Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

August 3, 2009

Recently in Houston, Texas, an off-duty police officer working as a security guard came upon a couple involved in a domestic quarrel.

When he intervened, the officer was overpowered by the man, who seized the officer?s Taser and threatened him with it. The officer responded by pulling his firearm and shooting the man twice, killing him.

While this incident is under investigation, the officer was not charged with criminal homicide. That means that his use of a gun to defend himself from a Taser attack is considered a proportionate response. And this, in turn, means that the Taser should be considered a lethal weapon ? not a ?less-lethal? weapon, but one as dangerous as a firearm.

Accordingly, the much-publicized incident earlier this year in which an unidentified Boise Police officer used a Taser on a handcuffed man, and threatened to tase his genitals, wasn?t mere misconduct; it was assault with a deadly weapon and should be prosecuted as such.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 31, 2009

Since 1980, the number of Americans behind bars has increased nearly five-fold. This is, in large measure, because of the federal government?s perverse insistence on criminalizing nearly every activity Congress can identify.

As Brian Walsh of the Heritage Foundation observes: ?Federal law ? now criminalizes entire categories of activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison?. Moreover, under these new laws, the government can often secure a conviction without having to prove that the ? accused even intended to commit a bad act.?

Every effort has been made to accommodate the ambitions of social engineers and prosecutors who are ?bent on using government?s ? power to punish any activity they dislike.?

It is literally impossible for Americans to know all of the laws and regulations generated by the government, much less obey them. Our rulers want us to believe that what liberties we exercise we enjoy only through their grace and indulgence.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 30, 2009

The Fort Carson-based 4th Infantry Division?s 4th Brigade Combat Team, which experienced some of the heaviest fighting during the early stages of the Iraq war, suffered a widespread breakdown of morale and military discipline. Several soldiers attached to that unit have been accused of murder and similar crimes since returning to the United States.

In interviews with the Colorado Springs Gazette, soldiers from that unit described running over Iraqi automobiles with tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Innocent taxi drivers were shot without provocation. Some Iraqi civilians were interrogated and then thrown from bridges.

?The Army pounds it into your head until it is instinct: Kill everybody, kill everybody,? explains infantry specialist Kenneth Eastridge, who is now in prison. ?And you do. Then they just think you can just come home and turn it off.?

That?s one of many reasons why wars should never be started on a whim, as happened with our tragic and unnecessary conflict in Iraq.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 29, 2009

During a recent congressional hearing, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke could not explain what had happened to more than half a trillion dollars the Fed lent to foreign central banks. What kind of institution is run in such a corrupt and lackadaisical manner?

A bi-partisan measure sponsored in the House of Representatives by Ron Paul of Texas, and by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, calls for a congressional audit of the Federal Reserve.

The proposal has earned more than 270 co-sponsors in the House, and 17 in the Senate. It has also provoked indignant and fearful condemnation from Fed Chairman Bernanke and many defenders of the status quo in the media and academia.

Opponents of the proposed audit insist it would violate the Fed?s independence and make it subservient to Congress. There is no reason for the Fed to be independent; in fact, there is no constitutional justification for its existence.

Let us end the Fed ? and take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 28, 2009

During its eight years in power, the Bush administration cut down many of the constitutional safeguards of individual liberty. So it was interesting to learn of an instance in which the administration declined to make a frontal assault on a key constitutional principle.

In early 2002, many of Bush?s key advisers, including Vice President Dick Cheney, urged him to test constitutional limits on the use of the military for domestic law enforcement by dispatching military troops into the suburbs of Buffalo, New York to arrest six terrorist suspects.

This use of the military to conduct domestic arrests is illegal under the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act. However, Cheney and his allies insisted that the use of the military as police could be justified on the grounds of national security, rather than law enforcement.

To his credit, Mr. Bush rejected those demands. But the dangerous amalgamation of the police and military has continued, albeit in a more incremental fashion.

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

Link: http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2009/07/praetorian-presumptions.html

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 27, 2009

President Obama?s statement that Cambridge, Massachusetts police had ?acted stupidly? in the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates is sound, even if his perception of the motives behind it was indefensible.

Professor Gates, a small, middle-aged black man, was arrested in his own home after a neighbor called in a tip that two men were trying to break in. The two men were Gates and his chauffeur, who were seen struggling with a stubborn front door.

When police arrived this confusion was quickly cleared up, but one officer took issue with Gates? attitude. So he arrested the professor for supposedly engaging in disorderly conduct in his own home. The charge was quickly dropped.

There was no justification to handcuff Gates and take him to jail because he said something that offended a policeman. That?s what President Obama should have said, if he felt compelled to answer questions about the matter.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 24, 2009

Let?s give Congress and the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are not deliberately seeking to destroy what remains of America?s middle class and our country?s economic vitality. But if that were their intention, how would they behave differently?

Congress recently enacted legislation to impose a Carbon tax on every productive activity for the supposed purpose of restricting so-called greenhouse gas emissions. It will suffocate what?s left of America?s industrial economy.

China has made it clear that they will not adopt similar measures. Not to worry, insists Obama?s Secretary of Commerce, Gary Locke: Americans will simply pick up the tab for China?s pollution.

During a recent meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, Locke said that because American consumption is causing greenhouse gas emissions in China, ?then quite frankly Americans need to pay for that.?

No, Mr. Locke: Social engineers like you should pay for the needless destruction of our economy.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 23, 2009

Ten years ago today, police officers and federal DEA agents swarmed Tulia, Texas. By the end of the day, 47 people, all of them black and poor, were under arrest on suspicion of drug dealing.

Eventually, nearly all of the defendants were either acquitted or pardoned, and taxpayers were saddled with a $5.9 million settlement arising from the case.

At the heart of the Tulia scandal was undercover narcotics officer Tom Coleman, who spun wild tales about a large and sophisticated drug syndicate in the tiny town. A corrupt cop wanted for theft, Coleman was the sole material witness in the investigation. The case eventually fell apart amid Coleman?s self-contradictions and disclosure of his tainted background.

The Feds funded Coleman?s multi-jurisdictional drug task force and covered up for him as long as they could. In many ways, the Tulia scandal is a perfect microcosm of the malignant fraud called the war on drugs.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 22, 2009

Government is pure consumption without useful productivity. The only things that government can actually make are criminals out of innocent people, and corpses out of living human beings.

The former principle is illustrated quite well by a bizarre story out of Haverford, Pennsylvania. A group of seven youngsters were selling lemonade door-to-door when a man named William Nickerson, who would have made a good block captain in Berlin circa 1936, called the police to complain. Nickerson thought the kids weren?t being properly supervised.

When a policeman arrived, he explained to the kids that it was against the law to sell lemonade without a permit. This struck a number of observers ? including several police officers ? as utterly bizarre.

It turns out that the ordinance was misconstrued, since it doesn?t apply to anyone younger than 16. But it?s worth wondering how many young entrepreneurs have been frustrated or forcibly shut down by that law and others like it.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 21, 2009

Too many public officials treat every instance of social conflict as a suitable opportunity for police intervention. This is particularly true of public schools that follow ?Zero Tolerance? policies regarding actual or potential violence.

Charles and Spring Towry of Sandpoint, Idaho are suing the Lake Pend Oreille (PAND-oh-RAY) School District over the arrest of their 8-year-old autistic girl last January. A dispute over the girl?s favorite sweatshirt degenerated into a situation in which several teachers forcibly restrained the girl. She reacted by kicking, pinching, and spitting at the teachers.

Mrs. Towry was called to the school, and she arrived just in time to see her 8-year-old daughter being taken away in handcuffs by the police. She was held for an hour, booked on suspicion of battery, and then released.

Whatever the merits of the Towrys? lawsuit, something has obviously gone seriously awry when police see fit to slap handcuffs on the wrists of an eight-year-old girl.

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