Melissa Brown

I was scheduled to fly home on December 22, 1988. The night before, my roommate was helping me pack and we had the TV on in the background. Back in those days, the BBC didn't interrupt programming for just any reason, so we knew that it was serious.

Most Americans are familiar with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, some mistakenly believe that the protection of speech is absolute; that anything a person says is protected. That is just simply not true.

"What's in a name? That which we would call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Juliet may have thought that names are artificial and meaningless, but she didn't have to deal with the controversy surrounding the Washington Redskins name change.

Libertarian is not a bad word. No, really, please hear me out. I see that word used a lot on Facebook, various blogs and news sites and I want to shout in a really bad Spanish accent a la Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

President Obama thinks that today's high school students need access to the information available on the Internet to find jobs competitive in a global economy. To that end, he has proposed a program called ConnectED, which will provide 99% of high school students with high-speed internet within five years.

In June, Eric Cantor (R-VA) proposed adding a stringent work requirement in order to receive food stamp benefits, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Thankfully, that amendment didn't pass. But crazy Cantor isn't done yet. His next brilliant, money-saving idea is to take away SNAP benefits from single adults with no dependents