Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 7,2008

Saddam Hussein once wrote: ?Law consists of two lines above my signature.? Richard Nixon expressed a similar view: ?What I?m saying is that when the president does [something], it?s not illegal.?

The Bush administration has embraced a view of executive powers that combines Saddam?s dictatorial presumption and Nixon?s self-interested corruption, and built on it even further. According to the administration, officials who helped build and operate its apparatus of illegal torture are above legal accountability, whether through the courts or Congress.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has requested that former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former vice presidential chief of staff David Addington, and former administration legal counsel John Yoo ? appear before his committee.

The administration has replied that Congress lacks the Constitutional power to question those officials about their performance while in the executive branch. The Bush doctrine dictates that these underlings enjoy the same royal immunities supposedly vested in the president and vice president.

If this lawlessness goes unpunished, Americans will owe the first King George an apology.

Let us take back the Liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 6,2008

During a recent interview with the television program 60 Minutes, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was asked if the torture of a criminal suspect in police custody was a form of cruel and unusual punishment.

?No. To the contrary,? Scalia smugly replied. ?Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment?... When [a police officer] is hurting you in order to get information from you, you wouldn?t say he?s punishing you.?

Indeed not: A police officer in that situation would be committing a crime. Torture is expressly forbidden as punishment by the Eighth Amendment, and government officials have no right or authority to inflict pain of any kind on anyone as a means of extracting information.

Previously, Scalia had invoked the use of torture by Jack Bauer, the fictional counter-terrorism hero of the depraved TV show 24, as a defense of the practice.

Scalia is considered a conservative jurist. His comments reveal him to be a degenerate ignoramus and authoritarian bully.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 5,2008

Last April was National Child Abuse Awareness Month, and for our instruction the government ruling us has committed several recent high-profile acts of official child abuse.

More than 400 children, including nursing infants, were taken from mothers belonging to the FLDS Church in Texas. That small, eccentric religious community was attacked in a paramilitary raid triggered by anonymous ? and now discredited ? allegations of sexual abuse.

Despite the absence of a victim or an accuser, the children were taken from their mothers at gunpoint.

A smaller but still shocking example of government child abuse was the seizure of seven-year-old Leo Ratte from his father Christopher Ratte.

During a baseball game, Mr. Ratte bought his son Leo a beverage he thought was lemonade, but that actually contained alcohol. This was an innocent mistake, a fact acknowledged by police and child protection workers. Yet the terrified boy was forcibly taken from his parents and kept from them for two days.

We must never forget that government is the single greatest source of preventable child abuse.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 25, 2008

For the first time in living memory, American consumers in some states have confronted food rationing. The New York Sun reports that ?Major retailers in New York ?New England and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply.?

Several converging factors have created a dramatic world grain shortfall. Washington?s ethanol subsidies have diverted resources into growing corn to be used as fuel; this creates what economists call a substitution effect driving up the price of other grains.

To this we can add the soaring price of fuel, the falling dollar, and bad harvests in several countries. The result has been food riots in dozens of countries, and the imposition of grain export controls by a half-dozen national governments.

While many living abroad are starving, American shoppers are, at present, merely frustrated. But it will only get worse from here.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 24, 2008

As CEO of the Federal National Mortgage Association, or Fannie Mae, Franklin D. Raines did a great deal to inflate the now-collapsed housing bubble.

In 2004, Raines and two of his henchmen overstated Fannie Mae?s earnings by $6.3 billion, thereby arranging huge bonuses for themselves just prior to leaving the company. In simple terms, they looted the company Enron-style, then let it collapse. Billions were spent to repair the damage.

Both Fannie Mae and its twin institution, the Federal Home Mortgage Loan Corporation, were created during the New Deal. These government-backed and subsidized entities own or guarantee 70 percent of American mortgage loans.

Rather than pursue Raines for his Enron-style corruption, the government has arranged a very comfortable settlement: He will give up a small portion of his ill-gotten gains and relinquish some now-worthless stock options.

Just as some banks are too big to fail, some crooks are apparently too big to prosecute.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 23, 2008

In the old Soviet Union, it was possible for anyone to be arrested at any time and charged with terrorism ? defined by that government?s constitution as any word or deed that could undermine the state.

Although we?ve not reached that level of despotism, the recent ?anti-terrorism initiative? Operation Sudden Impact illustrates that we?re far closer than most people realize.

That operation in Memphis, Tennessee involved more than 50 State, local, and federal agencies and funding from the Department of Homeland Security. It included traffic stops, raids on businesses, seizure of personal assets, and house-to-house searches. There was little to show for all of this effort and expense: A mere 332 people were arrested for outstanding warrants.

But the point of this exercise wasn?t to enforce the law; it was to help build a Soviet-style unitary law enforcement apparatus ? and to demonstrate how it could be used against the public, should our rulers deem it necessary.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 22, 2008

If Eric Bryant weren?t an attorney, he probably wouldn?t have been aware of an Oregon state statute permitting citizens to ?commence a violation proceeding? against people who violate traffic laws. And it?s also likely that if Bryant weren?t a lawyer, he wouldn?t have had the nerve to do so against a police officer.

Bryant, a resident of Portland, Oregon, saw police officer Chad Stensgaard pull up in front of a Japanese restaurant and park in a clearly defined No Parking zone. When he complained to Stensgaard, the police officer nonchalantly described his violation as a perk of his profession.

So Bryant filed four separate complaints against Officer Stensgaard carrying potential total fines of $540. Multnomah County has honored Bryant?s complaints, issuing a summons to the police officer to appear in court on May 23.

As Bryant correctly observes, citizens should be concerned when police officers use their status to justify breaking the law.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 21, 2008

The Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints, or FLDS Church, is an offshoot of the Mormon Church that still practices polygamy. Its doctrines are anti-biblical, its organization cultish, and at least some of its male leaders may have committed statutory rape. But nothing justifies the wholesale abduction of 416 of that community?s children by the state of Texas.

In early April, child welfare officials, with the help of a paramilitary strike team, raided the FLDS complex in El Dorado. They acted on a warrant based on an alleged phone call from an abused 16-year-old polygamous wife. That call was a hoax committed by a disturbed woman in Colorado. Despite that fact a judge has taken all of the community?s children into state custody.

Texas officials now plan to distribute those children to foster homes in several states, and force them to undergo DNA testing.

Repellent as the FLDS cult?s teachings may be, the totalitarian tactics of the Texas government are immeasurably worse.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 18, 2008

Jeremy Bentham, the 19th century British philosopher, devised a concept called the ?Panopticon? ? a prison structure in which the inmates were kept under constant covert surveillance.

The Bush administration has nearly completed a version of a national Panopticon in which all citizens would be treated like inmates of Bentham?s theoretical model prison.

Michael Chertoff, director of the Homeland Security Department, has approved a scheme in which his department will integrate spy satellites, signals intelligence, chemical detection assets, radar, and other technology into one all-encompassing domestic surveillance network.

Some of these assets, such as spy satellites, have traditionally been deployed against identified foreign enemies. Washington has now made it clear that it considers us to be its most important enemy. Other assets traditionally used for disaster response operations are now to be used in regimenting our population.

This demented administration is turning the former land of the free into an open-air prison camp.

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

Link: http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/Story?id=4635175&page=1

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 17, 2008

The president of the United States is a war criminal. He richly deserves not only impeachment, but imprisonment as well.

It?s not enough that George W. Bush usurped congressional power to entangle our nation in an illegal aggressive war against Iraq. After several years of strident denials, he has now admitted to ordering the torture of terrorism suspects.

Last week, ABC News reported that a special White House Committee, including Vice President Cheney, former CIA Director Tenet, and then-National Security Adviser Rice, micro-managed the torture of detainees. The so-called interrogation methods included water torture, commonly called ?waterboarding.?

In a follow-up interview with the network, Mr. Bush confirmed that he was very much in the loop as torture tactics forbidden by the Constitution and our laws were implemented: ?[Y]es, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

If we do not repudiate this evil, we will prove ourselves unworthy of the liberty wherewith Christ once made us free.