This book looks at the current state of civil liberties in America, by exploring case studies of several different types of cases.

Matthew Limon is a gay teenager from Kansas who was sentenced to a seventeen-year prison term for having consensual sex with a boy three years younger. If his sex partner had been female, the sentence would have been much less. As a way to lessen the impact of a proposed total abortion ban in South Dakota, Cecilia Fire Thunder, the President of the Sioux Nation, advocated putting an abortion clinic on Sioux land. The school board of Dover, Pennsylvania attempted to force the local high school to include “intelligent design” into the biology curriculum. A middle-age science teacher named Bertha Spahr led the fight against the plan. Kot Hordynski is part of a non-violent anti-war group at the University of California, Santa Clara. The Pentagon put him on a terrorist watch list and called him a "credible threat."

Before anyone thinks that the American Civil Liberties Union, of which Romero is the Executive Director, is an anti-conservative or anti-Catholic group, consider: the ACLU defended Rush Limbaugh’s right to privacy when prosecutors wanted his medical records to prosecute his drug bust; they argued that anti-abortion protestors have a right to march and be heard; the ACLU stood up for Oliver North’s constitutional rights during Iran-Contra; when a high school senior wanted to put a quote from the Bible in her yearbook, the ACLU argued that she had a right to free speech-even religious speech. Also, the ACLU helped strike the provision in the Virginia constitution that denied Jerry Falwell’s church the right to incorporate in Virginia.

This is a gem of a book. It does a good job of showing how civil liberties were not in good shape, entangling average people, even before 9/11; since then, things have gotten noticeably worse. It is very much worth reading.

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Are your co-workers arrogant, cynical, passive-aggressive, bullies or complainers? Publicly praise them for their help when appropriate, and don’t be afraid to stand up to them. If they created a problem, don’t make it personal; make them come up with a solution. If someone tries to dump their work on you, set clear boundaries as to what you will, and won’t, do. In meetings, do not, for any reason, lead with, “This may be a stupid question, but...”

What if you are the one with the “problem”? This book looks at negative self talk, people who are impatient or perfectionists, overcoming social anxiety, and dealing with criticism (not all criticism is a personal attack).

The author also looks at when to work from home, when to change jobs, and when your employer makes that decision for you (being fired is not the end of the world). More serious issues are covered, like pregnancy discrimination, sexual harassment, equal pay for equal work, and asking for a raise (something which is never easy, no matter who you are).

This book may be intended for women, but it is also highly recommended for men entering the workforce, too. It is very easy to read, and the author does a fine job presenting solutions for the situations that may be encountered in the workplace.

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Some parts of setting up a business website, especially with new software, can be done by the average individual, with a bit of training. The more technical parts need to be left to people who know what they are doing. A major sin is to have a vital part of your website not work at all, or look like it was done by someone who has never done this before, just to save money.

What are you going to sell on this brand new website? If you don’t already have a product or service, consider selling e-books. There is nothing to keep in stock; after you receive a person’s money, all it takes is a few clicks on your computer, and the product is "shipped." How do you get people to visit your website? The author talks about things like affiliate marketing, joint ventures with other websites, free electronic newsletters or magazines, among many other things. He also talks about how to make sure that when a person does a search for "widgets," for instance, that your site is at, or near, the top of the list.

The author includes the addresses for many, many websites that show the things mentioned in this book. He also includes many examples from his own internet marketing campaign, so that anyone can see how he did it.

This book may seem overwhelming; take a deep breath, and go one step at a time. For anyone selling on the internet, this book is not just worth reading. It’s worth keeping on your reference shelf, and making notes in, and marking pages with Post-It Notes. It’s worth the money.

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Jeff and Nicole Rank (she works for FEMA) were arrested on the grounds of the West Virginia state capital and thrown in jail, while local, state and capital police discussed who had jurisdiction over them. They were released, and just before their trial was to start, the city of Charleston dropped all charges. Their crime was to wear anti-Bush t-shirts to a Bush campaign rally to which they had gotten legitimate tickets.

Vice President Cheney was working a crowd in a Colorado shopping mall. Steve Howards walked up to him, told Cheney that he thought Cheney’s Iraq policy was reprehensible, and walked away. For that, he was handcuffed in front of his young son, and charged with assaulting Cheney. The charges were later dropped.

The authors also look inside the Dover, Pennsylvania school board, where religious fundamentalists attempted to introduce “intelligent design” into the biology curriculum. After a long trial, and a judicial ruling strongly in favor of evolution, the fundamentalists were voted out of office in the next election. Also included is the story of the four librarians from Connecticut, who refused to comply with a National Security letter, demanding records on use of a public library computer on a certain day.

This is a gem of a book. It does a fine job showing the size of the holes that the "war on terror" has put in the Bill of Rights, and it is also a very easy read. It is very highly recommended.

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In the early 1900s, Texas was experiencing an oil boom. Practically overnight, a town would spring up around oil wells, bringing all sorts of people, from roughnecks to work the wells, to barkeepers to prostitutes. They would stay until the oil ran out, then move on to the next boom town. Howard grew up in one boom town after another; Isaac, his father, was a frontier doctor, so they also followed the oil. Howard got to see, up close and personal, the dark underside of civilization, and it disgusted him. Finally settling in Cross Plains, he was a voracious reader who hated the regimentation of school. He lived on pulp magazines, like Weird Tales, available at the local general store. Howard was the shy, quiet kid in town with no interest in joining the oil boom.

A major influence on Howard’s development as a writer was the Texas tradition of telling tall tales. Isaac was an expert spinner of tales, and in her own way, Hester, his mother and an Irish immigrant, was pretty good at it, too. Hester had tuberculosis for most of Robert’s life, which forced him to stay home and help take care of her, because Isaac was frequently gone for days on his "rounds." After he became a published author, Howard was one of the mainstays at Weird Tales. He sent them all sorts of stories, usually set in the distant past, showing civilizations that had already degraded into barbarism (like Texas of the early 20th Century). In those days, pulp magazines usually paid half a cent to one cent per word, payment was usually on publication, which could be several months after acceptance, and even then, payment was sporadic. Howard spent hours a day at his typewriter, writing boxing stories (a huge interest of his), poetry and westerns, along with tales of Conan, his most famous creation.

Anyone who has ever picked up a pulp magazine, or who knows REH as more than just the creator of Conan, will love this book, as I did. While Howard’s books are still in print, Howard’s life has fallen into obscurity. This book does a really good job of remedying that situation.

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First of all, decide on a market for your product; not “everybody.” Perhaps you should focus on companies in a 50-mile radius with sales of over a million dollars per year. Get a mailing list from the state business association or from a mailing list company, and decide who, on the list, should be called. Set aside a certain amount of time, whether daily, weekly or monthly, to call people on that list, and stick with it. Have a script in front of you identifying yourself, and asking to speak with the person who purchases widgets (or whatever you are selling). Come up with your own system, on the list, to distinguish between No Answer, Out of Service, Person Not Available, etc. If the person asks to be put on your Do Not Call list, always honor such requests, but don’t cross them off your list. Cross reference your Do Not Call list with any future, or updated, lists you may purchase. That way, you have that many fewer people to call.

For those who say some version of Maybe, be sure to make follow-up calls, if appropriate. Ask if you can send them a one-page sheet about your product, which you will already have written and printed, and have ready to fax or mail, that day. If you are still "in the running," this is when you offer to put together a pricing proposal, or meet with the potential client, to see about turning Maybe into Yes. If they ultimately say No this time, they may say Yes next time, so your efforts are not totally in vain.

This is a specialized book, but a good and easy-to-read book. Anything that makes cold calling less unpleasant is worth investigating. This is well worth the time.

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It’s no great revelation to say that the American family farm is in very bad shape. A number of groups of farmers have banded together into democratically-run cooperatives to get decent prices for their products, something they could never have done individually. Employees of a Madison, Wisconsin cab company were tired of being treated like garbage, so they joined a union. A couple of strikes later, the owner abruptly closed up shop. The employees scraped together enough money to buy the company, and despite long odds and sleepless nights, have made the company a success. The employees of a strip club in San Francisco faced a similar dilemma. They joined a union and got their working conditions improved, then the owner suddenly closed the club. The women, several of whom have college degrees, decided that the only thing to do was become a worker-owned cooperative. They split up the duties, and got a crash course in running a business.

Creation Care is a growing movement that mixes environmentalism and evangelical religion. A way that corporations keep people apart is to assert, for instance, that gain for environmentalists means a loss for labor. Evidently, the Sierra Club and the United Steelworkers of America never got the memo, because they recently developed a joint public policy agenda, with clean energy at the top of the list. Don’t think for a second that a person loses their ability to make a difference in America once they reach "old age."

This is another excellent book from Jim Hightower. There is a list of addresses in the back (both regular mail and email) for all the groups mentioned here. If a person can’t find a local group in which to get involved, they could do a lot worse than contact any of these groups. What can I do to make America a better place? Here is a wonderful place to start.

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US military war games took place the very hour of the 9/11 attacks. It is possible that they were designed to be so distracting that they may have contributed to the success of the real attacks. According to several experts, the destruction of the World Trade Center looked more like a controlled demolition than the result of terrorism. There is a huge difference between the temperature at which jet fuel burns, and that needed to melt reinforced steel. If planes really did bring the World Trade Center, where did those extra thousands of degrees come from? Firefighters who reached the affected floors reported a couple of small fires, but no steel-melting inferno.

The author also looks at the reasons for planning war in Afghanistan and Iraq, even before 9/11; namely, oil and drugs in Central Asia. He also looks at the connections between 9/11 and groups like Halliburton, Harken Energy and BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International).

He also explores the backlash in America, including things like the Patriot Act, the ignoring of the Posse Comitatus Act, the building of internment camps and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

This book does an excellent job of shredding, once and for all, the "official" 9/11 story. It is a first-rate piece of journalism that is very much worth reading for all Americans.

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Veronica has a free and open sexual nature which seems to make up for a self-esteem level of zero. It is as if Veronica feels that her only worth as a human being is based on what is between her legs. After a three-day binge of sex, sleeping together and more self-loathing on Rob’s part, he finally lets it all out, and physically throws Veronica out of his apartment.

Rob busses tables at a local restaurant to pay the bills. A fellow employee is Rachael, a vivacious recent high school graduate with a sweet and innocent nature. They engage in some playful flirting during work hours, which gets their fellow employees to gossiping. Even better, from Rob’s point of view, is that Rachael enjoys reading Literature (she is actually familiar with Scandinavian writer Knut Hamsun), something about which Veronica is basically clueless. Rachael inspires Rob to take another look at some of his past writing attempts, stashed in a drawer. Her sweet nature begins to show Rob that there really is a light at the end of his emotional tunnel.

This is a short novel, but an uncomprising one, moving from bitter to almost optimistic. It shows the big difference between "sexual" love and "real" love. There may have been a little too much emphasis on the sex scenes, but this is still a good piece of writing that is worth reading.

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The leader of Earth, Chairman Basil Wenceslas, is forced to abandon all of Earth’s colonies, to concentrate whatever forces he has left on Earth’s defense. The figurehead monarchy, King Peter and Queen Estarra, escape to a forest world called Theroc, to set up a rival confederation, which the former Earth colonies gladly join. Now that the war is over, Chairman Wenceslas wants those former colonies back under his leadership. He makes an example of an average, undefended farming colony, by sending a fleet with orders to flatten and destroy everything. The whole event is filmed, and is to be shown to all other former Earth colonies.

Meantime, the original Klikiss are a black, insectoid race that live in colonies (like a bee hive). They have an overwhelming desire to fight and destroy all other colonies, called breedexes. They attack breedexes on other planets through transportals, teleportation portals spread all over the galaxy. When there is only one breedex left, it grows until critical mass is reached, and that breedex spreads to other planets via the transportals, when the fighting resumes. The original Klikiss were thought to have been extinct thousands of years ago, leaving their mark on many, now inhabited, planets. They’re back, and they want their planets back. The Klikiss have no problem at all with annihilating anyone, or anything, that gets in their way.

When reading a series, I am one of those who must do it in order, so the summary in the front of this book is a big help. It also helps because there is a lot going on in this book, perhaps too much. Having said that, if the rest of the series is as good as this volume, it is very much worth checking out. It is a very interesting story that will certainly keep the attention of the reader.

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Could He have been so inconsiderate as to separately tell Christians, Jews and Muslims that they are His chosen people, and that the other two groups are just faking it? He begins on the path of Christianity, speaking to a priest, a bishop and a minister. They patiently answer his questions; he is not the first, nor will he be the last, to make such inquiries. The unspoken part is that while questions about Christianity are normal, the expectation is that Traveler will eventually return to the Church, to stay.

He also speaks to a Jewish rabbi, and an Islamic scholar, who happens to be female. Things get a bit heated when discussing modern perceptions of Islam. The Bible has been "reinterpreted" and sometimes rewritten over the years, but the same cannot be said of the Koran. Compare a present-day copy and an early copy of the Koran, and there are zero text changes.

Maybe people are supposed to find their own path to God. Organized religion works for most people, but not for anyone. This is a short, but very interesting, book that doesn’t push any specific faith. Those who are looking for their path to God could do a lot worse than read this story.

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Personal privacy involves much more than just computers and the internet. Don’t leave outgoing mail in your mailbox to be picked up, especially if the mailbox is near the street. Hand it to a carrier or get it to a post office. Buy, and use, a home shredder, but make it a crosscut shredder, not one of those that cuts your documents into nice, easy-to-reconstruct strips. There is no illusion of privacy once you throw that bank statement or credit card receipt in the trash. Even at the dump, if a person knows where to look, and is sufficiently motivated, they can find it. There is also no illusion of privacy when talking on a cellphone in public. If a person isn’t listening in electronically, then the person right behind you can hear everything you say, so why are you talking about personal financial matters in public?

Have you thought about leaving an envelope or package in your car with the name and address showing? Without doing anything, a thief or scam artist now knows where you live. From there, it is a short distance to applying for a new credit card in your name, or getting a new driver’s license or Social Security number, or something equally unpleasant. Make sensitive phone calls from random pay phones. Disable your work phone’s redial mechanism by picking up the phone, waiting for a dial tone, pressing any number, and hanging up. Be very wary about giving out personal information over the phone, regardless of the reason given by the caller. The only way to make totally and absolutely sure that an incriminating email or document is really gone from your computer is to take the disk or hard drive on which it was stored, and smash it into many pieces. No matter how many times you Erase or Delete something, it can be retrieved.

After reading this book, it would be really easy to become a paranoid hermit, refusing to go anywhere or do anything. The author’s intention is not to spread fear, but awareness. It is not possible to completely plug all ID "holes," but there are many things that anyone can do to make a potential thief go elsewhere. This book is well worth reading, more than once.

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These are short tales, many of them less than a page long. At the end of each story, the editor includes a sentence or two on her thoughts about the story. This book can be read in an hour or so, and it is time very well spent. For those looking for some inspiration, and those just looking for some interesting reading, this book is very much worth checking out.

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Few people think like this because of what the authors call The Lemming Conspiracy. People are supposed to work 60 or 70 hour weeks in some office building, because their worth as a human being is defined by their job title, and the number of zero’s in their bank account. Anyone who is not on the "fast track," thinking of little beyond that next promotion, must be morally deficient. Liking your job, or feeling fulfilled, or having time for your family, is irrelevant; work is supposed to come first. Sound familiar?

Most books of this type look at just one or two areas, like interests, or goals, or hardwired abilities, to decide what is the "right" sort of job for an individual. This book explores eight different areas, with thought exercises throughout, so the reader can be pointed in the right direction.

Does the answer to a problem suddenly pop into your head, or are you more of a methodical, step-by-step type? Can you handle people coming to you with problems or questions on a non-stop basis, all day? Introvert or extrovert? Specialist or generalist? What is most important to you; family, health, excitement, spiritual fulfillment, etc? How much time per day do you spend doing what’s most important to you? What sort of family did you grow up in? What sort of personal boundaries would you like to set up regarding your job (no more late nights, no more weekends, etc.)? What is your boss likely to accept?

Many books are available attempting to help the reader find the sort of occupation that is best for them. This one belongs at, or near, the top of the list. It will get the reader looking at themselves in a whole new way.

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