The Barometer Online

Yea to the extreme measures people have taken to get a cheap gallon of gas. Like a drunk man in San Jose, Calif. who tried to fill his car with jet fuel after breaking into a small airport on Sunday. Nay to driving to the airport drunk - or at all. No really, that is no laughing matter - cough, cough - Dan McCarthy.

In 1999, the world's population reached six billion people. In the nine years since, our population has grown by over seven hundred million people. Adding the equivalent of the United States' population twice over to a world with shrinking farmland and growing deserts will clearly have effects in the developing nations where this growth will take place, mainly Asia and Africa, but what will the effects be here in the United States? A growing population puts pressure on natural resources and institutional capacities, but here in Oregon we're doing alright.

"This place wasn't here when I went to school," a white-haired, fuchsia-lipped woman shouted in my direction. In response, I gave her my best half-smile and a hardy agreement nod. Apparently this display of kindness was taken in a manner other than I intended.

"For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other." -Thomas Paine, "Common Sense." In American society, as in any other democratic society, there is the rule of law. But what is the rule of law? The University of Iowa Center for International Finance and Development states: "It can be understood as a legal-political regime under which the law restrains the government by promoting certain liberties and creating order and predictability regarding how a country functions.