3-Minute Civics: A bill of rights for teenagers

By ROBERT L. FRIED

Whose rights are foremost in our Bill of Rights? Whose rights are largely ignored? Needless to say, teenagers – along with women, men who didn’t own property, Native Americans and enslaved African Americans – were left out of the framing of our...

My Turn: The warning dream of the turtle

By JEAN STIMMELL

I had a dream the other night I can’t shake: I am driving through a desolate land, over a maze of logging trails, trying to find the location of my new job, when suddenly a giant snapping turtle, almost as wide as my truck, steps into the path and...

Jonathan P. Baird: Early on, journalist Dorothy Thompson saw Hitler for what he was

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

In studying the history of Italian and German fascism in the 1930s, it is fair to say that the world was not adequately warned about the danger. To a shocking extent, the American press of that era whitewashed and minimized the fascist threat. This...

My Turn: Alan Dershowitz and the age of consent

By ERIC MacLEISH

It has already been a challenging summer for Alan Dershowitz. Now a Fox News favorite, he has been disinvited to cocktail parties on the Vineyard. Then, he was accused by two women of having underage sex with them, all arranged by former client and...

My Turn: God and the American Constitution

By JIM BAER

A recent article in the news caught my attention because of the author’s alarming statement. The writer commented on how important it was that our Constitution includes the name of God in its text. It does not. Nowhere in our Constitution does the...

My Turn: The racist roots of the Second Amendment

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Mass shootings have become institutionalized as an almost normal part of American life, as have the responses to such shootings. After each massacre, victims, their families and gun-control advocates bemoan the latest atrocity and call for background...

Letter: The math behind road damage

I lease a plug-in electric car, so I was concerned about the proposal to tax me to offset my reduction in gas tax payments into the highway fund. I’ve been feeling smug about generating the electricity that powers my commute and only using gas when I...

Jonathan P. Baird: Spiro Agnew and the corruption defense

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

How does a corrupt, high-ranking government official, who is under criminal investigation, maintain his grip on power? On TV, I saw Roger Stone describe the game plan: “Admit nothing, deny everything and counterattack.”Stone was not the first in...

Editorial: A chilling story about climate change

Last month, the New York Times devoted an entire issue of its Sunday magazine to a single, 30,000-word account of the missed opportunity by the world’s nations to address the dangers posed by global warming.The article, “Losing Earth: The Decade We...

Editorial: Face to face with a grateful hummingbird

The goofy-looking red plastic feeder with fake yellow flowers hangs beyond the screen just a few feet from the porch chair. For years, it has been visited by at least one pair of hummingbirds, perhaps more. They are evening regulars, tanking up on the...

Mark Fernald: Why your property taxes are so high

By MARK FERNALD

New Hampshire has the second-highest property taxes per capita in the nation (behind New Jersey). The citizens of New Hampshire pay a higher percentage of income in property tax (5.6 percent) than any other state.The myth in New Hampshire is that we...

Letter: The seven easy steps to fascism

A little primer on fascism:1. Create a sense of victimization.2. Blame “them” using words like vermin, infestation, those people.3. Declare only strength can save the nation.4. Demonize established law, the courts and democratic institutions as weak...

Letter: Bobby and Freckles

As the Kennedy family commemorates and mourns the 50th anniversary of the unspeakable tragedy of Robert Kennedy’s assassination, may they take comfort in this Bible verse: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the...

Editorial: A volcanic history of the Granite State

Like millions, we watched with horror and fascination as the slowly moving black-and-Halloween-orange blob devoured a car and set everything in its path ablaze. Pele, the fire goddess who in religion and lore lives in Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano, is...

Jonathan P. Baird: Nazi Germany and the fall of law

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Back on Feb. 16, the New Hampshire Bar Association held its annual mid-year meeting. This year the program was a little different. Instead of the usual continuing legal education event, the bar brought in two historians, Anne O’Rourke and Willliam...

My Turn: The case for belladonna

By SOL SOLOMON

A recent news story claimed a popular homeopathic teething remedy is dangerous because it contains belladonna. On the surface, this could be alarming news. But with a little knowledge, the claim is clearly false, and the latest in a long-standing...

Debra Marshall: A confession, and a whole bunch of observations

By DEBRA MARSHALL

I want to tell you about the time I grabbed a total stranger’s penis and held it tight.I’m a woman of a certain age, and I’ve worked in many professions. One of the first jobs I had, about a thousand years ago back in the dark ages, was in a bustling...

A Concord comedian cracks a joke in NYC, then comes to regret it

By RAY DUCKLER

In Kath Barbadoro’s world, a world of laughter, things haven’t seemed very funny lately.That’s because Louis C.K., the famous comedian who was exposed for exposing himself to women, held up a mirror to male society, forcing it to acknowledge the...

Grace Mattern: The importance of recognizing white privilege

By GRACE MATTERN

The last time you handled a challenge well, were you called a credit to your race? When you go shopping, do store clerks watch you closely or follow you? Do you have trouble finding a hair salon nearby that knows how to style your hair? When you buy...

Vietnam Stories: The rest of the Red Beach story

By WILL GRAN

About halfway through Episode 3 of Ken Burns’s epic documentary on the Vietnam War, there is a 2½-minute segment on the Marine amphibious landing and securing of a beachhead at Red Beach near Da Nang, South Vietnam, on March 8, 1965. This segment...