Inside the long-awaited package, six pages of government paperwork dryly affirmed Carol Tapanila's anxious request. But when Tapanila slipped the contents from the brown envelope, she saw there was something more.

"We the people...." declared the script inside her U.S. passport - now with four holes punched through it from cover to cover. Her departure from life as an American was stamped final on the same page: "Bearer Expatriated Self."

With the envelope's arrival, Tapanila, a native of upstate New York who has lived in Canada since 1969, joined a largely overlooked surge of Americans rejecting what is, to millions, a highly sought prize: U.S. citizenship. Last year, the U.S. government reported a record 2,999 people renounced citizenship or terminated permanent residency; most are widely assumed to be driven by a desire to avoid paying taxes on hidden wealth.

The reality, though, is more complicated. The government's pursuit of tax evaders among Americans living abroad is indeed driving the jump in abandoned citizenship, experts say. But renouncers - whose ranks have swelled more than five-fold from a decade ago - often contradict the stereotype of the financial scoundrel. Many are from very ordinary economic circumstances.

Some call themselves "accidental Americans," who recall little of life in the U.S., but long ago happened to be born in it. Others say they renounced because of politics, family or personal identity. Some say signing away citizenship was a huge relief. Others recall being sickened by the decision.

At the U.S. consulate in Geneva, "I talked to a man who explained to me that I could never, ever get my nationality back," says Donna-Lane Nelson, whose Boston accent lingers though she's lived in Switzerland 24 years. "It felt like a divorce. It felt like a death. I took the second oath and I left the consulate and I threw up."

A sickening injustice happened this week in Philadelphia. Several Cops who were even caught on video terrorizing 22 Philly bodega owners will not be facing any criminal charges.

A Philadelphia plainclothes narcotics squad had barreled into the immigrants' bodegas, guns drawn. They had cut the wires on the stores' video surveillance systems, robbed thousands of dollars from the cash drawers, stolen food and merchandise and then trashed the shops on their way out the door.

Video from one of the heists can be seen below. One of these scumbags starts barraging the store owner, asking him if it was uploading to his computer at his house. Then he cuts the wires!

According to Philly.com, the shop owners were all legal immigrants. None had criminal records. Nor had they ever met - they hailed from four corners of the city and spoke different languages. Yet the stories they told Daily News reporters Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman were identical.

The fact that this disgusting villainy was caught on film and had 22 different witnesses makes it a fairly easy case to prosecute right? Not in police state America.

One of the cops, speaking of this incident told Philly.com that "The only way a cop can lose his job in this city is if he shoots another cop during roll call."

Modern psychiatry has become a hotbed of corruption, particularly the kind that seeks to demonize and declare mentally ill anyone who deviates from what is regarded as the norm. This is abundantly evident in the latest installment of the industry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, which dubs people who do not conform to what those in charge declare to be normal as mentally insane.

The so-called "condition" for why a person might choose to resist conformity has been labeled by the psychiatric profession as "oppositional defiant disorder," or ODD. The new DSM defines this made-up disease as an "ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior," and also lumps it in alongside attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, another made-up condition whose creator, Dr. Leon Eisenberg, admitted it to be phony on his death bed.

As you might suspect from this type of open-ended description, almost any personal behavior perceived by someone else to be undesirable or strange might be categorized as symptomatic of ODD. Children who throw temper tantrums or fight with their siblings, for instance, might be declared to have this supposed mental illness, as might children who express disagreement with their parents or teachers.

Kathleen Taylor, a neurologist at Oxford University, said that recent developments suggest that we will soon be able to treat religious fundamentalism and other forms of ideological beliefs potentially harmful to society as a form of mental illness.

She made the assertion during a talk at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales on Wednesday. She said that radicalizing ideologies may soon be viewed not as being of personal choice or free will but as a category of mental disorder. She said new developments in neuroscience could make it possible to consider extremists as people with mental illness rather than criminals.

She told The Times of London: "One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated. Someone who has for example become radicalized to a cult ideology -- we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance."

A special education teacher in Georgia set up hidden cameras to prove her claims that teacher's aides were mistreating disabled students.

The teacher said she told administrators at Harper-Archer Middle School about the abuse, but she claims they ignored her claims until she recorded the videos in February.

"If they don't believe me verbally, maybe I should set up a video," said the teacher, who asked to remain anonymous as she seeks a teaching job elsewhere.

The videos show one teacher's aide, identified as paraprofessional Alger Coleman, repeatedly assaulting an 11-year-old autistic boy, while a second aide sometimes encouraged him.

Coleman was arrested on child cruelty and simple battery charges, but the second aide has not yet been charged in the case.

Two students are suing the University of Hawaii for violating their First Amendment rights after administrator prevented them from distributing copies of the U.S. Constitution - demonstrating a frightening lack of knowledge about the very legal document they were attempting to censor.

Students Merritt Burch and Anthony Vizzone, members of the Young Americans for Liberty chapter at UH-Hilo, were prevented from handing out copies of the Constitution at a recruitment event in January. A week later, they were again informed by a censorship-minded administrator that their First Amendment-protected activities were in violation of school policy.

The students were told that they could only distribute literature from within UH-Hilo's "free speech zone," a small, muddy, frequently-flooded area on the edge of campus.

A middle school teacher reportedly admits that she gave a student a birthday lap dance in front of the entire class.

KHOU-TV reports that 42-year-old Felicia Smith gave the lap dance to a 15-year-old boy inside a Stovall Middle School classroom on Feb. 26.

According to court documents, Smith stopped the teenage boy from going to his next class and the entire class told him to sit down in a chair placed in the front of the room.

The Houston Chronicle reports Smith then gave the boy a "full-contact lap dance" and the boy told authorities she touched him all over his body, including placing her head between his legs.

At the end of the four-minute long lap dance, Smith reportedly told the boy, " I love you, baby. Happy birthday."

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy defended comments he made regarding African Americans earlier this week, as his ongoing land rights feud with the federal government receded into the background over accusations that he is a racist.

Bundy has been praised by conservative politicians and right-leaning groups for taking a stand against what they see as overreach by the US government, which claims the rancher owes taxpayers $1 million in unpaid cattle grazing fees dating back to 1993. Bundy has refused to pay, saying he doesn't owe the government anything for operating on land his ancestors have used for more than a century.

As RT reported previously, this led to an armed standoff between hundreds of armed federal officials and Bundy's own supporters - some of which included armed militia members from multiple states. That standoff ultimately ended when government officials left in order to avoid a violent escalation.

In the midst of the media firestorm that followed this event, Bundy seemingly placed the land rights conflict on the backburner by questioning whether African Americans were better off as slaves in a New York Times report.

Bundy was originally quoted saying that under government subsidy, African Americans - whom he referred to as "Negroes" - "didn't have nothing to do."

"And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?" he asked. "They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I've often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn't get no more freedom. They got less freedom."

Bundy's comments were quickly seized upon as evidence that the rancher was a racist. Politicians that had previously come out in support of his cause - Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) - quickly distanced themselves from the remarks.

"His remarks on race are offensive, and I wholeheartedly disagree with him," Paul said in a statement.

Heller, meanwhile, said he "completely disagrees with Mr. Bundy's appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in the most strenuous way."

If you live in the United States, there is a good chance that you are now living in poverty or near poverty. Nearly 50 million Americans, (49.7 Million), are living below the poverty line, with 80% of the entire U.S. population living near poverty or below it.

That near poverty statistic is perhaps more startling than the 50 million Americans below the poverty line, because it translates to a full 80% of the population struggling with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on government assistance to help make ends meet.

The always formidable defenders of free speech at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) filed a lawsuit in federal court today on behalf of a student who committed the heinous crime of handing out wee copies of the U.S. Constitution at the University of Hawaii at Hilo:

The complaint alleges that on January 16, 2014, plaintiff Merritt Burch, who is president of the UH Hilo chapter of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL), and a fellow student YAL member were participating in an outdoor event where student groups set up tables to distribute literature. Observing other students walking around and handing out items, Burch and her friend walked out from behind YAL's table to likewise hand out Constitutions and YAL information cards. A UH Hilo administrator ordered Burch and her companion to stop approaching students and get back behind their table, dismissing Burch's protest about her constitutional rights.

This is my favorite part, where the university administation tells Burch to go hand out her darned Constitutions on a tiny muddy plot on the edge of campus because "this isn't really the '60s anymore."

A week later, in an orientation meeting for student organizations, another administrator reiterated the rule against passing out literature. Burch and Vizzone were told that if they wanted to protest, the proper place to do so would be in UH Hilo's "free speech zone," a sloping, one-third acre area on the edge of campus. The "free speech zone" represents approximately 0.26 percent of UH Hilo's total area and is muddy and prone to flooding in Hilo's frequent rain. The administrator further observed, "This isn't really the '60s anymore" and "people can't really protest like that anymore."

Burch and Vizzone are challenging the denial of their right to hand out literature and policies restricting the distribution of literature. The suit also challenges UH Hilo's "free speech zone," a separate policy requiring students to request permission seven working days prior to engaging in expressive activity in two central outdoor areas on campus, and the failure of UH Hilo officials to adequately train administrators on the rights of college students.

Want to start your very own kampus kerfuffle? Grab a handful of pocket Constitutions from the Cato Institute for a dollar a pop.

Or maybe get one from a friendly cop?

[Editor's note: This video was produced by ReasonTV for educational purposes.]