Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 21, 2013

Benjamin Wassell of Silver Creek, New York, a wounded Iraq war veteran, is the first resident of that state to be charged under its draconian new firearms law. He was arrested during an undercover operation by state police in which he sold an AR-15 rifle and six large-capacity clips on January 24. If he had conducted those sales just days earlier, they would have been perfectly legal.

Wassell has no criminal record, and although what he did violates the new gun law, it isn?t legitimately a crime, since it didn?t involve injury or fraud on his part. Indeed, the only fraud involved in that transaction was that perpetrated by the police officials who arranged the sale on false pretenses. If they have their way, New York police officials will be doing a brisk business in incarcerating innocent gun owners.  The State of New York has established an anonymous tip line encouraging people to report suspected ?illegal gun owners? for a $500 reward.

Every totalitarian police state requires the disarmament of its subjects, and encourages them to spy on each other. New York State isn?t North Korea, but it?s on the same trajectory.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 20, 2013

Shawn Moore of Carney?s Point, New Jersey was visiting a friend?s house when he got a disturbing call from his wife, who said that police and child welfare investigators were at their home.

By the time he got back to his house, Moore ? a certified hunting safety instructor -- was on the phone with attorney Evan Nappen, who specializes in Second Amendment cases. The investigators were demanding access to the family?s gun safe to see if all of their firearms were registered. Moore demanded to see a search warrant, and when none was produced, he ordered the investigators to leave.

The visit apparently followed an anonymous tip prompted by a Facebook photo of Moore?s 11-year-old son Josh, who is holding a .22-caliber rifle he had received as a birthday present. Although the New Jersey Department of Children and Families wouldn?t confirm that it was responding to an anonymous report, department spokesperson Kristen Brown told Fox News that investigators ?are required to follow up on every single allegation that comes into the central registry.? The raid on Moore?s home, Brown insisted, represented a ?prudent and wise? policy.

That makes perfect sense, if the terms ?prudent and wise? are functional synonyms for ?totalitarian.?

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 19 2013

With the support of leaders from all major political parties, the British government has announced plans to create an official ?press regulator? empowered to impose fines and demand prominent corrections of stories deemed to be unreliable.  The new restrictions would also apply to bloggers and other independent Web-based commentators.

Britain is not alone in this turn toward totalitarianism. A similar system is quietly being established here in the putative Land of the Free.

 Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter filed a complaint with that city?s Human Rights Commission accusing a magazine of ?racial incitement? for publishing a story dealing with race relations. Downey, California resident Hashim Bomani was hit with a restraining order after using his blog to criticize Steven Golightly, director of the LA County Child Support Services Department.

 Dominic Ray Aguilar, a 37-year-old cab driver from Roseville, California, has been charged with making ?terroristic threats? against Police Officer John Moody. That threat supposedly came in a Facebook post condemning Officer Moody for gunning down an unarmed man named Ernesto Duenez, who was shot eleven times in the driveway of his home.

The totalitarian impulse is not limited to Marxist or Islamist regimes. Given a suitable excuse and sufficient power, every government would criminalize dissent and punish its critics.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 18, 2013

Ten former high-ranking officials of the Drug Enforcement Administration recently signed a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee criticizing the Obama administration for its supposed lack of zeal in enforcing marijuana prohibition. According to that letter, ?Our nation?s laws and international commitments under the federal CSA and as a signatory to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs? and the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic and Psychotropic Substances ? remain effective and unchanged.?

Among the signatories  were Robert L. Dupont, who headed the National Institute on Drug Abuse under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and Peter Bensinger, who was head of the DEA during most of that decade. Today, those former drug warriors run a company called Bensinger, DuPont & Associates, which specializes in workplace drug testing.

Since they have a financial interest in marijuana prohibition, it?s reasonable to surmise that DuPont and Bensinger aren?t acting on purely idealistic motives. No decent person has anything but contempt for Drug Kingpins ? but it?s difficult to see how Prohibition Profiteers are any less contemptible.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 15, 2013

Last April, a Brooklyn landlady named Karen Brim was mopping the floors in her apartment building when three police officers suddenly materialized in pursuit of several local teenagers. The officers claimed that the teens were trespassers. Brim said that they were guests and were welcome on her property. The police, however, were not. The officers responded by throwing the 42-year-old woman to the floor, shattering her leg. She was taken to a local hospital where she was shackled to a bed and held under armed guard for seventeen days. Brim, who was the victim, was charged with five offenses.

About a month earlier, a Chicago businessman named Bassil Abdelal was robbed at gunpoint. The robbers fled when they learned that the police were on the way. Abdelal experienced a brief ? and unwarranted ? sense of relief when the police arrived. That reaction was quickly dispelled as the police pumped eleven rounds into the victim?s body. Abdelal survived, was taken to a hospital ? where he, too, was handcuffed to his bed. For several days he suffered harassment from police detectives who apparently wanted to cover up the department?s culpable incompetence.

There is no emergency or crisis that will not be made immediately worse once the police get involved.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 14 2013

 As a New York City Police Officer assigned to the 81^st Precinct, Adrian Schoolcraft became disillusioned when supervisors talked about manipulating crime statistics and carrying out illegal arrests. After covertly recording some of those conversations, Schoolcraft blew the whistle ? and immediately paid a steep price.

On Halloween night in 2009, a police strike force raided Schoolcraft?s apartment and forcibly confined him to a mental ward at Jamaica Hospital under the care of Dr. Isak Isakov, supposedly to prevent him from harming himself. He was held there for six days.

As Schoolcraft told the New York Daily News, ?I wanted to leave because they had no reason to keep me. The doctor said to me and my father, `He?s not here against his will, but we are waiting to hear from the NYPD.??

New York State law forbids the psychological commitment of any individual unless it is proven that he is a danger to himself or others. The only danger Schoolcraft posed was to the corrupt police functionaries whose deeds he had exposed. An internal investigation validated nearly all of Schoolcraft?s claims ? yet nobody has ever been punished for his abduction and false imprisonment.  

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 13, 2013

The Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, has sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security containing a dire warning: The conspiracy theorists are plotting against the government. According to SPLC spokesman Mark Potok, ?We are in a scary moment. It is very much reminiscent, at least to me, of the months leading up to the Oklahoma City Bombing.?

The Los Angeles Times retailed the SPLC?s talking points in an unusually strident house editorial:  ?There are, in increasingly frightening numbers, cells of angry men in the United States preparing for combat.?

That description was not applied to the masked, armor-clad Berserkers who kick down doors in the early morning or late at night, or the officials who have purchased more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition -- much of it hollow-point rounds unsuitable for military use -- while distributing armored vehicles and other military hardware to police in practically every city nation-wide.

For self-appointed thought police like the SPLC, a ?conspiracy theorist? is someone who notices things without official permission ? and anybody who makes preparations to defend himself against criminal violence by the government is an incipient terrorist.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 11, 2013

While Senator Rand Paul?s drone filibuster will not restrain the Obama administration?s use of drones to carry out targeted killings of alleged terrorists and militants, it has laid bare an interesting alignment on the political landscape.

Senior Republican leaders the in the Senate, including Arizona?s John McCain and South Carolina?s Lindsey Graham, have thrown their unqualified support behind President Obama.

Speaking on the floor of the Senate, Senator Graham declared, ?People are astonished that President Obama is doing many of the things that President Bush did. I?m not astonished. I congratulate him for having the good judgment to understand we?re at war.? Speaking in the same vein, Senator McCain protested ?We?ve done ? a disservice to a lot of Americans by making them believe they?re somehow in danger from their government; they?re not.?  Republican Congressman Mike Rogers of Michigan, the House Intelligence Committee Chairman, denounced critics of targeted killings as ?irresponsible.?

Meanwhile, some nominally liberal commentators, such as Newsweek?s Eleanor Clift, accused Senator Paul and other opponents of the drone program of inciting sedition.

America was founded on principled hostility to power, not unqualified submission to it. The Founders most likely wouldn?t recognize as Americans people who would entrust the president with the power of discretionary killing.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 8 2013

It took a 13-hour filibuster from Senator Rand Paul to wring this statement from Attorney General Eric Holder:

?It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: `Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?? The answer to that question is no.?

What Holder is saying, in substantive terms, is that the President does have the supposed authority to use a drone to kill an American who is engaged in ?combat,? whether here or abroad. Under the rules of engagement used by the Obama Regime in Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan, any ?military-age? male found within a targeted ?kill zone? is likewise designated a ?combatant,? albeit usually after the fact. That definition was broad enough to include 16-year-old US citizen Abdel al-Awlaki, who was killed in a drone strike because his father was considered a combatant.

Holder selected a carefully qualified question in order to justify a narrowly tailored answer that reserves an expansive claim of executive power to authorize summary executions by the president. That?s how totalitarians operate.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 7, 2013

On the same day that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was filibustering the nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA over the nominee?s involvement in lethal drone strikes, Attorney General Eric Holder defended arbitrary power before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

As we noted earlier, Holder told the Committee that any Congressional action to restrict the targeted killing program would represent an unconstitutional limitation of presidential powers.

 In the same hearing, Holder said that some corrupt banks are simply too big to prosecute. According to Holder, ?some of these institutions become so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that ? if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. And I do think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large.?

In brief: According to Holder, American citizens can be summarily executed without criminal charges, but criminal banks are immune to prosecution.

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