When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals. In the current governmental climate, where laws that run counter to the dictates of the Constitution are made in secret, passed without debate, and upheld by secret courts that operate behind closed doors, obeying one’s conscience and speaking truth to the power of the police state can render you an “enemy of the state.” That list of so-called “enemies of the state” is growing. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out in this week's podcast, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is merely the latest victim of the police state’s assault on dissidents and whistleblowers. Indeed, it is fitting that we remember that Jesus Christ—the religious figure worshipped by Christians for his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection—paid the ultimate price for speaking out against the police state of his day.

We’re not living the American Dream. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, we’re in the grip of a financial nightmare. “We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America. We get taxed on how much we earn, taxed on what we eat, taxed on what we buy, taxed on where we go, taxed on what we drive, and taxed on how much is left of our assets when we die, and yet we have no real say in how the government runs, or how our taxpayer funds are used. All the while the government continues to do whatever it likes—levy taxes, rack up debt, spend outrageously and irresponsibly—with little thought for the plight of its citizens.

The U.S. government has unleashed untold horrors upon the world—including its own citizenry—in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances. These horrors are being meted out against humans and animals alike. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, you don’t have to dig very deep or go very back in the nation’s history to uncover numerous cases in which the government deliberately conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins.

The absurd cruelties of the American police state keep reaching newer heights. Consider that if you kill a police dog, you could face a longer prison sentence than if you’d murdered someone or abused a child. If a cop kills your dog, however, there will be little to no consequences for that officer. Not even a slap on the wrist. In this, as in so many instances of official misconduct by government officials, the courts have ruled that the cops have qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that incentivizes government officials to engage in lawless behavior without fear of repercussions. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, this is the heartless, heartbreaking, hypocritical injustice that passes for law and order in America today.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that your hard-earned tax dollars are being used for national security and urgent military needs. As John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, it’s all a ruse. In one month alone, government agencies—including the Department of Defense—went on a $97 million shopping spree that included $670,000 for golf carts, $1.7 million for musical equipment including pianos, tubas, and trombones, $4.6 million for lobster tail and crab, almost $8 million for iPhones and iPads, and nearly $10 million for workout and recreation equipment.

You think you’ve got rights? Think again. All of those freedoms we cherish—the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause—amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to disregard those prohibitions on government overreach at will. Our so-called rights have been reduced to technicalities in the face of the government’s ongoing power grabs. Consider a case before the U.S. Supreme Court (Mitchell vs. Wisconsin) in which Wisconsin police officers read an unconscious man his rights and then proceeded to forcibly and warrantlessly draw his blood while he was still unconscious in order to determine if he could be charged with a DUI.

With every smartphone we buy, every GPS device we install, every Twitter, Facebook, and Google account we open, every frequent buyer card we use for purchases—whether at the grocer’s, the yogurt shop, the airlines or the department store—and every credit and debit card we use to pay for our transactions, we’re helping Corporate America build a dossier for its government counterparts on who we know, what we think, how we spend our money, and how we spend our time. Yet it’s not just the surveillance and the buying and selling of your data that is worrisome. The ramifications of a government—any government—having this much unregulated, unaccountable power to target, track, round up and detain its citizens is beyond chilling.

Life in America has become a gut-wrenching, soul-sucking, misery-drenched, demoralizing existence. Even so, I’m not breaking up with America this Valentine’s Day, and neither should you. Instead, get outraged at what has been done to our country. What has been done to our freedoms. Get off your duff, get out of your house, get in the streets, get in people’s faces, get down to your local city council, get over to your local school board, get your thoughts down on paper, get your objections plastered on protest signs, get your neighbors, friends and family to join their voices to yours, get your representatives to pay attention to your grievances, get your kids to know their rights, get your local police to march in lockstep with the Constitution, get your media to act as watchdogs for the people and not lapdogs for the corporate state, get your act together, and get your house in order.

Nationwide, SWAT teams routinely invade homes, break down doors, kill family pets (they always shoot the dogs first), damage furnishings, terrorize families, and wound or kill those unlucky enough to be present during a raid. These raids are one more vivid example of how the government’s short-sighted use of immoral, illegal and unconstitutional tactics become dangerous weapons turned against the American people.

Get ready, folks, because the government—helped along by Congress (which adopted legislation allowing police to collect and test DNA immediately following arrests), President Trump (who signed the Rapid DNA Act into law), the courts (which have ruled that police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime), and local police agencies (which are chomping at the bit to acquire this new crime-fighting gadget)—is embarking on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database.