Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 4, 2011

Of the many lies told by George W. Bush in the build-up to the Iraq War, some of the most extravagant dealt with the supposed threat of Saddam Hussein?s death drones ? remote-controlled, unpiloted vehicles that could supposedly dispense biological or chemical agents in the skies above American cities.

Like Iraq?s supposed arsenal of WMDs, the death drones didn?t exist. This isn?t to say, however, that the skies above North America are devoid of potentially lethal drones.

The same Predator drone technology used by the CIA to kill suspected militants in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere is being used for police surveillance in , Houston Miami, and probably other cities as well.

The U.S. Border Patrol operates Predator drones armed with sophisticated tracking gear in the skies above the U.S.-Canadian border. Beginning last February, the Department of Homeland Security began to use Predator drones in counter-narcotics operations in Mexico.

Remember: When our rulers try to frighten us by describing the depravity of the foreign enemy du jour, they?re up to the same nasty business themselves.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 1, 2011

During a classified briefing on Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman of California that the administration would ignore any congressional effort intended to end, restrain, or limit the war in Libya.

The administration committed the government to war without congressional approval of any kind. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has publicly acknowledged that the war ? which was supposedly authorized by a UN Security Council resolution -- has nothing to do with defending the United States, or any American strategic interest of any kind.

Before being elected to their present positions, both President Obama and Vice President Biden candidly stated that it is an impeachable offense for a president to launch a foreign war without congressional approval. Perhaps this is why Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan has suggested that Congress should enact a resolution retroactively ?authorizing? the war weeks after it had begun.

By any rational measure, the war in Libya is an Orwellian exercise in unfettered, dictatorial power.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 30, 2011

New Orleans resident John Thompson was unjustly convicted of armed robbery and murder. The prosecutors responsible for this crime stole 18 years of Thompson?s life, 14 of which were spent in isolation on death row.

At one point Thompson was just a few weeks away from being murdered by way of unjust execution when an attorney who took an interest in his case found critical exculpatory evidence in the form of a blood test that had been deliberately withheld by the prosecutors. This discovery was later buttressed by the deathbed confession of an assistant prosecutor who had taken part in that crime.

Thompson filed a lawsuit for wrongful prosecution and won a $14 million judgment against the DA?s office. That judgment has been overturned by the Supreme Court, whose five conservative members consider it more important to uphold the spurious and malignant doctrine of prosecutorial immunity than to validate the rights of an innocent man ? and punish the criminals who attempted to murder him under the color of law.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 29, 2011

The 13-year-old daughter of Detroit resident Maryanne Godboldo was diagnosed with psychological problems and ordered to undergo injections of a dangerous psychotropic drug called Risperdal.

Godboldo, a professor at a local college, would not countenance the forcible drugging of her troubled daughter. So the local child abduction agency ? dishonestly called the Child Protective Services ? materialized on Godboldo?s doorstep, in the company of Sheriff?s deputies, to seize the child from her mother. To her eternal credit, Godboldo refused to surrender her daughter.

A SWAT team ? complete with automatic weapons and armored vehicles ? surrounded the home. After ten hours, Goldboldo surrendered. She is in jail on $500,000 bond, and her daughter is being forcibly drugged at the hands of her abductors.

The government agents in this case acted without legitimate authority of any kind. Their legal and moral status was identical to that of any other armed gang threatening to kidnap Godboldo?s daughter ? and if so much as a particle of justice remains in this country, every official responsible for this atrocity will be prosecuted and punished accordingly.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 28, 2011

Every foreign military entanglement is an exercise in simultaneously reaping and sowing misery. The patently illegal war in Libya perfectly exemplifies this principle.

In 1969, the CIA manipulated a young Libyan military officer named Muhamar Gadhafi into power. Shortly thereafter, Col. Gadhafi turned on his benefactors and became one of the most notorious proponents of radical Arab nationalism in the region.

In 2003, the Bush administration rehabilitated Gadhafi?s regime, designating the dictator a valued ally in the war on terrorism. Libya?s small and inept military suddenly became a preferred client of the Pentagon, which directed lucrative subsidies toward Tripoli and began training the upper echelons of its officer corps.

Now, of course, the Pentagon is destroying many of the assets, both material and human, it had cultivated at taxpayer expense as part of a UN-declared war against Libya. And Washington?s allies in that conflict are Muslim rebels led by guerillas who got hands-on training by fighting against U.S. troops in the undeclared war in Iraq.

Washington thus is harvesting one bloody crop while nurturing the seeds of another.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 25, 2011

The blogosphere was set ablaze by an innocuous preliminary ruling from Tampa Circuit Court Judge Richard Nielsen in a lawsuit involving current and former trustees of a Florida mosque.

The mosque?s internal constitution empowers an Islamic scholar to settle personnel, leadership, and financial disputes in accordance with the terms of the Koran. Citing this contract-based framework for private arbitration of the dispute, Judge Nielsen wrote that ?This case will proceed under Ecclesiastical Islamic Law.?

That announcement caused many commentators to describe the ruling as a precedent for the imposition of Sharia law on America?s judicial system. It is nothing of the kind; instead, this case is an example of the lost art of judicial restraint.

As Nielsen observed in a March 22 supplemental ruling , the use of Islamic law in this case is identical to private dispute-resolution mechanisms long employed by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim organizations. Rather than imposing Sharia, Nielsen?s approach ? at least thus far ? is intended to keep government out of internal religious affairs, an objective Christians should support.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 24, 2011

During the reign of the Emperor Vespasian, Rome imposed a city-wide tax on public toilets. The emperor?s son, Titus criticized the measure as undignified. In response, the Emperor reportedly held up a small coin and declared: ?Pecunia non olet? ? that is, money doesn?t stink.

Vespasian?s toilet tax appears to have inspired a proposal by Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle that the federal government impose a ten-cent per roll tax on toilet paper. A more immediate model was a similar rejected proposal made in 2009 by an Oregon state legislator, who suggested that a punitive tax on toilet paper consumption would help protect the environment.

Suttle suggests that the federal toilet paper tax could help pay for federally mandated municipal sewer improvements.

Vespasian?s tax was actually a surcharge on sales of urine to manufacturers who distilled it into ammonia and other useful products. His regime didn?t actually impose a tax on an involuntary bodily function. The one ruling us, however, just might find a way to do so.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 23, 2011

Sheriff Joe Arpaio has cost taxpayers in Arizona?s Maricopa County millions of dollars in legal settlements arising from instances in which prisoners have been abused ? sometimes with lethal consequences ?at the county jail. The Sheriff, who has been described by his own publicist as a ?media whore,? never misses an opportunity to preen for the cameras, producing his own cable TV ?reality? show even as tens of thousands of felony warrants are left unenforced.

Recently Arpaio and another bloated prima donna, over-age action star Steven Segal, a member of Arpaio?s posse, mounted a high-publicity SWAT raid ? complete with a tank ? in order to arrest a single, unarmed man suspected of running a cockfighting operation. According to Arpaio?s spokesman, the immensely expensive deployment of a small army to arrest one unarmed man suspected of a non-violent offense was ?an appropriate amount of force.?

Arpaio is a hero to conservatives who can countenance any act of official profligacy and corruption as long as it?s committed in the name of law and order.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 22, 2011

Rep. Illena Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, Chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is among Republican critics of the Obama administration?s new war in Libya. That war was supposedly authorized by a UN Security Council Resolution enacted after Congress had gone into recess.

?Deferring to the United Nations and calling on our military personnel to enforce the `writ of the international community? sets a dangerous precedent,? she protests.

In fact, this isn?t so much a precedent as an outgrowth of precedents going back to December 1945, when the Congress passed the UN Participation Act. That measure, as both critics and supporters acknowledged, would effectively be an open-ended declaration of war permitting presidents to deploy U.S. military personnel anywhere in the world in the service of our supposed obligations to the United Nations.

Since that time, presidents from both parties have made war, with the supposed authorization of the UN or its regional affiliates, in Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Iraq, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and now Libya. Rather than promoting world peace, the UN has been an engine of perpetual war.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 21, 2011

Terrorism, according to Bill Clinton, consists of ?killing and robbery and coercion by people who do not have state authority?.? Obviously this means that such crimes committed through the supposed authority of the state aren?t terrorism, but rather legitimate policy options. And the war on terrorism is not meant to end such criminal assaults on the innocent, but rather an effort to assert a state monopoly on criminal violence.

There is another official definition of terrorism: Any act which threatens to expose the Regime?s deceit and corruption.

Bernard Von NotHaus, founder and proprietor of the Liberty Dollar project, was recently convicted in a federal court for the supposed crime of manufacturing and circulating coins made out of the only constitutionally legal medium of exchange ? gold and silver. U.S. Attorney Anne Tompkins, the prosecutor who presided over this atrocity, insisted that the Liberty Dollar constituted ?a unique form of domestic terrorism? that threatened the stability of the fraudulent fiat dollar.

Where gangsters rule, honest men are treated as criminals.

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