As a military prosecutor at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, Lt. Col. Stuart Couch confronted a poignant dilemma.

Couch was assigned to prosecute Mohammadeou Ould Slahi, accused of organizing the hijacking of United Flight 175. That was the plane flown into the south tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. The co-pilot of that flight was Michael Horrocks, a close friend of Col. Couch.

As he prepared to prosecute Slahi, Couch discovered that the accused terrorist's confession had been extracted through torture ? including beatings and death threats against both him and his mother.

Couch desperately wanted to prosecute Slahi. But his oath to the Constitution and his commitment as a Christian made it impossible for him to be a party to torture. After confronting his superiors, Col. Couch withdrew from the case. He is confident that legitimate evidence will be found to build a case for prosecuting Slahi.

Despite his strong personal desire to avenge the death of his fellow Marine and close friend, Col. Couch stood fast on principle in defending the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

June 20, 2007

Congressman Peter DeFazio is a member of the House Homeland Security Committee. As such the Oregon Democrat is permitted to view classified documents in a secure room in the Capitol.

Rep. DeFazio recently asked to see the classified section of the Bush administration's plans for continuity of government in the event of a terrorist attack. That request was denied without comment.
Legal scholar Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, a group generally supportive of Bush, described that denial as a ?knee-jerk overextension of executive power.?

What is already on the public record is troubling enough. Last October Bush signed into law a measure permitting the president to seize control of the National Guard and deploy them domestically as his personal police force. He has also claimed the power to detain people indefinitely without access to the courts.

Rep. DeFazio's experience has caused him to wonder aloud if conspiracy theorists are right to speculate that another 9-11-type attack would result in something akin to a presidential dictatorship.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

Addressing the Constitutional Convention on June 29, 1787, James Madison offered timeless insights about what is now called the Military-Industrial Complex:

"A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense [against] foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people."

USA Today recently reported that the US military in Baghdad ?is taking fingerprints and eye scans from thousands of Iraqi men and building an unprecedented database that helps track suspected militants.? This is being done in collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, which are quietly building a similar system of human inventory control here at home.

Rather than keeping us free, the Iraq war is hastening the extermination of our liberties.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

The Senate recently passed, by a 97-0 vote, a resolution condemning Iran for its alleged role in supporting attacks on US soldiers in Iraq.

In fact, the Shiite Muslim regime in Iran supports the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government that was installed with Washington's support. Most of the Iraqi insurgents are supported by the Sunni Muslim government in Saudi Arabia, a supposed ally of the US.

Citing a senior US military official in Baghdad, the Los Angeles Times reports that nearly half of all Muslim militants battling US troops in Iraq ? including suicide bombers and captured guerrilla fighters -- are from Saudi Arabia. This isn't surprising, given that Iraq's Sunni minority doesn't want to be ruled by the Shiites, and Saudi Arabia is determined to check Iran's influence in the region.

By overthrowing Saddam, Washington enhanced Iranian power. Now Washington is preparing for war against Iran, even as our troops battle Saudis in Iraq.

The only cure for this insanity is for us to get out of the region entirely.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, former White House Political Director Sara Taylor declared: "I took an oath to the president, and I take that oath very seriously."

Senator Patrick Leahy reminded Miss Taylor that she had actually taken an oath to the Constitution, not to George W. Bush or any other official. "[T]he president refers to the government being his government ? it's not," observed Leahy.

Patrick Leahy, one of the most liberal members of the Senate, articulated a principle conservatives once understood: Loyalties to any official are contingent on their obedience to our Constitution.

Teddy Roosevelt made that point in memorable fashion:

?To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.?

The praetorian assumptions revealed in Miss Taylor's unguarded comments have no place in a republic ruled by law.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

Will the Chinese government be your next landlord? If you haven't paid off your mortgage, this is a serious possibility, particularly if your mortgage is backed by the federal government.

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Johnson recently visited Beijing to invite ? no, to beg ? the Chinese central bank to buy more mortgage-backed investment securities. The ongoing avalanche of mortgage defaults has reduced demand for those securities, many of which are offered by federally backed mortgage companies such as Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and Ginnie Mac, all of which extend loans to marginally qualified borrowers.

According to the federal government, Beijing owned roughly $107.5 billion in mortgage-backed securities as of June 2006. This means that the Chinese have helped pump up the real estate bubble on which much of our consumer spending has relied. It also means that they hold the notes that must be paid off after that bubble completes its ongoing collapse. And Washington, incredibly, is begging Beijing to take us even deeper into bondage.

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

George F. Will, a Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist and respected television commentator, warned on July 15 of the possibility of what he called a ?Weimar moment in our politics.?

That expression refers to conditions that prevailed in Germany following that nation's defeat in World War I. A segment of the German population insisted that the defeat was the result of the military being ?stabbed in the back? by corrupt and perfidious political figures. Such people agitated for an authoritarian government that would suppress dissent, regiment society, and recapture Germany's lost greatness. Not surprisingly, they were among Adolf Hitler's earliest and most devout supporters.

Mr. Will fears that similar attitudes are coalescing among supporters of the Bush administration's disastrous war in Iraq. He may be right. Furthermore, our law enforcement system has become militarized and federalized. The dollar's steady decline suggests that severe economic hardship, and the turmoil it brings, may be in our immediate future.

Is there a ?Weimar Moment? in our future? Let us pray that one can be avoided, and strive to take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

It often seems that the Bush administration is not a government, but rather a crime wave in perpetual session. Mr. Bush recently ordered former White House counsel Harriet Miers to defy a congressional subpoena to answer questions about the politically motivated firings of several federal prosecutors.

Current White House Counsel Fred Fielding insists that Miers ?has absolute immunity from compelled congressional testimony? regarding her role as a presidential adviser. That claim is ludicrous on its face, but Mrs. Miers is welcome to appear before Congress to make it. However, she is not free to reject a congressional subpoena, and Bush's order that she do so is a crime.

The US federal criminal code ? 18 USC Sec. 1505 -- defines obstruction of a congressional inquiry as a felony punishable by a fine, a prison term of up to 5 years, or both.

Cowering behind the skirts of a woman who may face prosecution on his account, Mr. Bush is defying his constitutional responsibility to ?take care that the laws be faithfully executed.?

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

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

Several Senate Republicans have recently called for a US withdrawal from Iraq. Others, such Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, support a bill that would bring about that withdrawal by the end of next April.

House Republican leader John Boehner has contemptuously referred to these war critics as ?wimps.? Senator Hagel's body still carries shrapnel he took while serving in Vietnam. Boehner has never experienced combat first-hand. So his qualifications to assess the courage of men like Chuck Hagel are a little thin.

Would Rep. Boehner also detect ?wimpiness? in Sgt. Erik Botta of Port St. Lucie, Florida? Sgt. Botta has reluctantly filed suit against the Army after being ordered to report for his fifth combat deployment since 2001. Botta is a young husband who stands to lose his home and his job if he serves another combat tour; he is being represented pro bono by an attorney who graduated from West Point.

The real congressional ?wimps? are those who refuse to stand up to a delusional president by voting to bring our troops home.

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

Conservative actor Ben Stein has fervently supported the Iraq war. In a recent essay, he describes an epiphany he had following a speech in Washington to a support group for families of soldiers who have fallen in Iraq:

?Why are we in Iraq? Most Iraqis don't want us there. Most Americans don't want us there. We are clearly not winning.... So, let's just leave and let them sort it out. If Bush is the only one who still wants the war ... we're in real serious trouble. This does not sound or smell like constitutional government to me,? concluded Stein.

With anguished reluctance, many other war supporters are coming to the tardy but welcome realization that we should never have invaded Iraq in the first place. For example: Republican Congressman John Doolittle of California, one of Bush's most loyal allies, now calls the war a ?quagmire? and urges withdrawal by the end of the year.

Is George W. Bush's vanity the only reason why Americans continue to kill and die in Iraq?

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