Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

October 2, 2007

Guatemala native Pedro Zapeta came to the United States without government permission in 1995. For eleven years, working in the underground economy as a dishwasher, Zapeta managed to accumulate more than $59,000 in savings.

Two years ago, the illegal immigrant decided to return to his homeland to build a home for his family. As Zapeta prepared to board an airliner, his savings caught the eye of a Customs official. The Feds detained Zapeta and confiscated his money. He was quickly released. His money was not.

Last January, federal Judge James Cohn ruled that the government could keep all but $10,000 of the money it had stolen from Zapeta. This was justified, Cohn insisted, not because Zapeta failed to obey our immigration laws, but because he neglected to sign a disclosure form required of everyone who travels with cash in excess of $10,000.

This kind of officially sanctioned theft happens every day in what was once a free country ruled by law.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

October 1, 2007

Morrisville, North Carolina resident Kent Kauffman was having a really bad week. His beloved dog had just died of kidney failure. And he had just caught a nasty cold. And then Kent caught sight of police lights in his rear-view mirror.

Officer Chris Gill gave Kent a ticket for failing to wear a seat belt. Speaking with the policeman through his minivan window, Kent yielded to an irrepressible urge to cough. The officer promptly seized him, threw him first into the side of the patrol car and then face-down on the ground, then cuffed his hands cuffed his back.

?He kept yelling at me to get up. I told him, `I can't move, man, I'm sick,'? recalled Kent.

Despite the fact that Kent never touched or threatened Gill, he was charged with assault on a government official, which carries a 60-day jail sentence.

If we remain in any sense a genuinely free society, how can someone be arrested for coughing in the presence of a police officer?

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

September 28, 2007

The book The Starfish and the Spider describes the Australian government's effort to protect the Great Barrier Reef from an exploding starfish population. Divers were sent to kill as many starfish as possible by cutting them in half.

However, because of its unique anatomy, a severed starfish simply duplicates itself. Cutting starfish into fragments simply produced a bigger population.

Leaderless human organizations behave in a similar fashion. For instance, Islamic terrorism is a leaderless movement that replicates much like the starfish population. Simply killing Muslim radicals in great numbers won't end the threat. In fact, sober intelligence assessments document that the war in Iraq has abetted the growth of Muslim radicalism.

Defenders of that war insist that we should kill ?them? there rather than fight them here. But this makes as much sense as trying to save the Barrier Reef by cutting up starfish. Insurgent Islam is a challenge that can't be addressed using the blunt instrument of military force.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

September 27,2007

Pardoned by the Florida Clemency Board after more than three years in prison, Dr. Richard Paey was returned to his family on September 21. Confined to a wheelchair after an automobile accident and an inept surgery, and suffering from multiple sclerosis, Dr. Paey was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

His supposed offense was to obtain medicine of the proper kind, and in adequate volume, to deal with his chronic pain.

Following a paramilitary police raid on Paey's home, an abusive prosecutor blackmailed his doctor into testifying against the crippled man. No evidence was produced that Paey had distributed the painkillers to others, but under Florida law possession of more than 28 grams of painkiller is regarded as evidence of trafficking.

Significantly, Noelle Bush, daughter of then-Governor Jeb Bush, was convicted of the same charge and referred to drug treatment, rather than being sent to prison. Injustices of this variety are quite common in the malicious, murderous fraud called the war on drugs.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

September 26, 2007

The last time the Canadian dollar, known as the ?Loonie,? was equal in value to the Greenback, Gerald Ford was in the White House. In May 2004 the Canadian Loonie was worth 72 cents. On September 20 of this year, it caught and passed the dollar. One result will be higher energy costs, since the US imports more oil from Canada than from the Middle East.

Just three days before the Loonie eclipsed the dollar, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates. This caused a dramatic drop in the dollar's value: Gold increased to $736 an ounce, and oil rose to over $82 a barrel.

Significantly, Saudi Arabia's rulers are beginning to distance themselves from the dollar. Washington depends on Saudi purchases of Treasury notes, and their insistence on selling oil only in dollars, to keep the greenback afloat.

What settlement will be imposed on our country once our foreign creditors abandon the decrepit dollar?

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

September 25, 2007

Washington State residents Alan and Stephne Roos knew that their son Thomas had drug problem. They didn't know that he was using the family's automobiles ? a late-model Nissan and a refurbished 1970 Chevy ? to deal drugs.

When Thomas was arrested, police confiscated the cars under the civil forfeiture provision of a state narcotics law. This was done despite the fact that the cars belonged to Thomas's parents, who were not accused of a crime. Under state law, the burden was on Alan and Stephne to prove that they did not know about their son's drug trafficking.

A sheriff's department official ruled that because the parents should have known about their son's activity, it was proper to seize their cars even though the parents are legally and morally innocent.

There is a name for a system that denies property rights and practices collective punishment in this fashion: Communism. And it's much deadlier than drugs.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

September 24, 2007

Deputy David B. Thompson of Oregon's Multnomah County Sheriff's Department finds some peculiar rewards in his work.

?Seeing someone get Tasered is second only to pulling the trigger,? wrote Deputy Thompson in a police-oriented Internet chat room. ?That is money ? puts a smile on your face.? On another occasion, Thompson boasted: ?I crushed a dude?s eye socket from repeatedly punching him in it and then I charged him with menacing and harassment [of me].?

The same streak of government-licensed sadism was on display at the University of Florida on September 17 when 21-year-old Andrew Meyer was manhandled by several police officers and then given a 50,000-volt Taser shock. Meyer's ?offense? was to take a little too long at the mike during a question period at a speech by John Kerry. Meyer was willing to leave, but he was Tazed anyway ? apparently because somebody wanted to experience the depraved thrill described by the unformed degenerate, Deputy David Thompson.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

September 21, 2007

After being assaulted by an off-duty police officer, 20-year-old Brett Darrow installed a video camera in his car to record encounters with law enforcement.

In early September, Darrow recorded a run-in with a policeman in St. George, Missouri. When Darrow ? who obeyed traffic rules and was polite and cooperative ? didn't display an adequately submissive attitude, the policeman threatened to perjure himself to justify a needless arrest.

"I bet I could say you resisted arrest or something," boasted the officer during a lengthy profane tirade. "You want me to show you? You want me to lock you up to show you I'm right and you're wrong??

Darrow recorded and publicized a similar encounter last year, earning him a death threat from at least one police officer. The St. Louis policeman told associates that he longs to ?pull him over alone ... and place a hunk of hot lead right where it belongs.?

How many other officers look on the public with such potentially murderous contempt?

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

September 20, 2007

There are few if any problems that cannot be made much worse through the dubious blessing of government intervention.

For example: Thanks to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, or Freddie Mac, thousands of homeowners who have made their mortgage and property tax payments on time may lose their homes anyway.

The mortgages were financed through American Home Mortgage Corporation, which filed for bankruptcy in August. Freddie Mac -- which worked with the company -- seized the files on some 4,547 mortgage loans, as well as $7 million in escrowed funds used for mortgage, insurance, and property tax payments. As a result, reported the Wall Street Journal, "Thousands of homeowners face an `imminent risk' of losing their homes" because property taxes are going unpaid.

Since Freddie Mac is deeply entangled in the mortgage industry nation-wide it's reasonable to expect that the predicament faced by those households is just a foretaste of sorrows to come.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

September 19, 2007

The French diplomat Talleyrand was among history's most cunning political survivors, somehow holding on to power while his comrades were sent to the guillotine. Asked late in life why he'd never written his memoirs, Talleyrand replied: ?It's because I have nothing to hide.?

The chief function of a political memoir is to preserve one's historic reputation by deflecting blame to others. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan takes that course in his new memoir, laying all of the blame for the ongoing economic meltdown on George W. Bush.

As Greenspan tells it, Bush refused to veto spending bills that drove the deficit and national debt to terrifying heights. This is certainly true. But it was Greenspan's Fed that pumped trillions of dollars into the economy, inflating a debt bubble the collapse of which threatens unprecedented economic ruin.

There is ample blame to go around for this, but Greenspan's was the hand at the printing press, however eager he is to conceal that fact.

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