Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

October 1, 2007

Morrisville, North Carolina resident Kent Kauffman was having a really bad week. His beloved dog had just died of kidney failure. And he had just caught a nasty cold. And then Kent caught sight of police lights in his rear-view mirror.

Officer Chris Gill gave Kent a ticket for failing to wear a seat belt. Speaking with the policeman through his minivan window, Kent yielded to an irrepressible urge to cough. The officer promptly seized him, threw him first into the side of the patrol car and then face-down on the ground, then cuffed his hands cuffed his back.

?He kept yelling at me to get up. I told him, `I can't move, man, I'm sick,'? recalled Kent.

Despite the fact that Kent never touched or threatened Gill, he was charged with assault on a government official, which carries a 60-day jail sentence.

If we remain in any sense a genuinely free society, how can someone be arrested for coughing in the presence of a police officer?

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