Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 27, 2009

16-year-old Juan Vasquez shouldn?t have been drinking alcohol or carrying crack cocaine the night of April 18, 2008. But being beaten nearly to death by police is a disproportionate penalty for his behavior.

Three officers in the city?s gang unit ? Charles Porter, Luis Riveria, and Cameron Moerman ?caught Vasquez following a chase and handcuffed him. According to Vasquez?s brother Robert, the officers beat Juan with a flashlight and then took turns jumping on his back. They then taunted him for not being able to walk.

Juan suffered lacerations of the liver, severe kidney damage, and broken ribs. The Denver City Government settled with Juan?s family for $1 million. Detective Porter, accused of administering the beating, was acquitted amid suspicions that he had been made the ?sacrificial lamb? by the other officers, who testified against him.

No street gang is more dangerous than police permitted to use lethal violence with impunity.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 26, 2009

After a fight broke out at a Ft. Lauderdale hotel last December 5, 22-year-old Joshua Ortiz, from a nearby elevator, saw some of his friends being manhandled by armored riot police. Ortiz yelled at the police to leave his friends alone.

A video record shows a group of four police approaching the elevator. Officer Derek Lade shoves his face into Ortiz?s before throwing the young man to the ground. Three cops then beat Oritz before dragging him away.

Officer Lade?s report falsely claimed that Ortiz had ?assumed a fighting stance? with his fists clenched, and then ?walked right up to me hitting his nose to my nose.? Ortiz was thus charged with felony assault on a police officer.

Had the elevator videotape not existed, Ortiz ? the victim of unlawful police violence ? might be headed for prison on the basis of Lade?s perjury. This reminds us, once again, of the value of recording every encounter with the police.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 25, 2009

Rolling Stone investigative writer Matt Taibbi has dissected the collapse of the mammoth insurance and investment company AIG.

Following the $165 billion federal bailout of AIG, the public was outraged to learn that the company had spent hundreds of millions of dollars on bonuses for the corporate officers who had presided over the company?s collapse.

During the last quarter of 2008, AIG lost more than $27 million per hour; that?s $465,000 a minute, or the equivalent of the median American household income every six seconds. This resulted from the implosion of AIG?s business model, in which bundles of bad mortgages were used to generate huge profits in the derivatives market.

The rescue of AIG?s corrupt leadership typifies the ongoing Wall Street Bailout, which Taibbi describes as ?rich bankers bailing out rich bankers using the taxpayer?s credit card.?

Keep this in mind when filing your income tax return this year.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 24, 2009

In the Book of Matthew we read Jesus? admonition to feed the hungry as if we were serving Christ Himself.

British legal scholar William Blackstone, who greatly influenced our Founding Fathers, insisted that human laws had to be in harmony with God?s law in order to be valid.

Thus no government has the authority to forbid people to feed the hungry.

Yet police in Orlando, Florida recently arrested 22-year-old Eric Montanez for feeding a group of several dozen homeless people in a public park. By doing so, Montanez violated an ordinance forbidding people to feed ?large groups? in a specified number of public locations.

Orlando police actually sent undercover officers to Montanez?s gathering, and collected ?evidence? in the form of a bowl of stew.

Montanez remains commendably defiant. "The law itself should be illegal. Feeding people should not be criminalized,? he insists. Those who take the Bible seriously would find it difficult to disagree.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 23, 2009

Montana?s state motto, which it adopted in 1865, is ?Oro y plata,? a Spanish phrase meaning ?gold and silver.? Appropriately, Montana?s state legislature is considering a measure that would restore the use of the only constitutionally sound money ? gold and silver.

The US Constitution authorizes only the use of gold and silver coin as legal tender for payment of debts and use in commercial transactions. Until 1971 it was possible to exchange paper dollars for constitutional money.

Now, however, the paper dollar is a pure fiat currency, and our official coinage contains no precious metal. And the Federal Reserve continues to undermine what?s left of the dollar?s value by emitting hundreds of billions ? or even trillions ? of dollars each week.

Restoring a sound currency is an indispensable step toward genuine economic recovery. Hopefully, Montana?s legislature will have the wisdom and courage to take that step, and other states will quickly follow.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 20, 2009

Former Vice President Dick Cheney insists that President Obama has repudiated the policies of the Bush administration and put U.S. national security at risk. Yet the changes imposed by Mr. Obama are stylistic, rather than substantive.

On March 13, the administration announced that it would no longer designate detainees as ?enemy combatants.? Regardless of the label applied to them, however, those detainees would still occupy a legal no-man?s land, without the protections of POW status or the due process rights of criminal defendants.

Like Bush, Obama has used presidential ?signing statements? to nullify provisions of bills he has signed into law. He has defended the use of warrantless wiretaps and electronic surveillance. His administration has even come to the legal aid of John Yoo, the legal architect of the Bush administration?s torture policies.

In this fashion Obama has embraced the worst abuses carried out under the reign of his predecessor.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 19, 2009

In late February, the insurance and financial services company AIG handed the Treasury Department what amounted to a $30 billion stickup note.

AIG, which had already received more than $130 billion in taxpayer funds when it was effectively nationalized last fall, insisted that it needed yet another huge infusion to stay alive ? and that its demise would mean the collapse of the entire global financial system.

That demand was met. And shortly thereafter we learned that the failed company, whose stock lost more than ninety percent of its value last fall, planned to give $165 million in bonuses to the corporate leaders who failed so spectacularly.

Former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich is correct in observing that no bonuses would have been paid if AIG had been compelled to go to bankruptcy court, rather than being bailed out. But that?s not how things work in our system of corporate socialism.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 18, 2009

Several years ago, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi, who shot and killed Vicky Weaver during the 1992 standoff at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, could not be prosecuted for homicide.

The court?s majority insisted that something called a ?discretionary function exemption? sometimes protects law enforcement officers from prosecution when they commit what would otherwise be plainly criminal acts.

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Alex Kozinski wrote that the ruling created what he called a ?007 Standard? ? a license to kill.

This notion pops up in some unlikely places. A recent essay in a police publication declared: "It can be very intimidating for the person who is dating a female cop who carries a gun and has a constitutional authority to take a life."

To assert that police enjoy some special authority beyond the same right to armed self-defense all citizens possess is to engage in lethal sophistry.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 17, 2009

Our British cousins across the Atlantic tragically tend to be about six months to a year ahead of the curve in terms of repudiating our shared legacy of liberty protected by law.

The March 14 London Daily Mail described a new and very troubling development in the UK, the creation of a massive new security database that would record all of the pertinent details of every trip abroad by British citizens, whether taken for business or pleasure.

Under this new ?e-borders? system, those seeking to travel abroad will have to submit, under penalty of criminal prosecution, detailed travel plans and huge amounts of personal information.

The freedom to travel was one of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Magna Carta. That freedom faces a mortal threat in Great Britain. How long will it be until it comes under similar assault here in the U.S.?

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 16, 2009

Ten years ago, the FBI, with the help of several left-wing advocacy groups, compiled a report entitled ?Project Megiddo.? That document was intended to guide law enforcement efforts to identify potential domestic terrorists.

The chief source of potential trouble, insisted the Bureau, was those espousing what was called ?anti-government ideology.?

That assumption lives on in a ?strategic report? prepared for law enforcement by the Missouri Information Analysis Center, one of dozens of counter-terrorism ?fusion centers? nation-wide. The document suggests that those who refer to the FBI, IRS, ATF, or the UN ?in a derogatory manor? [sic] should be viewed as potential terrorists. The same is true of those who supported 3rd party candidates, or Republican gadfly Ron Paul, in the last presidential election.

When citizens are hyper-vigilant toward government, freedom is one possible result. When the government is hyper-vigilant toward citizens, tyranny is the only possible outcome.

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