July 9, 2009—Ed Brown (67) and Elaine Brown (69) were convicted on all counts "of plotting to kill federal agents during a nine-month standoff at their fort-like rural home, where they had holed up to avoid arrest on tax evasion," the Associated Press reported.

In 2007, the Browns, a successful married couple from Plainfield, New Hampshire, who had dared to demand that the government show them the law before paying income taxes, were convicted of willful failure to pay them.

Ed Brown testified during the 2009 trial that the weapons in his home were for self-defense. The conviction is malicious. The Browns never intended to kill anyone; they just wanted to prove that the government had no lawful authority to directly tax the wages of people as if they were income. When the government court agreed that the government had the authority to collect an unconstitutional tax, the Browns just stayed home. When the government came to get them, a standoff ensued. People from all over the country came to be with them. Ed conducted interviews in which he said he believed the government planned to kill him and that he would rather die than go to prison. With some bravado, Ed reportedly also said that he would take a few feds with him.

The Brown’s concerns were well-founded. The U.S. government has killed a lot of Americans for greater and lesser reasons. Gordon Kahl was hunted down, shot and burned for his belief that government was not lawful; Sammy Weaver (14) and his mother Vickie were shot though they were not wanted in connection with any crime and the government mass murdered 114 innocent men, women and children at Mount Carmel near Waco, Texas.

The standoff, which began with their conviction January 18, 2007, ended peacefully nearly nine months later on October 4.

Though Ed had a conviction in 1960 at age 18 that was later pardoned, the Browns have no prior criminal history yet both face 30-years in prison for not surrendering to federal officials after being convicted on income tax related charges. For the Browns, this conviction is a death sentence.

"By rejecting the rule of the law and substituting a personal code involving weapons, explosives and threats, the defendants committed increasingly serious crimes," acting U.S. Attorney Michael Gunnison said. "Their conduct has no place in a civil society."

The "civil society" to which Gunnison refers is one that allows the government to lawlessly extort money from people at gunpoint, allows bankers to debauch the currency and loot an entire nation’s people and their assets while reinventing the Republic into a totalitarian technocracy that is in the final stages of force-vaccinating 300 million people with an experimental vaccine containing ingredients of known toxicity—and is planning to punish anyone who objects. According to Gunnison, elderly people who believe in the Constitution and are willing to resist an unlawful tax and refuse to immediately surrender to heavily-armed federal agents deserve to die in prison and are not fit to participate in our brave new "civil society."

The Browns, who were already serving five-year sentences for their original convictions, are scheduled to be effectively sentenced to death in prison on September 3, 2009.