Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 12, 2010

Arizona resident Ted Mink paid a traffic ticket in Ohio on November 29, 2006. Owing to a bureaucratic error, Arizona?s DMV suspended Mink?s driver?s license for supposed non-payment of that citation.

Three years later, Mink was stopped by police officers in Arizona. A computer check by one officer turned up the unjustified suspension.

The officers wrote Mink a total of four citations and seized his car, leaving the driver ? who had just visited the podiatrist and could walk only with painful difficulty ? no way to get home. Adding gratuitous insult to their official assault, one policeman warned Mink that hitchhiking would result in his arrest.

After much trouble and expense, Mink was able to recover his vehicle and restore what are called ?driving privileges.? A lawsuit he filed is working its way through the courts. Whatever the outcome, Mink?s experience reminds us that the greatest danger faced by motorists is discretionary abuse at the hands of armed strangers in government-issued costumes.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.