An Iowa jury has found former Dallas County Sheriff Brian Gilbert guilty of stealing $120,000 in cash seized as suspected drug profits. But this did nothing to stop the routine highway robbery authorized by the federal government as part of the so-called war on drugs.
Since 2002, Gilbert and his deputies have confiscated more than a million dollars in the name of "asset forfeiture.?

Although court approval is required before police can take ownership of seized assets, Gilbert's department offered detained motorists the option of surrendering their cash or cars as "abandoned property."
Last August 18, a federal court ruled that "possession of a large sum of money [by a motorist] is `strong evidence' of a connection to drug activity." This assumption permits police to confiscate cash found during a traffic stop -- without charging the driver with a crime.
The so-called war on drugs has turned many cops into robbers. Narcotics and the people who push them are vile, but federally abetted police corruption is a much bigger threat to our freedom.

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

Judging by the performance of the Bush administration, one could reasonably conclude that conservatism consists of nothing more than perpetual war, endless deficit spending, consolidation of power in the presidency, and an unflagging hostility to due process of law.

However, a small but influential group of activists has stepped forward to defend a worthier conservative tradition, one focused on conserving constitutional government.

The American Freedom Agenda was created by former Nixon aide Bruce Fein, along with former Republican Congressman Bob Barr, David Keene of the American Conservative Union, and Republican fund-raiser Richard Viguerie.

Viguerie puts the matter plainly: ?[A] constitutional crisis ... has developed to alarming proportion under President George W. Bush.?

The AFA seeks to end the use of military commissions, secret evidence, warrantless wiretapping, and presidential signing statements. They seek the restoration of habeas corpus and other constitutional due process guarantees.

The group asks all presidential candidates to endorse their platform. So far only Republican Ron Paul has done so. It's a modest beginning, but we have to start somewhere.

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

What does it take to wind up on the Transportation Security Administration's no-fly list?
Ask Walter F. Murphy, a professor emeritus at Princeton University.

On March 1, Professor Murphy ? a retired Marine Colonel and Korean War veteran ? discovered that his name was on a Terrorist Watch List when he tried to check in for a flight to New Jersey.

Setting aside his astonishment, Murphy asked how this happened, only to be asked an even more astonishing question: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." Murphy replied that hadn't, but that he had delivered a well-publicized lecture at Princeton ?highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution.?

"That'll do it," the official commented.

Recounting this incident, Murphy understandably said he is ?furious that any American citizen would be singled out for governmental harassment because he or she criticized any elected official....?

It's also revealing that this has become standard practice under the Bush administration.

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

Four years ago today, US-led forces captured Baghdad. In the city's Fardus Square, a Marine draped an American flag over the face of a huge statue of Saddam Hussein, which was torn down amid cheers from what we were told was a huge throng of jubilant Iraqis.

Later we learned that this supposedly spontaneous Iraqi celebration was a media event staged by the Pentagon for American consumption. The joyous Iraqi mob actually numbered fewer than 150, almost all of whom were part of an exile group funded by the CIA.

The leader of that group was Ahmed Chalabi, a con man and international fugitive. The architects of the Iraq war intended to install Chalabi as the leader of Iraq ? thereby replacing Saddam, a hideous dictator once supported by Washington, with a corrupt ruler of a slightly different flavor.

It didn't work out quite that way, but with a radical Islamic government in power and a civil war raging,
it's impossible to describe what's happened to Iraq as a ?liberation.?

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

By the time he was freed on April 3, 24-year-old blogger Josh Wolf had spent seven months in a California federal prison for refusing a federal subpoena.

Citing the California journalist shield law, Wolf insisted that he didn't have to provide prosecutors with video footage of a July 2005 riot in which a San Francisco Police Department car was damaged. The Feds claimed the car was federal property because the police department receives federal homeland security funds. Therefore, the federal government claimed jurisdiction over the matter, and the shield law didn't apply.

Wolf was freed because he agreed to post the riot footage on his website, rather than providing it to the prosecutors. Press freedom advocates considered this a partial triumph, but the agreement was a Pyrrhic victory at best, since it validated the claim of federal jurisdiction.

Nearly all police departments receive federal homeland security and counter-narcotics funds. All police agencies receiving even minute subsides are now considered appendages of the Washington. Those strings of federal subsidy must be cut.

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

If you were asked to write a script for a hostage scenario involving schoolchildren, whom would you cast as the villains? Obvious choices would include Middle Eastern radicals, urban gang-bangers, or demented misfits like the killers from Columbine, Colorado.

A recent police training exercise at a high school in Burlington Township, New Jersey, featured ?a right-wing fundamentalist group called `The New Crusaders' who don't believe in the separation of church and state [and who] went to the school seeking justice because the daughter of one had been expelled for praying before class.?

Casting of this kind is, to put it mildly, somewhat counter-intuitive. Fundamentalist Christians generally school their children at home, which is the most sensible way to provide for their education. And it should be remembered that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who carried out the Columbine massacre, made a point of hunting down and murdering Christian students.

The Burlington Township scenario says more about the entrenched prejudices of its creators than the potential dangers confronting schoolchildren.

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

In his April 3 press conference, President Bush issued what has to be considered a blackmail threat against Congress in an effort to extract funding to continue the war in Iraq.

Congress has passed a funding measure larger than the one Bush requested, but containing a September 1, 2008 deadline for withdrawal from Iraq. Bush insists that he will veto any bill that contains restrictions or deadlines of any kind.

If he doesn't get the bill he wants, Bush warned, funding will be cut for equipping and training troops, to provide support for their families. This would mean battle-weary military units would be re-deployed more often, for longer periods, with inadequate means to carry out their mission. This, in turn, will mean more battlefield deaths. This is nothing other than an implicit presidential threat against our troops.

The obvious alternative is to end this unjustifiable war and bring our troops home. But the Blackmailer-in-Chief won't consider that option. It's time Congress forced him to.

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

Article 1, Section 2 of the United States Constitution authorizes the federal government to conduct an ?enumeration? of the US population every decade in order to allocate congressional seats and electoral votes. This is the only legitimate and authorized function of the United States Census.
In recent decades, however, the Census Bureau has conducted invasive and detailed surveys of American households, wringing from them all kinds of information to which the federal government is not entitled. Under the Constitution, the government may count us, but it has no right to categorize us by ethnic groups, or to learn the intimate details of our household circumstances.
The Census Bureau's prying can be much more than a mere annoyance. Two historians employed in the Commerce Department's archives have confirmed that the Bureau helped identify the 100,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry who were confined in internment camps during World War II. In 2004, the Bureau turned over information about Arab-Americans to the Department of Homeland Security.
Census-takers are permitted to count us ? nothing more.
Let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

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.

In recent years it has become common to refer to the president as ?Our Commander-in-Chief.? That description is only proper when used by active-duty military personnel who have been called into service by Congress.

The designation ?Commander-in-Chief? refers to a function of the presidential office that is subject to, and qualified by, congressional war powers. In addition to the exclusive power to declare war, Congress appropriates money for the military and establishes regulations governing its training and conduct. In these matters, the president's constitutional authority is limited and derivative.

The Bush administration, however, insists that presidential Commander-in-Chief powers are unlimited, and permit the president to authorize any policy that suits his fancy.

In this view, he can set aside laws, authorize torture and detention without trial, and commit our country to war without a congressional declaration. This is the job description of a dictator.

As created through the Constitution, the presidency is a modest office. It was not intended to be the elected dictatorship it has become.

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