Author: William Norman Grigg

“Our safety and happiness lie in obedience to law by every man, woman, and child,” pontificated Attorney General Harry Micajah Daugherty in his keynote address to the 1921 annual conference of the American Bar Association in Cincinnati. His homily on the supposed virtue of submission to the state was offered in the service of the crusade to “suppress the age-long evil of the liquor traffic,” a holy errand to which the assembled legal luminaries were firmly committed, at least while they were on the clock. “After hours,” Edward Behr wryly observed in his book Prohibition: Thirteen Years that Changed America, … Continue reading →

The post The Last Full Measure of Misery appeared first on LewRockwell.

“You have to trust the government,” Justice Department attorney Richard Roberts unctuously told Jesse Trentadue. Seeking to understand why his younger brother Kenneth had died while in federal custody, Jesse, a trial attorney in Salt Lake City, had asked to see the findings of a federal grand jury investigation of the case. In an incandescent response to Roberts’s patronizing dismissal, Trentadue reminded the Justice Department functionary that the proper relationship between citizens and the government is not one of “trust,” but rather of “accountability from that government to the citizens.” “The Department of Justice has yet to account to the … Continue reading →

The post The Deep State Takes Care of Its Own appeared first on LewRockwell.

Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brethren; here there are states…. A state is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: `I the state, am the people.’… Destroyers are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state….Nietzsche, “The New Idol,” from Thus Spake Zarathustra The late rancher LaVoy Finicum sought to elude the state’s armed enforcers, but he wasn’t attempting to evade the law. His intent, as he explained clearly and repeatedly to OSP troopers before the lethal ambush at … Continue reading →

The post Finicum’s Wake appeared first on LewRockwell.

What happened at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775, was an eruption of terrorist violence against the forces of order and decency, insisted Peter Oliver, a former Massachusetts Bay Superior Court Judge. His history of the American rebellion was published in 1781, but it has an oddly contemporary flavor – almost as if it had been published by an 18th Century analog of the so-called Southern Poverty Law Center. General Gage, “having intelligence that a quantity of warlike stores was collected at Concord … judged it most prudent to seize them,” Oliver narrated. The troops acted with efficient … Continue reading →

The post From Showdown to Show Trial appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Mr. Hart, do you contest the legitimacy of the federal government of the United States of America?” That question was posed to former Idaho State Representative Phil Hart a few minutes into his February 3 federal bankruptcy hearing. By asking that question, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Newman transmuted the proceeding into a heresy trial. “No, I do not,” replied Hart – a good and sufficient answer that was ignored by the Inquisitor. Exhibit 36 in the hearing was a book entitled “Constitutional Income: Do You Have Any?” which Hart published in 2001.  Newman read an excerpt from page 300 of … Continue reading →

The post The Regime’s Relentless Persecution appeared first on LewRockwell.

Makaela Zabael-Gravatt was shot and nearly killed in her own backyard in Meridian, Idaho last September. The man arrested in that attack, Christopher Wirfs, had a violent criminal history. Prior to the attempted murder, Wirfs had spent several weeks stalking and harassing his victim, on multiple occasions explicitly threatening to shoot her. Zabael-Gravatt twice requested and was denied, an order of protection against the man who eventually tried to kill her. Media inquiries about those denials were deflected by the Meridian Police Department to the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office, which simply refused to comment on the matter. At the time, the … Continue reading →

The post Never Say Boo to a Cop appeared first on LewRockwell.

Roughly a year ago, Nampa, Idaho resident Kenndrick Rose was appointed as a member of the local military enslavement soviet. That is an accurate, rather than official, description of the Canyon County Selective Service Board, which would be activated in the increasingly likely event that the Regime reinstates the odious practice of conscription. Rose inherited his seat on the long-dormant board from his mother, Conchi Morales, who occupied it for twenty years. He has an academic background in computer science but no exceptional qualifications to rule on the merits of a given application for a draft deferment. Neither does anybody … Continue reading →

The post The Federal Kidnappers Are Back appeared first on LewRockwell.

There are abundant reasons to be grateful that we do not live under the Old Testament “lex talonis” legal covenant, and one compelling reason to lament that this is so: Under the system of justice described in the Book of Deuteronomy, a lying police officer and corrupt prosecutor who falsely convicted an innocent man would be required to suffer the punishment intended for their victim. Under that legal principle, former Idaho Falls Police Detective Jared Fuhriman and former Bonneville County District Attorney Kip Manwaring would be serving a sentence of 30 years to life for the wrongful murder conviction of … Continue reading →

The post Stolen Lives, Protected Criminals appeared first on LewRockwell.

LaVoy Finicum, who was shot at a roadblock by Oregon State Troopers and left to bleed to death in the snow, was not a violent criminal. He and his colleagues from the group calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom were traveling to John Day, Oregon to organize political resistance to federal control over lands in the western United States. After trying to run the roadblock, Finicum plowed his vehicle into a snowbank. He exited with his hands in the air, staggering in the snow before making a motion with his right hand that the FBI claims was an effort to … Continue reading →

The post Tyranny, Defiance, and Death appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Could we discuss potential punishments?” asked the tall, middle-aged man identified as “Juror 25” during the voir dire for the trial of Matthew Townsend on a ludicrous felony charge of “witness intimidation.” His supposed offense was to publish a well-reasoned and inoffensive Facebook post complaining about being arrested without cause. Pointing out that he had worked as a prison mentor for many years, and had actually counseled inmates facing the death penalty, the juror thought it would be worthwhile to know what would happen to Townsend if he were found guilty. Trial Judge Lynn Norton pointed out that once the trial proper … Continue reading →

The post Nullifying the Jury appeared first on LewRockwell.

The State of Idaho remains perversely determined to steal five years from the life of Matthew Townsend as punishment for publishing a defiant but harmless statement on his Facebook page.  His supposed offense was to criticize Meridian Police Officer Richard Brockbank by name, demand the dismissal of an equally spurious “resisting and obstructing” charge filed by the officer, and to promise a “non-violent and legal shame campaign” employing “peaceful but … annoying” tactics in the event that charge wasn’t dropped. The trial, which will be a Soviet-style exercise in seeking the imprisonment of a political dissident, will begin on January … Continue reading →

The post Single-Serving Stalinism appeared first on LewRockwell.

Without seeking permission, a small group of defiant armed men seized control of coveted property in Oregon. They weren’t welcomed by local residents, some of whom petitioned the government to evict the intruders from federally administered land. Rather than sending in the troops to uproot the uninvited settlers, the U.S. government told the local residents to accommodate them even as they put up fences and started to run cattle on the land they had seized. This destroyed the local agricultural balance, leaving many of the locals near starvation. Hunger can drive a man to do desperate things, especially when its … Continue reading →

The post This Is Government Land! appeared first on LewRockwell.

The only casualty of an hours-long SWAT raid and hostage situation in Neenah, Wisconsin on December 5 was Michael Funk, a disabled Vietnam veteran who was a party to a $50 million civil rights suit against the same department that killed him. Funk and three other plaintiffs filed that suit seeking compensation for harm they suffered in a SWAT raid at the same location three years earlier. Funk and Steve Erato were co-owners of Eagle Nation Cycles in Neenah, the scene of a hostage situation that developed out of a drunken rampage by local resident Michael Flatoff. After SWAT teams … Continue reading →

The post Rescuers or Death Squad? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Under the reign former Chief Joel Rae, the Steamboat Springs, Colorado Police Department viewed the local citizenry as revenue-producing livestock, and officers were encouraged to “strike first and strike hard” whenever their targets displayed anything other than utter docility. Not surprisingly, this resulted in a blizzard of “excessive force” complaints and several civil rights lawsuits. More remarkable was the emergence of two whistleblowers whose public testimony led to the removal of Chief Rae — but who now are being targeted for retaliation. Last March, former Detective Dave Kleiber, who resigned from the SSPD in 2013,  published open letter to residents … Continue reading →

The post The Blue Tribe appeared first on LewRockwell.

The first rule of bureaucratic crisis management is: “Find someone else to blame.” This is true even in agencies as small as the Adams County Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff Ryan Zollman would have an insuperable conflict of interest were he to conduct the official inquiry into the November 1st killing of Jack Yantis. He could have avoided that conflict by firing the deputies, charging them as private citizens, and then turning the evidence over to a special prosecutor. This would have provoked trouble with the Fraternal Order of Police and precipitated a grievance with the Idaho State Industrial Commission, but it … Continue reading →

The post Justice for a Murdered Rancher appeared first on LewRockwell.