Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 25, 2009

A few weeks ago, the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper was purchased by Platinum Equity, an investment fund from Beverly Hills. Platinum Equity is capitalized by the $30 billion pension fund of the Los Angeles Police Department and other large sums derived from public employee pension funds throughout California.

The first priority of the Union-Tribune?s new owners was to punish writers who had exposed and condemned corruption in the management of public pension funds. In a March 26 letter to the head of Platinum Equity, police union official Paul M. Weber wrote: "Since the very public employees [the newspaper?s editorial board] continually criticize[s] are now their owners, we strongly believe that those who currently run the editorial pages should be replaced.?

Huge amounts of so-called ?stimulus? funding are pouring into government agencies, and financially crippled newspapers are seeking government assistance. Heavy-handed attempts at political control over the media will probably become quite common.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 22, 2009

Roughly twenty state legislatures have enacted resolutions affirming their reserved powers under the Tenth Amendment. Montana has enacted a law exempting firearms made and sold within that state from federal firearms restrictions. Similar laws are being considered in Texas, Alaska, Tennessee, and Utah.

As Washington?s looters continue to pillage what remains of our earnings and wealth, some Americans might conclude that the Union as it presently exists is a political and economic suicide pact. There has been serious discussion of the merits of secession in states from Vermont to Texas.

Secession is neither treasonous nor subversive; it is America?s oldest and most honorable political tradition. In principle, secession is the political application of the right to free association.

The War for Independence was a war of secession from an empire whose rulers were determined to reduce Americans to vassalage. That empire was less corrupt and oppressive than the government ruling us today.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 21, 2009

The USA, once the world standard in individual liberty, is now leading the effort to build a comprehensive electronic police state.

In an electronic police state, observes the privacy activist group CryptoHippie, police officials use electronic technologies ?to record, organize, search and distribute forensic evidence against its citizens.? This ?is criminal evidence, ready for use in a trial ? gathered universally and silently[.]?

?Whoever holds that evidence can make you look very, very bad whenever they care ? to do so,? warns the watchdog group. ?You can be prosecuted whenever they feel like it ? the evidence is already in their database.?

Of the 52 nation-states surveyed, the top four electronic police states were Communist or ex-Communist countries: China, North Korea, Belarus, and Russia. Socialist Great Britain came next, followed by the United States of America.

Were we true to our ideals, the USA would proudly finish last on this list.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 20, 2009

In an 1824 letter, Thomas Jefferson offered a concise description of our federated constitutional republic.

"With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations [are] correctly understood by foreigners,? Jefferson observed. ?They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole."

Jefferson would be mortified to learn that today, as the Obama administration blithely defies constitutional restrictions on federal power, the states have become entirely dependent on Washington.

For the first time in our country?s history, the largest source of revenue for state and local governments is not sales, property, or state income tax. It is the federal government, which is disbursing countless billions of dollars ? created out of nothing by the Federal Reserve ? in so-called stimulus spending and other subsidies.

Our country is rapidly approaching the final exit ramp on the road to serfdom.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 19, 2009

We know for certain that dramatic and terrifying changes are underway in our nation when Washington?s embrace of socialist economics is criticized in the pages of Pravda.
Yes, that Pravda ? the newspaper that until 1991 served as the official propaganda organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

?[T]he American descent into Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed, against the backdrop of a passive, hapless sheeple,? lamented commentator Stanislav Mishin. ?The initial testing ground [for socialism] was? our Holy Russia[,] and a bloody test it was.

But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.?

And now the same power elite that enslaved Russia is poised to destroy what remains of America?s free economy and individualist culture, Mishin concludes. But most Americans don?t realize how dire our situation has become.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 18, 2009

Lynne Boynton of Wallingford, Connecticut was in her driveway when the stormtroopers arrived. Fifteen federal agents and local police, some of them wielding machine guns, swarmed the home she shares with her husband Paul and Father-in-Law Gilman.

Lynne was thrown face-down on the ground and held with a knee to her back and a gun to her head. 76-year-old Gilman and 51-year-old Paul were dragged out of bed and similarly assaulted.

The raiding party was from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which received a tip that a felon in their home had access to guns. The ?felon? in question was Paul, who was convicted of check forgery thirty four years ago. On that basis the ATF confiscated fourteen of Gilman?s firearms.

No arrests were made, and the show of force was unnecessary. But gratuitous, arbitrary state violence is a trademark of the quasi-fascist police state America has become.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 14, 2009

It?s tragically common for appellate judges to ratify abuses of fundamental rights. It?s less common for them to urge police and policy makers to commit such violations. This recently happened in Wisconsin.

In 2003, a man named Michael Sveum was accused of stalking. Police obtained a warrant to place a GPS device on his car. They recorded his movements for about a month, then retrieved the device and downloaded the data. Sveum was eventually convicted of stalking.

Sveum appealed his conviction, which was upheld by the District 4 Court of Appeals. Amazingly, however, Judge Paul Lundsten went beyond the facts of the case to specify that police installation of a GPS device on a person?s car does not require a warrant ? contrary to the clear import of both the Fourth Amendment and Article 11 of the Wisconsin Declaration of Rights.

Aren?t judges supposed to correct abuses, rather than abetting them?

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 13, 2009

During the 78-day US-led NATO war on Yugoslavia in 1999, the headquarters of Radio Television Serbia (or RTS) were destroyed by an airstrike. This was a deliberate, premeditated attack on a civilian media enterprise.

RTS was not a military target by any stretch of the definition. Ten people were killed as a result of the bombing.

On April 23 of this year, ten years after that attack, Amnesty International tardily recognized it as a war crime.

No one in NATO?s chain of command was ever prosecuted or sanctioned for this war crime. Incredible as it may seem, the only person held responsible for the death of ten civilian journalists was RTS director Dragouljub Milanovic, who was a target of the attack.

The UN tribunal for Yugoslavia sent him to prison for reckless endangerment of his staff ? a charge which tacitly assumes the criminality of those who presided over that unnecessary and immoral war.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 12, 2009

A bill before the House of Representatives -- HR 2159 -- would make it a crime to provide firearms to dangerous terrorists. It is about thirty years too late, and targeted at the wrong people.

The federal government has been arming and training terrorists for decades. The Islamic radicals who coalesced into Afghanistan?s Taliban regime and the al-Qaeda network received arms, money, and other material support from the CIA. They?re merely the latest in a long roster of Islamic radicals who have been clients of Washington.

Obviously, the world would be better off if Washington were to stop arming terrorists. But the purpose of HR 2159 is not to stop the government from arming terrorists. Rather, it?s to stop private gun sales to private citizens the government regards as terrorists.

And according to a recent Department of Homeland Security study, practically anybody whose political perspective is to the right of Fidel Castro would qualify.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 11, 2009

Last week I referred to Ashton Lundeby, a 16-year-old from North Carolina who was arrested and held, under the PATRIOT act, on suspicion of making bomb threats.

The federal prosecutor heading the case has now denied that the PATRIOT act played a role in the matter. I regret my error.

It must be pointed out that the original account of the Lundeby incident was similar to documented cases of federal overreaching.

Last year, a teenager from South Carolina who planned to make a small, crude bomb was charged with attempting to build a weapon of mass destruction. Two years ago, a prosecutor in Arizona filed a terrorism charge against a 14-year-old who pulled a penknife on a classmate.

Earlier this year, a mother who disrupted a commercial flight by swatting her children was arrested and held -- under PATRIOT act-related charges ? for two months before signing a plea bargain.
Whatever happened to proportionality?

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