The old year is closing chapters on some things as 2025 winds down, and the new year awaits mere days away to welcome new challenges and opportunities.

Here are some observations in the waning year and looking ahead to 2026.

VINDICATION

Free speech in America doesn't extend to deliberate defamatory comments. If one private citizen calls another a "criminal" or "traitor" or "terrorist" in public, that's not an opinion. Those terms have factual meanings, and to willfully misrepresent facts in order to cause harm (such as damage to professional reputation and loss of income) is unlawful.

Fortunately, the law provides both remedies and penalties for libel, slander and defamation.

That's what a Jonesboro man found out this week, when a jury determined he had defamed two teachers who attended the Jan. 6, 2021, rally in Washington, D.C., and ordered him to pay each teacher $20,000 in compensatory damages and $40,000 in punitive damages.

Both teachers had commented on social media that they didn't personally witness any violence that day at the Capitol, and that they were part of the overwhelming majority of people there who were peaceful protesters.

The ensuing guilt-by-association harassment that former Valley View teachers Nancy Best and Cindi Talbot suffered at the hands of the defendant is shocking (both retired in........

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