Liberty Minute January 15 2013

In overtly Communist countries like China and North Korea, it is commonplace to see people imprisoned for speaking or writing in opposition to the ruling elite. Similar conditions exist in the State of Alabama, where the ruling Republican establishment has arranged the indefinite imprisonment ? without a criminal conviction ? of a blogger whose writings offended them.

Roger Shuler, who maintains a blog called Legal Schnauzer, has been sued by the family of Robert Riley, Jr., the son of the state?s former Republican Governor. Shuler claimed that Riley had engaged in an affair with a lobbyist that ended in an abortion. In a sealed decision, a state judge imposed an injunction against Shuler forbidding him to write about Riley and ordering him to remove previously published material. Commendably, Shuler refused to comply ? and was arrested on a charge of criminal contempt. He is now in a state prison, where he will remain until he complies with the judge?s patently unconstitutional order.

Libel is a civil matter, not a criminal one, and the accusation against Shuler has not been proven in court. But such principles matter little to the pious totalitarians responsible for the Soviet-grade persecution of a troublesome blogger in Alabama.

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

LibertyMinute January 14 2013

There was never any dispute as to the identity of the people who beat Kelly Thomas to death outside a bus station in Fullerton, California. Nor was there any reasonable doubt that this act was one of aggressive violence by armed strangers committed against an unarmed, terrified, mentally troubled, 160-pound man. Yet a jury in conservativeOrange County,California acquitted the two ringleaders of the six-member gang that beat, kicked, and suffocated Thomas on a July night in 2011, while he cried out for his father.

The victim?s father, Ron Thomas, is a retired sheriff?s deputy. He described the killing of his son as an act of gang violence. The perpetrators were members of the Fullerton Police Department. The assault was instigated by Officer Manuel Ramos, who spent several minutes taunting and baiting Thomas ? a homeless man who was not suspected of a crime ? before slapping on gloves and saying: ?You see these fists? They?re about to f**k you up.?

The defense team insisted that Thomas was to blame for his death because he had tried to fight back after the police began their unwarranted and criminal assault. A jury accepted that argument, ratifying the idea that police have an unconditional license to kill ? and citizens have a moral duty to die when targeted by them.

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

Liberty Minute January 13 2013

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has announced his intention to file a class action lawsuit against the National Security Agency over its illegal eavesdropping program. An earlier suit filed by the group Judicial Watch resulted in a temporary injunction from federal district court Judge Richard Leon, who described the program as ?almost Orwellian.? A second federal judge, in response to a separate lawsuit filed by the ACLU, issued a ruling that described the totalitarian surveillance program as justified by the need to fight terrorism.

All of these lawsuits have depended heavily on the revelations of former NSA employee Edward Snowden, whose disclosures have laid bare the unconstitutional and criminal misconduct of the agency.  Rather than commending Snowden for his principled and patriotic service, Sen. Paul has called for him to be prosecuted and imprisoned.

?Edward Snowden broke the law,? Sen.  Paul wrote in a letter to the Wall Street Journal. ?There are penalties for breaking the law, and I believe he should be prosecuted.?

In effect, Senator Paul is telling Snowden: ?Thank you for risking your life to reveal criminal misconduct. I?ll take over and ride this issue to the White House, and you can serve a term in federal prison.?

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

Liberty Minute January 9 2014

Why would game wardens need to undergo SWAT training?

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has announced the creation of what it calls a ?cadre of specialty teams? that have undergone SWAT-style tactical training.

These new teams will supposedly focus on search-and-rescue operations, which the public understandably supports. It shouldn?t be forgotten, however, that all of the state?s 532 game wardens are commissioned police officers who operate far afield of their expected responsibilities.

The poster child for the department?s tactical program is Game Warden Cullen Stakes, who posed for a photo holding an assault rifle and wearing military garb quite similar to that worn by Special Forces operators overseas.  None of this is necessary or useful in rescuing people stranded by floods, or who have gotten lost in the woods.

Among the Parks and Wildlife Department?s new specialized units is the ?Scout Team,? a group of 45 wardens who ?have received a variety of training and can be used in border operations, dignitary protection, or any form of high-risk law enforcement, such as serving felony arrests or hostage situations,? reports Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine.

When even Parks and Wildlife agencies are becoming militarized, it?s pretty clear we live in a fully operational police state.

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

Liberty Minute January 8 2014

When 18-year-old Keith Vidal suffered a psychological breakdown on the afternoon of January 5, his parents called 911 for help. Within a few minutes, officers from the local police department in Boiling Spring Lake, North Carolina responded, along with at least one sheriff?s deputy. The situation was tense, but contained.

Fourteen minutes after the original call was made, Detective Byron Vassey from the police department in nearby Southport arrived. Seventy seconds later, Keith was dead. According to his father, the teenager ? who was pinned down by at least two officers -- had been tasered multiple times when another officer exclaimed: ?We don?t have time for this!? and shot him at point-blank range.

Although the shooter has not been formally identified, Vassey has been placed on administrative leave, and he was the officer who made the call reporting that he fired the shots in self-defense. He has since hired an attorney, who insists that the officer acted properly.

Keith was holding a screwdriver. However, he was a tiny young man who weighed no more than 100 pounds and had been restrained by several large adult males. 

When we call the police, we?re inviting the intervention of armed strangers who are given official permission to kill those they are sent to help.

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

Liberty Minute January 6 2014

Like her comrades at MSNBC, Melissa Harris-Perry uses her weekly program to peddle an alloy of embittered radical feminism and racial grievance-peddling to a small and dwindling audience. In a recent installment, Harris-Perry and her guests mocked the adopted black grandchild of former GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Her face radiated scornful hatred as she introduced a photo of the Romney family?s Christmas card, and she laughed indulgently as one guest ? invoking the old Sesame Street song ? said, ?One of these things is not like the other.? She was similarly amused by another guest?s suggestion that the Romney family had adopted the beautiful little boy as part of an affirmative action program.

Harris-Perry did apologize to the Romney family. Some prominent leftist commentators, however, insisted that Romney was to blame for supposedly exploiting his grandchild by including him in the family portrait.

Incidentally, this wasn?t the first time Harris-Perry ? a militant supporter of abortion ? has referred to a child as a ?thing.? And in a promotional ad for MSNBC, Harris-Perry described children as property of the whole ?community.?

This episode is a reminder that to the Progressive Left, everything is political ? and to them there are no non-combatants, even adopted newborn children.

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

Liberty Minute January 3 2014

In an inexplicable but welcome break with the Establishment consensus, the New York Times editorial board has demanded leniency for whistleblower Edward Snowden. For the better part of a year, the former NSA employee has lived in exile after disclosing huge amounts of information regarding the agency?s illegal electronic surveillance operations. He also proved that National Intelligence Director James Clapper committed a felony by lying to Congress under oath when he denied that the NSA routinely conducted surveillance on millions of American citizens.

In recent days, thanks to the Snowden disclosures, we have learned that the NSA ? with the cooperation of terrified manufacturers and shipping companies ? intercepts newly-ordered laptop computers in order to install malware that can be used to track the users once the computers reach the customers. This is the behavior of a totalitarian secret police organization, and it cannot be defended or allowed to continue.

Snowden?s detractors insist that he violated a confidentiality agreement by publicizing the NSA?s illegal activities. The same charge can be made against any principled person who defected from an oath-bound criminal syndicate, such as the Mafia or the KKK ? or from a totalitarian political organization.

By defying the surveillance state, Edward Snowden acted like a patriot. In proto-Soviet America, that?s a prosecutable offense.

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

Liberty Minute January 2 2014

Over a two-year period, Milwaukee resident Michael Vagnini  molested dozens of people at gunpoint, thrusting his hands into their anal cavities while associates held the victims at gunpoint. Under Wisconsin?s criminal code, those acts constitute false imprisonment, aggravated battery, and sexual assault, all of which are felonies.

Vagnini, who has been convicted on criminal charges, should face a sentence of decades in prison. However, he has been given a term of two years, most of which will be spent in special protective circumstances because he is an ex-Milwaukee Police Officer.

All of these acts of forcible sexual assault were committed under the color of supposed authority, despite the fact that Wisconsin law explicitly forbids body cavity searches without a warrant. Many of the victims were left with severe and lasting injury. In one instance, Vagnini applied a potentially fatal chokehold before violating the victim?s intimate anatomy. One victim, James Ashford, was subjected to six illegal searches during a six-month period.

Vagnini and three of his colleagues faced  dozens of charges, among them sexual assault and false imprisonment. If they had been common citizens, prosecutors would have had no reluctance to seek the maximum sentence. But there are different rules for privileged offenders who committed their crimes while wearing government-issued costumes.

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

Liberty Minute January 1 2014

The vast apparatus of regimentation and cronyism called ?Obamacare? is nothing more than a precursor to a fully socialized single-payer health care system. The architects of Obamacare have unflinchingly said that their plans will eventually require imposition of a new ethic in which doctors are forced to act in the politically defined interests of the collective, rather than on behalf of the individual patient.

This is the case in Britain?s National Health Service, in which doctors are expected to follow an ethical blueprint called the Liverpool Care Pathway. This requires that doctors provide for the supposedly compassionate death of certain people ? including elderly patients with some chronic conditions and premature infants under a certain weight.

Recently, a child named Maddalena Douse was born at 23 weeks? gestation at a hospital in Brighton, England. Under the Liverpool Care Pathway guidelines, she would have been allowed to die if she had weighted less than 400 grams. She just barely made weight, and received sufficient care to survive. It was discovered that doctors had mistakenly left a pair of scissors on the scale, tipping it just barely in her favor.

Under the UK?s socialized medical system ? which prefigures the direction Obamacare will take ? the weakest survive only when doctors neglect or ignore the government?s guidelines.

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

LibertyMinute December 30 2013

The Declaration of Independence asserts that individuals have an innate right to pursue happiness. Recognizing that right doesn?t impose a responsibility on others to provide the individual with happiness ? however it may be defined.

An early draft of the Declaration referred to the pursuit of ?property.? That phrase doesn?t refer merely to the acquisition of material wealth, but also the ownership of one?s life and the product of the exertion of his talents. For several decades after the American founding, this right was savagely denied to millions of people who were treated as the property of others.

The abolition of chattel slavery ? which was the only commendable outcome of a Civil War in which it was not the original objective ? was an unqualified blessing. However, that same Civil War set the precedent for a modified form of slavery called the Income Tax, in which the government ? following the example of ancient despotisms ? requires tribute from its subjects for the supposed privilege of living under its claimed jurisdiction.

We?ve reached a point where less than half of the population pays taxes, and the others are net tax consumers. A house thus divided against itself cannot stand.

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