Liberty Minute July 23 2013

The Vietnam War ended forty years ago, but its toxic legacy lives on in children born decades after the conflict came to a close. One of them is 12-year-old Thi Ly, whose head is unnaturally large and visibly misshapen and her eyes are separated by an unusual distance and out of alignment. From the time she was an infant, Ly has been repeatedly hospitalized for numerous ailments. Her 43-year-old mother, Le Thi Thu, has similar deformities.

Both of them are second-  and third-generation victims of exposure to dioxin as a result of the U.S. military?s use of a defoliant called Agent Orange that was used extensively over parts of southern Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The U.S. Air Force  sprayed more than 20 million gallons of Agent Orange during the war.

The U.S. government has grudgingly admitted that Agent Orange was responsible for diseases among American Vietnam veterans, but has never acknowledged that it is also to blame for birth defects, cancer, and other illnesses that continue to plague Vietnamese citizens.

John Adams warned us: ?Great is the guilty of an unnecessary war.? That guilt is compounded when those who waged it refuse to acknowledge the harm they?ve done to the innocent.

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

Liberty Minute July 22 2013

Judge Rosemarie Aquilina of Michigan?s Ingham County Circuit Court has voided Detroit?s bankruptcy decree, claiming that it violated the state constitution. To buttress that dubious claim, Judge Aquilina, a former aide to a Democratic state senator, offered the remarkable objection that the city?s effort to liquidate its unsustainable debts was an affront to what she considers the majesty of President Obama. According to Aquinlina, by filing for bankruptcy the City of Detroit is ?not honoring the President, who took [Detroit?s auto companies] out of bankruptcy.? In the mental universe this silly little judge inhabits, Mr. Obama is clothed with the sovereign power to change the laws of arithmetic and economics.

Aquilina?s partner in foolishness is MSNBC commentator Melissa Harris-Perry, who claims that Detroit?s woes are a product of inadequate government intervention. In a July 19 panel discussion, Harris-Perry declared: ?This is what it looks like when government is small enough to drown it in your bathtub, and it is not a pretty picture.? In fact, as Detroit?s fatally overfed government withers away, private initiatives are increasingly providing basic services without imposing fees inflated by the need to pay extravagant union pensions and benefits. For civic life to flourish, the redistributionist state must die.

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

Liberty Minute July 18 2013

On two occasions in a single week, surveillance drones operated from Florida?s Tyndall Air Force Base were destroyed in incidents that put the public at risk. On July 10, a drone was redirected over the Gulf of Mexico and ordered to self-destruct after two failed attempts to bring it in for a landing.

A week later, another drone crashed alongside US 98 at about 8:30 in the morning. This led authorities to shut down the busy interstate for an entire day.

The expanding domestic use of drones will mean increased risks to the public ? not merely from the abuses inherent in using them for warrantless surveillance, but also from the growing possibility of crashes and other mishaps. This is one of many reasons why cities across the country should emulate the example set by Deer Trail, Colorado. The municipal government of that village of 540 people is considering a proposal under which it would issue a $100 reward to ?any shooter who presents a valid hunting license and ? identifiable parts? of a federally operated drone.

As Deer Trail resident Philip Steel explains: ?We do not want drones in town. They fly in town, they get shot down.?

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

Liberty Minute July 17 2013

Author and activist Barrett Brown has been behind bars for nearly 300 days without a trial. Federal prosecutors have filed a 17-count indictment on charges arising from the act of republishing material obtained by hackers from HB Gary Federal and Stratfor, two private companies that are deeply involved in national security affairs.

Prior to being arrested, Brown endured months of harassment by the FBI. On one occasion FBI agents broke down his front door in his absence and confiscated documents.  The Bureau also threatened his mother, which led Brown to produce a YouTube video describing his harassment in detail. In that video he condemned FBI agent Robert Smith by name while expressly disavowing any intention to see harm done to him.

This led to Brown?s arrest on charges of threatening and intimidating federal agent. He was held for weeks without bail until the Justice Department filed an indictment accusing him of trafficking in ?stolen? information by disseminating the leaked material.

Brown?s supposed offense was to commit journalism by republishing information about politically privileged corporation that he didn?t personally acquire, and then to condemn a federal official who was harassing and persecuting his family. That?s the kind of thing that leads to prosecution in the American Reich.

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

Liberty Minute July 16 2013

ATF Special Agent Ashley Stephens visited the home of Claudia Moore, a suspected drug dealer with a felony conviction on her record. After Stephens knocked on Moore?s front door, he was greeted by a man named Mark Mongold, who was described as having ?prison tattoos.? The agent also claimed to smell marijuana.

Describing those factors as a threat to ?officer safety,? the agents demanded access to the home to conduct a ?protective sweep,? during which ammunition and drugs were found. A district court denied Mongold?s motion to suppress the evidence, which was based on the fact that the search took place without a warrant.

The US. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the district court and suppressed the evidence, noting that the ATF agents ?could most easily have protected the officers? safety by leaving [the] home, not by entering it.?

The Tenth Circuit quite sensibly slapped down this cynical argument for a warrantless search, but it was careful to specify that its sensible ruling is not to be used as a precedent. So we?ve not seen the end of cynical efforts by police to invent pretexts to violate the Fourth Amendment.

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

LibertyMinute July 15 2013

Thomas Jefferson famously said that he would prefer to have a newspaper without a government over having a government without a newspaper. Unfortunately, those running the contemporary news media see themselves as allies to, or appendages of, government, rather than principled and indispensable antagonists to it.

One small but telling example is offered by The Monitor, a daily newspaper in McAllen, Texas. Last spring, the Monitor learned that the McAllen city government was negotiating with the GEO Group, a Florida-based private prison corporation, about building a 1,000-bed jail that would accept federal inmates. The paper didn?t report on the discussions until July 2, in a story that contained the following admission: ?At the city?s request, The Monitor didn?t report the news to avoid tipping off potential competitors and skunking the deal.?

That news embargo also prevented the public from learning about the plans of the city government that is supposedly accountable to them. Were The Monitor an actual newspaper, rather than a propaganda organ, its editorial board would understand that its job is to disclose things the city government seeks to conceal, especially when taxpayer money is involved.

Where government is concerned, all true journalism is adversarial. Everything else is stenography.

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

Liberty Minute July 12 2013

Before he retired from the Army in 1993, Houston resident Ron Kelly spent decades firing machine guns, tanks, and other high-performance weapons. Kelly estimates that during his military career he fired 100,000 rounds of ammo. Yet when he recently tried to purchase a .22-caliber rifle at a local Wal-Mart, Kelly was denied ? because a computerized background check turned up a misdemeanor marijuana conviction from 1971.

As a teenager, Kelly was arrested with a baggie of pot at High School and given a year of probation. According to the FBI, federal law prevents a firearms purchase by people convicted of a misdemeanor that could result in a two-year jail sentence, and that this would apply even to those, like Kelly, who received a lighter sentence than the maximum.

Significantly, although the FBI?s National Instant Criminal Background Check System found a record of Kelly?s misdemeanor conviction, officials in North Carolina ? where the youthful arrest took place ? couldn?t find it.

Kelly?s youthful indiscretion didn?t disqualify him from firing guns on behalf of the government at taxpayer expense. Yet it supposedly makes him unworthy to keep and bear arms in his own defense.

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

Liberty Minute July 11 2013

The Justice Department?s Community Relations Service, or CRS, describes itself as the agency?s ?`peacemaker? for community conflicts and tensions arising from differences of race, color, and national origin. It is dedicated to assisting state and local units of government, private and public organizations, and community groups with preventing and resolving racial and ethnic tensions, incidents, and civil disorders, and in restoring racial stability and harmony.?

Which explains, one supposes, why the CRS has been working to inflame racial tensions over the George Zimmerman trial.

The public accountability group Judicial Watch obtained documents demonstrating that the CRS played a major behind-the-scenes role in organizing protests against Zimmerman, who has been on trial for killing Trayvon Martin. At taxpayer expense, the CRS sent personnel to Sanford, Florida to help organize protests focusing on Zimmerman, and then to provide ?technical assistance, conciliation ? onsite mediation? and security during the protests.

With the trial winding down, officials in Sanford and the surrounding area have become concerned about the possibility of riots in the event that Zimmerman is acquitted of second-degree murder in the killing of Martin. This would be the predictable outcome of the so-called ?peacemaking? efforts of the CRS.

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

Liberty Minute July 10 2013

As the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan is drawn down, the Pentagon is preparing to demolish a huge operations center that was built for the Marines.

The facility, which is located in the country?s Helmand Province, cost at least $34 million to construct. Sprawling across the bleak and dusty landscape of southwestern Afghanistan, the base is the size of a football field. It has an ultra-modern operations center with tiered seating, a briefing theater, a state-of-the-art air conditioning system, and large, well-appointed offices. It has never been used, and never will be.  Military commanders explained three years ago that the base wasn?t needed, but Washington insisted on paying the contractor to finish it nonetheless.

In Kandahar Province, the military recently finished a $45 million vehicle repair facility, which is now being used to sort through surplus equipment. In the northern part of the country can be found a partially completed consulate building that has been abandoned after an expenditure of $80 million. It was decided that the outpost would be vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

As General Smedley Butler pointed out decades ago, war is a racket. It is a perverse form of corporate socialist alchemy in which irreplaceable human lives are transmuted into corrupt profits for politically connected opportunists.

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

Liberty Minute July 9 2013

Just as the government doesn?t produce any of the wealth it plunders, politicians do not display any of the valor they celebrate. This fact is illustrated by today?s memorial service in Prescott, Arizona to honor the 19 firefighters who were killed on June 30 while battling a hugely destructive wildfire.

Among the thousands of people to attend the service are Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake, Governor Jan Brewer, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, all of whom are natives of Arizona and thus have a reason to be there. Unfortunately, the clownish figure known as Vice President Biden was offered a chance to speak at the event as well, which means that the event, and most of the town of Prescott, were encased in an iron dome of security that disrupted the daily affairs of the productive people who live nearby.

Just as infuriating is the fact that the security procedures meant that many people who knew the fallen firefighters -- who had grown up with them, gone to school with them, worshipped alongside them ? weren?t able to attend the service. Their desire to pay respect to people they loved was sacrificed on the altar of a foolish politician?s desire to bathe himself in the reflected glory of brave men.

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