Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 13, 2009

When innocent citizens are the subject of a paramilitary police raid at the wrong address, are they required to submit to what amounts to a criminal assault under the color of state authority?

Justin Chilton of Murfreesboro, Tennessee was recently awakened at 3:00 a.m. by a persistent pounding on the door. A decorated Iraq vet, Justin answered the door holding his gun. Police stormed into the house and arrested Justin and his father, Roger. They were thrown face-down, handcuffed, and struck with the butt of a rifle.

The raid took place at the wrong address. Justin and his Father were needlessly subjected to an armed assault and physical violence. And yet they were charged with resisting arrest and aggravated assault.

In principle, a police officer who enters a home without a proper warrant or probable cause is no different from any other armed intruder, and should be treated as such.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 12, 2009

For more than a decade, Tim Masters of Ft. Collins, Colorado was pursued for a hideous murder he didn?t commit.

He was eventually convicted without so much as a molecule of physical evidence to connect him to the crime. After nearly a decade behind bars, Masters was released after DNA analysis corroborated his innocence.

Masters was convicted because he was a convenient suspect. A teenager at the time, Masters lived near the location where the body of the murder victim was found. The victim resembled his late mother, who had died exactly four years earlier.

Following the advice of his father, a military veteran, Masters cooperated with the police and submitted to every demand.
Summarizing his experience in a recent interview, Masters declared: ?You shouldn?t always submit to authority. Our country wouldn?t exist if everyone submitted to authority.?

The wisdom in those words is the product of painful experience.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 11, 2009

Few if any crimes are more hideous than the sexual abuse of children. Those who commit such offenses should be punished with appropriate severity. There is a danger, however, in permitting our desire to punish sex offenders to undermine critical principles of due process.

In 2006, Congress enacted a law permitting states to seek federal ?civil confinement? of sex offenders once their prison terms had expired. Those deemed ?sexually dangerous persons? would be transferred from state to federal custody, and then imprisoned indefinitely for crimes they have yet to commit.

No matter how grotesque the offense, we cannot preemptively punish people for crimes they haven?t yet committed. And while such federal ?civil confinement? is presently limited to child sex offenders, there?s no reason why it won?t someday be applied to others deemed to be ?socially dangerous? for reasons of religion or political ideology.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 10, 2009

Last December, the pilot of a Marine Corps fighter jet bailed out of his plane over the outskirts of San Diego. The crippled jet, which had lost both engines, plummeted into a residential neighborhood, wiping out five houses and killing four people.

The pilot?s intention was to fly his jet to Miramar Marine Base. For some reason he chose not to follow mandatory emergency procedures, which called for him to divert to North Island Naval Station, a course that wouldn?t have involved flying over a populated area.

Furthermore, investigators have learned that numerous officials had known for months that the jet, which launched from the USS Abraham Lincoln, was not flight-worthy.

The death of four civilians ? a mother, a grandmother, and two tiny children ? was the product of culpable, depraved indifference by Marine Corps personnel. Those responsible should be prosecuted for second-degree murder.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 9, 2009

Canadian citizen Desiderio Fortunato is an individual who expects to be treated with respect by the people commonly called ?public servants.?

Fortunato routinely crosses the US-Canadian border. When given instructions by Canadian border guards, Fortunato always reminds them to say ?please?; without fail, the guards do so, often with a sheepish grin.

Last fall, while driving into the U.S., Fortunato tried the same approach with a U.S. border guard. This time, however, he was attacked with pepper-spray, gang-tackled, handcuffed, and detained for three hours before being released without apology.

According to Homeland Security Department Spokesman Mike Milne, the assault on Fortunato was an appropriate response: ?Our officers will give direct orders or commands to passengers ?. It is the obligation of the passenger to be compliant with those.?

When an official insists that civilians have an ?obligation? to obey ?commands? from someone in uniform, he?s speaking the language of marital law.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 6, 2009

In a recent interview with CNN Arizona state attorney general Terry Goddard became the first public official of note to suggest that that legalizing marijuana might relieve some of the violence that is tearing Mexico apart and threatening to spill over our southern border.

Prohibition acts as a price support program for the product being prohibited. Once legal sales of the product are permitted, the so-called ?risk premium? is removed and competition forces down the price. If marijuana were sold legally like tobacco, the market wouldn?t be dominated by criminal syndicates engaged in lethal competition for pre-eminence in a black market.

Unfortunately, Goddard coupled his suggestion with an oblique endorsement of an even deadlier form or prohibition commonly called gun control. He blames the armed violence of the cartels on the accessibility of firearms from the United States.

Nothing worthwhile will be gained if we simply swap drug prohibition for civilian disarmament.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 5, 2009

During a recent segment of CNBC?s ?Fast Money? program, correspondent Dylan Ratigan repeatedly assailed those who have taken their money out of the stock market and invested in precious metals.

Ratigan insisted that ?to be `long? on gold is to be `short? on America.? That is to say, it is supposedly unpatriotic to protect one?s wealth and assets by getting out of a still-overvalued stock market and anticipating the collapse of the dollar.

Paul Krugman of the New York Times has consistently promoted a slightly different version of this accusation, blaming our economic contraction on what he calls a ?savings glut.? The glut originated with thrifty Asian workers and countries who saved what they earned, and it continues today as, in Krugman?s words, ?impoverished consumers have rediscovered the virtues of thrift,? thereby reducing consumer demand.

Only in a society rapidly careening toward the totalitarian abyss is thrift considered unpatriotic.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 4, 2009

In the year 2000, the cost of the entire federal budget was $1.8 trillion. This year, according to the Obama administration?s budget, the federal deficit will be almost exactly that amount.

Since last September, when they were effectively given control over the economy, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department have taken on at least $7.7 trillion in taxpayer-subsidies financial liabilities, and generated hundreds of billions of dollars in new debt.

This month, yet another federal bank-bailout scheme goes into effect: TALF, a federal loan-generating entity that will put taxpayers on the hook for credit cards, auto loans, small business loans, and other forms of commercial debt that has gone bad.

Once America manufactured products the whole world was eager to buy. Today, thanks to the Federal Reserve, all we seem to manufacture is bad debt ? and devious schemes to make taxpayers pay the bills.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 3, 2009

It appears that the political class is strangely giddy about the same economic catastrophe that has left hundreds of millions anxious, alarmed, and frightened about the future.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is in Washington to address Congress today, has candidly referred to the global economic meltdown as a chance to erect a new global political and economic order ? what he calls ?a global New Deal.?

According to Brown, in this new arrangement would require radically expanded government spending by every nation and region of the globe, and a much larger role for governments in regimenting economies. It would also require international coordination through an entity that sounds a great deal like a world central bank.

This vision of a new world order would mean full employment and job security for socialist parasites around the globe. For those of us in the productive class, the prospects are nowhere near as bright.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 2, 2009

Last November Deputy Paul Schene of Washington?s King County Sheriff's Department was videotaped beating a 15-year-old girl in a holding cell.

As the door to her cell was being closed, the girl was ordered to remove her shoes. She complied by kicking one of them in Schene's direction.

Schene charged into the cell, kicked the girl in the stomach, slammed her head against the wall, threw her face-first to the floor, and ? with another officer?s help -- handcuffed her while striking her twice to the back to the head. Once she was shackled, the girl was pulled to her feet and dragged out of the cell by her hair:

None of this unnecessary violence was noted in Schene?s official report.

The video was pried from the department by a local TV station through an open records request. This incident reminds us, once again, of the value of recording police conduct wherever possible.

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