This story — about a couple of nutjobs in New Hampshire — just came up on my radar.  They’re in a months long standoff with the state and federal government for refusing to pay their taxes.

Wikipedia got me up to date.

I’ve had online debates with people who insist that the federal income tax is illegal.  The arguments advanced by these groups include:

• False arguments that the 16th Amendment to the Constitution (authorizing the income tax) was not properly ratified

• False arguments that the Internal Revenue Code was not properly enacted by Congress

• False arguments that the Internal Revenue Service was not properly constituted by either Congress or the Department of the Treasury (and is therefore operating as an "illegal" entity)

• False arguments that "income" cannot be defined, and therefore cannot be owed

• False arguments that only foreigners and citizens of the United States (falsely limited to citizens of the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, etc.) are liable to pay income tax, and state citizens are not liable for income tax — i.e., false arguments that the payment of income tax is really "voluntary" (you’d have to be a real sucker to believe this one).

Each one of these arguments are demonstrably false.  I rank these people right up there with 9/11 conspiracy theorists.– total whackos.

The Browns argument seems to fall under the thoroughly-bogus "legal" argument that they are not "citizens" of the United States, since that term is not defined, and therefore they cannot be taxed as "citizens".  This is because the Constitution states that people are "citizens" of the state in which they reside.  People like the Browns don’t understand the concept of "CONCURRENT CITIZENSHIP", which means that we are citizens of the state in which we reside AND the country in which we reside.

In other words, people like the Browns are idiots.

Anyway, I’ll be keeping my eye on this story.  I think it’s going to end in bloodshed.