19 signs. You are being watched. The control freaks that hold power in the United States have become absolutely obsessed with surveillance. They are constantly attempting to convince the American people that we are all "safer" when virtually everything that we do is watched, monitored, tracked and recorded. Our country is being systematically transformed ... MORE
by Erin Schultz. Last week, we asked a few local bar owners how DWI task force checkpoints affected their business over
the summer, and reader reaction to the piece ranged from vehement
support of the checkpoints to questioning if they are Constitutional or
not. Here are a few comments generated from the issue. Feel free to chime ... MORE
Shame on "those who slander the prophet of Islam." Today, President Barack Obama
delivered four pretty good paragraphs to the United Nations about
the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, and the
underlying principles of free speech and
tolerance-of-minority-viewpoints it reflects. In the
as-prepared transcript ... MORE
Overspending, overregulation impedes freedom. Health care policy can be tricky to navigate. One reason stems from the difficulty of measuring its intangibles — differences in the quality of life, for example, or the social value of extending life for a few days. A new report from Canada's Fraser Institute has does the hard work of putting a number on a ... MORE
Secret FISA court rules the Fourth Amendment be damned. The House of Representatives recently signed off on another five years of sweeping warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency, voting by a wide margin to extend the controversial FISA Amendments Act of 2008. But the debate on the House floor showed that the law’s ... MORE
Obama 2 pulls the curtain on Obama 1. Many voters will be comparing Mitt Romney with Barack Obama between now
and election day. But what might be even more revealing would be
comparing Obama with Obama. There is a big contrast between Obama based
on his rhetoric ("Obama 1") and Obama based on his record ("Obama 2"). ... MORE
Based on 1.7 million test scores. NPR's Claudio Sanchez brings us this bit of bad academic news: The class of 2012 scored the lowest average SAT reading score since 1972. A bit of good news is that math scores were up. Claudio filed this report for our Newscast unit: "Writing, too, is down nine points since the SAT introduced a writing section in 2006. ... MORE
A system coming down on peaceful men isn't right. It wasn’t Douglas Darrell’s Rastafarian religion that persuaded a Belknap County Superior Court jury to acquit him of growing marijuana recently, according to a woman who served on that jury. “It was the fact that the system was coming down on a peaceful man, and it wasn’t right,” ... MORE
-- Especially when there are riots. At the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly this week, plenty of voices will be heard, including that of the hateful president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and not one of those voices will be censored. Rarely has the value of free speech been so threatened. The arc of the unfortunate story is now well-told: ... MORE