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

December 29, 2009

In the summer of 2005, Carl Bryan of Coronado, California, a 21-year-old man with mental and emotional problems, was pulled over by a police officer for a seat belt violation.

A visibly agitated Bryan exited his car and began what Officer Bryan McPherson described as a “bizarre tantrum.” According to McPherson’s account, Bryan did not threaten the police officer, who was standing about 20 feet away.

Without warning , McPherson shot Bryan with a Taser, causing him to fall face-first to the pavement, shattering four of his front teeth.

Bryan sued the Coronado Police Department for use of excessive force and violation of his rights under the Fourth Amendment. On December 28 the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that there was no need to use a Taser on a visibly disturbed individual who presented an annoyance, rather than a threat. This is a small but significant victory against the promiscuous use of a consistently lethal weapon.

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

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 28, 2009

Only two things prevented Nigerian terrorist suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from destroying Northwest Airlines flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day. The first was a failed detonator. The second was quick, resolute action by passengers who subdued the would-be terrorist.

Since 9/11, the government ruling us has spent literally trillions of dollars in the name of fighting terrorism. Hundreds of billions have been spent on security screening procedures, yet Abdulmutallab – who was known by the CIA and State Department to be a potential terrorist – was able to board an international flight without luggage – and without a passport.

Government is the only human enterprise that profits from failure. Accordingly, the government has already exploited its near-catastrophic failure to protect Northwest flight 253 by imposing new restrictions on passengers. It may use the incident as a pretext for expanding the military conflict overseas as well.

For us this means more expense, fewer liberties, and no increase in security.

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

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 23, 2009

The institutionalized larceny called “civil asset forfeiture” represents a complete repudiation of central constitutional principles. Through forfeiture, police can literally steal money and other property from suspects and keep those assets even if the supposed offender is never convicted or even formally charged with a crime.

This undisguised criminal racket conducted under the color of supposed law is extremely lucrative for police departments and municipal governments. In depression-plagued Detroit, asset forfeiture rates have soared despite the fact that there has been no corresponding increase in the rate of violent crime.

A recent decision by the Minnesota State Supreme Court resulted in an ominous expansion of the forfeiture power. In this case, the court ruled that police could confiscate an SUV that was being driven by a suspected drunk driver who refused a breath test even though its co-owner and primary driver had nothing to do with the incident.

When police have a license to steal, constitutional liberty doesn’t exist.

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

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 22, 2009

If the human race is spared the horrors of a UN-supervised global eco-dictatorship, we may have Communist China to thank.

The agreement created at the recent UN Copenhagen Summit on climate change fell far short of the world body’s ambitions. The chief obstacle was China’s refusal to permit violations of its national sovereignty by the actions of international monitors who would enforce an accord restricting emissions of so-called greenhouse gasses.

Amazingly, while China was defending the principle of national independence, the government in Washington was promoting proposals for invasive international monitoring in the service of an unaccountable global regime.

After China refused to support severe restrictions on carbon emissions, President Obama suggested that Washington would be aiding the UN’s “eco-spying” efforts to enforce the less ambitious version that was approved in Copenhagen.

The ironies of this situation are practically indigestible: A nominally Communist country is defending national independence and the modern industrial economy against a totalitarian proposal supported by Washington.

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

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 21, 2009

In the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that black people were not “persons” and thus not entitled to the protections of the Constitution.

That assumption has been embedded in official practice by totalitarian regimes such as National Socialist Germany, which declared that Jews and other non-Aryan people were untermenschen, or sub-humans.

The government ruling us has now officially embraced this evil doctrine in the name of fighting terrorism.

On December 14, the Supreme Court let stand a lower court’s ruling that suspected terrorists classified as “unlawful enemy combatants” enjoy no legal protection against torture or other mistreatment because they are not considered “persons” under the law.e

Attorneys representing terrorist suspects had invoked the protections of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (or RFRA), which explicitly applies to all “persons.” A federal appeals court rejected that argument, thereby effectively categorizing such detainees as “non-persons.”

A government claiming such power is deadlier than any foreign terrorist threat.

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

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 18, 2009

Buckeye, Arizona is a town of 35,000 with a severely depressed economy. In 2007, the last year for which statistics were available, there were 51 violent crimes committed in Buckeye, with aggravated assault the most common offense.

Buckeye isn’t under siege by criminals. So why did the Department of Homeland Security give the city a $250,000 grant to purchase an armored vehicle?

The vehicle in question is an 8 ½-ton BearCat, or ballistic-engineered armored-response vehicle. The BearCat, comments the West Valley View, “would look quite at home on the streets of Baghdad.” It will be difficult to find an appropriate mission for the BearCat in Buckeye, but some excuse will eventually present itself.

This case is typical of the priorities we see being followed nation-wide. As the economy collapses, the Regime is spending huge sums to beef up and militarize law enforcement -- not to deal with rising crime, but – perhaps -- to prepare to deal forcefully with escalating public outrage.

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

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 17, 2009

For decades, Former New Zealand Prime Minister Mike Moore has been in the vanguard of the international left. He is the former vice-president of the International Union of Socialist Youth and served as the director-general of the World Trade Organization.

Moore’s “progressive” credentials are impressive, if only because they make his candor about the radical environmental movement so much more striking.

In a recent column for the New Zealand Herald, Moore observed that “Green politics is officially a religion,” and a singularly fanatical one at that.

“I heard a member of the UN Panel on Climate Change say of the findings: `There can no longer be dissent,’” recalls Moore, who predicts that governments will soon enact legislation designating so-called “climate denial” a species of hate crime.

The new eco-religion, Moore says, is akin to fanatical cults whose adherents “end up burning books … and building furnaces.” Sobering words from someone who knows whereof he speaks.

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

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 16, 2009

During an economic downturn, private businesses cut costs through layoffs, pay freezes, and even pay cuts where necessary.
Government, which unlike private business produces nothing and engages in pure consumption, behaves in exactly the opposite fashion.

USA Today recently reported that “Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months – and that’s before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.”

While productive people face job losses and prolonged economic misery, for federal employees the deepening depression is “an extraordinary boom time in pay and hiring….”

The average federal employee – the word “worker” is inappropriate – is paid $71,206, as compared to the $40,331 earned by the average private worker.

The government is a parasite that is killing its long-suffering host.

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

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 15, 2009

The RAND Corporation has released a study entitled A Stability Police Force for the United States: Justification and Creating U.S. Capabilities.

The RAND study, which was conducted for the U.S. Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute calls for the creation of a “hybrid” military/law enforcement unit within the U.S. Marshals Service for use “in a range of tasks such as crowd and riot control, special weapons and tactics … and investigations of organized criminal groups.”

Building the SPF within the Marshals Service “would place it where its members can develop the needed skills under the hybrid staffing option,” summarizes the document. “Furthermore, the USMS has the broadest law enforcement mandate of any U.S. law enforcement agency…. [This model] provides significant domestic policing and homeland security benefits by providing thousands of additional police officers across the United States.”

The SPF would be a centralized, militarized police unit of the kind suitable to the needs of a dictatorship, not a constitutional republic.

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

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 14, 2009

On December 8, Dr. Peter Watts, a Hugo-nominated science fiction author, was headed home to Toronto when the car he was driving was randomly selected for a search at the Canadian border.

After he emerged from his car to ask why he was being detained, Dr. Watts was severely beaten, pepper-sprayed, arrested, and otherwise abused by Border Patrol agents. His computer and flash drive were confiscated; he was interrogated without the benefit of legal counsel, and twice subjected to demands that he waive his Miranda rights. His traveling companion, who did nothing to provoke the interest of the Border Patrol, was likewise handcuffed and arrested.

After being held overnight in a frigid cell, Dr. Watts was charged with “assaulting a federal officer,” then unceremoniously deposited, in his shirtsleeves, on the Canadian side of the border.

Crossing the border of a totalitarian state is an experience fraught with danger. As Dr. Watts and many others can testify, the government ruling us is quickly ripening into full-fledged totalitarianism.

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

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 11, 2009

Eco-socialists have devised a system called “cap-and-trade,” in which businesses are required to buy permits to cover so-called greenhouse emissions, with the option of selling permits they don’t use.

Human population growth may eventually be regulated in much the same way.

In a December 8 editorial prompted by the UN global warming summit in Copenhagen, Canada’s National Post insisted that “A planetary law, such as China’s one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate.” The Chinese government used the Copenhagen conference to extol the supposed virtues of their totalitarian program.

UN adviser Dr. Norman Myers has suggested that someday “people might be issued with a warrant entitling them to have a single child…. This warrant might even carry commercial value, allowing individuals to decide not to have children at all and to sell their entitlement to others wanting larger families….”

The Bible describes children as a divine blessing. Eco-socialists regard children as a commodity to be rationed by a global state.

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

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 10, 2009

Iris Cooper of Patagonia, Arizona was driving to school at the Pima Medical Institute in Tucson when she realized that she had forgotten her books.

About two miles away from a Border Patrol checkpoint, Cooper turned her car around to head home, only to be stopped and detained by Border Patrol agents. She was pulled from her car, handcuffed, and detained for a half an hour while a K-9 unit conducted a warrantless search of her vehicle.

Despite being handcuffed and forbidden to leave, Cooper was told that she wasn’t under arrest. The handcuffs, she was told, were “part of the procedure.” This was a lie, of course: An arrest occurs any time a citizen is detained by any law enforcement officer. This includes traffic stops.

Over the past several years, the Border Patrol has erected checkpoints well inside our national borders and subjected U.S. citizens to this kind of treatment with increasing frequency. Thanks to such policies America is increasingly looking less like a republic and more like a Reich.

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

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 9, 2009

It’s been difficult for Seattle resident Rachel Porcaro, a single mother who makes about $18,000 a year cutting hair, to provide for herself and her two sons. Things did not improve when the domestic terrorist organization called the Internal Revenue Service singled her out for persecution.

Convinced that Rachel was hiding unreported income, the IRS demanded $16,000. A certified tax specialist documented that the IRS was misapplying tax laws, and that Rachel and her sons economized by living at her parents’ home as renters. Rather than backing off, the IRS escalated its assault by auditing Rachel’s father.

Rachel was eventually forced to pay a thousand dollars in additional taxes, plus penalties and interest. She is also forbidden to claim her children as dependents. As Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat points out, the agency spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars “to squeeze a grand out of a single mom who did nothing wrong.”

Let us work and pray for the abolition of the pestilential IRS,
and take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 8, 2009

Oregon’s official unemployment rate is over eleven percent, and the state ranks sixth in the nation for bankruptcies. Thanks to Oregon Attorney General John Kroger, things will soon get much worse for that state’s small business sector.

Kroger is putting the finishing touches on an Environmental Crimes Enforcement Unit that will aggressively pursue criminal prosecution of regulatory violations once dealt with as civil and administrative matters. Rather than targeting the large corporate concerns that figure so prominently in the familiar demonology of eco-propaganda, Kroger’s eco-enforcers will focus on small businesses.

Oregon legal analysts Christopher Rycewicz and Britan Sniffen write: “What does this increased emphasis on criminal enforcement mean for Oregon business owners? It means that we are entering a period of uncertainty, when we will not know the types of violations [the unit] is targeting….” This means more time and money spent on administrative and legal matters, which in turn will mean more business failures, unemployment, and misery for Oregon residents.

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

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 7 2009

Neel Kashkari went to Washington in 2006 as a 35-year-old assistant to then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. A little more than a year later, Kashkari was in charge of bailout stricken investment banks.

It was Kashkari who established the now-notorious $700 billion bailout price tag. As the Washington Post notes, that figure was entirely arbitrary. Kashkari admits that “Seven hundred billion was a number out of the air.” Five percent of the $14 trillion in combined residential and commercial mortgages was $700 billion, which Kashkari decided was “a nice round number.”

Following his resignation last May, Kashkari left Washington for the mountains of northern California, where he is living “off the grid.” The would-be architect of the new economy is now trying to build small sheds and cabins, with less than spectacular results.

If the government’s bailout of the banking system has even the slightest chance of working, why did the former bailout czar literally head for the hills?

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

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 4, 2009

How many laws are really necessary?

The Bible says that God gave ancient Israel Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai. Because of transgression God mandated the Mosaic Law, which contained roughly 600 laws and commandments. In the New Testament, Jesus – the same Lawgiver Who wrote the Law on Sinai – summarized it in two challenging but easily understood commandments.

Those at the helm of the modern state are much more ambitious than God.

In 2007, for example, the Texas state parole board identified 2,324 separate acts that had been classified as felonies; this year, that list increased by 59. A felony was once a crime punishable by death. That status is now given to much more trivial offenses.

Legal analyst Scott Henson points out that the Texas state code lists eleven felonies involving oyster-fishing. Henson also notes that not even prosecutors can keep track of the newly minted felonies.

The political class won’t be satisfied until they can devise a way to make felons out of all the rest of us.

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

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 3, 2009

The much-heralded economic “stimulus” package is an undisguised boon to what the Washington Post calls “the government-contractor nexus that is metropolitan Washington [D.C.]”

Thanks to immense “stimulus” subsidies lavished on government-employed contractors, the suburbs of Washington, D.C. are booming even as the rest of the country plummets into a depression. This amounts to sucking wealth from the private sector for the benefit of the political class.

Much of that pilfered largesse is given to contractors who are paid to help direct subsidies to other government-connected beneficiaries. The District itself has received 10 times the amount of stimulus funding, per capita, that has been sent to Florida, Michigan, Nevada, and Ohio, states suffering severely as a result of the downturn. Unemployment in Washington, D.C. is 6.2 percent, well below the official national average of 10.2 percent and roughly one-third the real unemployment rate. Virginia and Maryland are faring similarly well.

It shouldn’t surprise us that, amid universal economic misery, the tax-feeding class looks to its own interests first.

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

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 2, 2009

Legendary Swiss investor Marc Faber earned the nickname “Dr. Doom” for his negative view of Washington’s management of the U.S. economy. As Faber’s dismal predictions are being fulfilled around us, he warns that much worse is yet to come.

Addressing a recent conference in Singapore, Dr. Faber warned that the credit expansion fueling the so-called stimulus program will end in an unprecedented economic bust. When that happens, Washington and other western governments, unable to finance expansion through borrowing, will turn to undisguised inflation, funding their expenditures by printing money. The resulting hyperinflation will wipe out what remains of the middle class.

At that point, Faber predicts, Washington – and whatever friends it still has – will turn to the oldest and most destructive stimulus program: “There will be another war and it will be against an imaginary [or invented] enemy.”

Faber warns that no decent citizen should place his trust in Washington or the Federal Reserve. The wisdom of that warning is self-evident.

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

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

December 1, 2009

Whatever precipitated the bizarre automobile accident in which Tiger Woods was injured, this much is certain: Mr. Woods is doing the right thing in refusing to discuss the matter with either the media or the police.

Woods has been criticized for deflecting police inquiries. But as CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin explained, “Tiger Woods is under no legal obligation to speak with police...The Fifth Amendment gives everyone an absolute right to refuse to talk to them. He may be counting on the fact that if no new news emerges, everybody will move on.”

There has been a lot of public speculation that Woods – who wrecked his automobile after leaving his home in the early morning hours – had quarreled with his wife over a purported extra-marital affair. Whether or not this is the case, Woods has no responsibility to indulge the public’s prurient curiosity. And as a citizen he’s wise to recognize that in this situation, no good can come from cooperating with the police.

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

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

November 27, 2009

Wherever taxation and regulation become onerous, a black market or “shadow economy” will take root and flourish. In fact, the size of a so-called shadow economy is a telling indication of the size and intrusiveness of the government and the health of the “official” economy.

That being the case, what can we learn from the fact that, as the Christian Science Monitor recently reported, America’s “shadow economy” is “larger than the official output of all but the upper crust of nations across the globe.” Some economists estimate that the American “shadow economy” amounts to roughly 8 percent of the American Gross Domestic Product, or roughly $1 trillion.

As the economic contraction accelerates, the “shadow economy” is growing; people are going into unlicensed “necessity businesses” as a matter of simple survival.

In the old Soviet Union, the black market was the only thing that kept people from starving. Given the radical expansion of government and corresponding wreckage of the economy, Americans may have similar experiences in our future.

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

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

November 26, 2009

Congressman Ron Paul has long warned the public about the consequences of government debt and inflation. He has also been one of the most outspoken and capable critics of the banking cartel called the Federal Reserve System, which is essentially a government-chartered counterfeiter.

For over a year, the Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars out of nothing to fund the bailout of politically favored investment banks. For the purposes of shielding its actions, the Fed claims to be a private business; for the purpose of immunizing itself against civil suits, it describes itself as a government agency. And all the while it continues to debase the currency and impoverish Americans.

Last week, Rep. Paul won a critical battle in his long, heroic struggle against the Fed when his bill to audit that institution – HR 1207 – was voted out of committee. Whatever happens to that bill – and may God grant that it becomes law – the long-overdue revolt against the Federal Reserve is well begun.

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

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

November 25, 2009

The Justice Department’s decision to try accused 9-11 Mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four accomplices in a federal civilian court, rather than a military tribunal, has provoked fierce criticism from many conservatives who describe themselves as champions of the Constitution.

For instance, John F. McManus, President of the John Birch Society, told The Hill newspaper that “These trials [of the accused 9-11 plotters] should be held in military courts…. Their crimes were acts of war (didn't we go to war as a result?), not the acts of ordinary criminals.”

McManus and the organization he represents have often criticized Washington for going to war without a constitutionally required congressional declaration. Yet here McManus dispenses with that compulsory prerequisite in order to justify the use of military tribunals.

The trial of civilians before military tribunals is permissible only in situations in which the civilian court system is no longer functioning. This clearly isn’t the case, a fact that should be obvious to McManus and other self-styled conservative defenders of the Constitution.

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