Source: www.mercola.com | Original Post Date: March 4, 2015 –

For Americans, it’s that time of the year again—time to move your clocks an hour ahead; losing a precious hour of sleep in the process. For many, the time change associated with daylight savings time¹ (DST) also means spending several days or even weeks feeling generally off-kilter.

As reported by Prevent Disease:²

“A study, published in 2007… combined surveys from 55,000 people in central Europe with data on 50 individuals’ sleeping and wakefulness patterns for eight weeks around the shifts to and from daylight saving time.
The researchers found people never fully adjust their circadian rhythms to the hour shift associated with daylight saving time (or, as it is known in Europe, summer time).
Springing ahead by an hour, however, was most difficult for night owls — people prone to wake up and go to sleep late, they found.”[Emphasis mine]

Today and every year, “NEVER FORGET” echoes through the neighborhoods, cities, and Facebook statuses of America. 14 years after 9/11, Americans still bear the cross of a nation victimized and scorned after the brutal attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. While Americans — and politicians who are still intent on capitalizing on the tragedy — vow never to forget the fateful day, far too many citizens forget the liberties they have relinquished as a result. Lest today’s valiantly waving flags, government ceremonies, and TV news specials replaying the plane crashes coax you into forgetting, these nine essential freedoms have been usurped since 9/11:

1. The liberty to not be spied upon: Essential to a free society — at least as the founders of the United States saw it — was the freedom to be left alone. In the not too distant past, government agencies suspicious of citizens had to obtain warrants to investigate private citizens...

Two years after Edward Snowden first leaked information about the National Security Agency’s illegal domestic spying programs, the once-cynical whistleblower is now striking a more optimistic tone about what he sees as a rising “post-terror” America.

In an op-ed published Thursday in The New York Times, whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden reflected on how circumstances have changed on the two-year anniversary of his first leaks. “Two years ago today, three journalists and I worked nervously in a Hong Kong hotel room, waiting to see how the world would react to the revelation that the National Security Agency had been making records of nearly every phone call in the United States. In the days that followed, those journalists and others published documents revealing that democratic governments had been monitoring the private activities of ordinary citizens who had done nothing wrong,” wrote Snowden in the opening of his retrospective.