People and organizations other than doctors increasingly are assuming power to decide which medications to prescribe or procedures to undertake. More and more, decisions about personal healthcare are no longer made by the treating physicians in consultation with their patients, and based on the doctors' expertise.

The world is undoubtedly a safer, freer place because Thatcher - like Reagan - refused to back down when it came to defending freedom.

The seemingly omnipresent storm clouds hanging over the Constitution often make it hard to find a silver lining. Every day, the front page of The Drudge Report is littered with stories of government assaults on our civil liberties - from local government officials all the way up to the Oval Office.

I supported the Iraq resolution, but that was not an approval of war in Iraq and certainly was not approval for an occupation of Iraq.

On taking office, Obama promised the 'most transparent' administration in history; yet his record as president has been anything but transparent.

It is not just software glitches and corrupted memory cards that should be on the minds of election officials. Hackers pose another very real problem whereby an election could be tilted towards a favored candidate.

I sense that conservatives have largely already tuned out to the coming elections, after six years of burgeoning federal spending and inaction on key issues, such as immigration. The Republican Party has become the party of the government status quo, and conservatives see no reason to reward it with their votes.