Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 2, 2009

In recent years the Super Bowl has been a launching pad for high-profile advertising campaigns.

Among the organizations using this year?s Super Bowl for promotional purposes was the federal Transportation Security Administration, which used the event to promote public awareness of its ?behavior observation? techniques. Dozens of TSA ?behavior detection? officers were sprinkled through the crowd of 75,000 people for the supposed purpose of ferreting out individuals with malign intentions.

What special powers of discernment do these TSA personnel possess? Can they, like the empathic Betazoid aliens from Star Trek, sense concealed emotions, or detect the presence of hidden evil, like the Jedi Masters from Star Wars? Of course not; their ?behavior detection? skills, such as they are, amount to nothing more than an ordinary ability to recognize suspicious behavior and follow up on a hunch.

Rather than expanding its obnoxious presence to sporting events, the TSA should be scrapped outright.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 30, 2009

Russell Tice formerly worked for the National Security Agency?s "special access programs," also known as "black world" operations. Disillusioned with the NSA?s illegal surveillance of Americans, Tice quit the agency and went public with his objections.

Two years ago, Tice warned that "the technology exists to track and sort through every domestic and international phone call? made by Americans. The Bush administration insisted this was necessary to monitor terrorist suspects.

However, as Tice pointed out in a January 21 interview, ?The [NSA] had access to all Americans? communications, faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications.? And rather than focusing on suspected terrorists, the NSA was compiling dossiers on American news organizations and journalists.

Although electronic eavesdropping began decades ago, it was expanded under the Bush administration, with the help of then-Senator Barrack Obama. Now Obama, as president, has filed a motion with a federal judge in support of continuing that totalitarian program.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 29, 2009

Boxing legend George Foreman named all five of his sons George.
Actor Nicholas Gage christened his son Kal-El, after the character better known as Superman. Musician Frank Zappa named his children Hermit, Dweezil, and Moon Unit.

Inflicting such names on offspring is a perk enjoyed by celebrities. Non-celebrities do so at some risk to their parental rights. Witness the case of New Jersey parents Heath and Sarah Campbell, who named their oldest son Adolf Hitler, and also gave their infant daughters Nazi-inspired names.

A few weeks ago, state child protection officials seized the Campbell children. The bureaucrats insist that this had nothing to do with their names, but neither they nor the police can identify any other reason for this brutal imposition on parental rights.
Apparently, only celebrities are permitted to display bad taste in baby names without being targeted by the child-snatchers.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 28, 2009

While the national economy collapses, there is one region that is booming. Average household income continues to rise in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Those communities are inhabited by federal employees , whose jobs are secure and whose salaries continue to rise even amid a terrifying economic decline.

Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute points out that the average federal civilian employee is paid twice the amount that was earned by the average private sector worker -- a little more than $106,000 per year, as compared to an annual salary of $56,000. These radical, artificial disparities in wealth will expand as so-called stimulus spending increases, thereby putting more people on the government payroll.

Government spending adds nothing to the real wealth and productivity of the economy. An economy in which government functionaries prosper and the productive starve is one destined for immediate extinction.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 23, 2009

On January 16, Zimbabwe?s central bank set a new record in perverse profligacy by announcing the creation of a $100 trillion banknote, as well as other notes in denominations of 10, 20, and 50 trillion Zimbabwean dollars.

At the time of the announcement, the note was worth about 33 U.S. dollars in the underground currency market, assuming that anybody would be interested in buying Zimbabwean currency. But prices for essentials double every day in Zimbabwe ? that is, the currency loses half of its purchasing power every day.

The Mugabe regime insists that printing currency in obscenely huge denominations is necessary to cure that country?s cash shortage. But the real problem is that the government has stolen nearly all of the currency?s value through inflation.

Lest we think that Zimbabwe?s rulers are uniquely cruel and foolish, let?s not forget that our own rulers are following exactly the same course.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 22, 2009

After 28-year-old Ryan Frederick shot and killed a police detective during a SWAT raid on his Virginia he insisted that he opened fire because he didn?t know the assailants were police. His home had been robbed just days earlier. In fact, the burglars have admitted that the robbery was actually arranged by the police to gather evidence for a drug raid.

This isn?t the only troubling irregularity in this case. The prosecution has announced it will present testimony from five inmates who had conversation with Frederick about the shooting. One of them, a gang leader, has already traded testimony against his co-defendants for a reduced sentence.

The raid that cost one man his life was the product of a bad tip from a paid informant. Now the State of Virginia will collude with criminals for the testimony they need to send Frederick to prison for life. Outrageous as this is, it?s hardly atypical of what passes for justice today.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 21, 2009

Barrack Obama is determined to make government-imposed ?national service? a defining concept of his presidency, and many of his Republican rivals share his enthusiasm.

Former GOP presidential candidate John McCain has joined with Obama in promoting government-imposed service. Tony Blankley, who served as chief of staff for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, has called in a new book for the re-introduction of a universal military draft.

Blankley?s proposed system is similar to legislation being promoted by House Democrat Charles Rangel; it would require all Americans who turn 18 to spend two years either in military service or in a government-selected ?Homeland Security? role.

Each day, countless Americans serve each other without being forced to do so by the state. What we need is a much less invasive government, not one equipped to impose involuntary servitude in the interest of either domestic socialism or foreign military adventurism.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 20, 2008

Until the early 20th Century, most Americans neither knew nor cared much about the president.

Although the presidency was always considered significant, it wasn?t until after our nation acquired an overseas empire that it came to be regarded as the most important office on earth.

The Constitution defined the presidency as an institutionally weak office with largely derivative powers: Its function was to carry out constitutionally sound laws, conduct diplomacy with foreign nations, make various appointments with the Senate?s consent, and supervise the military when called into action by Congress.

Today, by way of contrast, the powers claimed and exercised by the president are limited only by his imagination and by Congress?s appetite for subservience.

On this inaugural day, amid the engineered ecstasy over the installation of a new short-term political messiah, it?s useful to ask: How would the Founding Fathers view this orgy of imperial leader-worship?

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 19, 2008

Who owns you? For Christians, the obvious answer to this question is that God owns each of us, first of all because we are His creations, and secondly because our sins have been paid for by the shed blood of Jesus Christ. (I Cor. 6:20, 7:23).

As far as human affairs are concerned, each of us exercises a form of self-ownership under God?s superintending sovereignty. This means that no other human being, either individually or acting as part of a collective, can properly claim ownership over any part of our lives, or the product of our exertions, without our consent. That consent can be expressed through contract, commerce, or covenant.

In ways too numerous to review, government claims improper ownership of our lives through coercion and fraud. How many ways has the government implicitly claimed ownership of your life today? The question is worth asking, and the answer is invariably unsettling.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 16, 2009

In May 2007, Sgt. Evan Vela shot an Iraqi civilian point-blank on the orders of his field commander. Subsequently convicted of murder, the Idaho native is now serving a ten-year sentence in Ft. Leavenworth Prison.

The Iraqi stumbled into Sgt. Vela?s five-man sniper squad, which had taken up a concealed position on his property.

When the Iraqi began to struggle and cry out, Staff Sergeant Michael Hensley ordered him shot to protect his unit. Although the order was clearly illegal, Vela carried it out. Hensley then planted a rifle on the Iraqi?s body and concocted a cover story.

Hensley later admitted to issuing the order, but was acquitted by a military tribunal. Evan Vela alone was convicted of murder.

The ultimate responsibility for that killing rests with the president who ordered our troops to carry out a war of aggression ? and who displayed no interest in commuting Evan Vela?s sentence.

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