Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 29, 2008

In a New York Times opinion column published last June, Air Force Colonel Morris D. Davis, chief prosecutor for the Pentagon?s Office of Military Commissions, defended those tribunals as ?a fair process to adjudicate the guilt or innocence [of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay].?

He expressed a sharply different perspective when he resigned last October. Just months after extolling the fairness of military commissions, Davis described how the Pentagon was planning to use them to hold dramatic show trials this year to influence the election.

The administration recently announced plans to try and execute several detainees. Davis has offered to serve as a defense witness in one of the trials as a way of exposing what he now calls a rigged system. Davis recalls being told by a Pentagon superior that ?We can?t have acquittals, we?ve got to have convictions.?

To his credit, Col. Davis, an architect of that system, may play a key role in demolishing it.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 28, 2008

Debbie Hirst of London suffers from an aggressive form of breast cancer. Britain?s National Health Service is unwilling to provide her with Avastin, a cancer drug widely in use here in the U.S. and elsewhere. Debbie decided to raise $120,000 to pay for the Avastin, while continuing her government-subsidized treatment.

After raising $20,000, Debbie was told by her doctor that if she paid for the Avastin, she would have to pay the total costs of her treatment. Of course, as a taxpayer, she?s already paid for Britain?s socialized medical system. But as the New York Times observes, allowing her to buy additional treatment ?would violate the philosophy of the health service?.?

That ?philosophy? dictates that British patients belong to the State, and can only receive treatments that the State deems fit and equitable ? at whatever price to their individual health.

This is something to bear in mind when we hear exhortations to nationalize our own health care system.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 27, 2008

During the 1930s, the tiny principality of Liechtenstein joined Switzerland in enacting banking secrecy laws that protected the assets of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.

Today, under Chancellor Angela Merkel, a supposed conservative born and raised in Communist East Germany, the German government imposes tax rates as high as fifty percent.

Not surprisingly, some Germans of means have transferred assets to secret accounts in Liechtenstein in order to escape their country?s punitive and confiscatory tax system. This prompted Germany?s BND intelligence service to use $7.3 million in taxpayer funds to bribe banking officials in Liechtenstein to provide them with information on Germans who used that country as a tax haven.

The BND operation was not only illegal, it was an act of aggression against a peaceful neighbor. And as April 15 approaches, this episode offers a timely and pointed illustration of the criminal means governments employ to plunder the productive on behalf of politically favored parasites.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 26, 2008

In October of last year, Boston attorney Simon Glik used his cellphone to record an arrest in which police used what he considered to be excessive force to subdue a suspect. He made no attempt to conceal the recording, holding his phone where it could easily be seen.

Nonetheless, the police arrested him on a charge of ?wiretapping.? Out of pure spite the officers tacked on charges of ?disturbing the peace? and aiding the attempted escape of a prisoner.

Under Massachusetts law, it is illegal to make a secret recording of a conversation. The charge against Glik has been thrown out by a Boston Municipal Court Judge, who ruled that Glik?s recording was not done in secret. This personal victory leaves a bad law on the books.

The Massachusetts law is just one of many dubious state wiretapping statutes. While wearing a badge, police have no reasonable expectation of privacy. They shouldn?t have the power to punish citizens who hold them accountable.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 25, 2008

How would Americans react if a foreign regime with overwhelming economic and military superiority bombed our nation for 78 days to punish us for supposed human rights offenses against illegal immigrants?

What would be our attitude if that same regime carved off a chunk of Texas that included the Alamo, declared it an independent nation, and gave control of it to a terrorist organization allied with Osama bin Laden?

If we were treated that way, we?d have every right to feel as the Serbs do today.

Hundreds of thousands of them swarmed the US embassy in Belgrade to protest the supposed independence of Kosovo, a province that is just as much a part of Serbia as Texas is part of the United States. It was stolen from Serbia following the illegal US-led 78 day bombing campaign in 1999 and turned over to a regime allied with bin Laden and the Saudis.

The Serbs have every right to be angry, and we have ample cause to be ashamed.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 21, 2008

Thomas Paine once warned: ?He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."

We are constantly told that those confined at Guantanamo Bay are our worst enemies. In a handful of cases, this may be true. More frequently, however, those imprisoned there are innocent people who have been turned into enemies of the United States through torture and other mistreatment.

A large majority of Gitmo prisoners were captured by Afghan and Pakistani bounty hunters, who were as indiscriminate as they were greedy. Gitmo has held elderly men too old to carry a gun, and juveniles too young to be detained as prisoners of war. Ahmed Errachidi [ear-RACH-id-ee], who confessed to being a top al-Qaeda commander, was a fry cook diagnosed as mentally ill years before being sent to Gitmo.

What precedents are being set at Gitmo that we will later lament?

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 20, 2008

England?s Northern Rock bank may be the first pebble in a global banking avalanche.

Newcastle-based Northern Rock is England?s fifth-largest mortgage lender. Last September, amid the global credit crunch provoked by the meltdown of the US mortgage market, Northern Rock applied to the Bank of England for emergency aid. This request was intended to prevent a bank run. Instead, it precipitated one.

In the course of a single weekend, the bank lost some $4 billion to withdrawals before the government guaranteed the bank?s deposits, and police were sent to disperse panicky customers. As the Economist magazine notes, this was England?s first bank run since 1866.

On February 17, the British government announced that it was nationalizing Northern Rock. Robin Ashby, one of the bank?s shareholders, lamented: ?This is a very bad day for Britain.?

It may also foreshadow grim things to come for banks on this side of the Atlantic as the credit crisis unfolds.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 19, 2008

It was after midnight when Yee Moua [MOO-ah], a Minneapolis resident of Hmong descent, heard the sound of a window shattering, followed by the quiet murmur of male voices. She frantically dialed 911 to summon the police.

When the intruders came upstairs, Yee?s husband Vang fired a shotgun at them, provoking a brief burst of return fire. Thankfully, nobody was injured. It was after the exchange of gunfire that the couple learned the invaders were the local SWAT team, which had been sent to the wrong address.

Former US Attorney Tom Heffelfinger, who is representing the family, observes: ?The law is very clear: every homeowner has the right to use deadly force, if necessary, to protect his home and family? from any intruder.

Innocent people die all the time in misdirected no-knock SWAT raids. Will the death of a few policemen be necessary in order to get law enforcement and the courts to take the Fourth Amendment seriously again?

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 18, 2008

The enrichment of government power increases the vulnerability of innocent. This is illustrated by an unfolding scandal in Florida.

Al Zimmerman, a 41-year-old former television news reporter, was the public spokesman for the Florida Department of Child and Family Services. He was arrested in early February and arraigned on eight charges of sexually exploiting a child.

Zimmerman allegedly paid two young teenage boys, both below the age of consent, to pose for sexually explicit photos. One of them was in a foster home as a ward of the child protection agency. Zimmerman planned to peddle his porn to buyers overseas.

There is evidence that several other boys might have been lured into such behavior. It?s difficult to know the extent of the scandal, because a second child welfare employee, Michael Hernandez, removed critical evidence from Zimmerman?s government-issued computer. Zimmerman and Hernandez were involved in a homosexual relationship.

How many other predators have insinuated themselves into the child welfare bureaucracy?

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 15, 2007

St. John Chrysostom, a fourth century father of the Christian Church, once pointed out that drunkenness results from a lack of self-discipline, rather than society's refusal to abolish alcohol.

Those who say that we should do away with alcohol, explained Chrysostom, ?must also say ... `Would that there were no steel,' because of the murderers, 'would that there were no night,' because of the thieves, `Would that there were no light,' because of the informers, and `Would that there were no women,' because of adultery.?

Prohibition of alcohol has never cured mankind of the flaws that lead to drunkenness. The same is true of drug prohibition, which has expanded state power, violence, and corruption while doing nothing to reduce the problems that result from addiction.

Individual liberty and social order would both benefit were we to redirect our efforts to cultivating self-discipline, while punishing as crimes only those acts of force and fraud that injure others.

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