Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

June 22, 2009

An official British inquiry has churned up new disclosures regarding the Bush administration?s efforts to create a pretext for war with Iraq.

The London Observer reports that a five-page memo written on January 31, 2003 describes a meeting between George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in which Bush said: ?The state date for the military campaign [is] now penciled in for 10 March. This [is] when the bombing would begin.?

The same document describes how Anglo-American diplomacy ?had to be arranged around ? military planning.?

Bush and Blair were aware that UN inspectors would fail to locate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So Bush suggested other potential triggers for war ? such as an overflight by an American U2 spy plane painted in UN colors. The intent was to provoke an attack on the plane that could provide a rationale for war.

Contriving an excuse for an unnecessary war is a repugnant crime against God and our Constitution.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

June 19, 2009

Along with his wife Suzanne, Michael Salman of Phoenix, Arizona holds regular church services and sponsors missionaries to Syria and other Middle Eastern countries.

On June 11, the Salmans? home was besieged by a swarm of police officers who detained the family for several hours. The police had been sent by the local zoning board to collect evidence that the Salmans were conducting church services in their home.

For a year and a half, the Salmans worked to comply with the zoning board?s requirements to build a 2,000-square-foot outbuilding, which cost them some $80,000. The function of that building is to entertain visitors. According to the zoning board, it is permissible to use that building to watch movies, but not to hold worship services.

A missionary from Syria who was present during the police raid on June 11 pointed out: ?We came to America to get away from this kind of persecution.?

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

A reminder:

My new radio program, Pro Libertate Radio, can be heard from 6:00-7:00 PM Central Time on the Liberty Radio News Network. Our toll-free number to take part in the program is 1-866-986-6397 (NEWS).

If you're not blessed to live within the broadcast area of a network affiliate -- a small, but stalwart and growing list -- the program is available on-line.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

June 18, 2009

In 2002, George W. Bush described Abu Zubaida, who was seized in Pakistan and detained at Guantanamo Bay, as the third-ranking member of al-Qaeda and the terrorist network?s ?chief of operations.?

CIA interrogators subjected Zubaida to controlled drowning ? more commonly called waterboarding ? 83 times. According to camp physicians, the 38-year-old Pakistani nearly died on four occasions.

After subjecting Zubaida to several years of imprisonment and torture, the CIA now admits that they were entirely mistaken. It turns out that he is not a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative and partner of Osama bin Laden, as the Bush administration claimed. In fact, he has no connection with al-Qaeda of any kind.

Zubaida?s case was used by the Bush administration and its defenders to illustrate the supposed merits of torture. It is actually an object lesson regarding both the practical deficiencies of torture as an investigative tool, and the unqualified evil of the practice.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

June 17, 2009

Vice President Joe Biden recently told representatives of police organizations that because of Sonia Sotomayor?s ?life-long commitment to law enforcement? they could be confident that she ?has your back[.]?

Sotomayor?s preferential treatment of law enforcement has led to miscarriages of justice.

Jeffery Deskovic spent 16 years ? nearly half his life ? in prison after being wrongfully convicted of rape and murder. Through abusive behavior, police extracted a false confession. The medical examiner fabricated evidence. The prosecutor was aware of all this and proceeded with the case anyway.

Deskovic filed a habeas corpus petition that missed a deadline by four days because of a clerical error. As an appellate judge Sotomayor had the discretion to waive the deadline but chose not to. Shortly thereafter the real perpetrator?s DNA was found in a database, and Deskovic was free. But Satamayor would have been content to let him stay innocently imprisoned for life.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

June 16, 2009

The public is increasingly exposed to scenes of unnecessary violence perpetrated against innocent people by police.

Many of those incidents are the product of a mind-set in which anything other than instant and unqualified submission to police orders is treated as justification for the use of force. Police in such circumstances often arrest their victims for the supposed crime of resisting arrest.

One police officer from New Jersey explains that police are trained to perceive such thing as ?Refusing to obey verbal commands, stiffening your body, putting your hands in your pocket, lowering your center of gravity, [or] possessing a menacing demeanor on your face? as ?resisting arrest.?

Police should be able to detain legitimate criminal suspects, but they shouldn?t have the power to criminalize involuntary reactions. Treating the act of resisting arrest as potential grounds for a sentence enhancement, rather than a crime in itself, would be a helpful corrective.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

June 15, 2009

For some people of a leftist political persuasion, practically any kind of political speech with which they disagree is to be considered ?hate speech.?

Typical of such people is Bonnie Erbe, a commentator for PBS and US News, who refers to the recent shooting at the Holocaust Museum as ?a clarion call for banning hate speech.?

Grouping that shooting with the murders of abortionist George Tiller and Army Private William Long ? the latter killed by a convert to Islam ? Erbe insists:

?It?s not enough to prosecute these murders as murders. They are hate-motivated crimes and each of these men had been under some sort of police surveillance prior to their actions. Isn?t it time we started rounding up promoters of hate before they kill??

Erbe apparently believes that she, or similarly wise and oracular people, can foretell crimes before they happen. It?s an interesting fantasy. It would be a totalitarian policy.

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

A reminder:

Please tune in to my new radio program, Pro Libertate Radio, on the Liberty News Radio Network. Our call-in number is 1-866-989-6397 (NEWS).

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

June 12, 2009

Until its assets were stolen in a November 2007 federal raid, the Liberty Dollar organization provided privately minted gold and silver coins for use in voluntary transactions. The organizers hoped such competition would prompt the government to restore our constitutional currency.

Rather than reforming their unconstitutional policies, the Feds are now preparing to prosecute the creators of the Liberty Dollar. Their supposed crime is to create a ?private coin [system] to compete with the official coinage of the United States,? thereby undermining the official currency?s ?uniform standard of value.?

That indictment actually applies to the Federal Reserve, a private cartel that, since its creation in 1913, has debased the currency so thoroughly that the dollar has lost more than ninety percent of its purchasing power.

If they had the slightest interest in pursuing justice, federal prosecutors would leave the Liberty Dollar organization alone and indict the gangsters running the Federal Reserve System.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

June 11, 2009

The shooting that took place yesterday at the Holocaust Museum provided a tragic, tangible display of the murderous consequences of the notion of collective guilt.

James W. von Brunn, the suspect in the shooting, has a long and unsavory history in the world of organized anti-Semitism, including a brief stint with the Aryan Nation cult in Hayden Lake, Idaho. His writings and ? according to neighbors ? casual utterances reflect his belief that the Jews ? people who for him are an undifferentiated mass of enemies ? are responsible for every political and economic affliction to beset mankind.

Even as we absorb the horror of the attack, some are opportunistically seizing on this event to peddle their own theories of collective guilt, in which von Brunn?s alleged crime supposedly implicates anyone said to belong to the so-called ?radical Right.?

Claims of that kind are no less irrational, or potentially murderous, than the hatreds that haunted von Brunn.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

September 10, 2009

Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama?s nominee to the Supreme Court, appears to be a hybrid authoritarian, combining liberal support for regulation and redistribution with the ?law and order? instincts of a conservative judge.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Sotomayor?s critics ?draw a picture of her as a zealous prosecutor ?prior to her appointment as a judge. A defense attorney who analyzed her rulings as an appellate judge concluded that ?she always seemed to be leaning toward the government,? upholding convictions even when evidence was illegally obtained.

Traditionally, conservative activist judges have been excessively deferential to the enforcement branches of government ? such as police and prosecutors. Liberal activist judges have been too eager to expand the regulatory and redistributionist elements of government ? such as federal agencies and other elements of the bureaucracy.

Neither of these approaches is acceptable to those who wish to see the Constitution strictly applied. The combination of both is disastrous.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

June 9, 2009

While Barack Obama?s conservative detractors are legion, his most acute critics include self-designated progressive commentators, one of whom has called for his resignation.

Commentator Ted Rall, is livid over Obama?s record on civil liberties, particularly his acceptance of the practice of ?Preventive detention.?

?Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street,? complains Rall. ?Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship?. It is amazing and incredible, after eight years of Bush's lawless behavior, to have to still have to explain these things. For that reason alone, Obama should resign.?

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone offers a similar protest, condemning liberals for indulging in a ?good king fantasy? regarding Obama while failing to see that he?s merely ?a smooth-talking shill? for the Power Elite who is amassing the powers of a dictator.

Unflinching honesty of this kind is welcome, commendable, and worthy of emulation.

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