There are the people (mostly women, and disproportionally black) who think arguing with the cops while demanding to speak with a supervisor will get them out of legal trouble.
Then there are the dumbasses who have taken the “don’t fight on the road, fight in court” advice to heart, and do some studying on the Internet. They don’t understand legal terminology, so they attempt to fake it by spouting a bunch of big words arranged into nonsensical phrases, using them as if they were the magic words in a spell that will make the bad consequences of their actions go away. Some of them even comment on this blog.
It’s tiresome and I can’t imagine how much restraint some of those in the courthouse have to put up with. Heck, I have problems dealing with it on this very blog. Let me illustrate:
Look, I make no bones about being more than disappointed with how our government does business. However, the things some of these outright morons come up with are simply incorrect and won’t work. They haven’t worked. No, you can’t get out of paying income taxes by casting a magic spell using vague Latin sounding phrases in court. Wesley Snipes tried using the 861 argument, and he went to prison for four years. He tried making the argument that he isn’t obligated to pay taxes. He has an outstanding $23 million tax bill. They have been fighting this in court since 2006. The IRS offered to settle it for $9.5 million, but Snipes refused.
This argument has been ruled frivolous in DOZENS of appellate cases. It just isn’t a thing. Proving that everything that comes up on this blog has been discussed already, I posted on this back in 2008. As I said then:
I agree that progressive income taxes are [morally and ethically] wrong. I agree that taking my money to give to someone else in a socialistic redistribution of wealth is the equivalent of armed robbery. I disagree that the tax code has such ludicrous loopholes.
I will not entertain any argument to the contrary in the comments to this post, unless that comment comes with a valid citation to an appellate case verifying your position. I am not going to turn this blog into a Sovereign citizen sounding board.
However, in the interest of fairness, anyone who wishes to set up their own blog to espouse those theories is perfectly welcome to do so. Just contact me, and I can set you up on this very server for the low, low price of $15 per month. The only rule I have for server space here is no porn. It takes up too much bandwidth and invites accusations of child porn and all of the scrutiny that comes with it.
2 Comments
Honk Honk · April 16, 2026 at 12:23 pm
I love those sov cit vids where they decide to rack up charges instead of just presenting ID.
We all hate papers please but if you are respectful you might just get a warning.
Fishlaw · April 16, 2026 at 1:53 pm
I am a retired trial lawyer, and have seen many of these goofy arguments. I defended cases where these people plead all kinds of nonsense. I will not clog your site with numerous stories, but one was particularly laughable. Two Rivers Wisconsin is on the west shore of Lake Michigan. As suggested by the name it has rivers running through it, which empty into the Lake. A man owned a motel on the bank of one of the rivers. He did not pay his mortgage. The bank filed foreclosure in state court. The man raised all the sovereign citizen arguments about the bank demanding the wrong form of money, etc. However, he also said that because his motel was on a navigable river, the state court did not have jurisdiction. Instead, Federal Admiralty law governed the case, so that the state court could not hear it. The state judge didn’t buy it.