Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April17, 2012

Officer Ramon Perez is an Evangelical Christian from Texas. Bogota, New York Police Officer Regina Tasca identifies herself as a gay female. Both of them intervened in the line of duty to protect helpless citizens from criminal violence by other police officers. And both of them have been disciplined for doing so.

Several years ago, Officer Perez refused to carry out an unlawful order to use a taser against a non-violent elderly man. Perez was purged from the Austin PD, which concluded that his moral and religious views undermined his solidarity with the force.

Last year, Officer Tasca ? who had just completed a training module dealing with emotionally disturbed individuals ? was one of several officers responding to a call from a mother seeking help with her mentally ill son. Although the son was not a criminal suspect, officers threw him to the ground and punched him 22 times while the mother screamed for them to stop. Tasca, to her credit, physically intervened to stop the assault ? and was immediately suspended. She faces termination on April 18.

In our system, the rogue cops are peace officers who actually seek to protect the innocent against criminal violence ? including that inflicted by their own comrades.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 16, 2012

Georgia resident John McNeil shot and killed an armed trespasser named Brian Epp in December 2005. Epp had threatened McNeil?s teenage son with a knife. When he arrived, McNeil fired a warning shot into the ground in an attempt to drive the intruder from his property. Several eyewitnesses confirmed that McNeil fired the killing shot after Epp reached for his knife and charged at him.

The police concluded that McNeil had acted in self-defense, as provided for under Georgia?s ?Stand Your Ground? law. A jury rejected a lawsuit filed by Epp?s widow, concluding that Epp was responsible for his own death. Yet in 2006, the Cobb County Prosecutor indicted McNeil for murder, wrangled a conviction out of a jury, and sent McNeil to prison for life.

Unlike the killing of Trayvon Marin by George Zimmerman, there is no ambiguity about this episode: John McNeil?s shooting of Brian Epp was an act of self-defense against an armed and violent aggressor. As it happens, McNeil is black; Brian Epp was white. Whether or not bigotry is to blame for this patent miscarriage of justice, John McNeil, rather than George Zimmerman, should be the focus of gun rights advocates seeking to defend the ?Stand Your Ground? principle.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 13, 2012

Denver resident James Moore was standing outside his apartment when he was thrown to the ground and beaten by two police officers.

After eight more police arrived, Moore was repeatedly slugged, kicked, and struck with a weighted weapon called a ?sap.? For most of the time he was hog-tied with his hands and ankles shackled and his legs pulled up behind his back, making it impossible to breathe. When paramedics arrived, Moore briefly ?flat-lined? on the sidewalk.

The police had come in response to a noise complaint. Charges against Moore were quickly dismissed, and the officers who beat him have never been disciplined.

Three years later, a group of ten cops in Fresno, California beat, pepper-sprayed, and repeatedly tasered a man named Paul Rosas. The assailants also hog-tied Rosas, earning extra points for creative sadism by using a garden hose to drown him as he pleaded for water. This atrocity was witnessed by Rosas? horrified children and several neighbors, who repeatedly warned that the victim was suffocating. No officer has ever been disciplined for the torture-murder of Paul Rosas.

America in 2012 is a country in which each of us is a phone call away from being beaten, tortured, and murdered by the police.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 111, 2012

Jimma Reat and several relatives were riding in a car near Denver?s city limits when the occupants of another vehicle, a Jeep SUV, threw bottles at them and brandished a gun. After fleeing the scene, Reat and his friends called 911.

Reports the Denver Post: ?The operator told them to return to Denver, find a safe spot to park and wait for police.? When one of Reat?s relatives complained that this wouldn?t be safe, the dispatcher sternly advised them that unless the group complied, they could expect no assistance from the police.

Following a brief argument, the group did as instructed ? and 24-year-old Reat was murdered. Although police were able to locate the stolen red SUV the following morning, the murderers have yet to be found.

This case was not unique. In a 2004 incident, a woman was attacked by two men in a car who threw objects at her vehicle and then cracked the rear windshield with a baseball bat. When she called 911 she, too, was instructed to return to the scene and wait for police assistance. One former dispatcher reports that this is standard policy.

If Jimma Reat hadn?t asked the police for help, he?d probably be alive today.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 11, 2012

Jimma Reat and several relatives were riding in a car near Denver?s city limits when the occupants of another vehicle, a Jeep SUV, threw bottles at them and brandished a gun. After fleeing the scene, Reat and his friends called 911.

Reports the Denver Post: ?The operator told them to return to Denver, find a safe spot to park and wait for police.? When one of Reat?s relatives complained that this wouldn?t be safe, the dispatcher sternly advised them that unless the group complied, they could expect no assistance from the police.

Following a brief argument, the group did as instructed ? and 24-year-old Reat was murdered. Although police were able to locate the stolen red SUV the following morning, the murderers have yet to be found.

This case was not unique. In a 2004 incident, a woman was attacked by two men in a car who threw objects at her vehicle and then cracked the rear windshield with a baseball bat. When she called 911 she, too, was instructed to return to the scene and wait for police assistance. One former dispatcher reports that this is standard policy.

If Jimma Reat hadn?t asked the police for help, he?d probably be alive today.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 10, 2012

Drug Enforcement Officer Michael Reichert of the Collinsville, Illinois Police Department was fired twice after being put on the so-called Brady List. That is a roster of police officers whose documented dishonesty disqualifies them from testifying in court.

In January 2011, Reichert was given a commendation by Collinsville Police Chief Scott Williams. Shortly thereafter he was named officer of the month. In recent weeks, Ohio filmmaker Terrance Huff produced and distributed a documentary of a December 1 traffic stop in which he was detained by Reichert, who had created a pretext to pull Huff over and conduct a drug search. Every claim made by Reichert was a documented lie. While conducting the search of Huff?s vehicle, Reichert manipulated his drug-detecting dog into ?alerting? in order to justify an invasive search of the van. When he was unable to find drugs or cash, Reichert ended the encounter by claiming that there was marijuana residue in the vehicle ? a final lie to cover several previous ones.

Reacting to national publicity generated by Huff?s video, Chief Williams insisted that ?We?re not doing any differently than any other law enforcement agency that has a drug interdiction program.?  This much, at least, is the unvarnished truth.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 9, 2012

Nineteenth century American jurist Lysander Spooner pointed out that while vices are sins, they aren?t necessarily crimes. That insight must be wedded to another by St. Augustine, who observed that a man has as many masters as he has vices. The case of Patrick Sullivan, formerly sheriff of Colorado?s Arapahoe County, illustrates how vicious public officials can enslave many others.

Sullivan, the National Sheriff Association?s Sheriff of the Year in 2001, was sentenced to 30 days in jail and two years? probation after pleading guilty to drug and prostitution charges.

Specifically, Sullivan admitted to using methamphetamine as leverage to obtain sexual favors from homosexual addicts. He made extensive use of the intelligence he had collected as sheriff to identify potential targets. More troubling still, as head of security for the Cherry Creek School District, Sullivan arranged to find a job for Sean Moss, a homosexual prostitute, porn star, and drug addict, who drowned in January 2011. Moss had listed Sullivan as an emergency contact in his medical records.

Under Colorado law, Sullivan?s offenses should have earned at least a year in prison. Instead, he was sent to serve a brief term in a jail bearing his name.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 6, 2012

Outside of an asylum for the clinically deranged, it?s difficult to find anyone as reality-impaired as Paul Krugman, the purported economist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for peddling Keynesian nostrums from his perch on the New York Times editorial page.

In his most recent dispatch, Krugman denounces what he calls ?destructive? criticism of the Federal Reserve, insisting that such impious talk impedes the ability of the Regime?s official counterfeiters to inflate the money supply.

Krugman believes that thrift is sinful and profligacy is virtuous. His formula for recovery is ?Spend now, while the economy remains depressed; save later, once it has recovered.?  Krugman has blamed the ongoing and deepening depression on what he calls a ?savings glut.? The only recorded instance in which he has offered praise for austerity was his approval of the so-called death panel provisions in the Obamacare law, which would ration government-regulated health care . This arrangement would mean that politically unprotected people would die, but it ?would save a lot of money,? Krugman insists.

Krugman is the same nitwit who has suggested that the government stage a phony alien invasion in order to generate support for government spending. Of such stuff are Nobel-winning public intellectuals made.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 5, 2012

During his two years as a Criminal Court Judge in Knoxville, Tennessee, Richard Baumgartner presided over an estimated 1,000 cases and sent hundreds of people to prison.

Deena Castleman was convicted of drug offenses in Baumgartner?s court. She was also one of several convicts who supplied narcotics to the judge, who had a long and secret history of alcohol and drug addiction. Castleman, who was half the married judge?s age, would also provide sexual favors to the judge during breaks between court sessions.

In March 2011, Baumgartner resigned from the bench and pleaded guilty to a single charge of judicial misconduct. The sentence imposed by Special Judge Jon Kerry Attwood  included no jail time, and the felony conviction will be wiped clean of the former judge?s record if he doesn?t re-offend. This permitted Baumgartner to retain his pension.

Court employees had complained that Baumgartner ? in addition to being crude and unprofessional ? was frequently unable to function. Scores of convictions he handed down ? including one involving the sexual torture and murder of a young couple ? may be thrown out or re-tried.

Official perversion of justice is among the most serious crimes imaginable ? but Judge Baumgartner was protected by the leniency that our system extends only to the corrupt and powerful.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 4, 2012

U.S. District Judge Victoria A. Roberts has dismissed conspiracy charges against Michigan?s so-called Hutaree militia.

The Feds charged nine militia activists with ?sedition? ? an ?offense? consisting of expressing opinions about government corruption.

Anti-government discussions were reported by the federal informant who infiltrated the group and ? acting as a provocateur? thoughtfully offered to teach them how to make improvised explosive devices.

?The message emanating from this case is it is not only protected speech to criticize the government, it is downright patriotic to question authority,? asserted attorney Todd Shanker. Defendant Michael Meeks ? a former Marine who was one of nine people who had endured arrest, detention, and years of expensive and stressful legal harassment ? offered a more sobering assessment of the outcome.

?Watch what you say,? Meeks summarized. ?Even the most innocent of statements can be used against you.?

Actually, the case demonstrates that it isn?t necessary to say anything to be considered a seditionist; all that?s required is to be in the presence of a Federal provocateur who is willing to say incendiary things in your presence.

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