American taxpayers own close to 200,000 vacant houses, and over the next year they will spend more than $40 million just to mow lawns at these properties. Taxpayers also foot the bills to paint walls, fix cabinets, plant flowers and more -- expenses that just last year, exceeded a half a billion dollars.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) released its 2012 list of the 12 Worst Colleges for Free Speech in The Huffington Post. Harvard is new to the list this year, joining Yale, Syracuse, and the University of Cincinnati at the top of the list.

The Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, is among a group of prominent Australians who have declared the ''war on drugs'' a failure in the most significant challenge to drug laws in decades.

Americans make up just 5 percent of the world's population but account for 25 percent of the population behind bars. Why? Because prisons are a big business and the WAR on Drugs, CNN reporter Fareed Zakaria says. The total number of Americans under correctional supervision (prison, parole, etc.) is 7.1 million, more than the entire state of Massachusetts. Prisons are a big business. Most are privately run, have powerful lobbyists and have bought most state politicians.

I think apprenticeships have the potential to create a much more efficient learning model. Most people learn by doing, not by reading books, listening to lectures or taking tests. If you tray to cram too much information inside at a time, you will not retain much for very long. Testing a person for their knowledge has huge drawbacks namely that you are testing for memory skills, not practical working knowledge. If you learn a little and use it right after, it will reinforce that knowledge and make the learning of the subject much more satisfying.

High School Students Are Occupying Public Education

http://youtu.be/hXUtIFrmn18

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is set to begin construction on a new high-risk bio-weapons research facility on the campus of Kansas State University in Manhattan Kansas.
The new facility will feature research on biolevel 3 and 4 viruses - some without any known cures - and other potentially dangerous materials.
The problem, critics say, is the location and the inherent seismic and weather-related disasters that could befall the facility, wreaking havoc on the surrounding population and beyond.

BELLEVUE, WA – A federal court ruling in Maryland, that the Second Amendment right to bear arms extends beyond the home and that citizens may not be required to offer a “good and substantial reason” for obtaining a concealed carry permit, is a huge victory, the Second Amendment Foundation said today.

Ruling in the case of Woollard v. Sheridan – a case brought by SAF in July 2010 on behalf of Maryland resident Raymond Woollard, who was denied his carry permit renewal – the U.S. District Court for Maryland ruled that “The Court finds that the right to bear arms is not limited to the home.”

The New Hampshire legislature has approved a bill to keep industrial hemp from being listed as a controlled substance. New Hampshire farmers need two more New England states to take the same action before farmers can legally grow hemp.

“I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,” Mr. Robertson said in an interview on Wednesday. “I’ve never used marijuana and I don’t intend to, but it’s just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.”