LibertyMinute

June 7, 2013

Last March, following a national outcry, two high school football stars fromSteubenville,Ohiowere convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl. A few weeks later, an FBI SWAT team raided theSteubenvillehome of 26-year-old corporate cybersecurity consultant Deric Lostutter, who obtained and published tweets and Instagram photos in which members of the football team had joked about the rape and mocked the victim.

That information was made public by way of the hacker collective that calls itself Anonymous. Mother Jones magazine notes that if Lostutter is convicted of federal hacking-related charges, he faces up to ten years in prison ? as compared to the one and two-year sentences handed out to theSteubenville rapists.

Bear in mind that the Regime threatening to send this hacker to prison is currently conducting wholesale warrantless surveillance of telephone and internet communications. Through a program called PRISM the National Security Agency can monitor e-mails, file transfers, and conduct real-time surveillance of online searches. The CIA is also developing the ability to conduct surveillance through internet-connected ?smart appliances.?

It is impossible to exaggerate when describing the dishonesty, hypocrisy, vulgarity, and corruption of the government that presumes to rule us.

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

Liberty Minute June 6 2013

According to the Obama administration and civilian disarmament advocates, Americans need to have a ?conversation? about gun violence ? but one 11-year-old student in Maryland was suspended for ten days for following that advice.

 Bruce Henkelman of Huntington, Maryland told WMAL radio that his son, a sixth grade student, received the suspension after a bus driver overheard the child talking about the Sandy Hook massacre. The student was interrogated by the school?s principal and a sheriff?s deputy ? without the father being present.

The principal later reportedly told Mr. Henkelman that ?if you say the word `gun? in my school you are going to get suspended for ten days.?

This outrage occurred in the same county where a five-year-old child and his first-grade sister were interrogated for two hours ? without a parent being present ? because the boy had brought a toy cap gun pistol to school. The boy, who was so traumatized he wet his pants, was suspended for ten days.

It?s should be noted that the police officers who assisted in these interrogations were carrying firearms. If guns are too dangerous for children to talk about, why should we permit strangers in government costumes to carry them?

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

Liberty Minute June 5 2013

Most of the U.S. economy remains mired in a recession, but Washington, D.C. and its surrounding counties continue to thrive. Mass bloodshed provided the fertilizer in which Washington has bloomed, as the expanding war economy has led the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, and military contractors to bring hundreds of thousands of new residents into the region.

The result, as the Wall Street Journal observes, is a new ?Gilded Age? for Washington, which has been ?a time of lush business profits fueled by government outsourcing and war.? Well-connected recent college graduates secure entry-level bureaucratic jobs that pay enough to support rentals that charge $3,000 a month. Military contractors like Northrup Gumman, corporate lobbying groups, and Wall Street firms bring in hordes of first-time home buyers, driving real estate values upward. Owing to their connections, Democratic Party insiders like Frank Islam and Debbie Driesman can afford to build a 40,000-square foot French chateau-style mansion in Potomac, Maryland, buying up and demolishing adjacent houses in the process.

After the housing bubble burst in 2007, the national economy collapsed. However, as the New York Times points out, ?as the country withered, Washington blossomed.? This does much to explain the invincible indifference of the ruling class to our nation?s unfolding economic catastrophe.

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

Liberty Minute June 4 2013

 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who announced months ago that he will not seek another term, is the world?s most powerful counterfeiter ? but he apparently wants to be a standup comedian.

Bernanke?s recent commencement address at Princeton University, where he had been a professor from 1985 to 2002, was an ill-advised attempt to mimic the ironic comic stylings of TV performer Stephen Colbert. The Fed Chairman told graduates that he had recently sent a job application to the Princeton administration, only to receive a form letter explaining that ?Princeton receives many more qualified applicants for faculty positions than we can accommodate.?

It might be difficult for graduates to see the humor in that line, given their grim employment prospects. The same is true of Bernanke?s comment that sending a student to Princeton is akin to ?buying a new Cadillac every year and then driving it off a cliff.?

There?s something both predictable and appropriate about the fact that Bernanke has an inflated opinion of his comic timing. Perhaps he?d be wise not to give up his day job ? assuming that once he?s finished at the Fed he can find a new job in the economy he?s created.

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

Liberty Minute June 3 2013

Michael Henderson, a former captain in the Murray County, Georgia Sheriff?s Office, has pleaded guilty to obstruction and witness tampering by retaliating against a woman who filed a complaint against a local judge.

Last year, 36-year-old Angela Garmley of Chatsworth, Georgia filed a complaint against Chief Magistrate Judge Bryan Cochran. She accused him of sexually propositioning her after she appeared before him in court. She was cooperating in an investigation in July of last year when she was arrested on spurious drug charges.

Henderson and a deputy sheriff staged a pretext traffic stop on a vehicle in which Mrs. Garmley was a passenger. The stated reason for the stop was that the driver had failed to dim his lights for oncoming traffic. In fact, Henderson was involved in a conspiracy to retaliate against Mrs. Garmley by planting methamphetamine in a small metal container hidden on the underside of the vehicle. When Garmley?s ex-husband came to the scene, he, too was arrested. Charges against them were dropped shortly after Judge Cochrane was forced to resign. In his letter of resignation, Cochrane admitted that he had illegally pre-signed blank warrants for police officers.

As Shakespeare put it, ?Thieves for their robbery have authority when judges steal themselves.?

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 30 2013

Tremaine McMillian, a 14-year-old from Miami, was roughhousing  with friends on a beach not far from his home when police officers arrived on ATVs and told him that he would have to stop.  One of the officers asked Tremaine where his parents were.

The teenager, wanting to avoid contact with the police, started to walk away. One officer attempted to restrain the teenager, who responded by pulling away while saying, ?Man, don?t touch me like I did something.? That was a lawful order from a citizen the officer was required to obey. Instead, they needlessly ? and criminally ? escalated the encounter by grabbing the kid, throwing him to the ground, and applying a choke hold ? actions that constituted aggravated armed assault and attempted homicide. 

The assailants then charged the victim with ?resisting arrest with violence? by supposedly clenching his fists and giving the officers what was described as a ?dehumanizing stare.? According to Miami-Dade Detective Alvaro Zabaleta, the violence in question consisted of McMillian pulling away from the armed stranger, an action that supposedly made him a ?threat to the officer? that had to be ?neutralized.?

If it?s considered a crime of violence to give a police officer a dirty look, we?d be safer without their supposed services.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 28, 2013

Jason Ellis of Bardstown, Kentucky was murdered in the early morning hours of May 25. He was a K-9 officer with the local police department. Of infinitely greater importance, this young man was a husband and father to two young sons.

In reacting to the murder of Jason Ellis, Bardstown Police Chief Rick McCubbin spoke of revenge, rather than justice:

?I can assure you we won?t give up on this person or persons until we either have them in custody or in the front sight of one of our weapons. I certainly hope the latter is the case.?

Had an intemperate remark of that kind been made by a Bardstown resident about an apparently unjustified killing of a citizen by a police officer, it would most likely have been treated as a terroristic threat.

Dominic Aguilar of Roseville, California, whose friend Ernesto Duenez, Jr. was gunned down in his front yard by a police officer named John Moody, was arrested and charged with a felony for a Facebook post expressing the hope that Moody would meet a violent end.

Aguilar?s post was ill-considered. McCubbin?s comment was a plausible threat to commit a summary execution. Why was the former considered a crime, but not the latter?

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute May 27 2013

Illinois resident Michael Cook has been charged with drug and firearms offenses in East St. Louis following the death of a colleague from a cocaine overdose. Cook and his friend, Joe Christ, were staying at a hunting lodge last March 10 when Christ was found dead. Cook was accused of using heroin while in possession of firearms.

There are two unusual ? and, most likely, related ? aspects of this case. The first is that Cook and Christ were sitting Circuit Court Judges.  The second is that Cook, despite being accused of firearms-related felonies, was released on his own recognizance ? most likely as a matter of ?professional courtesy? from another judge. That status was granted despite the fact that Cook is also being investigated on suspicion   of using his position to benefit a friend who is accused of being a drug dealer.

Washington County, Pennsylvania Judge Paul Pozonsky is embroiled in similar difficulties. He was arrested by State Police and charged with stealing cocaine used in evidence in cases over which he presided since 2011.

How many people have Cook, Christ, and Pozonsky put in prison for indulging the weaknesses they share ? but who, unlike them, have harmed only themselves?

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

LibertyMinute May 23 2013

Republican Congressman Tom Cotton of Arkansas somehow managed to graduate from Harvard Law School and take several oaths to uphold the US Constitution without studying the Constitution in adequate detail. Rep. Cotton has proposed a measure that would punish family members of people who violatedU.S. sanctions againstIran with prison sentences of up to 20 years. 

As Cotton explained: ?There would be no investigation. If the prime malefactor of the family is identified on the list for sanctions, then everyone within their family would automatically come within the sanctions regime as well.?

The sanctions measure itself is constitutionally illegitimate, since Congress has no jurisdiction over the military and economic policies of any other nation. Imposing sanctions is an act of war, and should only be done following the required congressional declaration of war. Rep. Cotton would compound that offense against the Constitution by imposing collective punishment ? without trial ? on the basis of kinship, rather than overt acts.

 In other words, under Cotton?s amendment people would be subject to criminal penalties on the basis of what the Constitution calls ?corruption of blood? ? something explicitly forbidden by Article 3, section III of the document  to which Cotton has sworn his allegiance, and for which he demonstrates contempt.

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

 Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 22, 2013

Television personality Bill Nye, a former Boeing engineer and standup comedian, may call himself ?The Science Guy,? but his May 20 appearance on Piers Morgan?s CNN program dealt with speculation, rather than science.

Referring to the devastating tornado inOklahoma, Nye said that 10 of the past 12 years have been ?the warmest years recorded? and that ?if there?s more heat driving the storm then there?s going to be more tornadoes.?

Actual climate scientists point out that warmer weather would tend to reduce wind shear, which is necessary to produce tornadoes. Furthermore, the journal Nature Geoscience reports that there has been a fifteen year ?standstill? in global temperature increases ? something Nye either didn?t know or declined to take into account.

Although Nye and other climate alarmists treat every tornado as a harbinger of catastrophic global warming, four decades ago their predecessors said exactly the opposite.  In an April 28, 1975 story entitled ?Our Cooling World,? Newsweek pointed out  that theU.S. had experienced ?the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded? ? a fact blamed on what was described as the catastrophic cooling of the global climate.

Nye typifies the kind of person who is often wrong, but never in doubt.

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