The Satanic courts strike again

I've mentioned previously the anti-tax protesters who have been scamming a lot of people into filing phony federal returns and getting into serious legal trouble as a result. This kind of activity is, of course, one of the real threads running through much of the history of the Patriot movement, dating back to the days of the Posse Comitatus, and continuing through the rather vivid case of the Montana Freemen.

Well, here's the latest twist:

Judge bans a 'nonsense' anti-tax book
ACLU calls it a free speech issue

A Las Vegas federal judge has called the anti-tax writings of a civil defendant "nonsense" and enjoined him from distributing a book that's based on them.

The case has sparked a legal battle that pits federal tax law against First Amendment rights.

A suit brought by the Tax Division of the Justice Department has won a temporary restraining order that enjoins Irwin Schiff and two co-workers from 13 specific activities, such as holding seminars that promote any false or fictitious tax schemes. U.S. v. Schiff, No. CV-S-03-0281-LDG-RJJ (D. Nev.).

While the government's complaint is thick with details and weighted by exhibits, the allegations boil down to this: Schiff and his associates are tax cheats.

The piece explores the ramifications in reasonable depth. (Of course, it misses perhaps one of the more amusing aspects of the case, which is how the ruling will be received among the True Believers -- that is, as yet another perfidy inflicted by the Satanic cabal that now runs the courts.) I think the free-speech questions it raises are important.

In my relatively limited experience with Patriot-related publications, even those that are known to contain provably false information nonetheless enjoy certain First Amendment protections. This even seems to extend to such books as those which advocated violent domestic terrorism -- and contained detailed instructions thereon. Thus it remains possible to purchase any number of manuals describing how to build homemade pipe bombs.

I do know, however, that people tread onto very thin constitutional ice when it comes to claiming First Amendment protection for criminal acts. This is, as it happens, one of the important points undergirding the constutionality of hate-crimes laws: That is, laws that tighten sentences for criminal acts committed with a bias motivation do not run afoul of free-speech protections because they deal with conduct (that is, something which is already a crime) that is not protected by the First. The illustration at the vivid extreme end of this logic is that one cannot assassinate a president and claim a free-speech protection for doing so.

It will be interesting to see if this ruling stands.