Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

September 14, 2012

Police in Boise assert that a criminal syndicate called the ?Slayer? gang was responsible for a series of robberies, assaults, and acts of extortion.

The alleged ringleader, a 53-year-old man named Jerry Brown, has agreed to plead guilty on three charges ? aggravated assault, recruiting a gang member, and use of a deadly weapon in the commission of a crime. He faces a 15-year prison term with a mandatory minimum of five years behind bars.

When prosecutors propose a deal, they generally offer to drop a serious charge in order to induce a defendant to plead guilty to a lesser offense. In Jerry Brown?s case, Ada County prosecutors secured a five-year prison sentence by agreeing not to prosecute him on charges that he had distributed marijuana.

Aggravated assault is a serious crime involving an actual victim. The same cannot honestly be said of engaging in commerce involving marijuana. Even if we embrace the flawed ? and un-Biblical -- assumption that the government has the authority to dictate what people choose to consume, wouldn?t reasonable people agree that beating somebody up is a more serious crime than handing him a joint?

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

September 13, 2012

Representatives from more than a dozen federal and local law enforcement agencies assembled in front of the Malheur County Courthouse in Vale, Oregon on September 10 to announce the results of a lengthy criminal probe. The federally supervised Task Force staged eleven separate raids in eastern Oregon and western Idaho.

No arrests were made, no charges were filed, and no evidence was seized. The lengthy, expensive, and intrusive inquiry and enforcement action focused on suspected misuse of Oregon?s medical marijuana law.

Specifically, the Task Force was investigating the possibility that somebody involved in the state-licensed delivery of medical marijuana ? which is legal in Oregon ? had somehow made a profit by doing so.

Meanwhile, municipal authorities in Portland, Oregon?s largest city, approved the infusion of fluoride into the water supply. This amounts to the forcible treatment of an entire population with a chemical that ? unlike marijuana ? has been proven to have a dangerous and damaging impact on the health of those who ingest it.

It?s difficult to find a more suitable illustration of the unalloyed lunacy of the so-called War on Drugs.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

September 12, 2012

During a recent campaign stop at an Ohiodiner, Vice President Joe Biden spied several members of a motorcycle club, one of whom was a woman several decades his junior. In a presumptuous act that might have earned him a beating had he not been accompanied by Secret Service agents, Biden seized the woman, placed her on his lap, and mugged for photographers.

During a separate campaign appearance in Florida, President Obama was the recipient of a photo-friendly bear hug from the owner of a pizza parlor. Prior to Mr. Obama?s appearance, the Secret Service had cleared the restaurant of any object that could be used as a weapon ? yet they were studiously indifferent when the president was seized and lifted from the ground by a man who outweighed him by at least eighty pounds.

The restaurant owner claims that the hug was a spontaneous gesture, an emotional reaction to the mere presence of Mr. Obama.

Most politicians aren?t fit for the company of decent people. Why do those of us who belong to society?s productive class insist on treating them as celebrities, and permitting them to use us as campaign props?

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

September 11, 2012

Everyone remembers September 11, 2001 as the day the Towers fell in lower Manhattan. Relatively few recognize that date as the day the laws fell silent as well.

Terrorists murdered thousands on that morning eleven years ago. In the intervening years the same government that failed to protect the victims has destroyed the remnant of our constitutional system, invoking that failure to justify every enhancement of its powers.

Eleven years later ? more than a year after the reported death of Osama bin Laden -- the U.S. remains at war in Afghanistan. U.S. personnel remain in Iraq, dealing with the residue of a war fought against a country that never attacked or threatened us in any way. Remote-controlled drone strikes by the CIA kill dozens of people each week in Yemen, Pakistan, and elsewhere, planting and nurturing the seeds from which future terrorist attacks will grow. And the government that failed to protect us eleven years ago now unabashedly treats all of us as if we were inmates of a prison society.

The people who presume to rule us have validated the warning contained in the ancient Roman maxim, ?In times of war, the laws fall silent.? They remain a far greater threat to us than any conceivable foreign enemy.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

September 10, 2012

Federal prosecutors in San Antonio claim that they have legal cause to seize two homes owned by Sindy Chapa, a professor at Texas State University. Although Chapa hasn?t been charged with a crime, prosecutors insist that the homes were purchased with the proceeds of criminal activity. The affidavits supporting the seizure have been sealed.

This is a logical extension of the abhorrent and criminal practice of civil asset forfeiture, in which law enforcement agencies confiscate ? that is, steal ? money and other property that is said to be connected in some way to criminal activity. As Scott Meiner of Americans for Forfeiture Reform observes, prosecutors seized Sindy Chapa?s homes while she was out of the country ? and then locked away the purported evidence supposedly justifying the confiscation.

The Obama-Holder Justice Department recently expanded the ability of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to confiscate property described as connected in some way to ?substance abuses.? This means that a notoriously corrupt ? and literally murderous ? federal agency devoid of a hint of constitutional legitimacy has an even broader self-appointed mandate to steal.

In its origins, every government begins as an armed gang. The government ruling us has long since abandoned the pretense that it is anything else.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

September 7, 2012

A woman who had passed through airport security in Houston was detained by the Transportation Security Administration and forbidden to board the plane as punishment for exhibiting a ?bad attitude.?

The TSA, which apparently exists in order to provide gainful employment for deviants and petty criminals, recently began a policy of testing beverages for explosives. This includes bottled drinks and coffee purchased by airline customers inside secure areas of airports.

The woman involved in the Houston episode ? which was captured on video -- was confronted by TSA personnel who demanded that she surrender her water bottle to be ?tested.? Since she had been through two security screenings, the woman didn?t see the point of this petty harassment and drank the water ? something she obviously wouldn?t have done if it had contained explosives or poison.

?Let me get this straight,? she said when TSA personnel refused to let her on the plane. ?This is retaliatory for my attitude, this is not making the airways safer.?

?It pretty much definitely is,? one TSA employee admitted.

In the age of the Homeland Security State, every airport operates like a prison. Then again, so does the rest of our society as well.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

September 6, 2012

The expression ?fish story? was inspired by the tendency of fishermen to exaggerate their exploits. Lying is always a sin, and when it involves fraud it can be a crime. But is lying about the size of a fish a felony? It is in Texas? a state afflicted with a government that displays a gift for criminalizing practically everything.

Seven participants in a Texasfishing tournament, including a guide, have been accused of lying about the size of their catch. Under a measure enacted a few years ago, each of them faces the prospect of ten years in prison and fines of up to $10,000.

Texas Republican state representative Dan Flynn, who sponsored the measure, admits that "everybody always exaggerate[es] ? the size of their fish.? Some fishing tournaments now offer large cash prizes, which means that people who win through deception could commit felony theft.

Obviously, tournament organizers would have a powerful incentive to prevent fraud of this kind. Why not simply allow them to enforce their own rules, and disqualify people who cheat? That approach would make sense nearly everywhere butTexas, where lawmakers have a punitive streak worthy of the Taliban.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

September 5, 2012

Vladimir Lenin, the founding dictator of theSoviet Union, digested politics into two simple propositions. The first was that the fundamental political question is who does what to whom. The second was that when the ?right? people obtain political power, they are entitled to exercise it without limit or legal restraint.

Lenin?s doctrines led to the death of tens of millions of people in theSoviet Unionand elsewhere. Despite that fact ? or perhaps because of it ? he remains the most significant political figure of the modern age. An illustration of his influence is offered by the sections of the 2012 Democratic Party National Platform dealing with civil liberties.

As Mother Jones magazine points out, ?the Democratic Party has given up on its 2008 promises to roll back the national security state? now that Barack Obama presides over the vast machinery of detention, regimentation, surveillance, torture, and summary execution.

The two major parties constitute the ?who? and ?whom? in Lenin?s formula. Now that the Democrats are the ?who? rather than the ?whom,? they have embraced the ?what? in this equation ? meaning the exercise of dictatorial presidential power.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

September 4, 2012

One of the oddest lines in the 2012 Republican National Platform calls for the Mariana Islands to be exempt from the federal minimum wage. Since the Constitution does not authorize the federal government to impose a minimum wage anywhere, the principled thing would have been to call for its total abolition. Why focus on a tiny, obscure territory?

For several years, high-profile Republican lobbyists, led by former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed and convicted felon Jack Abramoff have used their influence to exempt the Marianas ? especially Saipan ? from minimum wage laws and other workplace regulations. This has benefited a Chinese-owned fabric consortium that uses slave labor ? mostly female workers.

The raw materials come fromChina. The factory is owned and operated by the Chinese government. The workers are Chinese nationals subject to that country?s obscene population laws, including compelled abortion. They are forbidden to practice Christianity or any other religion. Yet owing to the influence exercised by Reed and Abramoff, the clothing manufactured in Saipan is labeled ?Made inUSA.?

Reed and Abramoff raked in a substantial amount of money lobbying on behalf of the people running this slave labor camp ? and their corrupt influence is now inscribed in the Republican Party Platform.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

September 3, 2012

The 2012 Republican Party platform calls for ?[c]urrent laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity ?to be vigorously enforced.?

That pornography is a soul-destroying vice is incontestable. When its production involves aggression against the rights of innocent people ? such as children ? a crime is committed. The Republican platform doesn?t recognize the critical distinction between vices and crimes.

In his essay ?Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty,? 19^th Century abolitionist Lysander Spooner observed that "Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.... For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be a falsehood, or falsehood truth."

Here?s that distinction described in practical terms: A man who owns pornography is indulging in a vice. Agents of the federal Transportation Security Administration who force air travelers to undergo virtual strip-searches by way of airport porno-scanners are committing a crime.

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