Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 19, 2010

Advocates of government spending seem to be entirely unacquainted with the word ?enough.? There appears to be no limit to the amount of wealth they devour. Every suggested reduction in spending levels is greeted with anguished protests and predictions of social turmoil.

This routine continues even now, when our country faces the immediate prospect of undisguised bankruptcy because of unrestrained government profligacy.

The Tea Party movement coalesced from healthy and widespread anger and frustration over our unfolding economic collapse. However, most of the candidates associated with that movement have been unable to specify the spending reductions they would support, often taking refuge in the familiar and tiresome refrain that we should cut ?waste, fraud and abuse.?

The only way to save the economy is to kill the welfare-warfare state. This means ending all federal entitlement programs and ending Washington?s imperial foreign policy abroad. Unless we do both, neither will ever happen ? that is, until the complete destruction of our economy solves the problem for us.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 18, 2010

Incidents in which police shoot family dogs are quite commonplace. Such episodes of ?puppycide??puppycide? rarely involve an actual risk to the officer.

On many occasions, citizens have been arrested and prosecuted on criminal charges for assaulting police dogs. In one case the so-called assailant was sentenced to eight years in prison for kicking a police dog.

Citizens whose dogs are killed needlessly by police rarely if ever receive redress. The same is true of citizens who are needlessly injured by police dogs.

Five-year-old Nazir Lowe of Salisbury, North Carolina was attacked by a police dog named Baks during an October 8 classroom demonstration. The dog vaulted on top of the terrified little boy, tearing at his neck and biting off part of his left ear.

Although the police department took the dog out of service, it hasn?t offered an apology of any kind to Nazir and his family. Had the situation been reversed, the dog would be dead, and someone would be in jail.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 14, 2010

Danny Frank Rodriguez, a 29-year-old Phoenix resident, got into an argument with his mother, who called the police. When two officers materialized a few minutes later, Rodriguez angrily demanded to see a warrant. One of the officers, Richard Chrisman, placed a gun against Rodriguez?s head and hissed that he didn?t need a warrant.

Within a few minutes, Chrisman attacked Rodriguez with pepper spray and a Taser, shot and killed his dog, and then fatally shot Rodriguez himself. A second officer on the scene, Officer Sergio Vergillio, testified that none of this violence was justified.

Even before this incident, Chrisman was on a ?Brady list,? a roster of troubled police officers who weren?t considered reliable witnesses in court. He has been charged with aggravated assault, but not with homicide. And the local police union has thrown its support behind Chrisman.

It can never be repeated often enough: Unless you?re willing to see somebody get killed, never call the police for help.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 13, 2010

Within a few hours of her birth at New Hampshire?s Concord Hospital, Cheyenne Irish was abducted by the DCYF, New Hampshire?s so-called child protection bureaucracy.

According to paperwork filed by the DCYF, Cheyenne?s mother, Stephanie Taylor, had already ?neglected? the newborn. Stephanie?s only action had been to give birth to Cheyenne. The only way she could have avoided the charge of neglecting her child would have been to avoid giving birth to her.

The DCYF apparently assumes that Stephanie Taylor, in order to be a fit mother, should have aborted her unborn daughter.

Cheyenne?s father, Jonathan Irish, was also described as unsuitable because of his distant association with the Oath Keepers, a group that encourages law enforcement and military personnel to be faithful to the U.S. Constitution. There are some concerns about the couple?s domestic life, but neither has committed an offense that would justify the abduction of their newborn daughter ? unless holding pro-constitutional political views and a refusal to abort one?s child are considered crimes.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 11, 2010

In 1974, Turkey invaded the island of Cyprus, which is claimed by both Turkey and Greece. The invasion was described as a preventive strike against an Athens-backed coup intent on uniting the island with mainland Greece.

In the decades leading up to the invasion, Greek and Turkish Cypriots were involved in an often bloody conflict on the island. During that period, the Turkish military carried out a covert campaign of false-flag terrorist attacks designed to exacerbate tensions and provide a pretext for harassment of the country?s ethnic Greek minority ? and, eventually, the invasion of Cyprus.

Retired Turkish General Sabri Yirmibesoglu, who headed the government?s Special War Department in the early 1970s, recently admitted: ?In Special War, certain acts of sabotage are staged and blamed on the enemy to increase public resistance. We did this in Cyprus. We even burnt down a mosque.?

The use of false-flag terrorist plots is a surprisingly common tactic ? one our own government has used on numerous occasions.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 8, 2010

George Caram Steeh, a federal District Judge in Michigan, offers what may be the definitive illustration of the axiom that the Constitution poses no threat to our system of government.

Judge Steeh ruled against a group of plaintiffs who seek an injunction against the ?Obamacare? individual health insurance mandate, which would impose a health care tax of nearly $9,000 a year. The plaintiffs made note of the indisputable truth that the Constitution does not authorize Congress to impose that requirement on individual citizens.

Judge Steeh dismissed this complaint by ruling that Congress has that unallocated power because the Supreme Court ?has expanded the reach of the Commerce Clause to reach purely local, non-commercial activity, simply because it is an integral part of a broader statutory scheme?.? In other words, the Congress has any power it can conjure for any purpose it can contrive. Upholding Obamacare means dispensing entirely with the pretense that the Constitution retains any meaning.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 7, 2010

In 1999, Syrian-born Abdul Rahim al-Janko fled an abusive father and ended up in Afghanistan. He was taken hostage by an al-Qaeda cell, which tortured him for months.

When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, Janko had been a prisoner of al-Qaeda and then the Taliban for 18 months. He and four other prisoners were taken into U.S. custody and treated as terrorist suspects, rather than terrorist victims.

Janko?s torture continued at the hands of U.S. interrogators. Al-Qaeda had beaten the soles of his feet and subjected him to electric shocks, eventually wringing from him a false confession of being an Israeli or American spy. American interrogators urinated on him, subjected him to stress positions and sleep deprivation. He was transferred to Guantanamo, and not released until June 2009.

Janko has filed suit against the U.S. government, which will doubtless insist that its abuses are covered by the supposed state secrets privilege and not subject to review or accountability of any kind.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 6, 2010

Students at the Camino de Paz Montessori School and Farm near Cuarteles, New Mexico were enjoying an outdoor lunch when a military helicopter materialized overhead.

After reconnoitering the school for about fifteen minutes, the helicopter flew away. Shortly thereafter a police van arrived and disgorged four men armed men wearing bullet-proof vests but displaying no visible insignia. The armed intruders demanded that the school allow them to inspect its greenhouse, where they found a small tomato crop. Apparently, the tomato vines had been mistaken for marijuana plants during the helicopter?s surveillance overflight.

This was one of several raids conducted in late September by New Mexico?s Region III Narcotics Task Force. As is typical in such operations, the federalized paramilitary strike team terrorized scores of innocent people by conducting warrantless armed invasions of private property in a raid that netted a total of 35 marijuana plants.

It cannot be repeated too often that the war on drugs is a literal war against the rights of the American people.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 5, 2010

The South Fulton, Tennessee fire department told Gene and Paulette Cranicks that they wouldn?t fight their house fire because the couple hadn?t paid their $75 fire protection fee.

The firefighters did arrive, however, to battle the blaze after it spread to the property of a neighbor who had paid the fee.
People of a collectivist mindset insist that this episode is an indictment of illustrating the supposed need for coercive provision of certain services. However, ?? ? a la carte government,? coverage is a common feature of government services.

Police are not legally or civilly required to come to the aid of an individual citizen threatened with criminal violence. Some police departments have even announced that they will no longer respond to burglary calls and other crimes. At least one city has started to impose a surcharge for 911 services already paid for through telephone fees.

With socialism, you pay for the entire menu but get service a la carte ? and you don?t even get to make the selections.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 4, 2010

The depraved Roman Emperor Caligula once took violent offense over a public expression of support for a political rival in the Senate. The infuriated tyrant confided to an associate that he wished the entire Roman population had a single neck.

The same sadistic sensibility inspired a short video entitled No Pressure, which was produced by the English environmental group 10:10. The organization?s goal is for everyone to reduce his so-called carbon footprint by ten percent in order to fight the supposed menace of global climate change.

No Pressure is composed of three vignettes in which groups of people ? schoolchildren, corporate employees, and a soccer team ? are invited by an authority figure to join the 10:10 crusade. Those who decline are asked to identify themselves. At this point the leader pushes a large red button and the holdouts are blown into a crimson mist.

According to 10:10, the ad was withdrawn because people didn?t get the joke. Their real problem is that people understood it perfectly.

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