Well somebody has to bring up the point, and if the clerks deep in the bowels of the court house are all in on the cabal, they surely aren’t going to mention it.
Little Nemo said:
Well, according to these nutjobs, the courts aren’t legal anyway, they are circumventing the real laws. So they don’t have the authority to repeal the real laws, all they can do is subvert them. Given that, the easiest way for them to get around the real laws is to pretend the real laws don’t exist.
But wait, why don’t they pretend they have the authority to change the laws? :smack:
Well, yeah, but, again, the woo-woos being described here are doing likewise, right? It’s not enough to just say this court can’t legitimately find me guilty because (a) the statute of limitations has expired, or (b) there’s a gold fringe on that flag over there; doing so merely raises a question, as to whether (a) enough years have elapsed, or whether (b) there really is a big and dangly gold fringe on that flag.
I mean, even the woo-woos don’t think magic words about the gold fringe work if there isn’t a gold fringe on the flag.
Well, yeah, but, again, I figure they figure it’s like “statute of limitations”-- or “double jeopardy”, or “I was underage when I signed that contract”, or “process was never served”, or whatever: it doesn’t instantly defeat the whole thing, it makes 'em check whether such is the case in this case. “Wait, did we or didn’t we type his name all in capital letters? Oh, crap, we didn’t.”
Isn’t that the whole point of the woo-woo story cited regarding CPS and the birth certificate a little ways back in this thread? Even the woo-woos don’t figure CPS backs off merely because someone says there’s no birth certificate; they figure such a claim is like “I wasn’t read my Miranda rights” (or “I was underage” or “the statute of limitations ran out”), in that it raises a question of fact which – if true – will get the issue in question disposed of.
I don’t think the woo-woos believe those rules to be hidden. I think the woo-woos believe anyone can look 'em up. They seem to think the gold-fringe-on-a-flag thing is as much black-letter law as a twenty-year statute of limitations: less well-known to the general public, in their opinion, but equally knowable. And since they know the government abides by this or that statute of limitations, and honors the “double jeopardy” rule, and tosses out confessions obtained during non-Miranda interrogations, they figure it’s equally plausible for said government to hypothetically abide by the gold-fringe thing or the capital-letters thing or the birth-certificate thing sure as it keeps abiding by the process-server thing and the I-invoke-the-right-to-a-jury-trial thing and the ex-post-facto thing.
But they have been told ahead of time, over and over again, that none of these things are true. We’re saying them right here. The web is filled with reports of courts throwing these cases out. Every real attorney tells them that. How is this any different from Creationists or birthers or any other nutcult who have the truth thrust in their faces and still blindly proclaim the opposite? Even those people who truly believe insane things have no claim to be held in seriousness or be taken as right in any way. And the fact that these people profess to believe in insane things solely because it is to their monetary advantage to believe in insane things makes them so morally slimy that they deserve the full application of the real law.
And mere repetition doesn’t make a case any better. Your four posts in this thread have said exactly the same thing each time. If you read them, they are beginning to sound uncannily like a magic words argument. You appear to think that if you use the same logic and the same examples, but phrase them slightly differently, we will magically cease all our objections and say that you were right all along. We won’t, because none of what you’re saying makes any rational or legal sense. No matter how you phrase it, we will see the same faulty judgment at work. If you can’t see this in yourself, then I understand why you can’t see it in others. So I hope you somehow begin to realize why you’re not getting anywhere and where your argument went off the rails.
But the difference is the immutability of these supposed “magic word” laws. I think everyone knows that the government could change the statute of limitations if it wanted to. Congress could pass a law saying that you could be charged with a crime regardless of how long ago the crime occurred.
But the gold fringe law isn’t like that. Supposedly it’s a law that can’t be changed by Congress. And there are no such laws. All laws were made by Congress and all laws can be unmade by Congress*. Even the Constitution can be rewritten.
So anyone who claims that there is a law that nobody can change does not know what they’re talking about.
*Okay, in reality most laws are made and unmade by state legislatures. But the same point applies.
If we want to get technical, in post Crisis continuity, Kal-El was launched from Krypton as a fetus. The rocket carrying him was a “gestation matrix”, the Kryptonians having done away with natural pregnancy. He was removed from this artificial womb when the Kents discovered it in Kansas. Thus, he was born on American soil and a US citizen.
The lack of concern in the DC universe about space aliens using anchor babies to gain citizenship on Earth is just shocking.
Can my grandmother and her fellow Far Far Right Wing Widows move into the nation next door? (I think it’s called BatShiTopia). They could hide from The Socialist Kenyan Moslem States of America until the rightful leaders (the Beck/Limbaugh ticket) are voted in.
You can make up all the stuff you want. You can declare yourself a freeborn citizen not under the 14th amendment. You can claim that the IRS envelope is not addressed to you because it is in capital letters. You can claim that the tax code is illegal, and that the 21st amendment is illegal.
You can make claim and counter claim. What is “legal” is what happens when you put your claims before a judge, and he tosses your sorry little ass into jail because you believe that some law doesn’t apply to you because you’ve recited some sort of magic incantation. Or, that the laws are invalid because everyone in Congress is an “Esquire” and therefore not a citizen under your version of the 13th amendment.
In the end, most of these people end up in jail, losing all of their property, and losing case after case. The court system is the arbiter of our laws, and what the court decides is what is legal. There is no way to avoid the IRS. You can’t opt out of laws. It doesn’t matter if you use your ZIP code or not. Your personal theory on governance don’t matter. You can’t opt out of society.
But the elder Els were dead, and Kal was clearly a refugee. I mean, who’s going to look at an apparently-human baby, naked and weeping for his mommy and reaching for comforting arms to hold him, and then say, “Nah, brat’s got no papers. Kill 'em with fire.”
Ravenman’s objection to my first post was that “What the OP seems to be proposing is that quite literally there are words (which are to some degree kept secret) that can be uttered to compel the government to completely drop any effort to arrest or prosecute a person on a wide range of crimes.”
My reply was that “the statute of limitations has run out” does – when true – compel the government to completely drop the whole thing for a wide range of crimes. I repeated it because it seemed directly on point; I then added a new example – “this court already litigated that matter” – to further respond to his claim: if either happens to be true, one can in fact compel the government to completely drop the whole thing for a wide range of crimes.
Ravenman then sensibly changed his argument to note that just mentioning “statute of limitations” doesn’t get the job done all by itself; doing so merely raises a question of fact to be settled in court. I therefore changed my argument to note that the examples brought up by other folks in this thread (about birth certificates and gold fringe) are thought to likewise merely raise questions of fact rather than settling the issue.
Little Nemo’s objection was as follows: “A good rule of thumb is that when somebody claims that some executive authority like the police or the Governor or the President can’t do something they may be right. But when they claim that a legislative or judicial authority like Congress or the courts can’t do something they’re pretty much always going to be wrong.”
As it happens, the two examples I’d mentioned – the statute of limitations and double jeopardy-- do apply to the courts rather than the police or the Governor or the President. And so I repeated them in hopes that he’d offer up a different argument.
He of course did so – and is now emphasizing that the woo-woos seem to believe stuff like the “gold fringe” bit is unlike a twenty-year statute of limitations or a Constitutional ban on double-jeopardy prosecutions in that the government can change the latter but not the former. To which I can but ask for a cite; I think the woo-woos are crazy, but I’m not sure they’re that crazy.
As far as I can tell, what you brand as “mere repetition” is somehow getting different answers every time; the previous objection gets dropped, and a new one I find more interesting gets offered up. it’s, like, magic, or something.
I’m not entirely sure it is; I’m merely figuring we should treat these folks the way we treat Creationists. In my experience, Creationists asked for evidence in favor of their beliefs can usually just cite the Bible; this fails to impress me. My response to any of these “gold fringe” woo-woos, or folks who figure the lack of a birth certificate will immunize you against CPS, or people who insist that capital letters hold special relevance for the legal system, or whatever, is to likewise ask for a cite; either they’ll provide something that impresses me, or they won’t.
I won’t reject any such claim just because it looks silly. I’ll reject it enthusiastically if a good cite isn’t forthcoming. Possibly your criteria differ, and that’s okay by me too; as is often the case, I see little point in assuming someone’s conclusions are incorrect so long as I can ask for their reasons instead.
Laws like the statute of limitations exist because they are enacted by Congress or some state legislature. So they demonstrate that Congress has the power to make laws and the power to overrule laws.
It’s tough to determine what exactly the woo-woos think because most of them don’t know themselves. But here’s a website where somebody offers his views on gold-fringed flags. His claim seems to be that a gold-fringed flag is a military flag and that a courtroom with a military flag is operating under martial law not civilian law. And he seems to feel that martial law allows courts to do things that they couldn’t do under civilian law. And an example he gives is that martial law allows the court to seize property under Admiralty Law that it couldn’t sieze under civilian law.
So this is what his claim boils down to: a court can seize property if there’s a gold-fringed flag in the courtroom but it can’t seize that property if there’s a non-fringed flag in the courtroom. But it doesn’t explain why. Why can’t the government seize property in a courtroom with a regular flag?
Because apparently it matters. One of the woo-woos on the linked page says he’s figured out a way to make the courts powerless - he carries a pair of scissors. When he sees a flag with a gold-fringe he springs into action and cuts the fringe off (assuming he doesn’t get beat up by the bailiff). And once the fringe is off the court’s power is broken - the court can no longer invoke martial law.
Let’s go back to 1874 or whenever this nonsense supposedly began. A bunch of Congressmen are plotting on how they’re going to steal property. One of them says, “First we pass a law saying that military courts can sieze property. Then we pass a law saying that flags with gold-fringes are military flags. Then we pass a law saying that any court with a gold-fringed flag in it is a military court. It’s brilliant.” And the other Congressmen look at him and say, “Well, I suppose that would work. But why don’t we just pass one law that says we can sieze property in civilian courts? That way if some nutcase with a pair of scissors cuts the fringe off it won’t make any difference.”
Theoretically, I don’t know if this is strictly true.
First of all, to discuss actually “opting out” of society, you’d have to discount all the nonsense that the Freeloaders spout (I wasn’t very familiar with them before this thread, but their ideas are…interesting. Then again, I think there’s something fascinating about people who cling to wacky beliefs). They have absolutely no interest in “opting out” of society. They just want to enjoy the benefits of society without any of the obligations.
But suppose, throughout your life, you’ve accumulated or inherited a Bill-Gatesian fortune. Suppose you decide you’re REALLY done with other people, and want nothing to do with anyone. Besides some international treaties that nobody will likely bother to enforce, what’s to stop you from, say, building some kind of self-sustaining fortress in a some remote corner of Antarctica? Let’s assume that money is really no object, so the many obvious practical obstacles could be overcome.
Also, assume you don’t give a crap about gold fringes, secret laws, capital letters, and legal magic words. It also just so happens that you don’t care about the real law, either.
If you go and live in your Fortress of Solitude, haven’t you opted out of society, for all intents and purposes? You’re not freeloading off of anyone, and nobody can (or will bother to) tell you what to do.
I know that this is absurdly unrealistic, but is there any reason that this doesn’t constitute “opting out” of society?
A particularly silly retcon, since it wasn’t necessary: Even without it, Superman is a natural-born citizen. He’s a foundling, and a foundling is legally considered to be a citizen of the place where he was found. Such status can be challenged, but only up until the kid’s 18th birthday, which it wasn’t in Superman’s case. So even now that it’s known that he wasn’t born in Kansas, his status remains.
To Smith,John: You’re going to need to get food in your Antarctic fortress somehow. I imagine you’re buying it with your Gatesian fortune? But how can you spend that money without taking part in society? Heck, how can you even hold it without taking part in society?
But note as well just what he’s doing, there: right off the bat he tries to back up his claims about gold-fringed flags by pointing to U.S.C. Chapter 1 and an Executive Order from Eisenhower that got printed in the Federal Register and everything. As far as I can tell, he believes the government whipped up yet another feature of the system in much the same way various legislatures enacted this or that statute of limitations: they can do as they please, they wanted to do this, and they could make a new law tomorrow.
I don’t see how that bears on our disagreement. I’m postulating a woo-woo who thinks the legislature was foolish enough to make that mistake back when but could change the law if they realize the error of their ways, and you’re apparently postulating a woo-woo who thinks they made that mistake but can’t change it. Is that what you think? If so, why?