Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

September 4, 2007

As Sigmund Freud famously said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes foot-tapping in a public restroom stall is simply a nervous tic, rather than a secret signal conveying a desire to commit perverted acts.
Senator Larry Craig chose not to fight his arrest in Minneapolis on charges arising from an encounter with an undercover cop in an airport restroom. After pleading guilty, Craig announced his resignation. Despite his decision to resign, Craig should have contested the charge, which was supported only by the uncorroborated testimony of the arresting officer, and his assumptions about acts Craig had not yet committed.

A common law principle at least as old as the Magna Carta holds that agents of the state should not be able to convict citizens of crimes on the basis of their uncorroborated testimony. And we shouldn't assume that policemen are telepaths able to discern the unspoken thoughts, and unperformed deeds, of suspects.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

September 3, 2007

Not satisfied with eviscerating the Bill of Rights and destroying what remains of the Constitution, our rulers are determined to repeal every guarantee of individual rights wrested by the people from government since the Magna Carta was issued in 1215.

Habeas Corpus, which prohibits summary imprisonment on the whim of a ruler, was destroyed when Congress passed the Military Commissions Act. The Fourth Amendment's protection against unlawful searches was for all purposes done away with through the so-called Protect America Act.

Now the regime is bent on abolishing the freedom to travel, an ancient right first secured in paragraphs 41 and 42 of the Magna Carta. When the Real ID Act goes into effect next May, Americans for the first time will be required to have a national ID card in order to board an airplane and perhaps even to travel cross-country by car.

Were they among us today, men like Jefferson and Madison would be mortified by such tyranny ? and disgusted by our complacency.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 31, 2007

While you have been busy working, or perhaps enjoying a well-deserved and too-brief vacation, the Federal Reserve ? the regime's official counterfeiting arm ? has been stealing the value of the dollars that you earn.

In order to stabilize markets left reeling from the ongoing collapse of the sub-prime mortgage industry, the Fed emitted roughly $100 billion. The first beneficiaries were major banks -- Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wachovia, and JP Morgan & Chase ? each of which received hundreds of millions of dollars via the Fed's discount window.

Through the magic of fractional-reserve banking, those dollars will be multiplied many times over in new loans. All of this helps to undermine our purchasing power and the value of our savings. And we'll take another hit when Congress raises the debt ceiling ? which is nearly $9 trillion dollars ? in a few weeks.

Incidentally, average US incomes have fallen since 2000.

Why, oh why, do we put up with this?

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 30, 2007

If Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick had run a network of abortion mills, rather than a dogfighting operation, he would probably have qualified for federal subsidies, rather than federal prosecution.

Thus observes Dr. William Anderson of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, who peels away the layers of sensationalism from the Vick dogfighting scandal to reveal the real issue: ?[W]e are seeing another sorry chapter in the saga of abuses by federal criminal authorities.?

Vick offered a guilty plea because the Feds threatened him with a RICO prosecution. The government wouldn't have to prove Vick actually committed a criminal act, but rather that he had been associated with a criminal enterprise.

Among the genuinely horrible things Vick allegedly did was to kill dogs that didn't perform well. Yet the federal government has announced plans to euthanize more than 50 Pitbulls seized from Vick. Apparently, what was a crime when done by Vick to his own property magically becomes a compassionate act when carried out by the regime.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 29, 2007

Last week's North American summit in Quebec attracted thousands of protesters, most of them peaceful and law-abiding.

At one point, three suspicious-looking individuals materialized; they were masked, visibly older and better-fed than the youthful demonstrators at the protest. The trio was carrying rocks and sticks and clearly spoiling for a fight with heavily armed riot police. They were quickly exposed as police provocateurs. Their role was to incite a riot as a pretext for the police to use overpowering force to clear away the peaceful demonstrators.

This kind of thing is nothing new. Grant Bristow, co-founder of Canada?s racist Heritage Front organization, was an agent of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. He was videotaped urging neo-Nazi skinheads to commit acts of violence, vandalism, and arson. He also made an effort to infiltrate and discredit the mainstream Reform Party.

The use of provocateurs is an old but effective trick. This is something we should remember as we strive to take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 28, 2007

Not satisfied with eviscerating the Bill of Rights and destroying what remains of the Constitution, our rulers are determined to repeal every guarantee of individual rights wrested by the people from government since the Magna Carta was issued in 1215.

Habeas Corpus, which prohibits summary imprisonment on the whim of a ruler, was destroyed when Congress passed the Military Commissions Act. The Fourth Amendment's protection against unlawful searches was for all purposes done away with through the so-called Protect America Act.

Now the regime is bent on abolishing the freedom to travel, an ancient right first secured in paragraphs 41 and 42 of the Magna Carta. When the Real ID Act goes into effect next May, Americans for the first time will be required to have a national ID card in order to board an airplane and perhaps even to travel cross-country by car.

Were they among us today, men like Jefferson and Madison would be mortified by such tyranny ? and disgusted by our complacency.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

June 27, 2007

?Absent Justice what are kindoms but vast robberies ? Thus wrote St Augustin in His Work The City of God. El Paso resident Anastasio Prieto can testify that the government is little more than the world's most heavily armed gang of thieves.

Earlier this month, Mr. Prieto, a truck driver, was asked by Texas State Police for permission to search his truck for contraband or ?cash in excess of $10,000.? Prieto complied with the request, pointing out that while he wasn't transporting anything illegal, he did have $23,700 in cash. The officers seized ? that is, stole ? the cash and turned it over to the Drug Enforcement Agency. Prieto was photographed and fingerprinted, then sent away without charges ? and without his money.

The DEA informed Prieto that to get his money back, he would have to prove that it was not obtained through drug trafficking.

This outrageous incident is actually fairly typical behavior from the regime ruling us in what was once the land of the free.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 24, 2007

Writing in 1792, James Madison observed: ?The Constitution supposes ... that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature.?

Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, Congress enacted a measure permitting the president to use military force against any country or entity he determined was engaged in terrorism. Few noticed at the time that this measure ? known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force ? amounted to a wholesale abdication by Congress of its exclusive constitutional authority to commit our nation to war.

In recent weeks the Bush administration has made clear its intention to classify the Iranian Revolutionary Guard ? an army of some 125,000 troops ? as a terrorist entity. This would provide the administration with a long-sought rationale for military action against Iran.

Congress must repeal the post-9-11 Authorization before the administration takes the back door to war with Iran.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 23, 2007

After next May, if you live in a state that has rejected the Federal Real ID act, you will be required to obtain a passport to board an airliner, visit a national park, or conduct business anywhere a federally approved ID is required.

As a growing number of states reject the Real ID program, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff insists that ?if a state doesn't have ... Real ID-compliant licenses then the state cannot expect that those licenses will be accepted for federal purposes.?

It's entirely possible that Washington will put additional teeth in that threat by requiring Real ID-compliant states to reject unapproved driver's licenses. This would make freedom of travel impossible.

What all of this means, in principle, is that the federally approved state driver's licenses required under the Real ID Act amount to an internal travel passport. Although common in totalitarian countries like the old Soviet Union, travel papers are completely foreign to our traditions, history, and principles.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 22, 2007

On May 25, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell sent a memo to Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff authorizing the use of spy satellite data by federal and local authorities. Washington's vast array of surveillance satellites, constructed for use against the Soviet Union, can now be employed domestically.

This new domestic surveillance capacity would supposedly be employed only to protect the public against terrorists and other violent criminals. However, notes the Baltimore Sun, ?there is no limit on the use of this high-tech equipment, which includes visual and non-visual capabilities that can sense electromagnetic activity, radioactivity, and chemical traces.?

The same administration that violated the law to conduct wholesale eavesdropping on electronic communications now has the ability to target any of us for real-time surveillance from orbit. And a newly passed measure, the dishonestly named ?Protect America Act,? effectively nullifies the Fourth Amendment's ban on ?unreasonable searches and seizures.?

In the name of security, our rulers have abolished our privacy.

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