In the first half, investigative journalist David Kirby argued that federal, state, and municipal governments, police, lawmakers, judges, and others are eviscerating fundamental liberties. He first became interested in this issue when he learned that people were losing their homes in Florida because they couldn't afford to fix housing code citations. "The actions that some of these agents were taking were clearly violating...4th amendment rights, including peering over the fence into their backyards," he lamented. How many ordinary American lives were being upturned by government overreach?, he wondered. Warrantless raids on private homes, child protection services busting into homes in the middle of the night and whisking kids away, civil asset forfeitures, and strip searches are among the most egregious infractions of civil rights, he reported. And these happen a lot more often than people realize.

The increased surveillance of US citizens in the post 9-11 era is another form of illegal search, he added. The eroding of rights and protections is not a partisan issue, Kirby pointed out, and has been a mainstay of both the Obama and Trump administrations. Citizens unable to pay court fines and fees are sometimes forced to serve time in jail in what has become a modern form of "debtor's prisons." Further, freedom of the press in the Trump years has come under assault in a way that Kirby characterized as "chilling." We need to hold our politicians responsible for upholding the government restraints on citizens as outlined in the Constitution, he remarked. Yet, new bills and policies have made little progress in this direction in recent times. The ACLU has been the standard-bearer in taking on these issues, he cited, though some complain they've been moving away from free speech cases. He endorsed the Institute for Justice as another organization that tackles cases and promotes activism.

----------------------------

Skywatch TV host and author Derek Gilbert explores biblical prophecy and the supernatural. In the latter half, he talked about demons and the Nephilim, and the way they're depicted in ancient texts, including the Bible and the Book of Enoch. It was the understanding of the early Church, that "demons are the spirits of those giants created in Genesis 6 before the Flood," he said, and they were denied entrance to the afterlife and condemned to wander the Earth, plaguing humans. The spirits, also known as the Nephilim or Rephaim, were hybrids-- neither fully human or angelic, he explained.

The pagan neighbors of ancient Israel conducted necromancy and sought contact with ancestor spirits, but they were really worshiping the demon spirits of the Nephilim, he suggested. The ancient Amorite kingdom, he continued, was said to know about the Rephaim spirits whom they referred to as "travelers," who could pass between the realms of the living and the dead. Gilbert also talked about how the Greek demi-gods like Hercules became "daemons" or friendly spirits when they died. Yet new scholarship, he noted, has shown that these demi-gods arose from the same origin or concept as the demonic Rephaim.

News segment guests: Mish Shedlock, Howard Bloom