Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 1, 2012

Before March 2011, the manufacture, sale, and possession of a form of incense called ?Spice? was legal in the State of Idaho. Then the legislature, always eager to expand the power of the government and constrict personal freedom, enacted a measure designating it a drug.

Just a few weeks later, the North Idaho Violent Crimes Task Force conducted a Spice raid on smoke shops in Coeur d?Alene. In the following October, police in Boise arrested four people for possession of Spice. In late January, Idaho Falls Police arrested 11 people who ran a licensed business called Incense Inc.

Dutifully performing their role as government stenographers, the Idaho Falls NBC affiliate gloated that while the business could shut its doors to the public, ?they couldn?t shut out the law,? and insisted that the city is ?a little safer? because of the arrests.

Like many other common products? including cleaners, magic markers, and various aerosol sprays ? Spice can be used as a mood-altering substance.  Immediately after the legislature banned Spice, an alarm was sounded that use of bath salts as a drug substitute had spiked ? thereby offering the prohibitionists another target.

Every prohibitionist measure expands the realm of state-licensed violence. Prohibitionists are determined, quite literally, to protect us to death.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 31, 2012

Gary Hesterberg of Montara, California was assaulted with a lethal weapon on January 29 while walking his dogs in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

?I heard what I thought was a pistol shot,? recalls eyewitness John Barlett, who was walking his dog nearby. ?[Hesterberg] let out a cry of agony as he fell on his back.? The attack, although painful, wasn?t fatal.

When Sheriff?s Deputies arrived a few minutes later, they arrested the victim. This is because the assailant was an unidentified Park Ranger who shot Hesterberg with a Taser. The victim was charged with the spurious offenses of failing to obey a supposedly lawful order, having his dogs off-leash, and providing false information to the snitty little martinet in a Ranger costume.

Last December, the National Park Service took control of the dog-walking area and imposed a leash requirement. When Hesterberg was accosted by the Ranger, he demanded to see her credentials; she refused that authentically lawful order. He told the functionary either to cite him or release him, and when the Ranger insisted on wasting his time he left ? only to be shot as he departed.

Hesterberg didn?t commit an actual crime ? but in our increasingly totalitarian society, he didn?t have to.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 30, 2012

Police Officer Ladmarald Cates was one of two Milwaukee cops who responded to a 911 call from an anxious single mother whose home had been vandalized with a brick. After arranging to be alone with the woman, he raped her.

Following the assault, the woman ran outside, alarming Cates?s partner, who ? in the interest of that all-important consideration, ?officer safety? ? called for backup. The rapist hurried out of the house and grabbed the victim by the waist, causing her feet to strike his partner. This permitted the officers to arrest the horrified woman for ?assaulting an officer.? She was taken to jail and held for 12 hours before receiving medical aid. After the hospital visit, she was sent back to jail for four days before being released without charges.

Although the victim?s accusation was substantiated by medical evidence, the DA refused to prosecute. The department?s Internal Affairs section confronted Cates ? a repeat offender ? with DNA evidence, and arranged to fire him for ?idling and loafing? on duty. If the victim hadn?t persisted long enough to see Cates convicted on civil rights charges, he would have found employment in another police department.

In the name of all that is holy ? never  call the police.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 24, 2012

With the help of federal subsidies, police in East Orange, New Jersey have created a system of immersive surveillance that appears to be modeled after the totalitarian ?pre-crime? system depicted in the sci-fi film ?Minority Report.?

Officers remotely operating any of the street?s plentiful surveillance cameras can ?paint? suspicious targets with a directed light beam up to a city block away. Patrol cars are likewise equipped with cameras that scan the license plates of all vehicles and have access to detailed databases containing personal information on drivers, and that are cross-referenced to various ?watch lists.?

?The message to criminals is: The police are observing you, the police are recording you, and the police are responding,? states East Orange Police Chief William Robinson. Of course, police in East Orange ? like their counterparts elsewhere ? are most likely prepared to arrest any citizen who observes, records, and responds to criminal abuse by police officers.

Meanwhile, the NYPD is working with the Pentagon to deploy a series of body scanners that can subject all pedestrians to virtual strip-searches.

Those who presume to rule us no longer bother to pretend as if they care about the Constitution.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 23, 2012

Bill Clinton cheated, stayed married, and wagged a finger at his critics as he was impeached. Newt Gingrich cheated, ruined two marriages, demanded an ?open marriage? from his second wife, waggled his jowls at CNN correspondent John King,  then went on to win a resounding victory in the South Carolina GOP presidential primary.

Gingrich, who was of draft age during the Vietnam War, married one of his high school teachers and claimed multiple draft deferments while conducting a series of extra-marital affairs. At one point he told an acquaintance that his first wife wasn?t pretty enough to be First Lady, so he arranged to divorce her while she was recovering from exploratory cancer surgery. He then married his then-current mistress, to whom he was married when he became House Speaker in 1994. Shortly after rising to that position he began an affair with the woman who would become his third wife, eventually divorcing his second wife after she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

On the eve of the South Carolina Primary, Fox News analyst Keith Ablow, a consulting psychiatrist, insisted that Gingrich?s sociopathic behavior displayed a set of traits best described as presidential. Given the depravity of the regime that rules us, Dr. Ablow might have a point.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 20, 2012

Los Angeles resident Shawn Nee, an amateur photographer, was accosted by sheriff?s deputies while taking photos of subway turnstiles. Because Nee was doing nothing illegal, and the deputy had no business harassing him, the shutterbug quite properly told the officer to mind his own business.

This prompted a smug extortion threat from the uniformed bully:

?You know, I?ll just submit your name to TLO (the Terrorism Liaison Officer program). Every time your driver?s license gets scanned, every time you take a plane, any time you go on any type of public transit system where they look at your identification, you?re going to be stopped. You will be detained. You?ll be searched. You will be on the FBI?s hit list.?

This is a perfect snapshot of the so-called ?local? police at work, using the threat of all-encompassing, Soviet-style harassment to browbeat an innocent man into surrendering his constitutionally protected rights.

In principle, and increasingly in practice, every police department and Sheriff?s Office in this country is part of a seamlessly integrated totalitarian homeland security apparatus. How can we support our local police when truly local police no longer exist?

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 19, 2012

Brian Hitchcock won?t be going to prison for the supposed offense of being rear-ended by Hermosa Beach Police Officer Anthony Parente last June.

The motorcycle cop had pulled behind Hitchcock at a stoplight; when the light changed, he pulled in even tighter and inexplicably hit his siren and running lights. When Hitchcock reflexively stopped, Parente plowed into the back of the BMW. The officer was thrown head-over-heels, landing in the backseat of the open convertible with his boots sticking in the air. Horrified, Hitchcock scrambled to help the injured officer, who requested his radio, and then called in the report ?Officer down.?

Although the LA County DA?s office found no evidence that Hitchcock was to blame for the accident, Parente?s colleagues conducted a month-long investigation into the driver seeking evidence of ?anti-police bias.? One detective lured the victim to a lunch for what was described as a friendly chat ? which he secretly recorded in the hope of capturing an incriminating remark. The police then attempted to have the middle-aged man prosecuted for assaulting Parente with a deadly weapon.

Four eyewitnesses testified that Parente had caused the crash, and the cop?s on-board video recorder conveniently malfunctioned. The charge was dismissed ? but only after a lying cop and his buddies put an innocent man through hell.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 18, 2012

?This is a Glock Forty,? explained DEA agent Lee Paige while lecturing an audience of about fifty students on gun safety. After dry-firing the handgun, Paige informed the gathering, ?I?m the only one I know professional enough to carry this Glock Forty? ? and then immediately shot himself in the left foot.

Attempting to salvage some object lesson from his foolishness, Paige attempted to handle another gun ? which prompted the schoolchildren to plead with the dangerously inept government employee to put the weapon down.

The videotape of the April 2004 incident in Orlando was turned over to the DEA. Shortly thereafter it leaked onto the internet, prompting Paige to file a lawsuit against the agency. That lawsuit was dismissed on January 17.

?As a result of the disclosure ? by the DEA, Mr. Paige became and is the target of jokes, derision, ridicule and disparaging comments,? protests the lawsuit. ?As a result of the notoriety arising from the disclosure of the videotape, Mr. Paige is no longer permitted or able to give educational motivational speeches and presentations.?

This is exactly as it should be: Paige earned every syllable of ridicule he has experienced, and should never be allowed near firearms again. Then again, the same is true of most government employees.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 17, 2012

On two occasions roughly four and a half years apart, Dr. Ron Paul has provoked the wrath of a supposedly Christian audience by insisting that the government is bound by the Golden Rule.

During the 2007 Values Voter Summit, sponsored by the Family Research Council, Dr. Paul?s closing peroration focused on the Christian Just War Doctrine and the evils of perpetual war. His invocations of the Prince of Peace provoked a chorus of boos that began even before he was finished speaking.

A very similar spectacle unfolded during the South Carolina GOP Presidential Debate on January 16.

?Maybe we should consider a Golden Rule in foreign policy ? don?t do to other nations what we don?t want them to do to us,? stated Dr. Paul, triggering another outburst of booing and voluble disapproval from the pious conservatives in attendance.

Reporting from the debate, political commentator Roger Simon pointed out that the crowd was inert ?until death raised its zany head.? As crowd reactions from the past several primary debates have demonstrated, Simon observes, ?the best thing a Republican candidate can do is promise them anything ? as long as it involves somebody dying.?

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 16, 2012

Following the Spanish-American War of 1898, the U.S. found itself mired in a campaign to suppress an independence movement in the Philippines. That conflict was condemned by many American commentators as a colonial enterprise unworthy of our country?s heritage. Minnesota Senator Knute Nelson parried those criticisms by insisting that ?We come as ministering angels, not as despots? ? a characterization that would have been a difficult sell to the 100,000 Filipinos who were killed and the millions more who were wounded, imprisoned, or displaced.

Last week a video clip emerged of a group of Marines ? that is, American ?ministering angels? -- anointing the bodies of dead Afghan rebels by urinating on the corpses. Similar photos and video clips have depicted U.S. helicopter pilots laughing as they shot at civilians who were carrying an injured man to a van in Baghdad, or American troops smiling while posing next to dead Afghans and Iraqis. [Eleven members of a U.S. Army ?kill team? in Afghanistan that targeted unarmed Afghans and cut off their fingers as war trophies have been convicted of war crimes.]

Even in those exceedingly rare circumstances when war is fought for legitimate self-defense, there is nothing angelic about the impulses it sets free in the souls of those who prosecute it.

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