Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 30, 2012

With New York City flooded and millions left without power by the impact of the Superstorm called Sandy, the New York Times exploited the tragedy to preach the supposed virtues of big government.

Without FEMA, asked the Times, ?Who would make decisions about where to send federal aid? Or perhaps there would be no federal aid, and every state would bear the burden of billions of dollars in damages??

The newspaper?s editorial collective apparently believes that the unfathomably wise and endlessly competent people managing the central government are better equipped to fix local problems than the people affected by them directly. They also appear to believe that the federal government, unlike states, can magically create money out of the ether. Historically, FEMA?s role in disaster management has been to impede the efficient delivery of relief offered by private agencies.

FEMA also exacerbates disasters by administering a perfectly insane federal flood insurance program, an expansion of which was signed by President Obama just months ago. This is an entitlement program that benefits wealthy homeowners on both coasts and creates perverse incentives for them to build residences in hurricane-prone areas.

Big government can neither control nature, nor provide suitable help when we are stricken by it.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 29 2012

The Halo Corporation, one of the most successful of the countless companies engaged in Homeland Security profiteering, is holding a Counter-Terrorism Summit in San Diego from October 29 to November 2. The event, like most of its kind, is a lavish junket disguised as a training seminar. In the setting of a luxurious seaside resort, highly paid law enforcement, security, and military officials will sit through courses on a variety of topics, many of them dealing with the so-called ?War on Drugs.?

The centerpiece of the week-long event will be a multi-agency counter-terrorism exercise involving a hypothetical ?Zombie apocalypse.? According to Halo Corporation spokesman Brad Baker, ?This is a very real exercise, this is not some type of big costume party.?

The idea that our country might someday be overrun by rampaging armies of the undead is only marginally less plausible than most of the scenarios discussed at the conference. While not minimizing the danger of Islamic terrorism or the possibility thatRussiaorChinamight succumb to nationalist militarism, the greatest threat to our well-being remains the omnivorous federal government and the ever-expanding police state apparatus that supports it.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 26, 2012

The Obama administration?s drone strikes and secret ?kill list? have been well-publicized by the establishment media. Speaking with reporters following a presidential debate, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the head of the Democratic National Committee, professed not to have heard of that issue.

In a similar setting, Obama Campaign adviser Robert Gibbs was asked about the presidential execution, by drone-fired missile, of 16-year-oldU.S.citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. Gibbs responded that killing the teenager was justified because his father, accused al Qaeda supporter Anwar al-Awlaki, was an ?irresponsible? parent.

Speaking in a panel discussion on MSNBC, Time magazine contributor ? and prominent Obama supporter ? Joe Klein stoutly defended the drone strikes, even as he admitted that innocent bystanders ? including 4-year-olds ? are frequently killed by them. The only concern, Klein insisted, was the possibility that the power to conduct remote killings may find itself in the hands of someone other than Obama.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 24, 2012

Former CIA undercover counter-terrorist operative John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on the agency?s illegal use of torture, has pleaded guilty to a single charge of disclosing the identity of an intelligence operative. Kiriakou, who participated in the capture of al-Qaeda suspects inPakistan, is expected to receive a sentence of up to two and a half years in prison.

Kiriakou was originally charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, under which he could have faced life imprisonment or even the death penalty.

While a CIA operative who exposed torture is headed for prison, an architect of the program has been given a new calling as an ecclesiastical leader. Bruce Jessen, who developed torture protocols and had hands-on experience in waterboarding detainees, has been appointed as a Bishop for a Spokane congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. An investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee concluded that Jessen?s work undermined both the rule of law and  national security.

It is commonplace in totalitarian countries for the government to punish those who defend the rule of law, and reward those who commit criminal acts on behalf of the regime.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 23, 2012

One of the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto demands imposition of ?A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.? Another mandates the ?Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.? A third calls for ?Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.? 

The first two of those provisions makes the third inevitable. A century ago, the U.S. government, following that totalitarian formula, created Federal Reserve System and imposed the income tax. Two years ago it enacted the ?Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act,? or FATCA, through which it claims universal jurisdiction over the bank accounts of U.S. citizens. This means that the U.S. government claims the authority to confiscate the wealth of Americans who seek to protect their earnings by depositing them in foreign bank accounts.

Because of FATCA, Swiss banks are beginning to refuse deposits from U.S. citizens. The IRS claims the right to seize 30% of a Swiss bank?s U.S. income if it fails to disclose information on a single American customer. This has driven many Americans doing business in Switzerland to renounce their citizenship, which is tragic ? but hardly surprising.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 19, 2012

Shane Bauer was one of three American hikers arrested inIranafter accidentally crossing that country?s border withIraq. He eventually spent more than two years incarcerated inTehran?s Evin Prison, including four months in solitary confinement.

After returning to the United States, Bauer became involved in an investigation of prison conditions in California. He focused on the conditions of inmates confined in Security Housing Units, or SHUs ? a severe form of solitary confinement.

InCalifornia, inmates are often sentenced to SHUs by special tribunals for entirely arbitrary reasons. They aren?t permitted access to attorneys or allowed to see the evidence against them, which is usually provided by anonymous informants. Solitary confinement ? which has severe and lasting psychological effects -- can last indefinitely, and often ends only when the inmate agrees to inform on somebody else. While in the SHUs the inmates are held in windowless cells and denied such rudimentary decencies as clocks, mattresses, and privacy when using the toilet.

Bauer doesn?t minimize the cruelty of Iranian prisons, or the magnitude of the injustice he suffered. He nonetheless came to believe that in some ways inmates in theU.S.prison system ? the largest in the world ? are treated worse than those imprisoned by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 18 2012

Thanks to the sadistic creativity of federal prosecutor Wendy Olson,Nampa,Idahoresident Kurt Barnes will spend a year in prison and three years on probation. His offense did not involve violence, theft, or fraud. It didn?t consist of doing anything, but rather neglecting to do something: Barnes was charged with ?misprision of felony? ? that is, failure to report a crime to the police.

The problem here is that no crime was actually committed. Barnes was general manager of a used car company targeted in an IRS sting operation four years ago. Undercover IRS informants posing as drug dealers offered to buy cars with cash they described as proceeds from narcotics deals. The dealership?s finance manager, Joseph Monte Johnson, agreed to the sales, and promised to conceal the details of the transactions.

After Johnson was arrested and charged with money laundering, Olson offered him a deal in exchange for testifying against Barnes. To enhance Johnson?s credibility, Olson sought to prevent disclosure of Johnson?s prior felony convictions ? which is essentially the same act for which Barnes now faces a prison term. The difference here is that Olson, unlike Barnes, actually succeeded in stealing something ? in this case, a year of a man?s life.

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

To the editor:

The Press-Tribune?s story sanitizing the Gem County Sheriff Office?s assault on the home of Michael Gibbons and Marcela Cruz (October 17) was riddled with misrepresentations.

The video of the raid shows that deputies did not identify themselves until after one of them had seized Marcela and dragged her from the home, injuring her in the process. According to the official police report she displayed no signs of abuse, a fact that warranted mention.

Your account says that Michael Gibbons was directed ?to his knees? by the deputies. In fact, he was forced to his knees with his back to a deputy who was pointing the muzzle of an assault rifle at his head ? what could be called the ?coup de grace? position. That detail is certainly germane to the story.

Sheriff Rolland defended the actions of the deputies who conducted an illegal warrantless search of the home. You did not mention that Sheriff Rolland took part in that illegal search ? which means that his assessment was self-serving.

Puzzled readers may wonder why deputies would approach a home with guns drawn ? including an assault rifle set to ?fire? ? because a neighbor called to report an argument. This question would have been usefully illuminated if you had mentioned that in a radio conversation prior to the raid one of the officers had described Gibbons as a ?constitutionalist? ? and thus, presumably, a threat to ?officer safety? owing to his attachment to that document.

In what sense does the Press-Tribune ?empower the community? when it engages in sycophantic state stenography, rather than independent journalism?

Sincerely,

William Norman Grigg

WNGrigg@msn.com

208.642. 8285

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 1, 2012

Organic farmers Michael Gibbons and his wife Marcela were minding their own business at their home outside Emmett, Idahowhen practically the entire Gem County Sheriff?s Office arrived. Marcela was seized by a deputy and dragged from the house at gunpoint. When Michael came out of the house he was forced to kneel with his back to a deputy who was pointing the muzzle of an assault rifle at his head.

With Michael in handcuffs and Marcela under armed guard, the deputies ? led by Sheriff Chuck Rolland ? conducted an illegal search of the home, finding what they thought was a marijuana growing operation. It proved to be an indoor nursery for organic tomatoes. Although Michael was given a misdemeanor citation for possession of drug paraphernalia, no arrests were made.

The pretext for this assault was a 911 call from a neighbor reporting that Michael and Marcela had an argument. En route, one of the deputies suggested that a paramilitary approach would be justified, saying of Michael: ?He?s a constitutionalist.?  

Idahois literally the last place inAmericawhere we would expect to see a local sheriff throwing a man into the dirt and threatening his life because he?s a constitutionalist.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 15, 2012

The 12-year-old girl was sleeping in her upstairs bedroom when an intruder silently opened the window and inserted an incendiary grenade. Seconds later the terrified child awoke to the horrible scent of her own burning flesh.

Downstairs, her father ? who suffers from heart disease and liver failure ? had been startled awake by loud voices and angry pounding on the front door. As he went to see what was happening, the door was thrust open and another incendiary grenade was flung into the home, this one blowing the nails out of drywall in the living room.

By any rational definition, this was an act of terrorism ?a pre-dawn assault on a residential home. It didn?t take place in Iran or Syria, but in Billings, Montana, and the assailants were members of a federally supervised narcotics task force serving a no-knock warrant to search for a suspected meth lab. No drugs were found, no arrests were made ? and, as is typical, no apologies were offered to the victims.

At least 70,000 no-knock raids take place nationwide each year. Again the question must be confronted: In what sense is this a free country ruled by law?

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