Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 3, 2011

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was careful to exempt police unions from his proposed modifications to the state?s collective bargaining agreement. Yet unionized police have expressed solidarity with the malodorous mob of union thugs who occupy the Wisconsin State Capitol, refusing to enforce an order to disperse them.

If the protesters were tax victims demanding that government let them keep what they have earned, the police most likely would have used napalm to clear them from the Capitol. But in the growing struggle with unionized tax feeders, the police are firmly on the side of the takers, rather than the makers.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, for example, urged its members to join nation-wide protests coordinated by a coalition of Marxist groups: ?Our brothers and sisters in Wisconsin are under attack,? declared the police union. ?They need and deserve our support.?

Given the choice, the local police will defend the interest of their union local, rather than the property rights of the people who pay their salaries.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 2, 2011

Last December, convicted terrorist Mohammed Janaid Babar was paroled after serving roughly four and a half years in prison. Terrorists trained by Babar murdered 52 people and wounded hundreds more in coordinated suicide bombings in London.

Graham Foulkes, a retired British judge whose 22-year-old son, David, was among Babar?s victims, observes that "People get four and a half years for burglary. They can get more for some ? traffic offenses. So for an international terrorist who's directly linked to the death of my son and dozens and dozens of people to get that sentence is just outrageous."

The outrage is compounded by the fact that prior to his parole, the Pakistani- American terrorist was free to roam the streets, marry and began a family, despite being convicted of an offense carrying a 70-year prison sentence.

As Foulkes points out, the leniency extended to Babar reflects the fact that he was an asset of U.S. intelligence at the time he was organizing the London terrorist bombings.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 1, 2011

There is a deeply morbid strain of misanthropy running through the environmentalist movement.

Last October, the ?10:10 Campaign,? a British eco-radical group, unveiled an allegedly hilarious public service advertisement promoting a campaign to hector people into reducing their individual ?carbon footprint? as a way of fighting the mythical problem of global warming.

People are shown in various settings ? the classroom, the workplace, a soccer field ? in which the campaign is announced, and people are asked to participate. Holdouts are asked to identify themselves after being assured that "no pressure" would be used against them. At this point, a large red button is pushed, and the eco-heretics explode in a gusher of crimson viscera.

It?s hard not to think of that advertisement when reading a National Geographic report describing how, according to NASA, a ?small? nuclear war, although devastating, would reverse global warming.

The Book of Isaiah teaches that the world was made to be inhabited. The environmentalist religion teaches that humanity is a mistake of evolution.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 25, 2011

Julian Heicklen may be sent to prison for the supposed crime of informing the public of the rights and duties of jurors.

Heicklen, a 78-year-old former Penn State chemistry professor, distributes literature about jury nullification on public sidewalks in front of federal courthouses. He has been fined for distributing literature without a government-issued permit. The so-called Justice Department is now seeking to prosecute Heicklen for ?jury tampering.?

The phrase ?jury nullification? refers to the fact that jurors have full authority to judge both the facts and the law of a case. This includes the power to set aside a manifestly unjust law and set a defendant free when the ?law? he may have broken does not protect life, liberty, or property. Juries are not required to apply a judge?s instructions, which simply reflect one lawyer?s opinion.

In a free society, the administration of justice lies in the hands of the citizenry, not a government judicial cartel of the kind prepared to imprison a 78-year-old man for peacefully exercising his rights.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 24, 2011

Speaking at a time when English Catholics and Protestants were killing each other, Queen Elizabeth I said: ?I have no desire to open windows into men?s souls.? Government has no jurisdiction over the convictions of any human being.

Somebody needs to explain this principle to Tennessee State Senator Bill Ketron, who has proposed a measure making it a felony to follow Sharia law. This wouldn?t merely forbid government from institutionalizing the Islamic code; it would target private beliefs and institutions, and allow the state attorney general to designate ?Sharia organizations? as criminal enterprises.

Ketron insists that the measure wouldn?t infringe on the religious freedom of Muslims who practice their religion peacefully. But it would authorize the government to determine which private beliefs and voluntary practices are suitable. It?s worth noting as well that the bill was drafted by an activistwho has called for criminalizing belief in, and the practice of, Islam entirely.

Whatever creed they profess, those who presume to make windows into men?s souls are promoting totalitarianism in practice.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 23, 2011

Last October, ?Tim,? an 11-year-old grade school student in Arvada, Colorado, drew stick figures of himself with a gun and a caption reading: ?Teacher must die.? Tim, who has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, had been told by a therapist to draw pictures when he got upset, rather than engaging in disruptive behavior.

Tim was sent to the principal?s office. School administrators, aware that Tim was in ?treatment? and had no record of violent or troublesome behavior, decided he wasn?t a threat.

That evening,, reports Denver Fox affiliate KDVR Tim and his mother received a visit from the police. Rather than telling the police to get a warrant and then spiriting her child to safety, the mother instructed her son to cooperate. Tim was handcuffed and hauled away in a patrol car, then confined in a cell and hit with criminal charges for behavior school administrators acknowledged was harmless.

There was a time when parents taught their children to trust the police. No conscientious parent would do so now.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 22, 2011

Wisconsin is in the throes of a tax-feeder tantrum, with thousands of government employee union members thronging the state capital. Displaying a remarkable gift for self-dramatization, the protesters compare themselves to the freedom activists who took to the streets of Cairo to demand an end to Hosni Mubarak?s corrupt, tyrannical reign.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker proposes modest changes to pension and health care benefits for state employees; they would still be more generous than similar benefits enjoyed by those who work in the productive sector. This would also limit collective bargaining rights for government employee unions, which should not exist in the first place.

Walker has said he doesn?t want a single state employee to lose his job. A better approach would be to treat the protests as a mass resignation.

Ditching work and pitching a tantrum to demand the preservation of "collective bargaining rights" for over-paid, tax-subsidized functionaries simply isn't the same thing as facing down the pitiless cadres of a quasi-totalitarian police state.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 21, 2011

"We are getting shot by American weapons fired by American-trained Bahraini soldiers with American-made tanks," a medical orderly in Bahrain told Robert Fisk of The Independent of London.

Bahrain, a tiny island nation governed by a Sunni Muslim dictator who rules over a Shi?ite Muslim population, has a small but formidable arsenal of tanks. They are useless for defense, but well-suited to the task of crushing a civilian uprising against the dictatorship.

Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation observes that the regime ruling Bahrain is ?cracking down on protestors with round-ups, jail, torture, and even extra-judicial execution.? As Hornberger points out, the dictatorship responsible for those atrocities has been supported by Washington because it ?has permitted the Empire to establish and maintain a base there for the Empire?s Fifth Fleet.?

Every empire is built on a foundation of bloodshed, terror, and repression. Washington?s empire ? created in defiance of the wisdom of our Founding Fathers ? is no exception. And it, like its predecessors, is coming to an ugly end.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 18, 2011

The Bible?s Book of Proverbs teaches that ?The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.? Debt is one of the most common forms of enslavement, oppressing households and nations alike. Our country, the purported Land of the Free, has sold itself into bondage through persistent public profligacy.

The Gospel of Luke records Jesus?s teaching that what is whispered in secret will someday be shouted from the rooftops. One of the unpleasant state secrets revealed through WikiLeaks is the extent to which the government ruling us has become susceptible to demands made by its Chinese creditors.

A June 2009 cable describes how China?s Sovereign Wealth Fund pressured Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to speed approval of a taxpayer-funded subsidy of Morgan Stanley, an investment bank in which the Chinese government had substantial interests. This was just one of several favors in which Washington placated its creditors in Beijing at the expense of taxpayers who are rapidly being reduced to undisguised serfdom.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 17, 2011

Former CIA analyst and Army veteran Ray McGovern has been a consistent critic of Washington?s foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. On February 16, McGovern was in the audience during a speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at George Washington University. Mrs. Clinton?s address criticized dictatorships in the Middle East ? such as the one ruling Iran ? that arrest and brutalize peaceful protesters and other political dissidents.

As Secretary Clinton began her speech, McGovern ? wearing a t-shirt identifying him as a member of an organization called Veterans for Peace ? stood and turned his back on her. He didn?t obstruct anyone?s view of the speaker or otherwise disrupt the event. Yet as Clinton heaped scorn on governments that dispatch police and hired thugs to beat up dissidents, McGovern was brutally abducted and beaten by security officers ? that is, police and other hired thugs.

?So this is America?? exclaimed the battered man as his assailants dragged him from the auditorium. Well, it is now.

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