Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

September 15, 2009

If you?re a resident of Nampa, Idaho, and you suspect that the ?friendly? police officer who pulls up next to you is sizing you up as a revenue-producing snack, you?re probably right.

Nampa is one of several cities involved in a federally subsidized pilot program involving forced blood tests for people accused of DUI. That?s why Officer Darryll Dowell, who is part of a ?select cadre? of local police assigned to act as ?officer phlebotomists,? will find himself ?looking at people?s arms and hands, thinking, `I could draw from that?.??

The specter of being pinned down and jabbed with a syringe by a policeman is intended to extort cooperation with breath tests, a less invasive (and less infection-prone) method of forcing a citizen to submit to a warrantless search of his person and provide potentially self-incriminating evidence. This kind of thing is explicitly forbidden by the Constitution ? as if that fact made any difference anymore.

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