Sunday, April 06, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

COLUMN: Vin Suprynowicz

Ominous shadow over the First Amendment

Last week, we were discussing U.S. District Senior Judge Lloyd George's March 19 order that Las Vegas tax education gadfly Irwin Schiff stop giving lectures, and stop selling his latest book: "The Federal Mafia: How the Government Illegally Imposes and Unlawfully Collects Income Taxes."

"They're trying to put me out of business," Schiff says. "It's because I'm on the Bill O'Reilly radio show now. See, what's killing the government is, I'm on the Bill O'Reilly show, I'm on Michael Reagan, this year was the first year I advertised nationally, and this is what's upsetting the government."

In a raid on his Las Vegas bookstore offices last month, armed Treasury agents seized the office computer on which Schiff had already written and stored the first five chapters of his next book. "So that's gone, too," he says.

And because the government has filed a civil action, rather than a criminal one, Schiff says, at least one lawyer has advised him, "Probably they're going to shut you down. Of course you can appeal to the 9th Circuit; that'll take six months and $30,000."

Before issuing his order in open court March 19, Judge George condemned Schiff's teachings, saying, "I have some sympathy for the people drawn into this, but really, it's nonsense."

"Look at the testimonials on my Web site," Schiff replies. "I've had people check out every statute that's cited in my book, every court decision, and it all checks out. Why would I sell the Internal Revenue Code if it doesn't verify what I say?"

For the record, so as not to leave it unsaid, I do not encourage folks to file these "zero returns," as Irwin Schiff advises. While most of Schiff's historical research does check out, the IRS will almost certainly try to take your stuff if you do this, and Schiff is ethically derelict, in my view, for not loudly warning people of that likely, real-world outcome.

In a hypothetical land where the federal courts would still allow citizens to present in defense an intensive two-week cross-examination of IRS agents under oath, explaining relevant 85-year-old court rulings to the jury and challenging that agency's jurisdiction and application of the law, those with the courage to withstand the expense and inconvenience of a prosecution would probably be better advised to simply not file, and dare the federals to prove the tax in question applies to them and their in-country wages.

(One would want to be sure to research Eisner v. Macomber (1920); Cook v. Tait (1924); Lucas v. Earl (1930); Flora v. United (1959); Garner v. United States (1975); and Central Illinois Public Service Co. v. United States (1978) -- and of course no stacking of the jury with only those who will swear in advance to "enforce the law as I give it to you" would be tolerated.)

I stress that the continued existence of any such federal court is today "hypothetical."

Nonetheless, that said, if Judge George's finding that Schiff's reading of tax law is "nonsense" was in truth made without a thorough study of the book in question -- without taking sworn testimony as to what statements are supposedly not factual and granting the accused an opportunity to challenge his accusers while they are under oath -- this does indeed set a very dangerous precedent, casting an ominous shadow over the First Amendment rights of any citizen subject to the jurisdiction of Judge George's court.

If the courts can and will now ban books simply by dubbing them "nonsense" because they challenge what "everybody knows," will they next ban celebrated UCLA biomedical researcher Dr. Peter Duesberg's book, "Inventing the AIDS Virus," which challenges the notion that HIV causes AIDS? New York state teacher of the year John Taylor Gatto's book "Dumbing Us Down," which argues the public schools are purposely designed to churn out psychologically damaged quasi-literates -- and that the more money we spend on these youth behavior modification camps the worse these pathologies become? The work of John Lott and professor Gary Kleck, demonstrating that crime rates go down wherever more law-biding citizens own and carry guns?

After all, Galileo's works challenged "what everyone knew" in the early 1600s, didn't they -- as had William Harvey's work on the circulation of the blood half a century earlier?

"The courts are now in the wholesale business of sanctioning not only the taxpayers but also the attorneys who bring any of these, what they call `frivolous,' actions," concludes Schiff attorney Noel Spaid of San Diego. "And the taxpayers who want to raise these issues can't find attorneys because they all fear getting these sanctions of up to $25,000. The government is in the business of stopping all dissenting speech against the income tax -- it is now anti-American to talk about the Internal Revenue system and come up with new ideas why what they're doing may not be valid. ... Anything that's anti-tax is `frivolous.'

"The thing that bothers you the most is that the courts are participating in the dumbing down of America by keeping these ideas from being discussed, by trying to prevent people from having access to them."

The next hearing date in the Schiff case is set for 1:30 p.m. Monday, when the government will seek to make permanent the judge's injunction against any further sales of the book "The Federal Mafia."

At which point, the first book will have been banned in America solely for its political content.

And here you thought all the IRS was taking away was your money.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "Send in the Waco Killers" and "The Ballad of Carl Drega."