Liberty Minute August 29 2013

Stockton May is an 11-year-old boy from Pleasant Grove, Utah who suffers from Dravet Syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy. There is no known cure for the condition. It can cause fatal swelling of the brain or sudden death during sleep.

For more than a decade, Stockton?s mother, Jennifer May, has pursued every possible treatment for her son. Two treatment protocols eased his symptoms, but caused severe bone loss and compromised his immune system. Earlier this year she learned that a child in neighboring Colorado who likewise suffers from Dravet Syndrome has been treated successfully using a product derived from marijuana.

Both medicinal and recreational uses of marijuana are legal in Colorado. Unfortunately, even the medicinal use of marijuana is treated as if it were a crime in Utah; mere possession of less than an ounce is punishable by a six month prison sentence and a $1,000 fine. The state?s ruling Republican establishment, displaying its characteristic mixture of Puritanical cruelty and punitive sanctimony, isn?t willing to consider decriminalizing marijuana even for limited medical purposes.

In a recent interview, Jennifer May explained ?I don?t want an illegal drug. I want a medicine.? In a free society, that anguished mother wouldn?t be forced to beg permission to help her son.

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

Liberty Minute August 28 2013

Under what circumstances is it justifiable for a police officer to assault an uncooperative but non-violent pregnant woman?

In a video that recently surfaced on YouTube, an unidentified Rochester, New York Police Officer is seen struggling with an unarmed pregnant woman. She cries out: ?You?re going to kill my baby? just seconds before the officer punches the woman in the back of the head and throws her face-first to the ground.

Earlier this year, a young pregnant girl was kneed in the stomach by one of three Rochester Police Officers who were restraining her during an arrest. In April 2012, Rochester Police pepper-sprayed a pregnant mother and an elderly woman during the arrest of a 25-year-old man named Jose Lugo. They also pepper-sprayed and arrested Lugo?s aunt while she was on the phone attempting to contact their superiors.

In early 2012, a DeKalb County, Georgia Police Officer named Jerad Wheeler kicked a pregnant woman named Raven Dozier in the stomach when she complained about excessive force being used to arrest her brother. The victim was arrested and charged with obstruction. The assault caused her unborn child to defecate in the womb.

Is it too much to expect that American police would refrain from acting like the Assyrians from the Old Testament?

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

Liberty Minute August 27 2013

On Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that it was ?undeniable? that the Syrian government had conducted a chemical attack on civilians, and then had made a ?cynical attempt to cover it up.?

Western chemical weapons experts cast doubt on claims that such an attack had occurred. Dan Kaszeta, a former officer in the US Army?s Chemical Corps, said that so-called tell-tale signs of a chemical weapons attack were absent from footage of the alleged atrocity.

Kerry?s view, apparently, is that an absence of evidence to support the charge of chemical weapons use is the most compelling proof of all. However, there is very solid evidence that the administration has long planned a false flag incident to provide a pretext for war.

Last January 30, a leaked email exchange between two senior officials of the British-based military contractor Britam Defence described a Washington-approved plan to stage a chemical attack in Syria in order to justify an international military response.

Ironically, on the same day that Kerry accused Syria of a crime against humanity, the CIA released a document confirming that Washington had supported Saddam Hussein?s use of nerve gas during his war with Iran in 1983.

The murderous cynicism of our rulers is an inexhaustible resource.

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

Liberty Minute August 23 2013

What would happen if people could develop the intellectual equivalent of a computer utility that would remove uniforms, badges, and titles from news accounts of fatal police raids? This would help people to determine if what happened was an act of criminal aggression or public service.

If our country were actually ruled by law, police would only be able to use force to defend persons and property. In a phrase, they would be peace officers, rather than law enforcers. Legitimate laws do not impose on the rights of individuals, and therefore do not need to be enforced.

A study carried out by The Police Foundation forty years ago found that police patrols have no impact on the crime rate. The chief purpose of police patrols isn?t to protect persons or property, but rather to collect revenue or arrest those suspected of indulging in vice.

In a reasonably free society, police would be called in to help people who are in trouble, rather than prowling neighborhoods in search of people to detain, question, and arrest. Their role would be similar to that of firemen, who ? after all -- don?t go on patrol in search of fires to extinguish.

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

LibertyMinute August 22 2013

Police inRossford,Ohiostaged a training exercise in which an armed man hijacked a schoolbus, which was then stormed by masked SWAT operators armed with assault rifles. School teachers and administrators watched the drill unfold via a live video feed. However, the terrified students weren?t informed that the supposed hijacking and rescue were only a drill.

This kind of thing has become quite commonplace.

In one recent ?school safety? drill that occurred inOrangeville,Illinois, a deranged-looking man barged into the school and began firing what appeared to be a handgun at students.

"I started praying to God and saying my last words," a student named Skylar later recalled. "I was scared. I didn't know what to do." Other kids "were just running everywhere and crying and hiding," he recounted. Some of the panicking schoolkids probably attempted to call or text their parents to describe the horror unfolding in front of them. They didn't know that each of the parents had been instructed not to answer if his child issued a desperate plea for help. 

 We can expect to see stories of this kind accumulate as summer parole ends for the unfortunate inmates of the government school system.

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

Liberty Minute

August 16 2013

Totalitarian regimes are often lenient in dealing with offenders who commit crimes against persons and property ? but they are pitiless in punishing political dissidents.

This explains why the Regime in Washington went after the late Aaron Swartz with such ferocity. Swartz was a potentially revolutionary figure in what he described as the cause of freedom of information. The hacker downloaded millions of academic documents from JSTOR, an expensive digital library operated by MIT. JSTOR declined to pursue charges after Swartz returned the files. The so-called Justice Department, however, filed criminal charges against Swartz that could have resulted in 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines. This led the 26-year-old to commit suicide.

US Attorney Stephen Heyman, the lead federal prosecutor in the case, had proposed a plea deal in which Swartz would serve a few months in prison. He admits that he withdrew that proposal and demanded the equivalent of a life sentence because Swartz and his followers mounted an internet campaign to build support for the defendant. This means that the draconian sentence was intended as punishment for a political offense ? and also to terrorize other potential dissidents into submission.

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

Liberty Minute August 14 2013

In a totalitarian system it is a crime to speak ill of the ruler. That being the case, what does it tell us that a silly rodeo stunt involving a clown in an Obama mask can be treated not only as a display of bad taste, but a crime and a national scandal?

As a result of the incident ? in which the audience was facetiously asked if it wanted to see the Obama stand-in run down by bulls ? the Missouri State Fair Commission announced that it may terminate its contract with the rodeo. The Missouri Rodeo Clown Association piled on by banning the performer ? whom it referred to as a ?rogue clown? -- for life. It also promised to require that all remaining members would undergo ?sensitivity training.?

This wasn?t enough to placate the NAACP, which demanded that the Justice Department investigate this incident as a crime. Obama?s partisans have reacted as if he were a helpless man threatened by the Klan ? rather than a death-dispensing bureaucrat who has slaughtered children, including a 16-year-old American teenager, from within an impenetrable security cocoon.

Free people are entitled to mock those who presume to rule them. Any other attitude is a species of idolatry.

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

Liberty Minute August 13 2013

What will happen when bureaucrats, rather than doctors, are in charge of medical treatment decisions? The case of Atlanta teenager Anthony Stokes provides one potentially terrifying answer.

Stokes is an otherwise healthy 15-year-old who suffers from an enlarged heart and has six months to live. However, the young man has been informed that he is not a candidate for a transplant. His mother, Melencia Hamilton, reports that she and her son have been told by Children?s Healthcare of Atlanta that Anthony isn?t eligible because of what was called a ?history of non-compliance? ? which apparently means poor grades and trouble with the police.

Christine Young Brown of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference says that the 15-year-old has ?been given a death sentence.? While claiming that it is trying to work with Anthony?s family, the hospital refuses to provide additional details about the case.

As the Obamacare system takes hold, crucial treatment decisions will increasingly be made by government bureaucrats on the basis of social, political, and economic standards, rather than the needs of the patient and the best judgment of his doctor. They will have unlimited access to personal information on patients, and thus unlimited potential reasons to deny treatment to those they deem to be ?non-compliant.?

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

Liberty Minute

August 9 2013

Ladar Levison, who operates the Lavabit e-mail service, sent a notice to his customers that he was shutting down his company rather than becoming ?complicit in crimes against the American people.?

Levison had been targeted by a National Security Letter or an NSA surveillance warrant, and wasn?t willing to become a collaborator in the Regime?s surveillance program. So he was forced to end a lucrative business he had created himself through a decade of hard work.

To appreciate the integrity displayed by Mr. Levison it?s useful to examine what is being done to the family of former CIA terrorism analyst John Kiriakou, who was sent to prison as punishment for confirming the Agency?s illegal use of torture. Kiriakou?s wife received a notice from the company that provided the family with auto and homeowners insurance for twenty years cancelling their policy. The company, according to the letter, does not insure felons. When his wife tried to put the policy in her name, she was told the company doesn?t insure ?felonious families.?

Kiriakou?s supposed offense, of course, was to expose felonious conduct of high-ranking CIA officials.

A totalitarian regime not only punishes dissenters, but their families, friends, and business associates, as well.

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

Liberty Minute August 7 2013

Thanks to world skateboard champion Tony Hawk, the world has been made aware of an incident in which a Virginia State Police trooper ran down a skateboarder on the streets of Richmond. The officer made an illegal U-turn that ended when he plowed into the back of the unsuspecting teenager, who was peacefully standing on the sidewalk. The victim survived and, thankfully, required only minimal medical attention.

There?s no evidence that the collision was deliberate. The video also makes it clear that unless the trooper was severely distracted, it would have been impossible for him not to have seen the skateboarder. So the injury was a result of either malicious criminal intent or criminal negligence on the part of the trooper ? and prosecution is not only appropriate, but imperative.

Predictably, no criminal charges were filed against the trooper. Nor did he face administrative punishment or any other disciplinary sanction. He remains on duty today. The State Police insist that the officer followed ?proper protocol,? but has refused to disclose what those protocols are, or to discuss other details of the case.

In an occupied country, the occupation troops aren?t required to explain their actions to the public.

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