When Jeffrey Epstein was finally arrested after a long history of sex-trafficking of underage girls, he was met by a small contingent of FBI agents (and cops) at Teterboro airport in 2019 and taken away.

When Mark Houck, a Catholic lay minister, got into a confrontation with a self-described "escort" at an abortion facility and pushed the man away after he spewed foul language at his 12-year-old son and violated the kid's personal space, well, he got the SWAT team. 

According to Catholic News Agency:

"A SWAT team of about 25 came to my house with about 15 vehicles and started pounding on our door," Houck's wife, Ryan-Marie Houck, told CNA on Friday, just hours after her husband's arrest.

"They said they were going to break in if he didn't open it. And then they had about five guns pointed at my husband, myself, and basically at my kids," she added.

"They were pointing their weapons," Middleton said. "They came in as if they were expecting some kind of confrontation."

Houck was one of those guys who prays the rosary at abortion facility, and apparently, he didn't seek the confrontation with the rabid man.  Pennsylvania declined to prosecute the case under the 1994 FACE Act, which in any case probably could have seen charges just as easily leveled at the "escort" for harassing a peaceful protester, but over in Washington, the feds under Joe Biden had their instructions.

They revived the dead case and sent in the SWAT team and its 15 squad cars.  Given the elaborate show, that had to have come from the top.

What counts for this unjust and disproportionate use of force on Houck?

Obviously, this was part and parcel of Joe Biden's crazed war on conservatives, laid out in his grotesque "Mussolini meltdown" speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia just weeks ago.

The Houck arrest has rightly drawn outrage from conservatives, Catholics, and civil liberties advocates, given its overkill, its junk foundation, its history of being thrown out of court, and its draconian consequences for Houck.

It's part of a broad war on conservatives from the left, which includes everything from censorship to declaring parents "terrorists" at school board meetings to the draconian and ruinous punishments meted out to Jan. 6 protesters to the outrageous raid on President Trump's home.

But it also seems to be a particular war on Catholics, the kind who embrace actual Church teachings. 

This is kind of an odd thing in a president who repeatedly touts himself as "a devout Catholic," telling 60 Minutes all about those rosary beads in his pocket — and, more to the point, who uses his "faith" to draw votes.

Catholics seem to be getting caught in these new Biden dragnets intended to, as the Chinese say, "kill the chicken to scare the monkey" quite a bit these days, and that's pretty ironic.

It goes part and parcel with Biden's refusal to say one word about pro-abortion attacks on Catholic (and other Christian) churches, disruptions of Catholic masses by crazed left-wing activists, attacks on women's crisis pregnancy centers, which are often manned by Catholics, and Biden's lawsuits against Catholic nuns (whom he professes to "admire") such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, who reject abortion and will not bankroll it in health care.

Biden's war on Catholics also affects Catholics in his broader refusal to permit conscience clauses for medical professionals who cannot morally perform abortions as Catholics, and in Biden's insistence on expanding funding for abortion, and abortion "access" as well as refusing to fund the Hyde Amendment, which prohibited the promotion and financing of abortion abroad.

According to the House GOP, Biden also promoted abortion with

• A 40% increase in funding for Title X, which gives $400 million taxpayer funds to Planned Parenthood and other entities that perform abortions.
• A 72% increase in funding for the United Nations Population Fund, which partners with China and North Korea, amongst other countries that continually violate human rights.

...which is abhorrent to those Catholics who follow Church teachings.

But oh, rest assured, Joe Biden can do that, and be "Mr. Devout Catholic," with no sanction from his bishop.  He can even use his visit with the pope for political purposes, as a means to "proving" to voters he remains Mr. Devout Catholic who's pals with the pope, and then go right on persecuting Catholics who hold Catholic religious beliefs on the side.

Biden's promotion of abortion coupled with persecutions of Catholics who oppose it makes him indistinguishable from the most intolerant secular humanist, someone like Bolshevik leader, persecutor, and abortion-promoter Alexandra Kollontai. 

Now that he's gotten away with promoting abortion with no criticism from the Catholic leadership, he's moved on to persecutions of Christians, particularly Catholics, almost in the same vein as Roman emperors such as Diocletian and Nero, except that those emperors, who did things the Roman way and threw Christians to lions, never pretended to have understood anything about Christianity.  Joe Biden, by contrast, wears his Catholicism like a skin suit.

What a nightmarish series of developments.  The whole spectacle of nominally Catholic leaders promoting and acquiescing to the persecution of Catholics for their beliefs, by the state and by its allied freelance goons, leaves one wondering: with "Catholics" like Joe Biden around to "represent Catholics," what Catholic needs enemies?

And more to the point, when is the Catholic leadership going to wise up and recognize Joe for the increasingly emboldened and ever nastier persecutor he actually is?  When are they going to recognize the skin suit?

Image: Wikimedia Commons, public domain.