When a locally owned and operated independent newspaper publishes its 900th issue, it’s worth taking note. Remarkable as this 22nd-year milestone might be, given the Quad Cities’ over-saturated media market, what makes the Reader’s longevity truly extraordinary lies with its small staff. Our dedicated team has consistently infused the publication with original ideas, creative story angles, in-depth analysis, exhaustive inventorying of our area’s culture, self-deprecating humor, and mad skills in generating effective client advertising. And the Reader’s availability on the stands is ubiquitous (some say maybe taken for granted) thanks to a distribution force to be reckoned with. As a wordsmith, I can tell you there are none adequate to express the gratitude, admiration, respect, and undying affection we have for our team.

A mainstay for these 900 issues has been to cover topics under-reported in the mainstream media, informing readers about critical issues and perspectives otherwise absent in conventional coverage. Such topics that deserve deep scrutiny in 2016 are many and varied. Here are some to kick off the next 900 issues.

Below is a very rudimentary primer on Islam concepts and definitions for the average American who does virtually no research - without which most opinions are grossly uninformed - beyond mainstream newspapers and broadcasts.

It is essential to understand that Islam is a beautifully rich and spiritually lofty religion, whose precepts most Christians, Jews, and people of other faiths would gladly embrace because they have far more similarities than differences. Controversies arise from vastly different interpretations of small parts of Islam that take on epic proportions inside the Muslim community (Ummah) as well as the outside world.

Reuters released a special report late last year that went largely under the corporate media's radar. Titled "The Echo Chamber," it exposed that at the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), "a handful of lawyers now dominates the docket."

"The Echo Chamber" examined 10,300 petitions before the Supreme Court from 2004 through 2012, triangulating the number of appeals filed, the names of attorneys and their firms, and the percentage of appeals accepted and heard by SCOTUS.

Some high points:

1) Sixty-six of 17,000 lawyers' appeals were at least six times more likely to be heard than all other lawyers' submissions combined in that same period.

2) These 66 lawyers account for less than 1 percent of lawyers who filed appeals with SCOTUS yet were involved in 43 percent of the cases chosen to be heard.

3) Fifty-one of these 66 lawyers represent corporate interests, turning SCOTUS "into an echo chamber - a place where an elite group of jurists embraces an elite group of lawyers who reinforce narrow views of how the law should be construed."

4) Twelve top firms had an 18-percent success rate in getting their petitions heard and were involved in a third of the cases before SCOTUS. Of the business-related cases accepted by SCOTUS, these top firms were involved in 60 percent.

5) Out of 8,000 firms doing business at the Supreme Court, 31 firms accounted for 44 percent of all cases heard by SCOTUS.

6) A group of eight lawyers accounted for 20 percent of all arguments made before SCOTUS in the past decade versus 30 attorneys in the decade before, demonstrating the diminishing circle of influence at the high court.

7) Demographically, of the 66 top lawyers, 63 are Caucasian and only eight are female. Thirty-one worked as clerks for SCOTUS; 25 worked in high-level positions for the U.S. Office of the Solicitor General, whose attorneys represent the government before SCOTUS; and 14 worked for both, making them "consummate insiders."

Halfway through 2015 already, and the stunning lack of oversight for increasing lawlessness remains unchanged - and it's arguably even more rampant. It is hard to fathom how the children of the '60s and '70s - the ones who objected loudly enough to end the Vietnam War, who forced the resignation of a president, and who history will show as the last generation that exceeded the standard of living of their parents - are the primary culprits in this devolution of the rule of law.

We have mostly fossils running the travesty that is government partnering with monster corporations - the industry leaders who control all aspects of infrastructure manufacturing, as well as primary services such as finance, health care, insurance, academia, and media, thereby virtually eliminating meaningful competition in America.

Americans need to admit that capitalism is no longer the economic model here, and hasn't been for decades. Capitalism depends on competition to succeed as an economic model first and foremost. Once government enters the arena with legislation and regulations that favor certain corporations and enterprises over others, capitalism is corrupted and morphs into something else. The better descriptor is fascism, where a small percentage of private-sector interests own, but government controls, most of a nation's resources. Socialism differs only in the ownership, leaving government owning and controlling those resources.

America is fast departing from its founding governing principles as a republic under the rule of law with a free-market capitalistic economic model as its underpinning. Administrative law is the largest contributor to this erosion, providing a massive set of rules and regulations administered by the executive branch at the federal and state levels, with counties mostly responsible for local implementation, to enforce broad legislation that is rarely read by the legislators who approve it. This behemoth of an unaccountable governing apparatus, no longer able to justify itself by any measure as representative of the people, derives its authority under a different primary directive altogether - known as "continuity of government."