Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 31, 2013

Forty years ago, the Supreme Court ? acting without moral, legal, or constitutional authority ? struck down the abortion laws of all fifty states.  The Court imposed a new legal regime in which the unborn could be murdered at any time before birth.

In fact, the notorious Roe vs. Wade ruling did not define birth as the beginning of legal personhood. This is why the abortion lobby defends the practice of a form of infanticide called ?partial-birth abortion? ? and why some self-appointed medical ethicists are promoting legal protection for what they call the post-birth abortion of supposedly unwanted newborn infants.

In addition to enabling the slaughter of 55 million unborn children, the Roe vs. Wade ruling established the principle that the government ? rather than the Creator ? defines who is a ?person? protected by law. Nor is that ruling the ?law of the land,? as its defenders insist, because the Supreme Court has no legislative authority.

This leads to an interesting question for the growing number of county sheriffs who have announced their opposition to the administration?s gun control policies: If they are willing to permit the federally sanctioned murder of children in their jurisdictions, why should we believe their promises to protect the right of armed self-defense?

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 30, 2013

The January 29^th  Idaho Press-Tribune published side-by-side op-ed columns by Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue and Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney on the subject of proposed civilian disarmament measures. Sheriff Donahue condemns Barrack Obama?s civilian disarmament as ?political posturing,? while professing his confidence that ?Congress would not be so foolish as to let anyone strip us of our Second Amendment rights.?

According to Donahue, ?Law-abiding citizens have every right to own legal firearms?.? On this reasoning, the government can criminalize ownership of certain kinds of firearms. Significantly, Donahue admits that he has taken part in federally supervised gun confiscation. He proudly recalls working with ?dedicated ATF agents and other local law enforcement officers to keep illegal guns, like sawed-off shotguns, off our streets and enforce laws prohibiting felons from owning or possessing firearms."

For his part, Sheriff Raney reiterated his willingness to carry out any gun confiscation measure enacted by Congress.

Donahue and Raney have collaborated to produce a museum-quality example of the controlled dialectic at work in the campaign to disarm the public. Both of these sheriffs will carry out orders to confiscate personal firearms. They've just tailored their respective rhetorical approaches for different constituencies.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 29, 2013

Vice President Joe Biden insists that private ownership of so-called assault weapons should be forbidden because police ?are outgunned on the street by the bad guys and the proliferation of these weapons.? He also claims that the number of deadly assaults against police officers has increased in recent years. 

In fact, duty-related deaths of police officers declined in 2012 as compared to the previous year, continuing a decades-long trend. And there wasn?t a single instance in which a police officer was killed by someone using a so-called assault weapon. Just as importantly, law-abiding citizens, by definition, do not use so-called assault weapons to murder police officers, or anybody else.

Biden maintains that the proposed assault weapons ban is ?a rational limitation on what types of weapons can be owned.? If that is the case, why not apply that ban to the police as well as the public? Many ? if not most ? of the so-called assault weapons used in crime are stolen from the police, rather than from responsible private gun owners. Yet the same federal government that seeks to ban private ownership of assault weapons continues to send military-grade weaponry to local police departments.

There is nothing rational, moral, or practical about disarming the innocent.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 28, 2013

For several years, the federal government sought to confiscate the family-owned Motel Caswell inTewksbury,Massachusetts.  The owner, Russ Caswell, had cooperated with police investigations of suspected narcotics activity. He was never charged with a crime. Yet a DEA official filed paperwork to steal the property through asset forfeiture because of drug offenses that took place without the owner?s knowledge.

Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, is reportedly considering an appeal of the ruling that dismissed the forfeiture suit against Caswell.  Ms. Ortiz was the same prosecutor who drove 26-year-old internet wiz Aaron Swartz to suicide.

After Swartz downloaded a large volume of publicly available academic papers from MIT, Massachusettsstate prosecutors intended to let him off with a stern warning. According to a report in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, Ortiz took over the case with the intention of sending a ?message.? In early January, three months before Swartz was to begin his criminal trial, he learned that Ortiz had rejected a proposed plea deal that would have avoided prison time. Two days later, the 26-year-old committed suicide.

Like most of her professional colleagues, Carmen Ortiz is an obvious sociopath. It?s a prerequisite for a career as a federal prosecutor.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 25, 2013

In 1854, a US marshal named James Batchelder was killed in Boston. Batchelder?s name is inscribed on the ?Officer Down? memorial, which honors law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty.

As it happens, Batchelder was enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act by arresting a young man who had fled to Boston from Virginia. Although that measure was properly enacted by Congress, many cities ? including Boston ? nullified it in order to protect the rights of people who had escaped from slavery.

If Idaho had been part of the Union in 1854, and Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney had been in office, Sheriff Raney would have eagerly enforced the Fugitive Slave Act. At least, he would do so if he were faithful to the principles he expressed in a January 25 Idaho Statesman op-ed column.

Unlike other sheriffs who have pledged not to enforce unconstitutional federal gun laws, Sheriff Raney insists that the Constitution?s ?supremacy clause? dictates that he set aside his personal convictions and enforce whatever legislation is enacted by the Congress as ?the law of the land.?

According to Raney, ?my oath requires me to uphold the laws that are passed by our federal and state representatives.? Slave-catchers like James Batchelder would have agreed with him.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 24, 2013

Because of its centralized, authoritarian nature, the military has always been a target of opportunity for social engineers. According to Dr. Allan Carlson of the Howard Center on the Family, "When one examines the military's role in stimulating government action or innovations that later become institutionalized, the effect of war in driving social revolution grows evident.?  

In light of this, we should not be surprised by the announcement that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is set to lift the ban on women in combat. This would overturn a 1994 policy directive that limited female military personnel to combat support operations. In that capacity more than 20,000 women have served in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. Hundreds have been wounded, and more than 130 have been killed.

That horrible toll will grow in the future ? and it may include female draftees.

In the mid-1970s, opponents of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment predicted that passage of the measure would result in women being subject to the draft. Now that the Pentagon is lifting the ban on women in combat, they will be subject to the Selective Service Act.

This is how the demand for equality results in uniformity of servitude.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 23, 2013

The Obama administration is openly escalating its campaign against private gun ownership -- but is it also preparing to make war on the American population? According to Canadian educator and human rights activist Jim Garrow, the answer to that shocking question is ?yes.?

In a phone interview, Garrow told me that he received an early morning phone call from a man he identified as a retired high-ranking military officer. That man was upset because a young protégé had resigned his commission to protest the Obama administration?s efforts to reconstruct the military. That disillusioned young officer reportedly said that the administration?s litmus test for officers was a willingness to accept orders from the chain of command that would involve firing on U.S. citizens who refuse to surrender their firearms.

Garrow, who has not revealed the name of his source, is regarded as a man of some accomplishment. Through the Bethune Institute, he has established hundreds of schools throughout China. Three years ago, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for rescuing baby girls who were targeted for infanticide because of the Chinese government?s one-child policy.  His warning shouldn?t be taken as gospel ? but it shouldn?t be dismissed as mere rumor, either.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 22, 2013

If you lie to a police officer, you can be charged with a crime. When ? not if?a police officer lies to you, he?s carrying out a legitimate function of his job. That?s what former prosecutor Val Van Brocklin explained in an essay published by Officer.com. Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper estimates that the typical police officer will lie several times during his daily duty shift.

In a 2009 ruling, the Washington State Supreme Court upheld a decision by an arbitrator reversing the termination of Kitsap County Sherriff?s deputy who had been fired for lying and other misconduct. The court agreed that honesty was not an essential function of a law enforcement officer?s job.

Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich, who has been forced to retain several deputies after they were caught lying, is determined to establish a higher standard of official conduct. To that end, Sheriff Knezovich has drafted legislation that would provide sheriffs and police chiefs with discretionary powers to fire officers who engage in dishonest or criminal behavior on the job. That proposed legislation has been supported by all 39 sheriffs inWashingtonState.

This wouldn?t correct all of the institutional problems with law enforcement, but it is a very good place to start.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 21, 2013

During a visit to Ft. Leavenworth?s Battle Command Training Program in the mid-1990s, author Robert D. Kaplan attended several round-table discussions involving the officers who now occupy the highest echelons in the Pentagon.

As Kaplan recorded in his book An Empire Wilderness, one consistent theme of those discussions was the likely repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the U.S. military from acting as a domestic law enforcement agency.

Although the Posse Comitatus Act remains on the books, a paper published by West Point?s Combatting Terrorism Center suggests that the Pentagon considers it to be a dead letter. The paper, which is entitled ?Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America?s Violent Far-Right,? claims that people who ?espouse strong convictions regarding the federal government, believing it to be corrupt and tyrannical,? are potential terrorists akin to al-Qaeda.

Similar assumptions were woven into a recent homeland security drill in Portsmouth, Ohio, in which elements of the Ohio National Guard?s 52^nd Civil Support Unit play-acted an incident in which two school employees angered by the government?s crackdown on gun rights plotted a terrorist attack.

A government determined to treat its population as the enemy will usually create some excuse to do so.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 18, 2013

A few days after being sworn in as the new Sheriff of Canyon County, Idaho, Kieran Donahue  joined the growing number of county sheriffs who have resolved not to enforce unconstitutional federal gun laws within their jurisdictions.

According to Sheriff Donahue, Mr. Obama?s campaign for new gun restrictions is ?political posturing? that capitalizes on ?hysteria.? The sheriff made it clear that he would refuse to implement any federal gun policy at odds with his responsibility to ?uphold the Constitution.?

Unfortunately, that resolute statement of principled defiance was fatally undermined when Donahue expressed his willingness to continue his office?s collaboration in the patently unconstitutional federal ?war on drugs? ? and his indecent eagerness to accept new federal subsidies to deploy deputies to guard public schools as soon as they are available.

U.S. Attorney for Idaho Wendy Olson, who said that her office would fully comply with new federal firearms mandates, observed that the Canyon County Sheriff?s Office ? like most others in the country ? has officers who are cross-deputized to serve on federal task forces.

You take the nickel, you take the noose. With federal money come federal mandates, and no sheriff who collaborates with the federal government can protect his county against unconstitutional federal gun laws.

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