?I know my rights!? That is one of those phrases we all like to have in our arsenal if we get into a struggle, particularly with the government or a financial institution. But another phrase that is just as appropriate, especially when it comes to the rights that the legal system gives us is, ?Use it or lose it.?

As much as we malign lawyers and hold the government up for ridicule, there are a lot of laws on the books that are here to protect ordinary citizens like you and I. The real crime then is when we don?t make ourselves aware of those rights or fail to take advantage of them. Nowhere is the problem more glaring then when it comes to the laws concerning estate planning, wills, trusts and inheritance.

Any estate planning lawyer can guide us through the steps of setting up legally binding documents to make sure that whatever is ours when we do pass on to the next life through death will go to the ones we want to have it. Amazingly, many people just do not take advantage of estate planning laws and their heirs find themselves trying to take care of their loved ones wishes with no will in place to protect their property.

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We live in a time when there is a lot of debate on how the government might take measures to assure reliable and affordable resources of power, particularly in light of our ongoing gas crisis. We also live in a time when we are trying to find our way as to our role in conservation and the proper way to handle the natural world so we can live ?green? and not damage the environment. Thirdly, we live in a time of remarkable natural disasters such as devastating hurricanes, fires and floods.

All of these symptoms remind us of another time in our history when a certain area of the country was clearly a candidate for some form of government program to address all of these problems. This area is called the Tennessee Valley in northern Alabama. The area that was under particular study was known as Muscle Shoals because of a dramatic drop in elevation of the Tennessee river drops 140 feet in just under 30 miles which creates a series of dramatic and violent rapids and waterfalls that locals came to refer to as the ?Muscle Shoals?. It is an area so well known that it was celebrated in the well known song Sweet Home Alabama with the verse?

?Now Muscle Shoals has got the swampers. And they?ve been known to pick a song or two. Lord they get me off so much. They pick me up when I?m feeling blue. Now how about you??

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Many governmental agencies and organizations get a lot of notice, both positive and negative. When the tragedy at Waco occurred several years ago in which the ATF worked to save the lives of so many innocents trapped in the Branch Dividian compound, the ATF took a lot of criticism when that episode ended badly. And yet it is the ATF that works so tirelessly to assure that we can be a nation that enjoys the rights we do but do so safely and within the laws.

FEMA the FBI, CIA, The IRS, Congress, The Supreme Court and of course, the Presidency all get lots of public attention, both bad and good because what they do touch the lives of all Americans routinely. But one small agency that works under the Department of the Army has a tremendous influence on the quality of life for all Americans. And yet it goes about its good business quietly as quiet heroes. That agency is the Corps of Engineers.

Most of us think of the Corps of Engineers in regard to the phenomenal works that were accomplished In the building of the many massive dam projects and other public works that do so much to control natural resources both to protect communities against natural disaster such as flooding or hurricanes and to exploit the natural environment such the drawing of energy from the natural elements such as the waters with dams.

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To even mention the name of this government institution can set off waves of anxiety and stories of abuse and persecution that is unheard of for virtually any other governmental body in this country. It?s really amazing the ability of three little words to instill fear in the hearts of an American citizen when those three little words are ? Internal Revenue Service.

When we look a little closer at the mission of the IRS and their actual record of how they handle most of their cases, the level of hysteria we get ourselves into is really pretty silly. For the most part, the abuses and draconian methods that we think of when we talk about the IRS are urban myth. You would think that the IRS existed solely to imprison the American people, take all of their property and make our lives miserable either through audits that resemble the Spanish Inquisition or by keeping us all in constant terror.

This is not to say that over the decades there have not been some abuses that have earned the IRS as least some of the reputation it is still working to live down. Yes, you can dig back and find some pretty awful abuses that the IRS has committed against citizens in the name of tax collection. But to be fair, we can find abuses in many governmental bodies, particularly those with a mission to carry out that is undercover or violent. We can think of phenomenal stories of violence and unethical behavior by the ATF, The FBI, The CIA and all branches of the military. But we don?t as a population cringe in terror in talking about those governmental bodies the way we do when the subject of the IRS comes up in conversation.

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The law is not a stagnant thing. It is constantly changing, evolving and adapting to new situations and new crimes that must be identified and understood so appropriate laws can be passed to protect honest people from the dishonest ones. This can be a tricky process, especially in this age when crimes using the internet make detection and evidence so difficult.

Identity theft is a perfect example of a crime that should be aggressively attacked from the legal community. But because it is a crime that is always changing and adapting, it is sometimes difficult for the legal community to get a firm definition of what identity theft is and particularly how to codify it into a system of laws that can be used to effectively stop it.

Probably the biggest problem with enforcing laws that will lead to the conviction of identity thieves is to develop ways to keep the evidence long enough to seek a conviction. Until we can give law enforcement sufficient tools both to identify and capture identity theft criminals and then to gather sufficient evidence to get a conviction, identity theft will continue to be an allusive enemy.

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Creative people of all types all come back to one legal touchstone and that is copyright law. It is often sited in all kinds of cases involving literature, film, publishing and certainly in music. Within the music industry, the ability of copyright to protect an artist?s work has come under new challenges in the last ten years. The rise of peer-to-peer file sharing, online music downloading and other internet related ways that music gets passed around has presented some real challenges to musicians to collect what is due them as owners of music under copyright.

There are numerous royalty rights associated with the writing, publication, performance and distribution of music that have to be sorted out by a complicated infrastructure that the music industry maintains to protect its own. But when you get back to the basics, the copyright of a piece of music works in music the same way it does in any literary field. That copyright, at least at first, belongs to the songwriter.

That is where the simplicity of the situation ends. For most songwriters, complete ownership of a song rarely remains the exclusive property of that author of the song. Most songwriters work with a publishing house to get their music out on the market. Even if the songwriter is writing songs for their own band, the publishing house provides the valuable service of not only publishing the song or songs but getting them out on the market to be covered or produced by others as well, if that is how the songwriter wants.

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When you think about it for very long, you wonder if there is a good reason that the United States even has a Federal Communications Commission. But with a closer look at the value this important government department adds to our public life, we can get a good perspective on the reasons we need the FCC to be there to provide some guidance for how the public airwaves are used.

The FCC grew out of a need in the early thirties to have a regulatory body to assist with issues relative to the growing radio industry in regards to monopolies on the airwaves and how radio conglomerates were handling relationships with affiliates and employees. So in 1934, Congress passed the Communications Act which expanded the Federal Radio Commission that was already in existence and gave it a wider jurisdiction. The agency that came out of this reorganization and expansion became what we now know as the Federal Communications Commission.

Much of the work of the early FCC was to work to diversify ownership of radio stations and impose some control on the powerful communications conglomerates of NBC and CBS. So the early regulatory activity of the FCC accomplished three improvements in the radio industry?

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Our federal government has literally dozens of bureaus, departments, and commissions. But of all of those agencies, there is probably none who are as ?notorious? as the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the FBI. This is an agency who?s reason for being and daily challenges are so dangerous and exotic that we often see the FBI portrayed in movies and TV shows, and almost always heroically.

It is really amazing when you think about it that the FBI is actually a very old agency. And yet in its long history, the FBI has maintained a high public approval and regard for honesty and their single-minded focus on their purpose, which is to protect the American people. That is why when we think of the FBI we think of the words of their motto which is, "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity".

The actual history of the beginnings of the FBI date back to the turn of last century with a descendent of the French general Napoleon. The President at that time was Teddy Roosevelt and it was under his Attorney General that an agency known as the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) was established in 1908, almost 100 years ago. That Attorney General was Charles Joseph Bonaparte whose grandfather was Jerome Bonaparte, the brother of the famous Napoleon.

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Government in any society is a complicated thing. In the United States, with our system of checks of balances between three powerful wings of central government layered on top of fifty individual state governments, each of which handles their checks and balances in an individual ways, our government which is summarized as ?of the people, by the people and for the people? has become a phenomenally complex thing.

After over two hundred years of history, it?s amazing to see that this government that rules the current America is still very much the product of those cornerstone documents that were written by the founding fathers, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and especially the Declaration of Independence. The national sense of self and that distinctively ?American? personality is very much interwoven with the bold statements in these documents.

For one thing, Americans have an intrinsic sense of their own rights and their ability to function separate from government. As such, government is never outside of the critical scrutiny of the people that it rules. While this seems perfectly normal to the citizens of this country, it is uncommon historically where government ruled with virtual absolute authority and the people were subservient to their leaders. To an American, the ones they elect to serve work for the public. And if they ever forget that or appear to be attempting to gather more power than they are allowed, it isn?t long before the leadership of the country is replaced. This ability of the people to peaceably ?throw the bums out? has kept government in check and constantly on edge for two centuries. And that is a good thing.

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In the day in day out creation and enforcement of laws by our government and law enforcement officials, it is a common occurrence for an issue to come up that is layered with emotional and moral questions. At the legislative level even today, our government is wrestling with issues involving cloning and stem cell research and trying to find a middle ground between the ethical, moral and religious issues versus the scientific benefit that might come from the practice.

One of the great debates has been ongoing in American society over it?s history has been over whether it is moral and right to use the death penalty as a punishment for heinous crimes. Whether one is for abolishing this form of punishment or on the side of using it as a just outcome for a criminal, there is no question that the issue itself is a difficult one to decide.

The arguments for or against the death penalty are often not offered from a legal point of view. The positions taken by those both for and against the law fall under a few general classifications?

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