Do Police Ever Stop Lying?

by Will

Liberty Minute May 9 2014

Brooklyn resident Robert Jackson was sitting in his parked truck outside his home in April 2013 when it was rammed by a police vehicle that was being driven down the wrong side of the street. After Jackson got out to inspect the damage and to exchange insurance information, he was surrounded by a scrum of eight police officers who beat him and arrested him in front of his children.

If the incident hadn?t been captured on video, Jackson most likely would have been sent to prison on the word of the officers responsible for the accident.

Wisconsin resident Tanya Weyker was left with a broken neck when Milwaukee County Deputy Joseph Quiles ran a stop sign and t-boned her car. Despite the fact that the officer was at fault, and Weyker wasn?t intoxicated, the 25-year-old victim was arrested and spent a year fighting the spurious charge of driving under the influence.

Quiles, of course, falsified his report, claiming that he had come to a full stop and looked both ways before going through the intersection. Although he was briefly suspended, Quiles remains on the force ? on paid medical leave.  

Not every law enforcement officer is a reflexive, opportunistic liar ? but so many meet that description that the profession itself is unworthy of our trust.

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

Only Sick and Evil People Resist Progressivism

by Will

Liberty Minute May 8 2014

 

In the years following World War II, a group of academics led by Marxist Theodor Adorno compiled a large and thoroughly dishonest study entitled ?The Authoritarian Personality.? This wasn't a work of scholarship. It was an ideological polemic intended to treat conservatives and traditionalists as people harboring secret impulses toward fascism.

 

The study treated conservatism as both a moral flaw and a form of mental illness. This isn't surprising, given that the Soviet Union ? to which Adorno and some of his colleagues bore allegiance ? treated opposition to socialism as a mental disorder.

 

The Adorno thesis has recently been revived as an explanation for the emergence of the Tea Party and other grassroots right-wing movements. In an article compiling several recent studies and books critical of the resurgent right, the leftist journal Salon concludes that conservatives are cognitively inferior to Progressives, and that many are latent psychopaths.

 

From that perspective, conservatives aren't merely mistaken about politics; they are to be regarded as innately evil and suitable only to be controlled by wiser and more insightful people.

 

Nearly all Progressives eventually embrace the conceit that only deranged and immoral people object to being ruled by them.

 

 

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

The American Criminal Justice System is Dead

by HUMPHREY Email

Liberty Minute May 5 2014

A profoundly troubling study published by the University of Texas School of Law concludes that the American criminal justice system is dead in everything but name. The paper, entitled ?Waiving the Criminal Justice System,? describes how the adversarial process through which the state must prove the guilt of a defendant has been supplanted with a system of administrative law in which prosecutors extract plea bargains in exchange for relatively lenient sentences. This is why federal prosecutors win more than ninety percent of their cases through plea bargains, rather than jury trials.

This is a lamentable state of affairs, and to many observers a familiar story. This study, however, breaks new ground by showing that prosecutors at both the state and federal levels require defendants to waive   due process rights that are vital for post-conviction appeals ? such as the right to effective assistance of counsel, and the right to obtain exculpatory evidence that can be used to overturn a conviction or at least obtain a new trial.

In the American tradition, the purpose of a trial was to establish the truth of an accusation against a defendant who is presumed to be innocent. The purpose of our post-constitutional criminal system is to ratify the defendant's guilt, irrespective of the facts.

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

"Non-Lethal" in Police Hands, Yet "Lethal" when used by Citizens

by Will

Liberty Minute May 7 2014

 

The Milwaukee Police Department is among the most violent and corrupt in the country. Several years ago, a group of patrol officers created a secretive club called the ?Punishers? that was responsible for a string of unprovoked criminal assaults. Another group of officers was sentenced to prison for conducting warrantless strip-searches that involved sexual assault.

 

A resident of Milwaukee who faces unexpected attention from the police thus has cause for abundant concern. On April 30, a homeless man who had fallen asleep on the street awoke to find himself confronted by an officer. When he didn't immediately cooperate with a pat-down, the officer began beating him with a baton. The victim managed to seize the weapon and use it to ward off his attacker ? who drew his sidearm and shot the man to death. Chief Ed Flynn has described this as an act of self-defense on the part of the officer.

 

Like tasers, police batons are imbued with curious properties that make them ?non-lethal? instruments when used by cops to electrocute or beat a helpless person to death ? but that transform them into ?lethal weapons? when they wind up in the unconsecrated hands of ordinary citizens.

 

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

Bunkerville is being terrorized -- by the BLM

by Will

Liberty Minute May 6 2014

  

Shortly after the BLM was compelled to return cattle the agency had stolen from Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, Nevada Senator Harry Reid condemned Bundy and the protesters who supported him as ?domestic terrorists.?

 

Reid's fellow Democrat, Nevada Congressman Steve Horsford, amplified that smear, breathlessly claiming that some of Bundy's armed supporters had set up checkpoints on rural roads outside of Bunkerville, and were supposedly harassing and intimidating local residents. According to Congressman Horsford, the alleged victims were too terrified to speak out publicly.

 

Many Bunkerville residents are frightened, and they set aside their fears to speak at a town hall meeting on May 1. However, it wasn't Mr. Bundy and his supporters who prompted those fears ? but rather the violent behavior of the BLM, and the refusal of the Clark County Sheriff's Office to restrain the agency's paramilitary enforcement personnel.

 

Several of the participants in the meeting expressed disappointment over the conduct of Sheriff Doug Gillespie, and appreciation to the citizen volunteers who had intervened when the sheriff's office failed to protect the community.

 

Despite his professed concerns for the safety of his constituents, Congressman Horsford didn't have time to pay a brief fact-finding visit to Bunkerville to find out what and whom they were afraid of.

  

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

The American Criminal Justice System is Dead

by Will

Liberty Minute May 5 2014

 

A profoundly troubling study published by the University of Texas School of Law concludes that the American criminal justice system is effectively dead. The paper, entitled ?Waiving the Criminal Justice System,? describes how the adversarial process through which the state must prove the guilt of a defendant has been supplanted with a system of administrative law in which prosecutors extract plea bargains in exchange for relatively lenient sentences. This is why federal prosecutors win more than ninety percent of their cases through plea bargains, rather than jury trials.


This is a lamentable state of affairs, and to many observers a familiar story. This study, however, breaks new ground by showing that prosecutors at both the state and federal levels require defendants to waive   due process rights that are vital for post-conviction appeals ? such as the right to effective assistance of counsel, and the right to obtain exculpatory evidence that can be used to overturn a conviction or at least obtain a new trial.

 

In the American tradition, the purpose of a trial was to establish the truth of an accusation against a defendant who is presumed to be innocent. The purpose of our post-constitutional criminal system is to ratify the defendant's guilt, irrespective of the facts.

 

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

Donald Sterling's Scarlet Letter

by Will

Liberty Minute May 2 2014                                      

 

 

Donald Sterling, the billionaire real estate mogul who owns the NBA's LA Clippers franchise, has been fined $2.5 million by the league, which also banned him for life after a recording surfaced of racist comments he made to his girlfriend.

 

The NBA is entitled to impose on Sterling whatever sanctions are authorized in its contract with him. Sterling, a married octogenarian who keeps company with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter, has a history of making derogatory comments about non-whites. Yet as Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo pointed out, business competition made it necessary for a man with bigoted views to employ many young black men, and make millionaires out of his most productive employees.

 

HL Mencken once defined Puritans as the kind of people who are haunted by the suspicion that somewhere, somebody might be enjoying himself. Those who subscribe to the post-Christian variety of Puritanism that afflicts our country are similarly obsessed with the idea that somebody somewhere might be entertaining politically incorrect thoughts, or giving voice to bigoted opinions.

 

As the case of Donald Sterling demonstrates, such people are likewise primed and eager to engage in orgies of accusation and vilification whenever those illicit sentiments are given expression.

 

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

Police Have "Complete Power Over You"

by Will

Liberty Minute April 30 2014

There is a tidy, one-word description of a system of government in which the state claims power over every aspect of a subject?s life: Totalitarianism. Ed Brown, the incumbent sheriff of North Carolina?s Onslow County, unwittingly displayed a totalitarian mindset in an advertisement for his re-election campaign.

According to the ad, which was written by the sheriff himself, ?Those in the law enforcement profession have complete power over you, your life, your family, your loved ones, your rights, your freedom, your future and everything precious to life.?

After some local citizens objected to Sheriff Brown?s all-encompassing definition of law enforcement powers, Brown claimed that his critics had taken his words out of context. The sheriff insists that his intent was to say that the criminal justice system ?covers and protects? every aspect of a citizen?s life. But this paternalistic view doesn?t alter the claim that police have power over citizens ? in other words, that they are masters, rather than servants.

Peace officers are citizens who assist others in the protection of person and property. Such people are to be appreciated. Law enforcers view themselves as overseers of lesser people. That conceit has no place in a genuinely free society.

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

Vilify, Isolate, then Liquidate: The Regime Targets Cliven Bundy

by Will

Liberty Minute April 28 2014

Whatever his other faults, Cliven Bundy is not a racist ? at least on the evidence of the carefully edited statement originally publicized by the New York Times.

In an impromptu speech to supporters on April 19, the embattled Nevada rancher described how the modern welfare state has undermined the black family, and expressed the hope that peaceful activism could reduce the size and invasiveness of government bureaucracy.

Like Dr. Walter Williams, a black economist and author, Bundy suggested that in some ways the welfare state has done more damage to the black family than slavery had done. Bundy also had sympathetic words for Mexicans, including illegal immigrants, whom he described as decent, hard-working, family-centered people.

Through the alchemy of ideologically inspired malice, the New York Times transmute those comments into the product of inveterate racism, creating a narrative that resulted in the immediate denunciation of Bundy by media and political figures who had supported him. The objective is to leave Bundy without public sympathy when the Feds finally deal with him.

This follows a familiar three-step process -- -developed by the Soviets, but employed by the Regime ruling us, as well --  for dealing with dissenters and non-conformists: First they are vilified, then isolated, then finally liquidated.

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

The Society Our Rulers would Prefer

by Will

Liberty Minute April 25, 2014

 

Every failure of government to carry out its self-defined task of protecting the public results in the enhancement of the power of the officials and institutions responsible for that failure ? and no accountability for their incompetence.

This phenomenon was on display during this year?s Boston Marathon, the first to take place since last year?s lethal bombing. While the government-aligned media fed the public a narrative of triumph and undaunted courage, the city of Boston was locked down. Helicopter gunships plied the skies over streets that had been shut down and clotted with armored troops carrying assault rifles. Train stations were shuttered; police at checkpoints across the city demanded identification and conducted warrantless searches and seizures.

One resident reports: ?I was nearly arrested this morning heading into the office and had my briefcase searched ? twice ? within a distance of fifty feet.  Police don?t like it when you remind them of the necessity for probable cause or articulable individualized suspicion.?

This is how society looks when those who presume to rule us are given an excuse ? and any excuse will do ? to manage affairs as they would prefer to. This is why they are the least qualified, and least trustworthy, to provide for our security.

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

<< 1 ... 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 ... 178 >>