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Five things you didn’t know about Jesus

You may hear revelations from new books that purport to tell the “real story” about Jesus, opinions from friends who have discovered a “secret” on the Web about the son of God, and airtight arguments from co-workers who can prove he never existed.

Beware of most of these revelations; many are based on pure speculation and wishful thinking. Much of what we know about Jesus has been known for the last 2,000 years.

Still, even for devout Christian there are surprises to be found hidden within the Gospels, and thanks to advances in historical research and archaeological discoveries, more is known about his life and times.

With that in mind, here are five things you probably didn’t know about Jesus.

1.) Jesus came from a nowhere little town.

Nearly all modern-day archaeologists agree the town of Nazareth had only 200 to 400 people. Jesus’ hometown is mentioned nowhere in either the Old Testament or the Talmud, which notes dozens of other towns in the area.

In fact, in the New Testament it is literally a joke.

In the Gospel of John, when a man named Nathanael hears the messiah is “Jesus of Nazareth,” he asks, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” He’s dissing Jesus’ crummy backwater town.

2.) Jesus probably didn’t know everything.

This is a thorny theological question. If Jesus is divine, wouldn’t he know all things? (Indeed, on several occasions Jesus predicts his death and resurrection.)

On the other hand, if he had a human consciousness, he needed to be taught something before he could know it. The Gospel of Luke says that when Jesus was a young man he “progressed” in wisdom. That means he learned things. (Otherwise how would he “progress”?)

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus initially refuses to heal the daughter of a non-Jewish woman, saying rather sharply, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

But when she replies that even the dogs get the crumbs from the table, Jesus softens, and he heals her daughter. He seems to be learning that his ministry extends beyond the Jewish people.

3.) Jesus was tough.

From age 12 to 30, Jesus worked in Nazareth as a carpenter. “Is not this the carpenter?” say the astonished crowds when he begins to preach.

The word used for Jesus’ profession in the original Greek is tekton. The traditional translation is “carpenter.” But most contemporary scholars say it’s more likely a general craftsman; some even translate it as “day laborer.”

A tekton would have made doors, tables, lamp stands and plows. But he probably also built stone walls and helped with house construction.

It was tough work that meant lugging tools, wood and stones all over Galilee. Jesus doesn’t simply stride onto the world stage after having dreamily examined a piece of wood when the mood suited him. For 18 years, he workedâ€”and worked hard.

4.) Jesus needed “me time.”

The Gospels frequently speak of Jesus’ need to “withdraw” from the crowds, and even his disciples.

Today by the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus carried out much of his ministry, you can see how close the towns were, and how natural it would have been for the enthusiastic crowds to “press” in on him, as the Gospels describe.

There’s even a cave on the shoreline, not far from Capernaum, his base of operations, where he may have prayed.

It’s called the “Eremos Cave,” from the word for “desolate” or “solitary,” from which we get the word “hermit.” Even though Jesus was the son of God, he needed time alone in prayer with the father.

5.) Jesus didn’t want to die.

As he approaches his death, and prays hard in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus says, “Remove this cup.” It’s a blunt prayer addressed to the father, whom he affectionately calls Abba. He doesn’t want to die.

Unlike the way some Christians portray Jesus as courting death, and even desiring it, like any human being, the idea of death is terrifying. “My soul is sorrowful even unto death,” he says.

In other words, “I’m so sad that it feels like I’m going to die.” But once Jesus realizes that this is somehow the will of the father, he assents to death, even on a cross.

It’s natural to want to know as much as we can about Jesus; that’s one reason I wrote my new book. But beware of the more outlandish claims about the son of God (he fathered children, he was married to Mary Magdalene, he spent time in India and so on.)

Many of these claims tend to project our own desires on a man who will always remain somewhat elusive, hard to fully understand and impossible to pin down.

In the end, as theologians like to say, Jesus is not so much a problem to be solved as a mystery to be pondered.

Transgender child’s mom: love your kids, period

I recognized the dress immediately. It had been his older sister’s — cast away, no doubt, in a donation bag that was never donated.

I didn’t race outside, tear the dress off and proffer admonishments. I watched, instead, as his makeshift wand of willow danced through the air — a little princess going from flower bed to flower bed casting enchantments over the marigolds.

I let our child continue playing undisturbed, but before I returned to my soup, I did what we all do when we see something adorable: I grabbed my phone and snapped a photo.

Later that night, my husband and I went to dinner with another couple we didn’t know well. As a fellow mom will do, the wife asked to see photos of our children, so I took out my phone and began swiping through recent family shots.

“Aren’t their children adorable?” she exclaimed, grabbing the phone out of my hands and showing photos to her husband.

Before I could get my phone back, they had discovered the photo from that afternoon.

I saw them exchange puzzled looks, then the wife said: “This is your son?”

‘Indulgence and permission are two different things’

Sensing their disapproval, I smiled and responded as calmly as I could, “Yes, he likes to play princess sometimes.”

“You really shouldn’t encourage that behavior,” the wife said with the grave compassion usually reserved for a potentially terminal illness. “When our son was little, he liked to play dress-up, too, but we didn’t indulge it. Not one bit. I even hired a male nanny! And now our son is completely normal! A strapping teenage boy — very popular with the girls — nothing odd about him at all!”

“You can’t indulge it,” the husband concurred. “That’s the key. It’s no different than enforcing bedtime. Children are very malleable. You can shape them, but not if you indulge their every whim.”

I politely thanked them for their (unsolicited) advice and my husband deftly changed the topic, but as I lay in bed later that night I couldn’t stop thinking about the the word “indulgent.”

My child at play.

Was it really indulgence to allow our child the freedom to express himself? It’s not as if he was shooting a BB gun at the neighbor’s pet cat, or throwing sand in another kid’s face.

Since that incident, I’ve had the word “indulgent” leveled at me many times by various detractors who disagree with the unconditional love and support my husband and I have offered our now-eight-year-old transgender daughter, as if that choice was the same as offering her an extra slice of chocolate cake even though we knew she already had seconds.

And here’s what I would say to those people: when it comes to parenting, indulgence and permission are two different things.

When we indulge a child, we let them get away with something — usually a behavior considered reprehensible by others. When we offer a child permission, we give them the reassurance that what they are doing is okay.

I like to think that the permission we gave Samuel to play as he saw fit in his early years paved the path for later emotional security.

On the eve of his sixth birthday, after a four-year battle with self-hatred and depression, he felt safe enough to transition from living as a boy to living as a girl. It was like witnessing a second birth.

And now we have a daughter who greets each day with excitement. Her name is Sadie, and she’s just as precious to us as her male counterpart was, only much, much happier.

What if we had punished Samuel instead of embracing Sadie?

I sometimes ask myself what would have happened if we had taken our dinner companion’s advice. What if we had shamed our son, or punished him? What if we had refused to let him out of his room unless he agreed to behave like a traditional boy?

In those early years of our child’s life, when my husband and I searched the Internet for information about children who claim to be the opposite gender than their anatomy indicates, we found these two statistics: Forty percent of transgender people attempt suicide each year, whereas a child who is accepted by his or her family is eight times less likely to attempt suicide later in life.

Better to be labeled as over-indulgent parents for letting our son play princess, we told ourselves, than to have a dead child.

If you worry that you, or someone you know, is indulging a young child by allowing him or her to cross-dress or do otherwise non-stereotypical activities, think again. Child development experts claim that children understand their gender identity as young as age 2.

But most children lack the vocabulary to articulate how they feel when they are so young. Their only recourse at gaining understanding may be to don a tutu as a boy, or to wear a Superman costume as a girl.

If your young child or student is a boy who likes traditional girl things, or a girl who likes traditional boy things, it doesn’t mean that he or she is transgender. It might mean nothing at all, or it might indicate that the child is what experts call “gender fluid.” It could be a phase, or it could be something more permanent.

No matter the reason, a child’s gender exploration isn’t something to punish.

Of course the nonconforming child’s behavior may be something you fear, and possibly for good reasons. You might live in a community that lacks understanding and compassion. You might be part of a religious group that doesn’t accept transgender identity as a possibility.

It doesn’t matter. Support that child anyway.

‘We’re living our lives, just like you’

Some may decry this decision, as if you are aiding and abetting a criminal. Nothing could be further from the truth. You are aiding and abetting the crucial work we all do in trying to figuring out who we are and why we’re here.

Like me, like my husband, like hundreds of other parents who have faced their young children’s gender dysphoria, you must push past fear and replace it with curiosity. And then you need to start learning, and connecting with other families who are going through similar experiences.

And if you don’t know any gender nonconforming children, or if you think the parents who support nonconforming children are mentally ill, child-abusing monsters — all things we have been called — I would wager a bet that if you came over to visit some afternoon, you might be surprised at how similar we are to you.

You might notice my teenage daughter’s school books and SAT prep manual scattered around. You might hear the sound of my younger daughter’s squeals as our dogs chase her around the house. You might notice we have the same favorite show playing on our TV, and if you look closely enough, you might see the imprint in the sofa where my husband naps as he pretends to watch.

What you wouldn’t notice is that one of my two daughters is transgender. You wouldn’t notice because there is nothing to notice.

We’re living our lives, just like you: struggling to keep things balanced, trying to look on the bright side, trying to get enough sleep, to drink enough water, to remember to brush our hair before we leave the house, to floss before bed, to say please and thank you, to apologize when wrong.

Those of us who are raising transgender children know it is time for us to be brave; to step forward; to introduce ourselves to you and welcome you into our lives; to prove that we haven’t indulged our children but merely chosen to love them.

Will Congress finally vote on ISIS war?

ButÂ aÂ voteÂ on the warÂ threatens to expose the divisions over the US military campaign between hawks and doves that have lingered since the Obama administration began fightingÂ ISISÂ in 2014.

On the one hand, congressional approval forÂ the ISIS war couldÂ be a public affirmation ofÂ President DonaldÂ Trump’s plansÂ to accelerate the military campaignÂ andÂ potentially give the commander in chief a freer hand to ramp up troop deployments across the Middle East.

On the other, anti-war lawmakers could press for restrictions on troop numbersÂ and theirÂ theaterÂ of battle,Â imposing limits that don’t exist under the currentÂ post-9/11 authorization for fighting al QaedaÂ that successive administrations have until now relied onÂ to fight ISIS as well.

The bipartisan group of lawmakers that for years has tried to force Congress to authorize the war against ISIS, arguing Congress is giving up its constitutional authority to declare war, says Trump’s desire to accelerate the ISIS campaign stresses the need for a formal vote on the war.Â

“I haven’t thought that this war against ISIS is constitutionally authorized from the beginning,” saidÂ DemocraticÂ Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy. “Now that we’re talking about a potential massive increase in troop presence, we need to put some boundaries around it congressionally.”Â

The White House has yet to weigh in directly on the issue,Â but likeÂ the Obama administration, the Trump administration says it has the legal authority to conduct its ISIS campaignÂ even without congressional approval.

But one top administration official signaled the administration also sees a benefit to a new ISIS war authorizationÂ — albeitÂ for different reasonsÂ than many Democratic advocates.

Defense Secretary James Mattis toldÂ a Senate panelÂ last week that he wants them to authorize the war againstÂ ISIS because,Â “I think it would be a statement of the American people’s resolve if you did so.”

“I thought the same thing for the last several years, I might add, and have not understood why the Congress has not come forward with this, at least the debate,”Â he added.

Congress has been reluctant to debate — let alone vote on — a war authorization, due to an inability to find consensus as well as political concerns that a vote could be used against them later on, as Hillary Clinton’s vote in favor of the Iraq War was.

“I think Congress should weigh in and say what the support should look like, but the devil is in the details” of any authorization for use of military force, Washington Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told CNN. “I don’t want the AUMF to be a blank check to theÂ President to do anything he wants, anywhere, anytime, for any reason.”

Mattis delivered a plan to Trump to accelerate that campaign, and additional US troops in recent days have deployed to Iraq and Syria, including an air assault as part of aÂ major offensiveÂ led by US-backed fighters to retake a dam near Raqqa, Syria. Soldiers from the 82ndÂ Airborne DivisionÂ were deploying to Iraq in the “low hundreds” this week, according to a US defense official.

The Trump administration is also looking atÂ stepping upÂ the US military’s involvement in Yemen’s civil war, and has loosened the rules for counter-terrorism missions in parts of the country.

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona tried to team up to pass a war authorization during the Obama administration, and they told CNN they’re now reworking a bill that can get support from both parties.

“We had a bill in for a couple of years nobody was interested in — we tried to wordsmith differences between Democrats and Republicans — so we’re actually exploring some different ways of coming at it,” Kaine said. “It’s the beginning of an administration, a new plan on the table might be time to look at it, and I think Gen. Mattis helps us move in that direction.”

Other Democrats predicted Trump could force Congress’ hand to pass a war authorization ifÂ he were to diveÂ too far into military adventurism.

“I’ll tell you what will make it happen, is if theÂ President takes some kind of aggressive military action that’s unexpected and that is not envisioned as just a continuation of the Global War on Terror,” Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill told CNN.

But for Republicans, a “robust” war authorization is what’s needed so the commander in chief’s hands are not tied.

“The draft that the Obama administration put out … it was very, very limiting, extremely limiting,” said Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan. “It might have a better chance now that we have a White House that probably will have a different outlook.”

Mattis said at last week’s hearing that he does not support limitations on time or geography in a war authorization.Â

“Due to the nature of this enemy’s threat, that would only work to help the enemy,” Mattis said in response to a question from Sen. Lindsey Graham,Â a South Carolina Republican,Â about geographic restrictions.

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, whose committee would handle legislation to vote on the war, said he wanted the administration to articulate its ISIS strategy first, and then Congress could consider passing an AUMF.

“We’ve said from day one, even back under the Obama days, we’d like for the administration to lay out a strategy. That never really happened,”Â the Tennessee RepublicanÂ said. “I do think these guys are formulating one and we’ll see where it goes.”

Why is government searching phones?

These are some of the many American citizens re-entering the country who have been subjected to searches of their cellphones and questioning about their social media.

Such invasions of travelers’ private communications are extremely intrusive and have been conducted even when officials don’t apparently have reason to think the person has done something wrong. And the government has lately increased the practice dramatically â€” even though recent legal decisions raise serious questions about its constitutionality.

Because people keep ever more of their personal details on their phones and computers, it is particularly egregious that the government should claim some right to unfettered access to these devices simply because a person travels abroad.

On Monday, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University â€” whose mission is to defend free speech in the digital age â€” filed a lawsuit seeking to compel the government to release information on the number of travelers whose devices have been searched, the policies related to searching cellphones containing sensitive and confidential information, and the findings of internal audits about the device search program.

Border searches of electronic devices by the Department of Homeland Security have risen exponentially in recent years, from about 5,000 device searches in 2015 to about 25,000 in 2016, according to press reports that cited DHS data. During the Trump administration, the intrusions appear to have become even more frequent; in February 2017 alone, border officials searched 5,000 devices.

And why is this happening? A US Customs and Border Protection policy since 2009 authorizes officers to seize and search a traveler’s electronic devices even if the person is not suspicious. The policy was always legally dubious, but it has become indefensible in light of the Supreme Court’s 2014 landmark decision in Riley v. California.

The court held that police generally can’t seize a person’s cellphone as part of an arrest without first obtaining a warrant that is backed by evidence that the cellphone contains evidence of a crime and is signed by a judge.

A cellphone contains “the sum of an individual’s private life,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. The search of a smartphone is nothing like the search of a duffle bag. What people store on their cellphones — including Internet browsing history, medical records, family photos, GPS location data, financial information, and apps related to dating, addiction and hobbies — is vastly more sensitive than what people used to carry in their pockets, backpacks, or purses, or even keep in their homes.

Searches of electronic devices when there is no basis for suspicion to search them raise serious concerns relating to the freedoms of speech and association. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor observed in another recent Supreme Court case, “[a]wareness that the government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms.” Americans will be justifiably concerned about speaking freely if, simply because they travel internationally, the government is given unlimited authority to read through their emails, texts, social media posts and the like.

The implications may be especially significant for a free press. Suspicionless searches of cellphones threaten the ability of journalists and their sources to report on important international issues, which deprives the public of its right to know about those issues.

Numerous reports show that journalists, lawyers and activists â€” particularly those who cover civil wars and terrorism or travel to conflict areas â€” have had their cellphones and devices searched at the US border, where officers have demanded their passwords and read their communications with sources.

Those sources will likely be leery of sharing information with journalists and activists if their identities and reports may be revealed to the US government at the border.

Anecdotal evidence about how the government is using its authority to conduct suspicionless electronic device searches is disturbing but incomplete. The public has a right to see a fuller picture, as many civil liberties groups have asked the government to provide.

Our freedom of information lawsuit request seeks a range of information, but one of the items we seek may be especially revealing: We’ve asked for the database of the Treasury Enforcement Communications System that houses information about every device-search at the border, including the reason for the search, the country of origin of the traveler, and the traveler’s race and ethnicity.

The government created this database in response to concerns voiced by the Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights office several years ago about the possibility that searches might be conducted in a discriminatory or otherwise unlawful way.

Disclosure of the database â€” perhaps with narrow redactions to protect legitimate national security and privacy interests â€” would help the public understand the answer to basic questions about the government’s program: How often do border officers search travelers’ cellphones and other devices, and for what reasons?

Why did the incidence of cellphone searches sharply increase in the past 15 months? Does the department follow its own rules for taking special measures to protect searches of privileged and other sensitive content stored on cellphones, and what are those rules?

The courts should require the government to disclose this information and quickly, and the practice of delving into travelers’ private lives at the border without reason to suspect them of wrongdoing should ultimately end. Everything we know about the government’s searches of devices at the border suggests the government is dramatically expanding an unconstitutional program.

Study: Greatest rise in heroin use was among whites

More people die from drug overdoses than from guns or car accidents. At the peak of the AIDS epidemic in 1995, 43,115 people in the United States died from the disease.

Furthermore, since 1999, the number of overdoses from prescription opioids like oxycodone and hydrocodone, as well as illicit drugs like heroin, have quadrupled. In fact, heroin now accounts for one in four overdose deaths in the United States.

Now, a new study in the journal JAMA Psychiatry looks beyond the total number of overdose deaths to get a better picture of how heroin use patterns have changed since 2001. Since then, the number of people who have used heroin has increased almost five-fold, and the number of people who abuse heroin has approximately tripled.

The greatest increases in use occurred among white males.

Heroin use on the rise

The authors evaluated the responses of 79,402 individuals, as collected from the 2001-2002 and the 2012-2013 National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, a longitudinal study conducted by the National Institutes of Health to evaluate alcohol and drug use and abuse. While heroin use between whites and non-whites was fairly similar in the 2001-2002 results, at 0.34% and 0.32% respectively, by 2012-2013 the percentage of whites who had used heroin jumped to 1.90%. Just 1.05% of non-whites in 2012-2013 used heroin. Heroin use also increased significantly among those with a high school education or less, as well as those who lived at less than 100% of the federal poverty line.

The authors of the new report write “these trends are concerning because increases in the prevalence of heroin use and use disorder have been occurring among vulnerable individuals who have few resources to overcome problems associated with use.”

According to a 2016 Surgeon General’s report on alcohol, drugs and health, only one in 10 of those with a substance use disorder receive any treatment.

“The good news is that among all drugs of abuse, heroin and opioids have by far the best treatment medications available. Methadone and buprenorphine have proven effectiveness data, they not only reduce the chances of dying from an opioid overdose by 50%, they support people being in recovery from their addiction and reduce health care costs and improve a wide array of other outcomes,” said Caleb Banta-Green, an associate professor of health services at the University of Washington. Banta-Green was not involved in the study.

Starting with prescription drugs

The study also confirmed the idea that many heroin users start by using prescription opioids like oxycodone and hydrocodone. Approximately one-third of all white heroin users reported using prescription drugs for non-medical purposes in 2001-2002. By 2013 more than half of all white heroin users started by initially using prescription drugs. For non-whites, the number of people who started by using prescription drugs before heroin actually dropped in the same time frame.

An accompanying editorial by Bertha Madras, a psychologist at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts and former deputy director in the White House’s Office of National Drug Control and Policy pointed to the shift in treating pain as a major factor in understanding the current crisis. She noted that in the past two decades, the number of opioid prescriptions has risen three-fold.

“This shift in practice norms was fueled by acceptance of low quality evidence that opioids are a relatively benign remedy for managing chronic pain,” she wrote. “These vast opioid supplies created a risk for diversion, opioid misuse and disorder, and overdose death.”

The study did not find any significant difference when looking at what age groups were using heroin, but heroin dependency and addiction was significantly higher for those below the age of 45 than those above. That should be a cause of concern, said Banta-Green, who noted that one of the costs of overdoses and abuse to society is lost productivity.

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A county-by-county study released Wednesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, calculated that drug overdose deaths resulted in a 778 years of potential life lost for every hundred thousand people. This report also found that most of the increase in premature deaths in 15- to 44-year-olds is due to drug overdoses. And while no community is immune to this crisis, suburbs, which used to have the lowest rates of premature deaths from drug overdoses now have the highest rates.

The authors of the longitudinal study note that “heroin use appears to have become more socially acceptable among suburban and rural white individuals, perhaps because its effects seem so similar to those of widely available [prescription opioids].”

The findings of these new reports are in line with earlier research over the past two decades about increasing heroin and opioid overdoses. “The trend isn’t a surprise — the takeaway is what matters. Heroin use disorder is a serious medical condition with which individuals are likely to struggle for the rest of their life. We need to give them the tools they need to survive and thrive,” said Banta-Green.

GOP congressman: Senate should oversee Russia probe

Story highlights

“It is unfortunate we are where we are in the House,” he said.
Democrats have repeatedly called for Devin Nunes to step down

“What I think should happen right now is the Senate is going to lead this discussion, this investigation on the Russian meddling into the election,” Rep. Charlie Dent said Wednesday on CNN’s “Newsroom,” referring the Senate intelligence committee’s probe. “I think that’s where it is.”

“It is unfortunate we are where we are in the House. It seems like there is not going to be a House report on intelligence, on the Russian meddling, so we have to turn our eyes to the Senate,” Dent added.

Key House Democrats have called on Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes to recuse himself from an investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, widening a stunning partisan split over the probe.

Nunes had worked closely on the House investigation into ties between top aides to the campaign of President Donald Trump and Russian officials. But the California Republican has been heavily criticized following a visit to the White House grounds one day before going to the President and the public with possible evidence that his transition aides’ communications were picked up in surveillance by US intelligence.

Nunes has repeatedly defended his actions and some Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, have said they have “full confidence” in his ability to oversee the probe.

But Dent said that there doesn’t appear to be enough cooperation among the House Intelligence Committee to more forward.

“My sense is right now the House is in a situation where the House has been overly politicized,” Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican, said. “It doesn’t seem like there is much cooperation on either side and it seems like Sens. (Richard) Burr and (Mark) Warner are doing a good job of running a fair investigation and I think that’s where we will have to look right now to get a real report on this.”

Dent stopped short of saying that the House committee should end their investigation.

“I think the House should try,” he said. “But at this moment, I’m not optimistic just given the tone and the tenor and the various shots being taken by both sides.”

“It sounds to me they are getting into a stalemate position,” he added.

Amazon to start collecting state sales taxes

On Saturday Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) will start collecting sales taxes on purchases in the last four states where it wasn’t doing so: Hawaii, Idaho, Maine and New Mexico. Four other states — Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon — have no sales tax, while a fifth, Alaska, doesn’t have a statewide tax, but it does have municipal sales taxes.

Typically, an online retailer only has to collect sales tax in states where they have a physical presence, such as a storefront or a distribution center. That loophole cost states $17.2 billion in lost sales taxes last year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“The way we are consuming things is so different. Because of that, the states’ sales tax revenue is not keeping pace,” said Max Behlke, director of budget and tax policy for the NCSL. “States have to modernize [sales taxes] to the 21st century. If they can’t collect sales taxes, it’ll mean higher state income taxes or property taxes.”

Embattled brick-and-mortar retailers have long complained about what they argue is the unfair advantage held by their online rivals. But various bills to require online retailers to collect all the different sales taxes have stalled in Congress, despite bipartisan support.

For years Amazon was one of the leaders in the fight to keep online purchases tax free. But as it has moved to offer faster and faster deliveries, it has expanded its network of distribution centers and started collecting sales taxes in more and more states.

“Their business model has changed. To have same day or next day delivery, you need distribution centers nearby,” said Behlke.

By the end of last year, Amazon was collecting sales taxes in 29 states and Washington D.C. Since that list included all of the largest states, that meant it was effectively collecting sales tax from 86% of the nation’s population. The site has been rapidly adding the remaining states to the list of places where it collects taxes this year, bringing the total to 41 states plus Washington. And as of April 1, it will collect from all 45 states that have a statewide sales tax.

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on the change in policy.

And there is still one big sales-tax loophole left on Amazon: Shoppers don’t have to pay sales tax when they buy from one of the site’s many third-party vendors.

Those vendors have huge sales in their own right. Amazon says it has more than 100,000 vendors who sell more than $100,000 each annually, which means total sales of more than $10 billion. Amazon says that nearly half the items it sells are from third-party vendors.

“Whatever a state is getting in sales tax from Amazon, it should probably be getting about twice that much,” said Behlke.

CNNMoney (New York) First published March 29, 2017: 2:59 PM ET