The Robber State Strikes (Updated)

There are occasions – and they are coming with increasing frequency – on which the Regime ruling us is laid bare to confront us in the stark majesty of its unalloyed evil.

For many of us, such incidents resonate with those awful hours on April 19, 1993, when the Regime's enforcers immolated scores of innocent people in a religious sanctuary at Mt. Carmel in Texas. We think also of such atrocities as the 78-day terror bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, a campaign meant to force an Orthodox Christian population (ruled, as most are, by a socialist government) to surrender territory they consider sacred to Islamo-Marxist terrorists. And of course, the ongoing criminal occupation of Iraq testifies powerfully of the true nature of the Regime as the world's most powerful and murderous criminal enterprise.

Yesterday, the essential nature of the Regime was on display in Evansville, Indiana when agents of the FBI and the Secret Service attacked (I refuse to employ the gelded euphemism “raided”) the office of the Liberty Dollar, a company that manufactures beautiful precious metal bullion coins.

In an act of undisguised armed robbery, the Feds stole the company's inventories of gold, silver, and platinum, as well as two tons of recently delivered Liberty Dollars – in gold, silver, and copper, depending on the face value – bearing the likeness of heroic Republican Presidential aspirant Ron Paul (whose campaign, incidentally, had nothing to do with that tribute).

The Secret Service was involved in this crime because the Regime considers the private manufacture of precious metal coins to be “counterfeiting” -- and their use in private, voluntary, fully-informed transactions to be a species of “fraud.”

Roughly a year ago, I published an account of a conversation with Becky Bailey of the US mint. Ms. Bailey had condemned the Liberty Dollar as a criminal enterprise, since what the Feds are pleased to call the “law” forbids the use of gold and silver as legal tender.

In a telephone interview, I asked Bailey to answer the following hypothetical question: If an individual went to a local diner and offered a Liberty Dollar in exchange for a meal, and the proprietor agreed to provide the service on those terms, “is that transaction a crime?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I'm not an attorney, but our legal team has looked this over carefully, and they're convinced that exchanging gold and silver medallions for goods or services as if they were real currency – including in barter – is a violation of 18 USC section 486.”

I pointed out that the U.S. Constitution authorizes only the use of those metals as legal tender. That being the case, I asked, “How can it be a federal crime to use the only legal tender recognized by the Constitution in private transactions?” Ms. Bailey bridled at that question, asking if I wanted “to debate the legal and constitutional issues”; I replied that I wasn't interested in a debate, but simply asking her to explain a clear factual contradiction. She maintained that the constitutional language regarding the use of gold and silver had been rendered moot when the federal government went off the gold standard.

Tyranny is the condition that prevails whenever the government claims the power to render the law “moot.”

Those assigned to peddle lies on behalf of the Regime regarding the Liberty Dollar robbery – FBI Agent Wendy Osborne of the Bureau's Indianapolis Office, and Suellen Pierce of the US Attorney's Office for the Western District of North Carolina – aren't answering questions. This, too, is to be expected: Spokes-drones for a totalitarian collective can't speak until they are programmed with the appropriate talking points.

The criminals who plundered Liberty Dollar of its precious assets likewise froze the company's bank accounts, and made off with the company's files and computers. This suggests to me that the Feds may go after the organization – and possibly its customers – as a “criminal conspiracy.”

This is a “conspiracy,” once again, to sell people precious metals at a price they agree to pay, for use in private barter transactions between fully informed, law-abiding citizens.

Last time the Regime stretched forth its hand to steal privately owned gold, it did so on the pretext of the national emergency created by the Great Depression.

What the Regime is attempting to do here, in the absence of a similar crisis, is to criminalize the use of real money at a time when the State-issued pseudo-currency is in full meltdown.

For a first-hand account of this atrocity from Liberty Dollar co-founder Bernard von NotHaus, via RonPaulRadio.com, go here.

Update

A warrant, as Lew Rockwell has pointed out, is a note the government writes to itself giving itself permission to steal your property. With that in mind, the search and seizure warrants used to provide a patina of "legality" to the Feds' Liberty Dollar heist make for interesting reading (they've been posted at the Liberty Dollar website).

In keeping with recent trends in Federal larceny, this was described as a "civil forfeiture." Which means that the property stolen by the burglars with badges has been found guilty, and will only be released if the victims can prove that it wasn't involved in a crime. This includes everybody who bought Ron Paul Liberty Dollars, or who conducted other business with the company that was interrupted in mid-transaction when the Regime sicced its Goon Squad on the company.


According to the seizure warrant, "American Liberty Dollar and/or Hawaii Dala currency and/or precious metals of gold, silver, copper, or platinum or other substance and United States currency are forfeitable to the United States ... because it is property involved in, or traceable to, money laundering, or because it is, or is traceable to, gross receipts and proceeds obtained, directly or indirectly, as a result of mail fraud...."


It isn't necessary to prove that anybody at Liberty Dollar, or any of their customers, committed an act of "money laundering" or "mail fraud." The allegations -- with were pulled out of the tax-fattened fundament of an individual identified as Special Agent Andrew F. Romagnuolo of the FBI -- are sufficient to "justify" the theft as a forfeiture.

Mr. Romagnuolo's office number is 828.253.1643. If you call him, please be impolite.

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The Regime's imperial foreign policy is the primary reason that the fraudulent fiat currency called the “dollar” is in free-fall. A very plausible recent estimate places the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at $1.6 trillion by 2009. And those costs will grow exponentially should the war expand to encompass Iran, Syria, and other nations.

By any rational measurement, the Iraq war has been a moral, strategic, and economic disaster. Tomorrow night (Friday, November 16) I will have an opportunity to explain why.

I will be debating the proposition, “Resolved: The U.S. Has A Justified Military Presence In Iraq” with the estimable Bryan Fischer, Executive Director of the Idaho Values Alliance. Mr. Fischer will argue the affirmative, I will argue the negative, with Pastor Glenn Ferrell of the Sovereign Redeemer Presbyterian Church moderating.

The event will be held at the College of Idaho's Langroise Center Recital Hall, beginning at 7:00 PM. For those living in the Treasure Valley interested in attending, the address is: 2112 Cleveland Blvd in Caldwell. Parking will be available at the Jewett auditorium just off College Avenue. Seating is limited, and a video recording will be made of the event.

Completely Gratuitous Video Extra

In describing the fine art of scenery-chewing, we can employ an ascending scale of adjectives:

There is stentorian, then there's Shakespearean, and finally, there's Shatnerian.

The last refers to the ... oddly metered ... curiously ... punctuated ... styleofdeliverymadefamous by – the – one-and-on-ly WILLIAM SHATNER.

Love him, hate him, or merely study him out of anthropological curiosity, you must admit that it is difficult to ignore Mr. Shatner when he's in mid-oratory.

Candace Bergen, Shatner's multiple-award-winning* co-star on Boston Legal, once said that sharing a scene with him is a bit like trying to share a stage with animals and cute children: You're lucky to be noticed at all. (She meant that as a species of compliment, I think.)

Although he's absorbed plenty of abuse for his unfettered style, I consider Mr. Shatner to be an exceptionally fine actor when he's on (see, for example, his performance as Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov, his role as military prosecutor N.P. Chipman in the made-for-TV drama The Andersonville Trial -- in both of which his co-star was Richard Basehart, oddly enough -- or the sheer lunatic genius and occasional poignancy he displays as Denny Crane in the above-mentioned Boston Legal).

It was as the intrepid Starship Captain James Tiberius Kirk that Mr. Shatner found his defining role, of course. In the video clip that follows, Cap'n Jimmy T is given the opportunity – by way of a plot so exquisitely ludicrous it would make Baron von Munchausen say, “Hey, dude, I ain't buyin' that” -- to extol the singular virtues of the United States Constitution.

Yes, the scene is hammy enough to fill a boxcar full of Hot Pockets. But you know what? It gets to me. And I think the Ron Paul Revolution could do worse than to make the phrase “The Holy Words will be obeyed” into one of its rallying cries.

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*I should point out that Mr. Shatner himself is a multiple Emmy winner.

Dum spiro, pugno!