Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 2, 2009

The Bush administration?s Justice Department recently indicted and convicted Charles Taylor, Jr., son of the former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, for violating a 1994 law against torture.

The American-born Taylor served as head of his father?s Antiterrorist Unit, which suppressed domestic dissent.

Some victims were imprisoned for weeks in small water-filled pits covered by bars and barbed wire. Others were electrocuted, burned, stabbed by bayonets, or bound hand and foot and covered with aggressive, biting ants. Taylor was also accused of murdering several helpless prisoners at a security checkpoint.

After securing a conviction, the Justice Department has asked the trial judge to impose a sentence of 147 years, in order to send a message that ?there cannot be impunity? in ordering and committing acts of torture. If they are serious about applying that principle, their next target should be Vice President Dick Cheney, who has publicly confessed to ordering acts of torture by U.S. interrogators overseas.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 1, 2009

Organizers of a recent gun buy-back in Denver were disappointed when only 15 weapons were turned in to be melted down by the police.

A lack of funds made it impossible to pay the promised $50 for each gun turned in. About 40 people with a total of 120 firearms showed up for the event, but most refused to hand over their guns when told they wouldn?t receive the money they had been promised.

Anti-gun activist Alvertis Simmons complained that the lack of money shouldn?t have dissuaded people from turning in their guns ?to make a statement against gun violence.? But gun buy-backs actually encourage more gun-related crime by creating an incentive for criminally inclined people to steal guns and sell them.

Besides, if the objective were to protect the public from gun violence, a better approach would be to confiscate the government?s guns, rather than those in private hands.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 31, 2008

2008 may have been the most devastating year in economic history.
The exploding debt bubble destroyed an estimated $14 trillion in investment capital. Economic analyst James Howard Kunstler describes the damage as being akin to an unprecedented cosmic catastrophe ? ?as if a meteor had landed on Madison Avenue and 51st Street,? wiping out the entire investment banking industry.

Our nation?s economy would be resilient enough to surmount this disaster, but it cannot overcome the supposed cure being imposed by the government.

The crash was the inevitable result of the Fed?s radical inflation of money and credit. Now the Federal Reserve and Treasury have prescribed a much larger dose of the same affliction as a purported cure, pumping trillions of dollars into the banking system. The effects on consumers should be felt by next spring, and there?s a good chance the dollar will lose as much as half of its value before the end of 2009.

Happy New Year.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

Christmas, 2008

It was a tax collection decree that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, the village where the Almighty Creator of the Universe became flesh in order to redeem mankind from death and sin.

Many often recite Benjamin Franklin's mordant observation that nothing in life is certain except for death and taxes. This truism is usually invoked by those who urge submissiveness in the face of government's ever-expanding demands on the product of our labors.

But Franklin's formula omits mention of another apparently inevitable reality ? that of sin. While sin is unavoidable, Christians must still struggle against it. And those who understand that all people and institutions are subject to God's law must never relent in the fight against that form of institutionalized theft called taxation.

The teachings of Jesus, if universally accepted and practiced faithfully, would rescue mankind from the corruption and oppression of human government. And the expiatory death and resurrection of Jesus Christ made both death and sin reversible, which is the incomparable gift we celebrate today.

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

December 24, 2008

In ways both subtle and obvious, the government ruling us is preparing for the imposition of martial law.

Among the overt measures being taken toward that objective is the creation of an active-duty Homeland Security force within the military's Northern Command, which covers North America.

As of last October, a fully equipped combat brigade is now assigned for domestic duty, which may include riot control and other law enforcement roles. Plans call for the expansion of the Army's Homeland Security force to at least 20,000 troops by no later than 2011.

A paper recently published by the US Army War College observes: "Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities [in order] to defend basic domestic order and human security." The report also notes that once that Rubicon had been passed, there would be no clear way to restore civilian government.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

December 23, 2008

In July 2007 we reviewed the case of Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison we reviewed the case of Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, two 13-year-old Oregon boys who were prosecuted for a middle school prank in which they swatted girls on the rear end.

Cory and Ryan were arrested, incarcerated, dragged before a judge in prison clothes, publicly humiliated, and threatened with lifetime designation a sex offenders if convicted of the charges.

People across the country donated tens of thousands of dollars for Cory and Ryan's defense. The charges were eventually dismissed after it was learned that the supposed victims had been pressured to make false statements.

An interesting coda to this story was written last November, when Debra Markham, the deputy District Attorney who prosecuted Cory and Ryan, was arrested and charged with assaulting her husband.

Both suborning perjury and beating a spouse are a far graver offenses than playfully swatting a classmate on the bottom.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

December 22, 2008

A conflict in Middletown, New York displays the deliberate perversity of the bureaucratic mind at work.

That town's United Presbyterian Church has established a shelter for homeless people during this winter's killing cold snap. It routinely takes in dozens of people with no other refuge, providing them with a warm place to sleep, food, and clothing.

Last week, the City sent its fire inspector to examine the premises. He found nothing amiss. Yet the City's chief legal counsel insists that the homeless shelter is an impermissible residential use of the church property. The City therefore is preparing to file a zoning violation against the church.

Until it was changed in 2007, the zoning ordinance permitted such charitable use of the church facility. But no church should have to beg the government's permission to serve the poor, and no property owner should be subject to the scrutiny of socialist community planners.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

December 19, 2008

In the mid-18th Century, Jesuit scholar Guillaume Francois Berthier accurately assessed the potential for violence displayed by the forces of supposed tolerance.

Addressing secularists, Berthier wrote: ?You accuse us of fanaticism, while the hatred that animates you against our religion inspires in you a fanaticism whose excesses are difficult to imagine.?

Were he among us today, Berthier would have little difficulty recognizing that same potentially violent fanaticism among advocates of so-called gay marriage. Very few self-identified homosexuals are interested in participating in a politically correct parody of legitimate marriage.

The objective of this movement is to employ government power forcibly to redefine an institution ? the conventional family -- that existed anterior to the State, and is superior to it. They demand that the State commit lethal violence against society's foundational institution ? and their tactics will grow increasingly violent as their demands are resisted.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

December 18, 2008

Last July 29, Cheye Calvo of Berwyn Heights, Maryland was changing for an appointment when .a group of heavily armed police charged into his house

They dragged him downstairs in his underwear, handcuffed him, and detained him face-down on the floor at gunpoint along with his wife and mother-in-law.

Calvo and his family were the victims of an increasingly common outrage, a no-knock drug enforcement raid at the wrong address.

He filed freedom of information act requests regarding the conduct and training of local paramilitary police. Five months later, Calvo is still being stymied by the county police and sheriff's department, who insist that an internal review of the matter is sufficient.

Mr. Calvo, incidentally, is the Mayor of Berwyn Heights. If an elected official confronts police obstructionism of this kind, what chance for justice does a common citizen have in similar circumstances?

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

December 17, 2008

After the Senate blocked a measure intended to bail out the Big Three automakers, Michigan Governor Janet Granholm denounced the vote as ?un-American.

"It is unacceptable for this un-American, frankly, behavior of these U.S. senators to cause this country to go from a recession into a depression," she ranted. Referring to the bailout of Wall Street financial institutions, Granholm continued: ?You give this big bailout to these financial institutions?don?t ask a single question, they can do what they want?and then you lay the blame [on] the auto industry, which is a victim of this financial meltdown, on the backs of the people who are working on the line.?

Congress's sin was not to deny Detroit a bailout, but rather to appropriate taxpayer money to bail out anybody.

Although it is disgustingly common, redistribution of wealth is constitutionally impermissible, morally reprehensible, and patently un-American.

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