Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 13 2011

The problem with contemporary politics is not that the tenor of discourse is crude and vitriolic. Rather, it is that people focus their hostilities at each other rather than at the apparatus of official coercion called the ?government.?

Rather than coveting our liberties and being suspicious of government power, people have been indoctrinated into coveting government power and being incurably suspicious of each other.

In his essay Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche described the State as ?the coldest of all cold monsters?. Everything it says, it lies; and whatever it has, it has stolen?. [I]t bites with stolen teeth, and it bites often??

One useful habit in talking about politics would be for each person to perceive every proposed legislative act or government action as a death threat ? either directed at him, or directed by him at somebody else. This is the true nature of government power.

By all means, let us be civil in dealing with each other ? but if you can?t say something nice, please make sure that you?re saying something about the government.

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

Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 12 2011

Since 2005, over-the-counter cold remedies containing pseudoephedrine have been treated as a controlled substance. Pharmacies are required to limit customers to no more than 3.6 grams a day, supposedly to make it more difficult for would-be traffickers to obtain the raw ingredients of methamphetamine.

Predictably, this simply created a flourishing black market for pseudoephedrine. Cash-strapped people are eagerly acting as ?smurfers? ? that is, proxy buyers who buy huge quantities of Sudafed and other cold remedies on behalf of meth dealers.

The crack-down on meth has resulted in deeply entrenched corruption and perversions of due process: . Pharmacy Giant CVS, whose corporate leadership admits that it knowingly allowed meth manufacturers to buy huge amounts of pseudoephedrine, was spared criminal charges and given a large fine that will be passed along to customers

Meanwhile, several small-time defendants who bought excessive amounts of cold medicine from the company face more than a decade in prison ? where meth and other illegal drugs are readily available.

The madness of drug prohibition must end.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 11 2011

Prompted by a vicious criminal assault in which a federal judge and five others were murdered, and a congresswoman and more than a dozen others were wounded, New York Republican Representative Peter King is preparing legislation making it a federal crime for commoners to carry firearms within 1000 feet of a federal official.

Pennsylvania Democrat Robert Brady will introduce legislation making it a crime to threaten or incite violence against a federal official. New York Democrat Louise Slaughter, who blames criticism of the government for the act of a mentally unbalanced nihilist, is exploring what she calls ?ways to better police language on the airwaves.? South Carolina Democrat James Clyburn, insisting that the ?parameters? of free speech must be reset, will push to reinstate the so-called Fairness Doctrine.

Last week, the House of Representatives read the Constitution. This week, that body is preparing to destroy what is left of it.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 10, 2011

In the immediate aftermath of the horrific Safeway massacre in Tucson, Arizona ? which left federal Judge John Roll dead, and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords critically wounded -- House Speaker John Boehner intoned that ?An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve. Such acts of violence have no place in our society.?

FBI Director Robert Mueller framed the incident in a similar fashion, describing the shooting rampage as an attack on ?our way of life.?

This atrocity ended the lives of six irreplaceable human beings, one of them a nine-year-old girl. Boehner and Mueller are correct that criminal violence is an attack on our society and our way of life. It is to be hoped that those seeking to extract partisan advantage from this crime would recognize that criminal violence of this kind is committed daily, both here and abroad, by the government they seek to control. There is no place in civilized society for such behavior, whether or not it bears the imprimatur of the political class.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 7 2011

The management of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport intends to file a protest with Texas state liquor regulators over the opening of Rick?s Cabaret, a strip club that will be built near the airport.

The owners of the club have paid $4.5 million for the building and obtained all of the required permits. They intend for the facility to be open for business in time for the Super Bowl.

The DFW Airport management protests that the strip club will attract a disreputable clientele. ?I?m not real happy about our flights coming in here and looking down on [strip club advertisements] and that kind of operation,? observes Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief.

As Loyola University economist Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo points out, strip clubs generally employ security guards to prevent patrons from groping the performers. The federal TSA, however, ?employs scores of slovenly-looking bureaucrats to threaten you with jail if you protest being groped.?

If they are really concerned about public decency, the DFW airport management should begin by firing the TSA.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 6, 2011

In 1997, Bert Sacks traveled to Baghdad carrying medicine for Iraqi hospitals. At the time, as then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright acknowledged, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children were dying from preventable diseases as a consequence of a U.S.-enforced embargo.

Sacks and his friends accepted no money from anyone in Iraq, and had no contact with officials of Saddam?s regime. Yet in 2002 the Regime in Washington ? which at the time was headed by George W. Bush ? fined Sacks $10,000 for supposedly trading with the enemy by paying his own travel and lodging expenses. Bear in mind that Congress has never declared war on Iraq.

Sacks filed a counter-suit in 2004 arguing that the blockade of Iraq violated numerous international treaties; a federal court dismissed the suit, claiming that those treaties weren?t binding. The Obama administration has renewed the lawsuit, seeking the original fine and late-payment penalties.

The supposed offense committed by Sacks was to refuse complicity in the crimes of the government ruling us.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 5, 2011

New York Congressman Peter King spent decades raising money on behalf of the Irish Republican Army, one of the world?s most violent terrorist organizations. Some of the money he raised went to purchase weapons used to carry out robberies, extortion, kidnappings, and bombings.

Several years ago, Rep. King intervened on behalf of Malachy McAllister, who served three years in a British prison for his role in the ambush and attempted murder of a policeman. McAllister fled to New York with his family after they were nearly killed in a reprisal raid by a Loyalist gang.

In 2003, the Homeland Security Department, citing McAllister?s terrorist background, tried to deport him. King used his influence to prevent the deportation, despite the fact that McAllister was a member of a hyper-violent Marxist terrorist cell within the Irish Republican movement.

It is at once infuriating and strangely appropriate to our times that King, a long-time terrorist ally, is the incoming Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 4, 2011

Last December 11, a Las Vegas resident was killed during a traffic stop when police used a Taser on him. Rather than complying with new regulations governing official inquests, the police involved in that episode, on the advice of their union leadership, are simply refusing to cooperate with the investigation.

The inquest revisions were enacted following widespread outrage over recent episodes in which police killed civilians under questionable circumstances. The intent was to introduce an adversarial element into a process that was collegial to the point of being incestuous.

Since 1976, more than two hundred lethal force incidents have been examined by a seven-member jury. Only one of them was ruled "negligent" ? and that decision was overturned on appeal. This isn't a surprising result, given that under the old system the D.A.'s office literally orchestrated the questioning with the police department prior to the hearing.

Confronting the prospect of something akin to actual accountability, the police resorted to insubordination. This is the stuff of which Latin American banana republics are made.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 3, 2011

The government ruling us has an annual budget deficit of $1.3 trillion, and a debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion. Just a few weeks from now, the incoming Congress is expected to raise the debt ceiling, which has been more or less an annual ritual since the Nixon administration sundered the connection between the dollar and gold in 1971.

Austan Goolsbee, the Obama junta?s chief economic adviser, warns that it would be ?catastrophic? for Congress to refuse to raise the debt ceiling. Many Tea Party-connected congressmen are demanding a bargain in which they would vote to raise the ceiling in exchange for spending cuts. However, if they were genuinely in favor of reducing the size and cost of government, they would vote against raising the debt ceiling, which will make spending cuts unavoidable.

As long as the government is permitted to borrow money, it will continue to siphon wealth away from the productive sector. The sooner we cut up the Regime?s credit cards, the sooner real recovery can begin.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 31, 2010

At every opportunity, the Regime is aggressively violating our most elemental personal freedoms.

The most obvious example is the widespread use of pornographically explicit X-Ray scanners and public sexual molestation at airport security checkpoints. Public outrage over these impositions has grown so intense that some major airports are exploring the possibility of jettisoning the TSA and hiring private security screeners. Meanwhile, the Homeland Security Department is preparing to expand its totalitarian security tactics to include train and bus stations.

DUI checkpoints are proliferating across the country. Many of themfollow the ?no refusal? model in which drivers who refuse a breathalyzer test will be forced to endure a blood draw. In some states judges are on site to issue rubber-stamp warrants authorizing the procedure. And every traffic stop offers police a pretext to search a vehicle and ?forfeit? ? that is, steal ? anything of value found therein.

The government no longer asks our permission to invade our privacy and our persons. How long will we permit this to continue?

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