Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 21, 2008

The seizure of more than 400 children whose mothers belong to the polygamist FLDS Church in Texas is a crime without obvious precedent in our history.

The church commune was raided on April 3 ostensibly to find a 16-year-old victim of physical and sexual abuse by her polygamist husband.

But court documents and sworn testimony prove the officials who conducted the raid knew the suspected abuser was in Arizona all the time, and that the woman who called an abuse hotline claiming to be the 16-year-old victim was actually a prankster from Colorado.

Despite the fact that the search was invalid, the children were seized and placed with their mothers in detention facilities that health care professionals described as concentration camps. The children have been dispatched to distant foster homes in anticipation of the state terminating the parental rights of their mothers ? including church members in conventional marriages.

The crimes committed against those mothers place all parental rights in jeopardy.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 20, 2008

If we were to adapt the Parable of the Good Samaritan to reflect modern circumstances, the entire incident would be a police sting operation.

The man who fell among thieves would actually be a police operative and the Samaritan would be arrested and have his donkey confiscated for the supposed offense of running an unlicensed ambulance service.

Something very similar happened to 78-year-old Florida resident Rosco O?Neil.

During a visit to a local grocery store, O?Neil was approached by a woman who said she needed a ride. O?Neill said he?d help if she was there after he finished shopping.

After getting his groceries, O?Neil took the woman to her requested destination, where she insisted on paying him over his repeated objections. At that point O?Neil was surrounded by police. He was given $2,000 in citations and had his van impounded for operating an unlicensed taxi service.

Perhaps O?Neil is fortunate he didn?t try to save somebody?s life without first getting government permission.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 19, 2008

During a speech in Roseburg, Oregon, Democratic presidential candidate Barrack Obama endorsed the idea of enforced austerity for Americans: ?We can?t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ? and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.?

Like practically everyone else in the political class, Mr. Obama has made himself wealthy in a career devoted to regulating the way the rest of us live. Should he be elected president, he will suffer for nothing by way of transportation, food, and other creature comforts, even as the rest of us grapple with price inflation that is putting many of the essentials beyond our economic reach.

Our coming privations will be bad enough without the federal mandates Obama envisions, which would be designed to reduce our standard of living to a level deemed suitable by eco-radicals both here and abroad.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

The teaching that we are to render to Caesar that which is Caesar?s, and give to God that which is God?s, does not impose on us an unconditional duty to obey government.

Each of us is a unique creation made in the likeness of God. Neither our bodies nor our genetic codes belong to the vaporous abstraction called ?society,? let alone to the government.

Yet the Regime ruling us is building a national DNA database, and will exploit any opportunity to confiscate a sample from any of us. On May 2 the president signed an act requiring all newborn children to undergo DNA screening within six months of birth.

Caesar created the debased coin Jesus used in his illustration. Only God can create a human being, and no government has a proprietary claim over any part of us. Remember: When government demands of us something we cannot properly give, Christians have not only the right, but the duty, to disobey.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

For five years, German resident Murat Kurnaz was held in U.S. military custody.

During that time, Kurnaz faced almost incessant mistreatment, much of it in the form of unambiguous torture. He underwent controlled drowning, more commonly called ?waterboarding,? electric shocks, and prolonged sleep deprivation. At one point, he spent 33 days in a tiny isolation cell with the ventilation system turned off for hours each day.

Even if Kurnaz had been a legitimate POW or terrorist suspect, this treatment would have been entirely illegal. But he was completely innocent ? a fact known to US authorities no later than February 2002. Yet he wasn?t released until August 2006. Even then, his captors tried unsuccessfully to compel Kurnaz to sign a confession. After he refused, Kurnaz was shackled hand and foot and forced to wear blacked-out goggles during his return flight to Germany.

It what sense is our government protecting us from terror when it inflicts such Soviet-style torture on the innocent?

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

A federal court in Brooklyn recently unsealed an indictment against a gang of eight men accused of running an innovative robbery scheme. The criminals mimicked the tactics of police counter-narcotics departments to identify, target, and extort money from drug dealers in several cities along the East Coast.

Once they had kidnapped dealers and their families, the police impersonators would employ some of the same methods approved for official government use in the so-called war on terror.

For instance, some of the victims of this criminal gang were subjected to long periods of controlled drowning ? a procedure commonly called ?waterboarding.? On one occasion, a pair of pliers was applied to the intimate anatomy of a victim, who was threatened with sexual mutilation if he didn?t talk.

When used by government officials, such tactics are called ?enhanced interrogation techniques.? Apparently, it?s only when they?re used without government permission that we?re free to call them torture.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

One of the few powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution is that of coining money from gold and silver.
In 1971, under Richard Nixon, the government severed the remaining links binding its currency to precious metals. Since then, notes political analyst Kevin Phillips, ?Washington has been forced to gull its citizens and creditors by debasing official statistics? about our nation?s economic performance.

Arcane formulas are devised, and constantly revised, to minimize the rate of consumer inflation and unemployment. This creates a statistical phenomenon Phillips calls the ?Pollyanna Creep? ? a growing disparity between the official depiction of the economy?s performance, and the reality experienced by consumers.

This deception allows Washington to manipulate both the perceptions of the electorate and the interest rates it pays to foreign creditors while holding down cost of living adjustments for Social Security and other benefit payments.

It?s no exaggeration to say that deliberate, malicious fraud permeates everything that is done by the federal government.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

During the first quarter of 2008, the private sector ? that is, the productive element of the economy ? shed nearly 300,000 jobs. At the same time, the federal, state and local governments ? that is, the parasite class ? added nearly 77,000 jobs.

USA Today reported that this is ?the biggest jump in first-quarter hiring [by government] since a boom in 2002? following the 9-11 attacks. That boom began last July 1, when government economic forecasts -- called for a healthy and growing economy. With the economy in a steep and severe decline, this expansion of government payrolls will inflict even greater hardships on already cash-strapped taxpayers.

Our country is afflicted with roughly 88,000 government units that employ in excess of 22 million people. Government is, by a considerable margin, our country?s largest employer. This wouldn?t be the case if our country were a constitutional republic organized around a free market, as our Founders intended.

Government must be ruthlessly pruned back if we are to take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

In 1981, James Woodard of Dallas was convicted of murdering his girlfriend and sentenced to life in prison. Over the next twenty-seven years, Woodard ? a model prisoner ? was given 12 parole hearings in which he was offered freedom in exchange for admitting that he was guilty of that crime.

Although every molecule of his body ached for freedom, Woodard refused each time that offer was made, insisting that he had been wrongfully convicted.

In late April, Woodard was vindicated when a district judge ordered his release. DNA tests on the body of the victim ? who had been raped and strangled ? confirmed that Woodard was not the assailant. In addition, new research documented that former Dallas DA Henry Wade had deliberately concealed evidence that would have cleared Woodard.

With the help of the Innocence Project of Texas, Woodard is now free after living roughly half his life in prison ? and manfully maintaining his integrity when tempted to confess to a crime he didn?t commit.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 8,2008

Marshall Pappert of Bridgeville, Pennsylvania mistakenly believed that he lived in a city and a country in which the right to petition his elected representatives was a sacred right.

For years the 56-year-old Mr. Pappert has complained to his city government about the noise and dust produced by a neighboring concrete factory, which often begins operation at 2 a.m. Desperate for relief of some kind, Pappert has besieged city officials with letters, information requests, and phone calls.

After leaving three stern but polite voice mails for Borough Manager Lori Collins, Pappert was hit with a criminal harassment complaint because Collins didn?t like the tone of his voice. Incredibly, Pappert was arrested, and a district judge convicted him of the supposed crime of petitioning an elected representative. That decision should, and likely will, be overturned.

Officials who treat constituents in this fashion should not only be thrown out of office, I'm tempted to say they should also be placed in stocks in the town square and pelted with dead cats and rotten fruit.

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