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About this series
 "Losing Liberty," an ongoing series of commentaries by The Detroit News editorial page staff and other writers, will focus on the damage we're doing to the Bill of Rights.
First Amendment
Due Process
Privacy
Education
Submission Guidelines
Letters
You can send letters to The Detroit News three different ways. You can send an e-mail to letters@detnews.com.
You can send us a fax to (313) 222-6417. Or you can send a letter by mail to The Detroit News, Letters, Editorial Page, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226. Please include home and work phone numbers, plus city of residence, for verification.
We prefer letters of 250 words or less. Direct rebuttals to editorials may be up to 300 words. Letters are subject to editing and become the property of The Detroit News. We do not consider letters to other publications.
Commentary
The Detroit News accepts submissions of commentaries between 600 and 750 words on current public policy and societal issues on the local, state, national and international scene. The work must be the author's own and it must be exclusive to The Detroit News in Southeast Michigan. We do not accept articles that have been submitted to the Free Press.
Please submit to Richard Burr, Associate Editor / Features, Editorial Page, The Detroit News, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226, or fax to (313) 222-6417, or e-mail to oped@detnews.com.
First priority is given to local and state topics written by Michigan writers. Because of the large volume of commentary submissions The Detroit News receives, we can only publish a few on any given week. We try to let writers know by phone or mail of The News' final decision.
© Copyright 2003 The Detroit News.
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Losing Liberty: EDUCATION
Sunday, December 7, 2003
Nolan Finley
Students learn wrong freedom lessons
Educators call them teachable moments, opportunities beyond the textbooks and classrooms to convey a lesson using a real life experience. 12/07/03
Editorial
America Fails to Teach Its Own Success Story
America is raising children and graduating students who are ignorant of their democratic heritage and legacy of liberty. 12/07/03
Henry Payne / The Detroit News
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Judge Damon Keith
Schools should teach value of informed dissent
In the 228 years since the great man of British letters Samuel Johnson first penned the phrase "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," it has been quoted so often that it has almost been reduced to a cliche. 12/07/03
Losing Liberty: FIRST AMENDMENT
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Foreign Courts Threaten Free Press on Internet
Free speech on the Internet is being threatened by foreign courts claiming jurisdiction over American web sites. 11/19/03
Terror War Tests Commitment to Freedom of Speech
Every war tests America's commitment to its free speech ideals. The war on terrorism is no different. 11/19/03
Trading freedom for security is 'a false choice'
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), was recently interviewed by Detroit News editorial writer Shikha Dalmia. The following are excerpts. 11/19/03
Unlike Britain, a free press gives America heat and light
The current royal scandal has Great Britain's news media playing connect-the-dots. 11/19/03
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Rules Stifling Free Speech Damage Democracy
Americans' guaranteed freedom to speak their minds without fear of retaliation is under attack from both the right and the left. 11/18/03
Universities become censorship zones
For those who still believe America's colleges and universities treasure free speech, I would like to introduce Texas Tech University's "free speech gazebo." It is only 20 feet in diameter, but, up until this summer, it was the sole area on campus where Tech's 28,000 students could demonstrate, make speeches and pamphleteer without giving the university six days' advance notice. 11/18/03
Monday, November 17, 2003
A Curtain of Secrecy Now Covers the First Amendment
 A rapid and unprecedented growth of government secrecy is undermining the founding principles of American democracy. 11/17/03
Government keeps information from citizens
Driving to work after dropping the kids at school, your usual route is closed due to a multicar accident. As you pass the scene, you recognize the car of the mayor and a car that looks like your neighbor's in the tangled pile. 11/17/03
Sunday, November 16, 2003
Press, Speech Freedoms Fall Victim to Terrorism War
"Democracies die behind closed doors," wrote federal Judge Damon J. Keith, in a now-famous decision opening the deportation hearing of a suspected terrorist collaborator from Ann Arbor. 11/16/03
Nolan Finley
Free speech, press threatened
Several years ago the Ku Klux Klan dropped by the Detroit City Council to ask for a permit to march and rally downtown. 11/16/03
Free speech strengthens democracy
Free speech is as important today as when the Founding Fathers created this right in the First Amendment. But unless Americans understand how the dissent and social change that free speech sometimes brings advances our democracy, the vibrancy of free speech may slowly be choked. 11/16/03
Losing Liberty: DUE PROCESS
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Congress and the Courts Must Protect Civil Liberties
Americans have two avenues to check a president who tries to bend the Constitution to his own advantage: Congress and the courts. 09/17/03
Terror war challenges freedoms
Detroit News readers respond to the potential loss of their liberties in the name of homeland security. 09/17/03
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Military Tribunals Challenge America's Legal Tradition
America faces a question that could decide whether it remains a nation of principles, guided by laws it holds sacred even in a time of tremendous fear and uncertainty. 09/16/03
U.S. should respect rights of war prisoners
Which of the hundreds of persons imprisoned by U.S. forces since 9-11 are "prisoners of war" and which fall outside this category? The question is important because those who fall into the latter group -- sometimes called "unlawful enemy combatants" -- are not entitled to the rights and protections afforded prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. 09/16/03
Monday, September 15, 2003
Patriot Act Heightens Assault on Civil Liberties
Protecting its people is Job One of any government -- keeping them safe from an external enemy or lawless elements of its own society. 09/15/03
White House squanders safeguards
To the layperson looking at Attorney General John Ashcroft's now-infamous road show in defense of the USA Patriot Act, the whole ruckus must look rather comical. 09/15/03
Sunday, September 14, 2003
Nolan Finley
Protect freedom's safeguards
Fifteen years ago, Americans were asked in a Gallup poll whether they'd trade some of their civil liberties for a victory in the drug war. Sixty-two percent said yes. 09/14/03
Editorial
Key Legal Shields Forfeited in War on Terrorism
The scene has become almost commonplace -- a jubilant inmate is freed from his cell after DNA testing proves he didn't commit the crime that sent him to prison. 09/14/03
Commentary
Letting guard down would allow Bush to take away rights and liberties for good
America is a great country because it is a free country. And America is a free country because our Constitution limits the powers of presidents, senators, prosecutors and police officers. If government officials had carte blanche power to wiretap our phones, search our homes and arrest our friends, our country would not be free. 09/14/03
Democracy ensures rights increase over time; Bush policies don't threaten Constitution
H.L. Mencken once criticized "practical politics" as aiming to "keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary," and he was not exaggerating much. One can find such practical politicians on both sides of the debate on civil liberties. 09/14/03
Losing Liberty: PRIVACY
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
Nolan Finley
Americans must hold tight to freedom
Reach back in time and pluck a citizen off the streets of 1903 America. Pull that person forward and plop him down in the exact same spot in today's world. No doubt, he'd find the surrounding buildings, vehicles and garb stunningly unfamiliar. 06/22/03
Forfeiting Privacy Will Destroy the Essence of America
Privacy, cherished by Americans as essential to the pursuit of happiness, is giving way to technological leaps and societal paranoia. 06/22/03
Citizens need to protect the Bill of Rights
It is a challenge to assess whether a given civil liberties problem is a one-time violation or indicates a larger attack on the Bill of Rights. We do not want to cry wolf, but we also do not want to miss the boat. 06/22/03
Stop Technology from Destroying Privacy
The Police recorded a love song in the '80s that pledged, "Every move you make ... every step you take, I'll be watching you." 06/23/03
Put controls on emerging 'surveillance state'
The convergence of privacy-invading technologies and Washington's appetite for surveillance have put civil liberties on the run. This is especially true in the war against terrorism. 06/23/03
Patriot Act Amounts to War on Privacy
The USA Patriot Act has become an all-season license for the federal government to fish for information on law-abiding citizens in the name of national security. 06/24/03
Privacy becomes a casualty
In speaking with a large group of student interns on Capitol Hill recently -- students from across the country and the ideological spectrum -- I asked a simple question: "When you communicate with others by e-mail, do you consider your communications private?" 06/24/03
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