Betty Perry of Orem, Utah is a 70-year-old grandma and widow who was assaulted and spent and hour in jail because she can't afford to water her lawn.

When a police officer materialized on her front porch to issue a citation under the city zoning ordinance, Mrs. Perry refused to provide any information and informed him that she wanted to seek the advice of a lawyer.

As she turned to go back inside her house, the officer tried to handcuff her for ?resisting the ticket.? He tripped the elderly lady, causing her to scrape her face. Betty's clothes and her front porch were left bloody as a result of the assault.

Betty was handcuffed, fingerprinted, and incarcerated for an hour before being released. Asked to summarize her experience, Betty replied: ?Don't ever say no when the police tell you to do something.... You've got to do what they tell you or they will hurt you.?

Every law and regulation, no matter how trivial, carries the implicit threat of lethal force.

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

Lewis ?Scooter? Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice by a jury of his peers. Libby was covering up White House involvement in exposing the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. She and her sources were ?burned? -- to use the intelligence community expression ? because she is the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson.

Sentenced to 33 months in prison, Libby didn't serve a day before his sentence was commuted by Mr. Bush. The sentence was within federal guidelines. Bush's commutation, however, violated federal standards for clemency, which require that at least some prison time be served.

Furthermore, the commutation is a serious abuse of presidential power. During the Constitutional Convention, James Madison said that impeachment is the proper remedy when a president exercises clemency on behalf of a criminal co-conspirator. In other words, a president cannot use the promise of clemency to encourage a subordinate to break the law on his behalf.

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

Although it sounds like the stuff of science fiction, a British government panel has approved the creation of interspecies clones -- human-animal hybrids for use in medical experiments.

The British panel insisted that these genetically engineered embryos would never be implanted in human or animal wombs. However, that line will be almost certainly be crossed as soon as perceived scientific necessity demands it.

Experiments of this sort are representative of the so-called ?Transhumanist? movement. As Wesley J. Smith of the Discovery Institute explains, Transhumanists believe that ?human beings, as we exist now, aren't good enough, and that under the supervision and guidance of god-like scientists we can seize control of our evolution and achieve perfection.?

This demented dream resonates with the Great Lie hissed by the Serpent in Eden: ?Then ye shall be as gods.? It is also in harmony with the depraved Nazi objective of creating a ?Master Race? through controlled genetics ? and the liquidation of those deemed ?life unworthy of life.?

Let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Montana resident Tim Sundles was recently sentenced by a federal court to six days in jail and two years of probation for attempting to kill wolves with poisoned meat. That effort went awry when the pesticide-laced meatballs were eaten a neighbor's pet dogs.

Sundles could properly be charged with negligence. Instead, he was prosecuted under the Endangered Species Act, the federal law through which wolves have been reintroduced to the Mountain States.

Wildlife ecologist Dr. Charles F. Kay observes that ?environmentalists are using wolf recovery and the Endangered Species Act to run ranchers out of the country and to thwart multiple use of public lands....? Renee Askins of the eco-radical Wolf Recovery Fund admits as much: "[W]olf recovery is not about wolves, [Instead] it is about control of the West."

The Endangered Species Act is the product of a worldview inverting that of Genesis: Rather than being God's special creation, human beings are just another species within a democratic biosphere ruled by the high priests of eco-radicalism.

Let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

For too many Americans, Independence Day has become an opportunity to celebrate the power of the central government, rather than to reflect on the principles of liberty.

In parades and other events across the nation today, extravagant tribute will be paid to Washington's military might. Of course, it is proper to express gratitude to veterans and pray for those currently serving in the military.

But Independence Day should extol freedom, not power.

The men who signed the Declaration were rebelling against their central government ? its tyrannical taxation, its infringements of basic liberties, its useless foreign wars. They dared to assert that all men ? kings and commoners alike ? were equal before the God who created them, and equally subject to His law. And they understood that there are times when patriots who love their country of necessity become enemies of the government that rules them.

These sober and responsible men didn't rebel for ?light and transient causes.? It is their spirit of principled rebellion we should honor this day.

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

A law recently enacted in Texas requires couples to take an eight-hour ?successful marriage? class before receiving a free marriage license. Those who decline to take the course will have to pay $60 in order to receive a license, which is double the current fee.

The law has been compared to others designed to compel healthy behavior, such as ?click it or ticket? seat belt campaigns and anti-smoking efforts. But getting the government involved in teaching marriage skills is even worse than the other invasive Nanny State laws that increasingly afflict us.

Marriage is an institution ordained by God and it can only succeed on His terms. Yet ?religious content? is impermissible in the government-imposed ?successful marriage? instruction mandated by Texas.

It's bad enough that government presumes to require a license for couples and churches to solemnize a covenant over which the state has no proper jurisdiction. Requiring couples to be catechized in the state's secular assumptions about marriage borders on blasphemy.

Let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

David Burch of White Cloud, Michigan spent a weekend in jail because a local judge didn't like the condition of his yard.

When Burch purchased his home last fall, the contractor who built it was supposed to finish the lawn, but didn't. After Burch made an unsuccessful attempt to lay sod, he was cited by the police and sent to jail under a city ?quality of life? ordinance. Burch notes that ?the people who work at the court [and] at the jail thought it was funny.?

There is nothing funny about depriving a human being of his freedom for any length of time, particularly for a supposed offense involving the maintenance of his own property.

This is the kind of thing we'd expect to see in Communist China ? except it happens more often here in the supposed land of the free: America's jail and prison population is larger than China's. Most imprisoned here were convicted of non-violent offenses, many as trivial as David Burch's failure to cultivate a photogenic lawn.

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

In October 2002, Christian women working for the Oakland City government created the Good News Employee Association, which they described as ?a forum for people of Faith to express their views ... with respect for the Natural Family, marriage and family values.?

That group was created after homosexual activists used an official bulletin board and the city government's e-mail system to pressure employees to participate in ?National Coming Out Day.? Denied access to the e-mail system, the Christian employees displayed a flier advertising their group on the office bulletin board. A lesbian employee complained about the flier, causing administrators to remove it and declare its content to be ?homophobic.?

The Christian employees were warned that termination could result if they were caught making positive references to marriage and the family as defined in the Bible. That policy has been ratified by two federal courts. And Congress is considering a proposed ?hate crime? law that would have a similar impact on free speech nation-wide.

Let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo persuaded a judge to give Paris Hilton 45 days in jail for driving with a suspended license.

At the time Delgadillo's wife Michelle was wanted on a 1998 arrest warrant for driving without insurance on a suspended license in an unregistered car. In 2004, while driving without a license, she wrecked her husband's city-owned vehicle.

After this was publicized, Michelle Delgadillo was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge and received 12 months probation and a $431 fine.

At about the same time, thousands of miles away in Iowa, former Sheriff Brian Gilbert, convicted of stealing $120,000, received five years' probation. The judge set aside the prescribed penalty of ten years in prison.

As economist Dr. William L. Anderson observes, ?there truly are Two Americas, the one of government employees and politicians who are protected even while engaging in the worst kind of lawbreaking, and the other being the America in which the rest of us live.?

Let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

On June 20 the House of Representatives passed a resolution demanding that the UN Security Council charge Iranian President Maumoud Ahmadinejad with incitement to genocide, and that the Council consider unspecified ?measures? to ?prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons....?

The resolution recycled the familiar claim that Ahmadinejad ?called for Israel to be `wiped off the map'.? The Iranian president is a maniac, but that phrase was not uttered by him: He was calling for regime change in Israel, not for the annihilation of the Israeli people.

Iran is cursed with a hideous government whose intentions toward Israel are hardly benign. But Congress has no jurisdiction over the utterances of foreign rulers, and no constitutional duty to defend the State of Israel. Furthermore, calling for the UN to prosecute an elected head of state is itself a form of aggression.

The same strategic geniuses who planned the disastrous invasion of Iraq are planning another war with Iran. They must be stopped.

Let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.