Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 13, 2011

Dallas resident Diane Irons was startled to see the police on her doorstep. She was puzzled when they asked her to step out onto her porch. Her bewilderment quickly mutated to fury when she was arrested for ?public intoxication,? and forced to spend six hours in jail.

The police had been sent to Mrs. Irons? home by a less-than-helpful neighbor, who called to report a domestic disturbance. Although Irons and her nephew had been arguing over living arrangements, neither of them had been drinking. In fact, she is a teetotaler. Nonetheless, an arresting officer falsely claimed that Irons? eyes were bloodshot and that she displayed slurred speech and other signs of drug use or alcohol intoxication.

Ben Irons, Diane?s adult son, tried to explain that his mother was a stroke victim who attends speech therapy. When Ben attempted to show the police his mother?s medical records, he, too, was arrested for the supposed offense of interfering with the police.

After being released from custody, Mrs. Irons received a personal visit and apology from Dallas Police Chief David Brown. The family has announced its intention to file a wrongful arrest lawsuit against the department, which will most likely end in yet another taxpayer-funded settlement.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 12, 2011

Last June, a farmer named Rodney Brossart from Lakota, North Dakota got into a dispute with the local sheriff over a half-dozen stray cattle. Brossart was arrested, and the following day three of his sons allegedly confronted deputies with rifles. This led the Sheriff to escalate the confrontation to a full-spectrum military response ? including the local SWAT team and a Predator B drone supplied by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency.

?As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed,? reported the Los Angeles Times. ?Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.?

Brossart had been identified as a supposed terrorism risk by the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center, a self-appointed watchdog group that works with federal agencies to indoctrinate local law enforcement.

The Predator Drones used to carry out CIA assassinations in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere are deployed over American skies ? and they have harmless citizens regarded as ?domestic extremists? in the crosshairs.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 9, 2011

Like many other grade school-age boys, 9-year-old Emanyea Lockett of Gaston, North Carolina noticed that his teacher was pretty. He made the mistake of mentioning this out loud, not knowing that the rules had changed. For telling a friend the teacher was cute, Emanyea was suspended for sexual harassment.

Mark Curran, a seven-year-old from Boston, got into a scuffle on a school bus. He says that the other boy was choking him, so he kicked him in the groin. Officials claimed that this constituted ?inappropriate touching? and told him that he would be investigated for sexual harassment.

Lisa Rinniker, the prosecuting attorney for Grant County, Wisconsin has charged a five-year-old boy [correction: the child is now six years of age] with felonious sexual assault for allegedly ?playing doctor? with a girl his age. Another five-year-old boy who was involved wasn?t charged, and the girl herself insists that the boy didn?t do what he stands accused of doing.

After Rinniker sent the Kindergartner a summons threatening to send him to jail if he didn?t appear in court, his parents filed a lawsuit. Rinniker responded by having a judge slap the parents with a gag order.

It?s doubtful than any other police state in history has been so determined to make criminals out of innocently misbehaving children.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 8, 2011

After decades of dutiful service to the tax-devouring class, Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Barney Frank announced his retirement.

Frank was a figure out of some of the gamier passages of imperial Roman history. In April 1985, he hired a male prostitute, Steve Gobie, who moved into his Georgetown apartment and became a so-called ?personal aide.? Gobie also used that apartment to run a homosexual prostitution ring. Rather than facing criminal charges ? as any private citizen would ? or expulsion from the House ? as its rules required ? Frank underwent a mild chastisement and was allowed to continue his career as an impenitent plunderer.

According to the JTA News Service, ?Frank said he rued his vote against the first Persian Gulf War in 1991, as well as approving restrictions on the Internal Revenue Service that he now sees as impeding tax collection.?

So as he assesses his career, Frank?s chief regret is that he failed to serve the welfare/warfare state with perfect fidelity. He has no similar misgivings about the Dodd-Frank financial legislation he helped produce, which has driven countless small businesses into oblivion. For collectivists like Frank, wealth-producers are the enemy, and tax-gatherers are indispensable allies.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 7, 2011

During a recent town hall-style appearance in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich exploited an opportunity for a cheap applause line by saying: ?Waterboarding is by every technical rule not torture?. [U]nder the normal rules internationally it?s not torture.?

Like nearly every other public utterance that escapes Gingrich?s tax-devouring mouth, this statement  displayed a very poor ratio of knowledge to certitude, and at best an indifference to the truth.

When employed by agents of the Spanish Inquisition, it was called ?El tormento de agua? ? Spanish for ?water torture.? U.S. troops who employed it during the occupation of the Philippines were prosecuted for violations of the laws of warfare. Japanese interrogators who used it were executed after WWII as war criminals. It was used extensively by torturers employed by the Communist Khmer Rouge.  It is banned by international conventions, criminal statutes, the Army Field Manual, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Eighth Amendment, and by any reasonable understanding of biblical law.

Gingrich, who insists on describing himself as an historian, should be aware of this academically. If he remains unconvinced, Newt can always opt for the hands-on approach and undergo this supposedly legal procedure himself.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 6, 2011

The American Enterprise Institute is one of the most prominent of the Washington-based think-tanks promoting pre-emptive war against Iran. Danielle Pletka, who heads the group?s foreign policy section, is an unabashed war hawk regarding Iran.

In a recent address, Ms. Pletka offered a revealing assessment of the real dangers posed by a nuclear Iran: ?The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it; it's Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it.? This would result in Iran being perceived as a ?reasonable power,? rather than a rogue regime.

Thomas Donnelly, Pletka?s comrade at AEI, insists that war with Iran is necessary not to prevent nuclear genocide, but in order to preserve ?the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and the greater Middle East.?

For years, the American public has been barraged with apocalyptic predictions that a nuclear-armed Iran would launch a genocidal attack on Israel. The AEI, which is one of the most hawkish neo-con think-tanks in Washington, appears to believe that if Iran is seeking a nuclear arsenal, it?s doing so for the purposes of deterrence, not aggression. This is a problem that can be addressed by means less drastic than war.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November December 5, 2011

From the Afghan opium fields that are guarded by U.S. troops, to the street-level drug retail networks that are honeycombed with informants and undercover police officers, the narcotics trade is a vertically integrated joint venture between international organized crime and the government agencies supposedly fighting it.

The most recent illustration of this evil symbiosis was provided by the December 3 New York Times, which describes how the federal Drug Enforcement Administration has ?laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds? on behalf of Mexican narcotics cartels.

?American agents transport the cash on government flights to the United States, where it is deposited into traffickers? accounts, and then wired to companies that provide goods and services to the cartel,? recounts the Times.

It?s quite likely that at least some of that money was used to purchase firearms from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Through a project called Operation Fast and Furious, the ATF allowed known cartel members to purchase firearms and convey them to Mexico. Predictably, the agency lost track of the weapons, which ended up being used to kill innocent people.

Things of this sort make perfect sense -- once it?s understood that governments and criminal syndicates are in the same business.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 2, 2011

Prior to 1829, there were no police forces anywhere in the English-speaking world, at least as we understand them today. In that year, Robert Peel, England?s Home Secretary and the former English military governor of Ireland, introduced a bill to create the London Metropolitan Police.

British parliamentarian William Cobbett, an outspoken foe of what he called ?tax-eaters,? was among the fiercest critics of the Metropolitan Police, which he saw as the vanguard of a country-wide army of occupation.

?Tyranny always comes by slow degrees, and nothing could tend to illustrate that fact [better] than the history of police in this country,? Cobbett proclaimed.  He predicted that London would be overrun with ?Blue Locusts? ? ?a body of men ? as fit for domestic war as the redcoats were for foreign war.?

Peel?s model was exported to New York City in 1844. Other major cities ? New Orleans, Cincinnati, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago -- soon followed. All of those police forces were patterned after Peel?s military occupation force in Ireland.

Thus when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently boasted that in the NYPD he commands ?the seventh-largest army in the world,? he wasn?t speaking figuratively.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 1, 2011

Rick Aleman ran a day care facility in Hanover Park, Illinois. In September 2005, a woman named Danielle Schrik, whose 11-month-old son Joshua was enrolled in the day care, told Aleman that the child had been feverish and lethargic when she dropped him off.

Shortly after Danielle left, Joshua collapsed. Aleman called 911 and began to administer CPR. Police took Aleman in for questioning. The officers pressed Aleman to sign a waiver of his Miranda rights against self-incrimination, and repeatedly deflected his requests for help from an attorney.

At one point Detective Todd Carlson told Aleman that doctors had concluded that Joshua?s death was the result of shaken-baby syndrome ; this prompted the grief-stricken man to say that he must have been responsible. Aleman was charged with murder when Joshua died a few days later.

That charge was dismissed when it was revealed that Carlson had lied about the doctors? findings. He had also covered up the violent criminal history of Joshua?s mother, in whom he had a romantic interest.

Never talk to the police. Always assume they are lying to you. They aren?t interested in the truth; they are just trying to put you in jail. Don?t help them.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 28, 2011

Five-year-old Stockton, California resident Michael Davis has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and sometimes proved to be a disruptive influence in his class.

Seeking to ?cure? Michael of his rambunctiousness, the faculty of Rio Calaveras Elementary School arranged a meeting with Lt. Frank Gordo, a ?resource officer? assigned to the district.

At one point, according to Gordo?s account, he placed his hand on Michael. The youngster, according to Gordo, ?pushed my hand away in a batting motion, pushed papers off the table, and kicked me in the right knee.?

Rather than backing off and calming down, which is how a functioning adult would have behaved, Gordo arrested the child, zip-tying his hands and ankles and dragging him to the station, where he was charged with ?battery on a police officer.? He was also forced to undergo a psychiatric exam.

Michael, whose parents are divorced, may have emotional problems. This much should be said: Whatever ?affliction? inspired this youngster?s reflexive hostility towards a State-licensed armed bully is something I wish the rest of us would catch.

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