As the United States embarks on a campaign against international terrorism abroad, it is important that we carefully consider what such a conflict could mean for our freedoms here at home. Wars often give rise to conditions of secrecy and suppression of dissent that are antithetical to democracy.

During the Vietnam War some peace activists rejected and burned the American flag, embracing instead the flag of Vietnam's National Liberation Front fighting against the United States. When some U.S. peace activists traveled to Vietnam their Vietnamese hosts questioned their turning against their own flag as an unpatriotic blunder that allowed the Nixon government to make the American flag into a symbol of support for the war, marginalizing those who called for peace. Three decades later, will peace activists learn from past blunders and embrace the stars and stripes?

Environmental activist and college instructor Adrienne Anderson has been the victim of an "outrageous" defamation campaign at the hands of the PR department of Colorado's largest sewage plant, and a judge has hit the plant with a $450,000 damage award. According to the Denver Post, the judge has ordered the sewage district "to publicly apologize in a full page ad." The Post notes that the judge "singled out Metro's public relations director Steven M.