Yeah, another example is all of this "sovereign citizen" stuff out there. Have you seen any of this?
I stumbled down a Facebook reel/Youtube rabbit hole after seeing a video of these crazy people that think that state rules don't apply to them with respect to needing a driver's license and car registration. They're convinced that the wording in the Consitution and in other ancient court cases allows them to "travel" anywhere they like, and that because that is a guaranteed right, they don't have to be properly licensed and registered.
It's all bullshit of course-- you do have a legal right to "travel" but that doesn't include driving a car. Driving is a privilege, not a right, and the courts have established that decisively over the decades. If you want to walk from state to state that's fine, but if you're driving a car, then you have to be properly licensed and registered. These encounters invariably end up with the cop that pulled them over, dragging them out of their cars and taking them straight to jail.
And of course the majority of these people already have suspended licenses anyway, which I imagine is why they opted to go down this goofy route in the first place. They always have these "documents" that are supposed to be Federal and official. But what I suspect is that there's some website out there with a lot of fake wording that convinces these people they can take the easy way out, and literally sells them this fake stuff. Someone's making money off these idiots. Sucker born every minute and all that.
These people used to be called posse comitatus. That term started about the time of a shootout with federal marshals in South Dakota with Gordon Kahl.
Gordon Kahl - Wikipedia Two federal marshals were killed. Many of these people were tax protesters and formed what they referred to as their own church, which usually was called the "Life Science Church of ..." and claimed they were exempt from the payment of federal income tax. When I clerked for a federal judge we encountered many of them from around the Sioux City area. But even before that, in the 1970s, my dad was the payroll manager paying about 6,000 factory workers per week at the John Deere plant in Dubuque. He had a version of the same people claiming 30 or more dependent exemptions on their W-4s. Dad had to testify in federal court at a criminal trial in Cedar Rapids for the prosecution to introduce documents in the federal criminal trial. The IRS investigator from Des Moines who was assigned to the federal cases in Sioux City, later told me he remembered working with dad, who was really just a records custodian witness for purpose of introducing documents into evidence.
I knew these people from around Sioux City were potentially dangerous, but we had a very skilled local federal marshal who was unassuming and gave them all the benefit of the doubt. Lloyd T. deescalated every situation. I learned from him because I would have to direct traffic in the courthouse, as well, in my clerk position. Everyone remained safe, and even as they were criminally prosecuted, and their property and farms were being seized. Lloyd T. was an extraordinary person and law enforcement officer.
Around here I have run into some of these people. I had a guy in a divorce case that bought phony documents online. He was a white man and purported to be a member of an Indian tribe that issued a driver's license to him and would present it when cops stopped him. The feds tried to catch him for years because of past criminal activity that they failed to pursue soon enough and a prior slam dunk criminal case had been dismissed due to the statute of limitations. He continued to fuck up, and filed for bankruptcy, lied on his bankruptcy forms, and was charged with all manner of crimes. He was self-employed, admitted to a $50,000 per year income in our divorce case about 20-years ago, and also never filed tax returns for years. I think he got a 5-year sentence in federal court for bankruptcy fraud.
