As many of you likely have heard, The Boston Phoenix (last year re-named simply The Phoenix) has ceased publication, a victim of the harsh economic times for print journalism. The remaining skeleton staff presiding over the sad burial rites has edited and published the final issue of the paper, available only in an on-line version that can be read at http://thephoenix.com.

                I have written my final column that will be of particular interest to those of you who have been reading this rather remarkable “alternative weekly” for years. But it should also be of interest to those who have not had the pleasure of such a long-term reading experience. Here is my piece:

http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/153300-freedom-watch-my-final-phoenix-column/

Many on the left have cynically (or at least opportunistically) used James Holmes’s Aurora, Colorado rampage as an occasion to demand gun control. A more sensible and less constitutionally dubious response to this tragedy would be to enact universal reporting requirements that would allow for the aggregating of red flag-raising data, such as records of lawful but suspicious weapons sales in gun stores and unusually large online ammunition purchases. In my most recent “This Just In” piece for the Boston Phoenix, I point out that the Feds are good at inventing "terrorist" plots starring a cast of innocuous misfits, egged on by agents who don’t have enough real work to do and by informants working off some beef with the feds. Yet the feds appear less skilled at gathering accessible information that would help them uncover real crimes. We live, alas, in a national security state that is better at invading liberty than in actually providing protection.

The article after the jump...

Being Fourth of July week, it seems a particularly apt time to consider the various forms of tyranny with which we have been inundated of late. The treatment of federal prisoner (and putative “corrupt pol” – a subject on which I expect to have more to say at some future date) Salvatore DiMasi is of the stomach-churning variety. Or at least the treatment of DiMasi by federal prosecutors and “corrections” officials should churn the stomach of all decent citizens devoted to the essential respect for human dignity demanded of our government by the Bill of Rights. Please read my views on the subject in the current issue of The Boston Phoenix; the column after the jump.