Be afraid,../The Federal Mafia

[richj at northcs.com]

If you have been under the impression that the
original framers of the Constitution might be 
rolling over in their graves; 

If government intervention under the guise of
safety for the people makes your gut wrench; 

If the nanny state mentality is getting you down,
then check out:

    www.freestateproject.org

It was featured on slasdot October 22. If you spend
some time on the Essays/Articles link, you can see
that this is NOT Waco Wacko mentality at work.

Also-Steven Elling wrote: 

>I can't remember where exactly I read about this but here it goes.
>
>During World War I the government needed financial help with the war effort,
>so they asked that citizens show their patriotism by sending money to the
>government.  The government helped them determine how much they should send
>by establishing a `voluntary' Federal Income Tax system.  They stated it
>was `voluntary' because they knew they were barred from laying direct taxes
>on citizens by the constitution.  After the war was over, citizens kept
>showing their patriotism by sending in money and this continued through to
>World War II.

Unfortunately, someone might have gotten their facts wrong. The 16th
Amendment to the Constitution was formally accepted in 1913. This 
preceeds the US Declaration of war on 4/6/1917. The 16th Amendment
is a simple little one sentence item:

'The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, 
from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several 
states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.'

While all of us gripe about taxes, those that have said 'no' 
tend to have zipcodes at government run facilities. That is
not to say that the Amendment can't be repealed-that has been 
known to happen.(Amendment 18 in 1919 and Amendment 21 in 1933.

(http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.table.html)

What all of this has to do with Linux, well I'm still trying
to sort that out.

Richard Johnson