I was on vacation in Europe recently when I experienced first-hand the extent to which the U.S. government will go to follow and track its citizens. It has made me very grateful that I hold dual citizenship and have a second passport.

This is what happened.

After relaxing along the Adriatic Sea in Dubrovnik for a week, my family and I decided to take a day trip to the Bay of Kotor in neighboring Montenegro. Feeling rather lazy, we opted for a group tour rather than driving south ourselves.

On August 1, independent U.S. Senate candidate Joy Allison filed a lawsuit against television stations KHNL and KGMB, collectively known as Hawaii News Now, for not allowing her to appear in a televised debate on the networks. Allison is running for the Senate seat currently held by Democrat Brian Schatz.

When my friend and IVN colleague David Yee wrote a column suggesting that the Founding Fathers might have taken issue with the practice of torturing enemies, he faced a fairly predictable barrage of well-scripted criticism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiGd3pDiItM

Upon receiving his official endorsement from Women for Kansas, independent U.S. Senate candidate Greg Orman spoke before the group on why he entered the race and about the major themes of his campaign.

George Washington cheerfully using a waterboard to "baptize the terrorists." It almost seems ludicrous invoking such imagery, but there seems to be a real psychological need to tie all of our current events and practices back to the Founding Fathers.

Last week, former Iowa state senator Kent Sorenson pleaded guilty to accepting a bribe from the Ron Paul presidential campaign to switch his support from U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann to the former Texas congressman.

In the 2014 election cycle, Victoria Jackson and Scott Lively launched campaigns for public office in their respective states, Tennessee and Massachusetts, as independent candidates. Jackson ran for a seat on the Williamson County Commission but lost by a wide margin to the incumbent earlier this month.

Scott Lively had more success. Recently, he officially qualified to appear on the ballot for Massachusetts governor.

I often ask myself: “Is America becoming a Third World country?” I’ve traveled all over the world and seen the ins and outs of developed and undeveloped nations, observing economic and political structures that work and many that don’t. And what I too often see in the Third World is that fair and equal treatment under the law often goes amiss.

On Thursday, August 28, Politico reported on a new USA Today/Suffolk University poll that said 35 percent of likely GOP caucus voters would vote for Mitt Romney in 2016 if he was added to the field of candidates. The poll released one day after it was reported that Mitt Romney was considering a third presidential run.

The race in California State Assembly District 64 was a four-way competition that ended with Democrats Mike Gipson, a member of the Carson City Council (2005-present), and Prophet La'omar Walker, an engineer and community advocate, advancing to the general election after the nonpartisan, top-two open primary.