Free Talk Live

With the rise of e-mail and the decline of letters, mail volume is falling at a staggering rate, and the postal service's survival plan isn't reassuring. Elsewhere in the world, postal services are grappling with the same dilemma — only most of them, in humbling contrast, are thriving.

By James Bovard -- The U.S. Postal Service announced plans this month to phase out overnight delivery of first-class mail. Postal officials are portraying the decision as a painful but necessary budget-induced departure from a long history of exemplary service. In reality, the Postal Service has been intentionally slowing down first-class mail for almost 50 years. It’s time to end the post office’s monopoly on letter delivery.

The federal government's mail transport and delivery agency this week said it will roll out a line of apparel and accessories it plans to sell in department and specialty stores. The "Rain Heat & Snow" brand of clothing, named after the Postal Service's motto trumpeting its carriers' determination to overcome whatever Mother Nature can throw at them, would put USPS in the "cutting edge of functional fashion," it said.

The oft-maligned U.S. mail is actually quite well-run. Politicians steered it into the ditch
By John Tierney

If you want to mail a letter in Sugar Hill, N.H., you’d better be quick. The town’s postal unit has cut its hours to a mere 30 minutes per day, sparking outrage from the rural community’s 563 residents that has now caught the attention of the state’s two U.S. Senators. The Postal Service announced in May that instead of eliminating up to 3,700 post offices, it would instead reduce their hours of operation from 8 hours per day to between 2 and 4 hours, but only after holding community meetings.

A school bus driver with a BAC of .15 drives over a mailbox, rolling down a hill backwards ended when the children decided to save themselves.

The man, 20, was driving east on U.S. Highway 40 near Strawberry Reservoir when a deputy tried to stop him for going 15 miles over the speed limit, according to Wasatch County Chief Deputy Sheriff Jared Rigby. The driver did not stop and the deputy told dispatchers he was pursuing a fleeing driver. A short time later, a dispatcher notified the deputy that the driver had called in and said “that he was not going to stop and that I needed to leave him alone,” Rigby said, reading from the deputy's report.

Proposed law scheduled for a vote next week originally increased Americans' e-mail privacy. Then law enforcement complained. Now it increases government access to e-mail and other digital files.

...In 1785, a resolution authorized the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs to open and inspect any mail that related to the safety and interests of the United States. The ensuing inspections caused prominent men, like George Washington, to complain of mail tampering. According to various historians, it also led James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe to correspond in code. That is, they encrypted their letters to preserve the privacy of their political discussions.