Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 28, 2011

Republican presidential contender Rick Santorum is an unabashed proponent of pre-emptive war with Iran. During a recent visit to New Hampshire, Santorum cited a supposed plot by Iranian agents to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in Washington as justification for bellicosity toward Iran.

Even more recently, however, Santorum endorsed assassination as an instrument of policy when employed by the U.S. government.

?On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead," he explained, broadly intimating that the U.S. government was responsible. "I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly?. I think we should send a very clear message that if you are scientist from Russia or North Korea or from Iran, and you are going to work on a nuclear program to develop a nuclear bomb for Iran, you are not safe."

According to Santorum, those who doubt that the U.S. government would assassinate civilian scientists should take heed to the way it treats American citizens designated enemies of the State:

"When people say, `You can't go out and assassinate people' -- well, tell that to al-Awlaki?. We've done it. We've done it to an American citizen."

What Santorum is describing ? and endorsing -- is undisguised state terrorism.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 27, 2011

Scott Olsen, a 24-year-old Marine combat veteran of the Iraq War, survived that imperial venture abroad ? but he may die from wounds inflicted by the Empire?s domestic enforcement apparatus.

Olsen, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, was shot in the head by a police projectile during a protest in Oakland, California organized by the Occupy Wall Street movement. Riot police armed with rubber bullets, tear gas, and other supposedly non-lethal weaponry had been deployed to clear the streets of protesters near City Hall.

According to an AP report, Olsen ?participated in the protest because he felt corporations and banks have too much influence on the government?.? He had come to the same conclusion as his fellow Marine, Major General Smedley Butler ? the most decorated combat veteran in U.S. history.

Eighty years ago, amid the last Great Depression, Butler published a slender book entitled ?War is a Racket? in which he lamented the role he had played as an enforcement and collection agent of Wall Street and its allied political elite.

Scott Olsen is the human link connecting the concerns behind both the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement, who should unite in a joint effort to dismantle corporate socialism.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

September 30, 2011

Although it is as routinely ignored as any other constitutional or statutory limit on government power, the Posse Comitatus Act is still the law. That statute forbids the use of the military in domestic law enforcement operations.

During the 1980s, huge exceptions were carved out of that statute to permit co-mingling of police and military units to fight the ?War on Drugs.? Now a pilot program in the State of Wyoming would expand that exception to include underage drinking and drunk driving.

Through a federally subsidized, $300,000 program, police in Cheyenne will collaborate with personnel from the F.E. Warren Air Force Base to enforce a ?zero tolerance? program. Beginning this Halloween, saturation patrols of police and military police will swarm the city?s streets in search of underage drinkers or adults who have supposedly imbibed a bit too much.

In Columbus, Georgia, officials have arranged a different kind of collaboration: In exchange for an armored vehicle and specialized training, the Columbus Police Department?s SWAT team will be assigned as the ?special response team? at nearby Ft. Benning [ ? which, as the home of the Army Infantry, is well able to see to its own security needs].

These initiatives are driven by opportunism, not necessity ? and they are intended to accelerate our society?s descent into undisguised tyranny.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 25, 2011

It was 7:00 a.m. when the SWAT team arrived at the San Jose home of Joann Rice. When her daughter answered the door, the police told her they were pursuing an armed fugitive. The young lady told the officers that the suspect wasn?t there, and that they could come in and see for themselves.

Instead of acting on that invitation, the police seized the young lady and took her to jail. They then unloaded several rounds of tear gas into the house, leaving it with shattered windows, perforated walls, and a dense, suffocating chemical mist. The residue of the tear gas attack is now infused into the carpets and the furniture. After failing to find the fugitive following a siege that lasted several hours, the police eventually lost interest in the home and drove off without offering to help ? or providing so much as an apology.

Americans can ? or at least should ? be outraged by the treatment inflicted on this innocent homeowner. Here?s something else to think about: What was done to Joanne Rice of San Jose, California is a microcosm of what the U.S. government did to the innocent people of Iraq.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 24, 2011

Who are the real ?one percent?? That figure has been thrust into the public conversation by the so-called ?Occupy Wall Street? movement, which has organized mass protests on Wall Street and in many cities around the country. The term ?one percent? has become a form of ideological shorthand describing the wealthy and powerful.

Many of the proverbial ?one percent? aren?t exponents of free market capitalism. Four years ago, the political elite diverted nearly the entire aggregate wealth of the United States into a bail-out for Wall Street. This was wealth redistribution on an unprecedented scale.

Wall Street isn?t the only place where the ?one percent? can be found in abundance. Notes the Washington Post: ?Washingtonians now enjoy the highest median household income of any metropolitan area in the country?. The signs of that wealth are on display all over, from the string of luxury boutiques such as Gucci and Tony Burch ? to the $15 cocktails served over artisanal ice at the W Hotel in the District to the ever-larger houses rising off River Road in the Potomac.?

Unfortunately, much of the ?Occupy Wall Street? movement is promoting policies that would further enrich and empower the politically protected ?one percent.?

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 21, 2011

A decade and a half ago, the Supreme Court upheld the use of warrantless ?sobriety checkpoints.? Targeted seat belt enforcement checkpoints have become commonplace. Michigan?s Genesee County is expanding this practice to include warrantless ?drug checkpoints.?

Reports the Detroit Free Press:

?Motorists driving on expressways around Flint are getting surprised by a stunning tactic that the Genesee County sheriff has been using to fight the flow of illegal drugs ? one that legal experts said will not withstand a court challenge?. [M]otorists have said they have seen a pickup towing a large sign on I-69 or U.S.-23 that depicts the sheriff?s badge and warns: `Sheriff narcotics check point, 1 mile ahead ? drug dog in use.??

University of Michigan law professor David Moran points out that a 2000 U.S. Supreme Court decision held that similar open-ended, all-encompassing narcotics checkpoints in Indianapolis were unconstitutional. He points out that one tactic used by the Genessee County Sheriff?s Office ? waiting to stop motorists who make a last-minute U-turn to avoid the illicit checkpoints ? is ?perilously close to entrapment.?

?It?s just the kind of shabby treatment that the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent,? Moran concludes. Alas, the Fourth Amendment is a dead letter in our degenerate police state.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 20, 2011

?Federal Reserve Notes? are described as ?legal tender.? This means that the government requires people to accept them in exchange for goods and services, as well as to pay debts.

However, the same government that requires people to use that currency treats large cash transactions as evidence of criminal activity, and even claims the right to ?forfeit? ? that is, to steal ? large amounts of cash when discovered in the course of a traffic stop, on the pretext that such accumulations of currency are connected to the drug trade.

The government afflicting the State of Louisiana is expanding this war on cash by enacting a measure forbidding many kinds of small cash transactions.

House bill 195 prohibits the use of cash in buying or selling second hand goods. According to State representative Rickey Hardy, who co-sponsored the bill, it is intended to target thieves by creating a paper trail that police can follow. This will require the use of cashier?s checks or debit cards, a procedure that will impose processing fees and other expenses on small, down-market retailers who have tiny profit margins.

More importantly, it will make criminals out of harmless, law-abiding people.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 19, 2011

Philosophers Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein have described an error of logic they call the ?Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy,? which is based on the proverbial marksman who shoots first, then draws a bull?s-eye around the bullet hole.  In similar fashion, politicians responsible for conspicuous failures can be expected to redefine their goals after the fact in order to claim a success. This applies not only to routine bureaucratic ineptitude, but also to matters of literal life and death.

In early October, a drone attack in Yemen killed 16-year-old U.S. citizen Adbulrahman al-Awlaki and his 17-year-old cousin. Awlaki had originally gone to Yemen in search of his father, Anwar al-Awlaki, who had been murdered by the U.S. government by a drone strike about two weeks earlier.

The elder Awlaki was said to be involved in terrorism, but he was never formally charged, let alone tried and convicted before being summarily executed. The younger Awlaki was never accused of any wrong-doing.

The Obama administration circulated the story that the 16-year-old was actually an adult ?suspected? of being a ?militant,? thereby redefining the killing as a strategic success.

If a president can murder anybody at whim, why can?t he invent a justification after the fact?

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 18 2011

During one of his frequent visits to a courtroom, former Idaho gubernatorial candidate Rex Rammell was arrested and charged with felony jury tampering for distributing materials on jury nullification. The literature correctly pointed out that juries have plenary authority to rule on both the facts and the law in a case.

That charge against Rammell was eventually negotiated down to a misdemeanor. In fact, it should have been dismissed outright ? and similar charges filed against nearly every judge and prosecutor in the state of Idaho, who routinely commit what can only be described as jury tampering.

In Idaho, as in other states, jurors are required to sign a document attesting that they will be bound by the trial judge?s view of the law. That claim is a patent falsehood, and the document containing it is a spurious and unenforceable contract.

In a 1794 Supreme Court case that was tried before a jury, John Jay ? the first Chief Justice and  co-author of the Federalist Papers ? informed jurors that they had the duty to ?judge ? [both] the law as well as the fact in controversy.?

Today, Chief Justice John Jay ? a Framer of the Constitution -- would be considered unsuitable  for jury duty in Idaho.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 17, 2011

In his new book The Better Angels of Our Nature, Harvard professor Steven Pinker, who has been anointed one of the ?100 most influential scientists? by Time magazine, insists that recent centuries have witnessed a dramatic decline in social violence.  Dr. Pinker, who describes himself as an evolutionary psychologist, describes this as ?the most important thing that has ever happened in human history.?

Pinker claims that this is a triumph of what has been called the ?social contract,? an arrangement in which a secular government asserts a monopoly on the ?legitimate? use of force. By over-awing those inclined toward primitive expressions of violence, the state supposedly emancipates the ?better angels of our nature? ? empathy, self-discipline, and peaceful cooperation.

Somehow, the immensely learned Dr. Pinker missed one of the most consequential facts of modern history: The systematic slaughter during the 20^th Century of at least 170 million people by governments claiming and enforcing a monopoly on the ?legitimate? use of force. He likewise didn?t notice that the civilized and humane values he celebrates are the product of non-state social action through the marketplace and private associations.

The impulses unleashed by the state are demonic, not angelic.

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