put out an RFP (Request for Proposal) for designs for the Wall. In an article about how some architects would like to find a way to make the Wall beautiful as well as effective, this stood out to me: