Political Racketeering in New Jersey

by Will

Liberty Minute November 13 2013

Mark Halper and his 14 children once ran a dairy farm on 75 acres outside of Piscataway, New Jersey.

In 1999, a clique of local political officials and well-connected business interests staged a brazen land grab in the name of ?eminent domain.? The town issued a ?taking? in 2004, which led to the family being driven off their farm.

One member of that clique, David D?Amiano, approached Halper in 2005 and tried to extract a $40,000 bribe in exchange for using his influence with then-Governor James McGreevey to increase the amount paid for the farm. Halper recorded the conversation, which was used as evidence by then-US Attorney Chris Christie. D?Amiano was a major fundraiser for McGreevey, and his trial and conviction helped bring down the incumbent governor ? and propel Christie into the governor?s mansion.

The amount paid to the Halper family ? which has spent millions in legal fees -- was a fraction of what the land was worth. After being seized the property was used as a dumping ground. Cleaning it up will cost at least $1.5 million. Halper says that the family has been abandoned by  Christie, who used them as one of many rungs on his political ladder as he climbs to the White House.

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

Shouldn't the Government Pledge Allegiance to Us?

by Will

Liberty Minute November 12 2013                                  

A teacher in Spring Hill, Florida, was recently suspended for trying to force a fourth-grader to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance against his religious convictions. This is a case where the teacher needed to learn from the student.

The term ?Liege? is a noun describing a lord or ruler. When one professes allegiance, that individual is submitting to a Liege.

In America, Thomas Paine famously said, the law is king. Many who fought in the War for Independence embraced the slogan, ?No king but King Jesus.? In a constitutional republic founded on ?the laws of nature and Nature?s God,? citizens are not subjects. This is one reason why many genuinely patriotic Americans object to the Pledge of Allegiance ? the original version of which was written by a socialist-leaning nationalist who wanted to institutionalize loyalty to the central government in Washington.

Many atheists object to the inclusion of the phrase ?under God? in the Pledge, which in the absence of that phrase would make the government the central focus of the citizen?s devotion.  But honorable people of many backgrounds take issue with the way in which the Pledge seems to make the citizens subordinate to a government that is supposed to be their servant, rather than their master.

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

Ten Days in Jail -- for Stealing 25 Years from an Innocent Man

by Will

LibertyMinute November 11 2013

Michael Morton spent a quarter-century in prison for a murder he didn?t commit. Former Williamson County, Texas District Attorney Ken Anderson deliberately withheld exculpatory evidence during Morton?s trial. His successor in the prosecutor?s office, John Bradley, spent years obstructing attempts to conduct the DNA tests that eventually led to Morton?s exoneration.

By the time Morton was set free, the corrupt DA who had prosecuted him had become a District Judge.  Last week,Andersonwas forced to resign as judge and surrender his license to practice law. He was also required to spend ten days in jail as punishment for the crime of withholding evidence.

Ten days in jail is a sentence of the kind imposed for the most trivial misdemeanors. By imprisoning an innocent man,Andersoncommitted fraud upon the court, perjury, subornation of perjury, kidnapping, and torture. He should spend the rest of his life in prison, and surrender all of his assets to make restitution to his victim.

The trivial sentence imposed on Andersonillustrates the gap separating the privileged punitive class from the rest of society. Even more infuriating is the fact that Anderson is the first prosecutor to be punished in any way for wrongfully convicting an innocent victim.

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

Benjamin Franklin, Terrorist Lover

by Will

Liberty Minute November 8 2013

According to Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, Benjamin Franklin was an irresponsible extremist for placing a higher value on liberty than security.

In an interview with NewsMax, Dershowitz declared:

?Benjamin Franklin was wrong when he said those who give up any privacy or rights in the name of security deserved neither. That?s nonsense. That?s hyperbole. That?s extremism.?

Actually, the perspective Dershowitz finds so objectionable is Americanism, something both incomprehensible and offensive to him. Professor Dershowitz accuses those who share Franklin?s perspective of being ?extreme radicals who hate America and love terrorism? ? a charge that, presumably, would make defending the Bill of Rights a form of seditious treason.

Over the past several years, Dershowitz has promoted a doctrine called ?pre-emption? in which the government can do pretty much anything it pleases in the name of fighting an open-ended war against an amorphous enemy. He has loudly supported the practice of torture, which he wants to institutionalize, and expounded a doctrine of collective guilt in which the population of any nation targeted by the U.S. or Israel is considered combatants unless they actively oppose their country?s government.

It would be comforting to think that Professor Dershowitz is an anomaly, but his deranged views are very much in line with official policy.

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

Hail the Sociopath-in-Chief

by Will

Liberty Minute November 7 2013

According to the new 2012 campaign memoir ?Double Down,? President Obama boasted that he is ?really good at killing people.? That comment was made with reference to the ongoing targeted killing program, in which the president and his aides select names from a so-called kill list.

The people Mr. Obama kills so promiscuously aren?t limited to so-called suspected militants. During the past four years, the administration?s drone program has perfected a technique called the ?double-tap? strike, in which a lethal drone attack is followed after a short interval by a second strike intended to take out emergency personnel and other first responders. The ?double-tap? tactic is widely and properly condemned when used by terrorist groups ? other than the killing apparatus headed by Barack Obama, in any case.

Mr. Obama?s body count includes victims who were killed by drone attacks on funeral processions, worship services at mosques in Pakistan and in other countries, and elderly people who were working in backyard gardens. The list includes at least two U.S. citizens, including a 16-year-old boy who was murdered by a drone strike during a backyard barbecue.

Only a certifiable sociopath takes pride in his ability to kill helpless people. Apparently, that disposition is a prerequisite for the modern presidency.

 

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

Ditching the Hippocratic Oath

by Will

Liberty Minute November 6 2013

Arthur Guett, who presided over the Health Affairs division of the Nazi regime?s Interior Ministry, attacked the Hippocratic Oath and promoted  the collectivist view that a medical practitioner?s first duty was to society, rather than the individual. Guett insisted that ?the ill-conceived love of thy neighbor has to disappear, especially in relation to inferior or asocial creatures.? That category included not only Jews and others regarded as inferior races, but also congenitally ill, handicapped, and mentally infirm Germans who were regarded as ?life unworthy of life.?

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and intimate adviser to Barack Obama, has embraced a similar collectivist view of health care. Dr. Emanuel, a key architect of the Obamacare program, insists that we must abandon the Hippocratic Oath and the moral obligation it imposes on doctors to treat the individual patient. He maintains that physicians should embrace a more communitarian view in which the needs of the elderly, the newborn, and seriously ill people would be considered less important than the good of the collective ? as defined by exalted beings like himself.

The song remains the same, even if Dr. Emanuel is performing it in a different key from his Nazi forebears.

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

Exiled Truth-Teller vs. Celebrity Criminal

by Will

Liberty Minute November 5 2013

It has been said that politics is the equivalent of show business for unattractive people. A better description might be that politics is socially sanctioned organized crime. Politicians or appointed officials who order or are complicit in fraud, theft, and mass murder rarely if ever are punished for those crimes.

As Secretary of State and UN Ambassador under Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright defended the murderous Iraq embargo that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 500,000 children through starvation and disease. Asked about the embargo in a 1995 60 Minutes interview, Albright famously said that she believed the mass death of innocent children was ?worth it.? A few years later Albright helped arrange the terror-bombing of Serbia, which resulted in thousands of civilian deaths.

By any rational reckoning, Albright is a murderous sociopath who should be serving a prison term. Yet she is teaching diplomacy at Georgetown University and commanding huge fees as a speaker. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the audience at a recent speech by Albright ?laughed and applauded? as she touted her own supposed accomplishments and condemned the supposed damage done by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Snowden is a truth-teller who was driven into exile. Albright is a celebrity criminal enjoying a lavish retirement.

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

Officially Imposed Fictions about Global Warming

by Will

Liberty Minute November 4 2013

Plato?s Republic describes a supposedly benign totalitarian state ruled by an elite caste called the Guardians. Among the instruments of social control employed by the Guardians would be the use of ?Noble Lies? that legitimize their power and encourage submissiveness on the part of their subjects.

The self-appointed Power Elite has propagated many noble lies about the environment, the most important of which deals with Global Warming. An immense political infrastructure has been established to regulate all human activities in order to prevent what we are told are catastrophic and irreversible changes to the climate. Those policies impose huge costs on energy consumers and crippling regulations on energy producers, and if fully implemented would subject all economic activity to intrusive bureaucratic micro-management. Yet there is no reliable scientific confirmation that global temperatures are rising dramatically, or that human activity ? as opposed to natural variations in solar output ? is responsible for any measurable changes.

Where science can?t confirm the threat, political means are used to mold attitudes by force. This explains Barack Obama?s recent executive order requiring federal, state, and local governments to deal with the impact of a problem that almost certainly doesn?t exist. This is forcible indoctrination in an officially sanctioned lie ? a tactic Plato?s totalitarian Guardians would recognize.

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

Corporatist Totalitarian Indoctrination in Schools

by Will

LibertyMinute November 1, 2013

In overtly totalitarian countries, official education is permeated with unabashed propaganda exalting the Dear Leader and the state over which he presides. Every subject, including spelling, mathematics, and science ? is turned into an exercise in passive indoctrination. This is increasingly common in proto-totalitarianAmerica, as well.

A parent of a ten-year-old child sent the Infowars news service a portion of a grammar test that was produced by Pearson Education, a contractor that designs instructional materials as part of the federal ?No Child Left Behind? program. One section of the test offered such statements as ?The commands of government officials must be obeyed by all,? and ?The wants of an individual are less important than the well-being of the nation.?

The New York Times reports that one of Pearson Education?s chief lobbyists is an official ?who served as the top White House liaison with Congress on drafting the No Child [Left Behind] law.? The corporation also operates a non-profit foundation that organizes junkets overseas for state education officials.

It is a testimony to the perversely inventive genius of some putative American capitalists that they find a way to profit from indoctrinating children to be reflexively submissive to the state.

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

Obama's "Noble Lies"

by Will

Liberty Minute October 31, 2013

President Obama?s repeated assurances that Americans would be able to retain their current health care plans under the ObamaCare program were conscious, deliberate lies.  NBC News, tardily performing the kind of journalistic due diligence that should have been done years ago, reports that administration officials were aware that two-thirds ? or more ? of those currently insured would have their plans cancelled, and most of them will face huge price increases in health coverage under the government-administered system.

Syndicated columnist Clarence Page, a tireless defender of ObamaCare, has conceded that the president has repeatedly lied, while minimizing the importance of a deception that will have immense consequences for millions of Americans. Mr. Obama, according to Page, lied about his program ?repeatedly in a campaign that he won? ? which means, apparently, that his deliberate dishonesty was ratified by the voters and sanctified by political victory.

This is exactly the same excuse used by George W. Bush and his defenders regarding the deliberate lies used to manipulate the public into the Iraq War. From their perspective, Bush?s re-election in 2004 was an ?accountability moment? that transmuted his documented lies into settled policy.

In a democracy, the people are held accountable for the lies their rulers tell them ? while those exalted liars claim to be exempt.

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

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