The Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal last week published eleven news stories about citizens using a firearm to stop a crime. Here are three examples.

Dave Gram was a long time reporter for the Associated Press, is currently the host of what’s billed on WDEV as a “news talk” radio show (not an editorial or opinion show), and is an affiliated reporter with VT Digger. Today he was allowed to publish on that last platform a personal attack on another journalist, Guy Page, writer/publisher of Vermont Daily and news editor with VTWatercooler.com.

Slavery was and is a horrible, dehumanizing institution, but to call it the United States’ “original sin” and to tear down statues and deface memorials to our founders (not to be confused with Confederate generals) is historically ignorant and dangerous. Slavery was hardly an original concept in the late 18^th and 19^th Century. In fact, pretty much every society since the modern version of humans evolved had slavery up until that time.

The Greeks had slaves. The Romans had slaves. The Egyptians had slaves to build the pyramids, and the Chinese had slaves to build the Wall. Vikings enslaved Saxons. Muslims enslaved Vikings. The English enslaved Irish and Scots. The Russians had serfs (potAYto, potAHto). The Incas, Mayans and Aztecs all had slavery, as did the North American native tribes. African nations had slaves themselves and sold them to European slave traders. Slavery was the norm for all 5500 or so years of recorded human history — until those crusty, old, dead, European white guys abolished it.

The GWSA is likely to land on Gov. Scott’s desk at the end of August. There are five reasons why it deserves his veto. “He can take his stand on the liberties and economic well-being of Vermonters, accountable democracy, constitutional separation of powers, far more important spending priorities, and protecting the state from costly virtue-signaling nuisance suits, all in a misbegotten bill that will produce no detectable effect on climate.”

The Senate may be about ready to vote on the Global-Warming Solutions Act (H.688). The bill, heavily promoted by the Energy Action Network, would create a counterfeit government within the government, instruct state agencies to issue rules (that no legislator would ever vote on) governing anything and everything needed to drive down Vermont carbon dioxide emissions to arbitrary levels, and authorize law suits against the state if the process isn’t fast enough to suit the climate warriors. Responsible Senators should consign the democracy-shredding GWSA to a place of eternal rest.

The pressure of the pandemic and imminent huge budget deficits require that Vermont launch a thoroughgoing Performance Review, not just to “squeeze out waste”, but to bring state government back to focusing its core functions. Barack Obama can explain to Democrats the need to tackle this task.