Link: http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2009/06/cheneys-revenge-coming-to-police.html

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

June 8, 2009

Last August, Niagara Falls County Judge Sara Sperrazza issued an order that Ryan Smith submit to a DNA test to see if he was involved in a pair of armed robberies. Smith gave the sample, but it was sent to the wrong lab and ruined.

A second order was issued without informing Smith?s defense attorney. Smith refused the second test. The DA?s office authorized police to use ?minimum force? to compel Smith to submit to the test. The police used a Taser to break down Smith?s resistance and secure the sample.

The defense challenged the legality of this act. Last week, Judge Sperrazza ruled that it is permissible to use a Taser to enforce a court order, as long as the device is not used maliciously.

There was no hurry to get the sample. Yet now we?re saddled with a precedent that could institutionalize Taser torture as a means of enforcing court orders and interrogating criminal suspects.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

June 5, 2009

In Communist regimes, powerful positions are assigned entirely on the basis of political reliability rather than subject competence.
The case of 31-year-old Obama administration functionary Brian Deese suggests that America is perilously close to becoming a Soviet-style ?People?s Republic.?

Mr. Deese has never run a business of any kind. He has no specialized knowledge or understanding of the automobile industry. He?s barely held a job of any kind, let alone a non-governmental position in the productive sector. Yet, as the New York Times puts it, he is essentially in charge of ?remaking the American automobile industry.?

A campaign worker who was absorbed by the administration, Deese is now in charge of defining policy options for the Obama administration?s automobile task force. Tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars ? not to mention the fate of America?s signature industry -- hang on his every whim.

When callow commissars exercise that kind of power, the free market is dead.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

June 4, 2009

Following a May 13 high-speed chase on the California Interstate, El Monte Police Officer George Fierro was videotaped kicking a prone and unresisting suspect in the head.

The suspect, 23-year-old Richard Rodriguez, was described as a member of a local Chicano street gang connected to the Mexican Mafia.

Ironically, he may have been a customer of the policeman who arrested him.

Officer Fierro owns Torcido Clothing, a specialty shop specializing in "some of the hardest authentic jail house threads for the street." Its preferred clientele is drawn from Latino street gangs. Among its offerings is a t-shirt bearing the inscription 186.22, a reference to the section of the California criminal code dealing with gang-related violence.

At least some of the clothing Fierro sells to gang members contains special pockets to conceal guns, drugs, and other contraband.

Perhaps next we?ll learn of a fireman who markets t-shirts romanticizing arson.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

June 3, 2009

A 12-year-old boy was arrested and detained at Denver International Airport on suspicion of carrying an explosive device.

The object in question was described as ?a homemade device similar to a flare.?

Becky Akers, an investigative reporter who covers travel-related issues, points out that ?We used to call `devices? like this `science projects?; indeed, things that go `pop? and incorporate a bit of gunpowder ? were once a rite of passage for American boys.?

No harm was intended by the boy, and no harm resulted to anyone but himself, and that was due to the frenzied, officious overreaction by the Transportation Security Administration and the local police. Yet the young man could still face felony charges. In fact, under the relevant section of the federal criminal code, this 12-year-old could be charged with making a weapon of mass destruction.

This was a much better country before our government went insane.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

June 2, 2009

The Obama administration?s plan for dismantling bankrupt General Motors suggests that America is quickly sinking into a Third World morass of socialist corruption.

Investigative reporter Greg Palast points out that Steven Rattner, the administration?s so-called auto czar, ?is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance. Cash in the insurance fund would be replaced by [worthless] GM stock?. Yet Citibank and [JP] Morgan ? [would] get ? $6 billion right now and in cash, from a company that can?t pay for auto parts or worker eye exams.?

Many of GM?s ?legacy costs? are unrealistically high, due to overreaching by the United Auto Workers union. But what Rattner and Obama propose is clearly illegal. And the beneficiaries, Citibank and Morgan, have already received a third of a trillion dollars in bailout funds. And it?s hardly a coincidence that both of them were generous financial supporters of the Obama presidential campaign.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

June 1, 2009

While there is much to lament over the murder of Kansas abortionist George Tiller, the end of his career is not on that list.

Tiller was one of a handful of people in this country willing to commit a form of infanticide called ?partial-birth? abortion, in which there is no ambiguity about the humanity, or viability, of the victim. Although perversely considered a legitimate medical procedure under what the government calls the law, this is unmistakably an act of murder.

Tiller was shot and killed on May 31 while attending church. That was also an act of murder.

If a police officer or a bounty hunter tracks a wanted murderer down in his church and summarily executes him, he is not serving the ends of justice but rather committing a capital crime. The same is true of the person who murdered George Tiller, an act that will do nothing to restore protection for unborn human beings.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 29, 2009

In December 2006, Concepcion Curbelo was stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint near Rodeo, New Mexico. She was arrested on drug charges and detained for two hours along with her minor children.

When Concepcion?s husband Juan, a Border Patrol Agent, saw the incident report on his wife?s arrest, he identified inconsistencies and fabrications that concealed an obvious lack of probable cause for stopping and searching the vehicle. The stop resulted from the practice of ?shotgunning,? an expression that refers to pretext stops of traffic without reasonable suspicion.

Agent Curbelo and his supervisor, William Leafstone, pressed the matter with their supervisors. Both were the subject of official retaliation for supposedly divulging ?sensitive? information. They were removed from enforcement duty and assigned to work on building a border fence.

A lawsuit filed on their behalf eventually led to reinstatement after the Border Patrol was forced to admit that ?shotgunning? ? routine violations of the Fourth Amendment ? are agency policy.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 28, 2009

The nomination of federal judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has been enthusiastically applauded by those who believe that such appointments should advance the cause of racial and sexual diversity.

If diversity is a legitimate consideration in making such appointments, it would be wise to abandon superficial traits in favor of authentic differences in philosophical perspective.

It would be worthwhile ? once again, if diversity is the goal? to see a few seats on the High Court set aside to represent the interests of property owners. Judge Sotomayor, who sat on a federal panel that approved a blatant extortion scheme in New York State that was carried out in the name of ?eminent domain,? is no friend of property rights.

Of course, the only legitimate criterion for appointment should be a commitment to defend the Constitution. This is a minority view in the court system, but don?t expect any sympathy for it among champions of diversity.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 27, 2009

Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, who served as a Navy SEAL during the Vietnam War, underwent the process of controlled drowning commonly called ?waterboarding? as part of his training. He states unequivocally that the technique, which was used by the Bush administration against terrorist suspects, is a form of torture.

Ventura also asks a very pertinent question: If, as defenders of waterboarding insist, the procedure isn?t torture, why don?t police employ it against criminal suspects?

There was a time when waterboarding was commonly used as a ?third degree? interrogation tactic by American police, who learned it from soldiers returning from the Philippines in the early 1900s. Although it was considered a war crime to subject prisoners to water torture, nobody who did so was seriously punished. This encouraged police to emulate the practice until at least the early 1930s.

The torture techniques used against terrorist suspects today will be employed against Americans in the near future.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 26 2009

With the economy continuing to collapse and pools of taxable income drying up, state and local governments are on the prowl for new sources of revenue. County commissioners in Ohio have made a suggestion sure to be popular with tax-feeders nation-wide: They want to make it easier for money-hungry counties to use assets seized in drug cases.

Through a process called asset forfeiture, sheriff?s offices and police departments can confiscate cash and other property from people suspected of involvement in narcotics trafficking. Under present laws, it?s not even necessary to prove that the people from whom the assets were taken were involved in criminal activity.

According to Commissioner Don Foley of Ohio?s Montgomery County, ?We?re in a budgetary time when the old rules don?t apply.? Montgomery County Sheriff Phil Plummer maintains that the revenue from forfeiture is a ?pot? that can keep growing. This will mean turning police into undisguised agents of official plunder.

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