Will Grigg's Liberty Minutes
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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

August 23, 2010

As we’ve noted previously, Philadelphia is presided over by a mayor – appropriately named Michael Nutter – who is engaged in a vulgar shakedown.

Referring to people who supposedly owe various municipal taxes, Nutter has declared: “We want our damn money. You owe it, we want it, and I plan to collect it.”

Nutter’s administration couples a porcine appetite for revenue with a certain depraved creativity in making so-called tax scofflaws out of innocent people. . It recently devised a way to impose a $300 tax – disguised as a “business privilege license” -- on residents who maintain internet blogs

For the past three years, Philadelphian Marilyn Hess has published a low-traffic blog devoted to organic cooking. It has brought in less than $50 in ad revenue. Now the unemployed blogger has received a letter from the city demanding that she pay for a business license, as well as net profits tax.

Nutter’s regime offers another useful look at the authentic face of the loathsome instrument of misery and corruption called government.

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

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

August 20, 2010

Roger Clemens was one of the most dominant pitchers in Major League Baseball. The last years of his otherwise luminous career were marred with allegations that he had used performance-enhancing drugs in an effort to retain his eroding physical skills.

In 2008, Clemens was questioned by Congress about those allegations. This was a matter dealing with Major League Baseball’s internal personnel policies, which are outside Congress’s constitutional authority. Clemens categorically denied the use of banned substances. His testimony was contradicted by a former trainer and a former teammate.

Absent physical evidence, it’s impossible to prosecute Clemens for violations of drug laws. So the Feds are trying to put him in prison for up to 30 years for the supposed crime of lying to Congress about a matter over which it has no authority.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush, who knowingly lied our country into an unnecessary war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, enjoys a tax-subsidized retirement cocooned within Secret Service protection.

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

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

August 19, 2010

Former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton recently urged Israel to conduct what he described as a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in Bushehr.

This would trigger a devastating war involving Iran, Israel, and perhaps the entire world. Bolton is among those willing to pay that price to deprive the Iranian regime of its nuclear program.

Those who support military action against Iran often invoke the Holocaust, insisting that the Iranian government wants to finish the evil work begun by Hitler. This is difficult to reconcile with the fact that Iran currently hosts the second-largest Jewish population in the Middle East.

There are 11 synagogues and numerous Hebrew schools in Tehran. The BBC reports that Iranian President Ahmadenijad – who supposedly lusts to kill every Jew on the planet – recently arranged a donation to a Jewish hospital in Tehran.

Things aren’t perfect for Iran’s Jews. They would grow dramatically worse if their country were attacked by the West.

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

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

August 18, 2010

The Second Great Commandment requires that we love our neighbors as ourselves. This isn’t limited to those who are fellow believers. The same is true of the Golden Rule: We are to do as we would be done to without regard to the recipients of that divinely ordained treatment.

One way American Christians put those principles into practice is to defend the rights of all citizens, irrespective of denominational or religious affiliation. And yes, this does include Americans who profess the Muslim faith.

When asked “who is my neighbor?” the Lord answered that question by offering a parable in which the virtue of loving one’s neighbor was exhibited by a Samaritan – someone who adhered to a pagan religion that sometimes led to violent clashes with the Jews.

Jesus taught the Jews of His time that Samaritans were their neighbors – just as American Muslims are our neighbors today. As Christians we are called to extend God’s love to them. As Americans it is our duty to defend their rights.

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

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

August 16, 2010

Early in his presidency, Barack Obama created a minor diplomatic problem by returning a bronze bust of Churchill that had been lent to President George W. Bush. The White House declined a British offer to keep the bust for a few more years.

Obama’s ambivalence toward Churchill may have something to do with Churchill’s role in suppressing the Mau-Mau insurrection against British rule in Kenya.

The means used to put down that bloody and horrific uprising included arrest, detention, and torture without trial. Among the victims of official mistreatment – which included daily whippings -- was Hussein Onyango Obama, the President's grandfather, who at the time was a cook in the British Army.

Civil liberties commentator Glenn Greenwald points out the irony that Mr. Obama’s government behaves in similar fashion – detaining suspects without trial, countenancing torture of detainees, and even conducting targeted assassinations. It would have been better to keep the Churchill bust and let the Brits take back their imperial foreign policy.

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

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

August 13, 2010

Every once in a while those who presume to rule us will remove their mask of geniality and reveal their malevolent desire for unlimited power.

Not long ago, Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman sponsored a measure giving the president an internet “kill switch.” After all, observed Lieberman, the government of Communist China has that option, so why shouldn’t we?

In a recent New York Times column, Richard Falkenrath, who was deputy homeland security adviser in the Bush administration, described the “approval, admiration and perhaps even a touch of envy” he experienced when the United Arab Emirates announced a ban on the use of BlackBerry personal communication devices.

The dictators ruling the UAE can take “swift, decisive action” to eavesdrop on all private electronic communications – including a ban on services that refuse to comply. From his perspective – one he shares with many law enforcement and intelligence officials – Falkenrath considers it a pity the United States isn’t more like that Arab dictatorship.

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

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

August 12, 2010

The most powerful patron of radical Islam is not Iran, Iraq, or Saudi Arabia. It is the United States Government – particularly the CIA and the Pentagon.

In 1953, the CIA sponsored radical Islamic clerics in Iran to help bring down its secular government. The CIA also cultivated the Muslim Brotherhood, an international Islamic network whose institutional offspring include Hamas and al-Qaeda.

In July 1978, the CIA funded radical Islamic groups that eventually overthrew the Soviet-aligned government of Afghanistan. The coup’s architect, Zbigniew Brzezinski, later dismissed the importance of “some stirred-up Muslims” in Afghanistan – that is, the group that later coalesced into the Taliban.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq installed a government whose constitution enshrines Sharia law.

Millions of Americans have been whipped into a frenzy over the alleged threat of a proposed Muslim community center in New York. But the real threat remains in Washington, D.C.

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

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

August 11, 2010

Ana Ramirez was desperate for help when her 25-year-old son Christian – who has Down’s Syndrome and a heart defect – went on a rampage.
Ana, who had left her job to be a full-time caretaker to her handicapped son, called 911. She informed the dispatcher that her son was handicapped and begged the police not to use a Taser to subdue him.

Within a minute after the police arrived, Christian had been shot six times with a Taser, and both Ana and her younger son Hernando were under arrest. Worried that the electro-shock device might kill Christian, Ana and Hernando had thrown themselves on top of the angry young man, trying to shield him and extract the prongs from his clothing.

Christian survived, and faces no criminal charges. Ana and Hernando have been charged with obstruction and resisting arrest and may spend a year in jail for the supposed crime of protecting a mentally impaired family member from unwarranted, potentially lethal violence.

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

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

August 10, 2010

An afternoon outing with her husband and 7-year-old son at Children’s Splash Park in Tavares, Florida became a Kafkaesque ordeal for Janet Lovett , a native of Peru who recently became a U.S. citizen.

As the family enjoyed the water park, Mrs. Lovett’s shirt was soaked and became translucent. An official identifying himself as a city employee asked Janet to change into a swimsuit. Wrapping herself with a towel, Janet excused herself and went to change.

In the parking lot, she was accosted by a Deputy Sheriff who demanded information. Janet asked to speak to her husband; the request was refused. When the officer demanded identification, Janet hesitated momentarily – and promptly found herself arrested for “suspicion of obstructing justice and resisting arrest.” She was abducted at gunpoint and confined for five hours as her husband frantically scrambled to raise $1,500 bail.

The flimsy charges – a pretext to arrest a suspected illegal immigrant -- were dropped. This incident illustrates the harassment that will ensue if Arizona-style “papers, please” laws prevail.

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

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

August 9, 2010

Sixty-five years ago today, the Japanese port city of Nagasaki was destroyed by an atomic bomb. The victims included most of Japan’s persecuted Christian population. They were vaporized in a nanosecond, some of them memorialized by eerie shadows etched into walls by the nuclear fireball that turned them into radioactive mist.

Many of the most notable American military figures of the time – including Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur – condemned the use of the atomic bomb on Japan, which had been trying to surrender for months.

Ironically, forty years before the bombing – almost to the day – then-U.S. Secretary of War William Howard Taft visited Nagasaki. In a public speech he led a Japanese war chant in praise of the Imperial Army, which at the time was fighting Russian troops in Manchuria. Washington quietly abetted the rise of the Japanese Empire, which it hoped would be a junior partner in dominating the Pacific. What a good idea that turned out to be.

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