Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 21, 2007

After being designated an ?unlawful enemy combatant,? US citizen Jose Padilla was held for more than three years in military custody. During that period he was subjected to prolonged torture through sensory deprivation.

Padilla was accused of plotting a terrorist strike within the US. The evidence backing that charge came in the form of testimony obtained through the torture of three other men abroad, one of whom suffered sexual mutilation at the hands of Moroccan interrogators.

Fearing a potential Supreme Court challenge, Bush administration released Padilla from military custody. It then charged him with a different set of crimes, none of which had anything to do with the original charges. Last week a jury convicted Padilla, on scanty and dubious evidence, of supporting terrorism overseas.

Whatever one thinks of Padilla and the verdict, the precedent set in his treatment is terrifying: A US citizen can be placed outside the protections of the law by presidential decree, and treated any way his captors see fit.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 20, 2007

In the event of a major terrorist attack, the Department of Homeland Security would implement detailed plans to lock down the entire American population. Among the assets used to induce the population to submit to martial law would be thousands of pastors organized as ?Clergy Response Teams.?

The mission of those teams, in addition to distributing food and other necessities, would be to ?quell dissent,? observed a recent news report. Dr. Durell Tuberville, a chaplain connected to the program, explained to Shreveport, Louisiana's KSLA-TV that the main message to be preached is that "government is established by the Lord" and that citizens should submit to it unconditionally.

This is a dishonest paraphrase of Romans 13, which teaches that the God-ordained purpose of government is to defend the innocent, and that all rulers are accountable to God and His law. In our republic, the law is king, the people are sovereign, and government power is limited by the Constitution.

Let us take back the liberty where with Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 17, 2007

The Council for Security Policy is a Washington think-tank intimately connected with the Bush administration. Its current and former members include Vice President Dick Cheney. The organization has several front groups, including one called Family Security Matters, or FSM.

On August 3, the FSM website published an essay by contributing editor Philip Atkinson calling for George W. Bush to proclaim himself president-for-life, and to use the US military to de-populate Iraq and re-populate it with Americans.

In fact, according to Atkinson, at the onset of the war Bush should have ?use[d] his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead.? But he can redeem that mistake by ?becoming the first permanent president of America.? Otherwise, he would ?fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God....?

This is the voice of an authentic strain of contemporary fascism, coming from a supposedly conservative group closely tied to the White House.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 16, 2007

When Congress passed the so-called PATRIOT Act in 2001, much of the measure remained unread by the congressmen who voted for it. One element of the bill added literally minutes before the vote permits federal investigators to conduct ?sneak and peek? searches ? that is, searches permitted by secret warrants that are disclosed to the targeted individual long after the fact.

This is supposedly a tool to be used only when necessary to defend national security. Yet of the hundreds of sneak-and-peek searches conducted by the Feds in 2005, only 12 percent were related to terrorism. One covert search in eastern Tennessee was prompted by an investigation of a cockfighting ring. Cockfighting is a barbarous sport and corrupt gambling enterprise, to be sure, but hardly a threat to national security.

When police tactics devised to fight terrorists are employed against petty crooks, it's reasonable to expect that they will soon be deployed against law-abiding political dissidents. It has certainly happened before.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 15, 2007

Pop singer Clay Aiken was recently involved in a trivial argument aboard a commercial flight. A man who had been aboard that Continental Express flight told aviation columnist Patrick Smith: ?[F]ederal agents came onto the plane and interviewed people sitting near the `altercation' site before releasing us. At one point the flight attendant said, `This is 2007, and you need to watch what you say on a plane.'?

It is not an exaggeration to say that airline passengers today enjoy a status somewhat akin to that of the passengers on a prison transport bus. This is one reason why foreign air travelers are increasingly avoiding the U.S.

According to Business Traveler magazine, foreign air carriers are devising routes that will ?enable global travelers to avoid the United States.? Air New Zealand, for instance, transfers Europe-bound passengers in British Columbia, thereby permitting them to avoid invasive U.S. customs procedures.

Apparently, the US is no longer a preferred destination for freedom-oriented frequent fliers.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 14, 2007

Many Americans might consider Edith Williams to be paranoid. Because of strange noises and an odd echo heard whenever she talks with her sister, the 80-year-old Denver resident is convinced that her phones have been tapped.

Neither her long-distance carrier nor her brother, a retired police chief, can find evidence of tampering.

Still, Edith is uneasy, for two reasons. The first is that in 2003 she sent President Bush a series of stern but polite e-mails urging him not to attack Iraq; she believes this marked her as a dissident. Her second cause for concern is the fact that she immigrated to the US from Germany in 1951, and current Homeland Security policies are stirring uncomfortable memories of how the Nazis consolidated power in the country of her birth.

Edith Williams may be paranoid, but that doesn't mean she has nothing to worry about. Given her background, Edith's sense of where our country is headed is worthy of our attention.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 13, 2007

On this day ? August 13 ? in 1961, residents of Berlin awoke to a divided city. Communist officials in East Berlin had erected a crude six-foot-high barbed wire barrier that would eventually grow into an immense concrete wall ? the most powerful symbol of the unmitigated tyranny of Communism.

The embryonic Berlin Wall was built to contain the growing flood of refugees fleeing the Communist section of the city in search of freedom in the West. The relatively flimsy barbed wire fence was supplemented with sharpshooters with orders to kill anyone trying to escape. Before the sun set on August 13 the streets of East Berlin were decorated with the blood of martyrs to the cause of human freedom.

The Wall came down on November 9, 1989 ? ironically, the fifty-first anniversary of the Nazi Kristallnacht rampage that inaugurated Germany's long totalitarian nightmare. But we would be wise to remember that hideous testament to tyranny, a symbol of the evil of which every government is capable.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 10, 2007

The Chinese government, which for years has been propping up the US economy by purchasing huge volumes of Treasury notes, has publicly suggested that it may exercise what it calls the ?nuclear option? by selling off those notes.

Were Beijing to do so, it would fatally undermine the dollar, which is already hitting new lows when compared to other currencies, including the euro.

This announcement came as the Chinese, along with Russia and several central Asian nations, conducted joint military exercises through the recently created Shanghai Cooperation Organization ? a Chinese-led regional alliance.

Tensions with Moscow and Beijing are predictable, given the nature of the regimes ruling Russia and China. But the Bush administration's announced intention to pursue a ?global democratic revolution? did nothing to improve the situation. Neither did launching an unnecessary war in Iraq that is depleting our military while driving us further in debt to our chief strategic rivals.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 9, 2007

The US Court of Appeals for Washington, DC has ruled that the Food and Drug Administration can deny experimental drugs to people suffering from terminal illness. The ruling is based on the assumption that rights are government artifacts.

In her dissenting opinion, Judge Judith W. Rogers pointed out that while federal courts protect abortion and various forms of deviant sexual behavior as rights, ?the right to try to save one's life is left out in the cold....?

The federal court insists that it is the federal government, not the afflicted individual, that has the authority to calculate the risks and potential benefits of new medical treatments. Abandoning this paternalistic premise, warned the court, ?would undermine much of the modern administrative state....?

By this reckoning, the federal government's all-encompassing power to regulate our lives must be preserved, even if doing so consigns people to agonizing deaths that could be prevented through the use of experimental drugs.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 8, 2007

A report from the Government Accountability Office warns that the Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 assault rifles and pistols that were given to Iraqi security personnel in 2004 and 2005. The report concludes that the effort to train and equip Iraqi security forces was rushed and haphazard. The program was led by General David Petraeus, who is now in overall command of US troops in Iraq.

At least some of the missing weaponry is being used by Iraqi insurgents to attack and kill US soldiers.

Gen. Petraeus is now presiding over another effort to build Iraqi security forces. This time, there is no doubt that the US is putting weapons in the hands of insurgents. Supposedly moderate elements within the Sunni Muslim community are being recruited as security contractors. However, some of them are believed to have links to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

How much more of this insanity will we permit before demanding that we bring our troops home?

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