From the February 2007 Idaho Observer:

Arguments and actions: A time and place for both

One of the smaller articles in the January 22, ’07 issue of The IO stayed with me long after having perused the 24 pages of Vol. 9, No.1. It told the sad tale of Ed and Elaine Brown, a couple who were recently (Jan. 18) found guilty of tax evasion by a jury of (obviously) completely clueless "consumers"; citizens (ostensibly) of the once great state of New Hampshire.

"My life is destroyed" Mr. Brown was quoted as saying. I read this on the same day it was announced in the news that 12 billion in U.S. currency was somehow misplaced—never to be seen again—in Mesopotamia. Sucked up by the same sands which all too greedily has absorbed the blood of over 3,300 soldiers and 650,000 citizens (from a study recently released by Johns Hopkins University) since America’s first selected president invaded Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in March, 2003, ostensibly in search of "WMD." Ironically, the U.S., with the aid of then vice-President George HW Bush and Donald Rumsfeld sold poison gas and other weapons (of mass destruction) to Saddam during the Reagan era.

Yes Ed, sad to say your life, like mine, has been destroyed by the IRS, an agency hell-bent on squeezing every last dime from the little guy. For, as the author John Ross so poignantly and truthfully points out on page 519 of his epic book "Unintended Consequences (1996), "A felony conviction will f-up your whole life, and that’s no exaggeration."

If any 10 supporters have yet to read this crucially important historical novel, I urge them to do so immediately.

I just hope Mr. Brown understands the difference between arguments and action. The law requires the former; politics demands the latter. Mr. Ross’s tome, though fiction, is a fine game plan as to how and when a citizen MUST act to preserve what little liberty is left after administrative remedies and legal arguments have failed.

While Shepardizing some cases in the prison’s law library, I came across one where the author of a two-volume work I’ve heard about over the years, but have yet to read, titled "The Law That Never Was" (1985), gave expert testimony at trial documenting the fact the 16^th Amendment was never properly ratified (1913). This improper addiction to the organic "law of the land" supposedly authorized the Congress to directly tax the wages as "incomes." The Supreme Court held that this was not a question of law but a political question to be settled outside the purview of the Courts. As far as the Supreme Court was concerned, the fact that then Secretary of State Knox publicly announced the 16^th Amendment ratified made it so. Since no amount of evidence and activism have been able to overturn the illegal 16^th Amendment, a constitutional coup d’etat was ratified under the color of law in 1913 and continues to this day.

So, those who seek a remedy under law from the nine robed dictators in D.C. must understand that the argument is over. Our "masters" have spoken and all pleas for a redress of grievances in this matter must now be addressed from one of the three boxes of freedom: The ballot box, the jury box or the cartridge box.

Since the political class has effectively closed off access to the first two options and have been systematically banning our access to the last one since the 1930s, it is high time real men like Mr. Brown and his supporters seriously consider their box options—with the New Hampshire state motto, "Live Free or Die!" as their guide.