Friday, May 14, 2004
fringe element:
brad from monkey law once asked me what's up with those " a yellow fringe on the flag is a mark of the beast" folks.
i still don't have the whole scoop.
here is a site listing cases, in which such fringe arguments were sanctioned or dismissed, but that explains little.
disclaimer: i'm a little fringy myself. i'm an old hippie, been in touch with the war tax resistance movement since about watergate. i do have some law degrees, but i don't make a living at it. i've met some of these right wing salt of the earth folks, but never fully immersed myself in that culture.
they grow up with certain ideas about america and justice, and then wind up getting screwed by some burrocrat, and they think, is this america? is that legitimate, how they took my (kids/car/job/house/stuff/money/etc.?)
Looking for answers, they turn to the patriot movement.
to be clear here,.. well no i can't, i'll be obtuse... i'm talking about the mainstream fringe element, not the prison-gang/white power/neo-anything crowd.
the patriot movement studies the founders, and seeks to expose the modern courts as a sham. and they are, but i'll bet it was always thus. my study of legal history suggests the little guy has been getting screwed since before writing was invented. techniques change.
and they are definately on to something. the idea that the common law has a lot to teach us, that's powerful.
i have a rant going on in a local discussion board, about insisting on a jury trial as a way to fight seat belt tickets.
you can really disrupt the smooth functioning of a revenue collecting agency by knowing and asserting your rights.
it's high risk, professionally, personally. But it's great fun.
the flag.
see, one of the things the fringers believe is that the yellow flag is a tip-off that you aren't in a common law court, and then they get very concerned about something called jurisdiction. as a lawyer, i concede they have a point - a large number of cases aren't about the merits, but are arguments about whether or not one is in the right court. so this isn't just a patriot thing. but the patriots have some.. unusual... source material, and tend not to know how to read and cite cases in the ways judges are used to. add in, in one actual case where i knew the judge,
if the judge is jewish and thinks that patriot = nazi, that doesn't help your case. i shouldn't have used the j word.
[see generally the volokh conspiracy volokh.com]
the flag.
see, one of the things the fringers beleive is that the yellow fringe on a flag is a symbol of the navy (or the admiralty, if that's different) and that that's a clue one is in an admiralty court instead of a common law court.
(see padilla and the guantanamo cases for how military courts can and can't screw with civilians.)
I didn't have admiralty law, not alot of call for it in missouri. what's more likely is that they are in an administrative "court" (where you really do run a risk of being denied procedural rights found in law courts, andreally do need to establish jurisdiction) or in a court established by statute and court-made rules.
But I haven't yet disproved the admiralty law claim.
I found an important clue the other day. I'm reading Churchill's history of the english speaking peoples.
I'm on volume 4 right now. These patriot folks tend not to trust anything written after 1913 or so; they harken back to the founders. The founders, it turns out, wrote a lot about how the common law, and their rights as englishmen, were being oppressed, and people were getting hauled into admiralty courts, and treated without due process.
Because, in their day, this really happened.
Between the restoration, 1689 or so, and the revolution 1776, the british did take away important rights from the colonists, and did use admiralty courts to do so.
So, when the modern patriots, suspicious of modern courts, looked to the founders, they found a lot of stuff about admiralty courts oppressing us. I hazard a guess that that is where some of this comes from.
It's just a hop skip and a jump to the yellow-fringed flag.
all for now. may update with more from churchill, or more sites or cites.
nice argument that the fringe is flag desecration and mutilation.
http://user.icx.net/~drherb/fringe.html
typical site, looks like a mix of true and false.
brad from monkey law once asked me what's up with those " a yellow fringe on the flag is a mark of the beast" folks.
i still don't have the whole scoop.
here is a site listing cases, in which such fringe arguments were sanctioned or dismissed, but that explains little.
disclaimer: i'm a little fringy myself. i'm an old hippie, been in touch with the war tax resistance movement since about watergate. i do have some law degrees, but i don't make a living at it. i've met some of these right wing salt of the earth folks, but never fully immersed myself in that culture.
they grow up with certain ideas about america and justice, and then wind up getting screwed by some burrocrat, and they think, is this america? is that legitimate, how they took my (kids/car/job/house/stuff/money/etc.?)
Looking for answers, they turn to the patriot movement.
to be clear here,.. well no i can't, i'll be obtuse... i'm talking about the mainstream fringe element, not the prison-gang/white power/neo-anything crowd.
the patriot movement studies the founders, and seeks to expose the modern courts as a sham. and they are, but i'll bet it was always thus. my study of legal history suggests the little guy has been getting screwed since before writing was invented. techniques change.
and they are definately on to something. the idea that the common law has a lot to teach us, that's powerful.
i have a rant going on in a local discussion board, about insisting on a jury trial as a way to fight seat belt tickets.
you can really disrupt the smooth functioning of a revenue collecting agency by knowing and asserting your rights.
it's high risk, professionally, personally. But it's great fun.
the flag.
see, one of the things the fringers believe is that the yellow flag is a tip-off that you aren't in a common law court, and then they get very concerned about something called jurisdiction. as a lawyer, i concede they have a point - a large number of cases aren't about the merits, but are arguments about whether or not one is in the right court. so this isn't just a patriot thing. but the patriots have some.. unusual... source material, and tend not to know how to read and cite cases in the ways judges are used to. add in, in one actual case where i knew the judge,
if the judge is jewish and thinks that patriot = nazi, that doesn't help your case. i shouldn't have used the j word.
[see generally the volokh conspiracy volokh.com]
the flag.
see, one of the things the fringers beleive is that the yellow fringe on a flag is a symbol of the navy (or the admiralty, if that's different) and that that's a clue one is in an admiralty court instead of a common law court.
(see padilla and the guantanamo cases for how military courts can and can't screw with civilians.)
I didn't have admiralty law, not alot of call for it in missouri. what's more likely is that they are in an administrative "court" (where you really do run a risk of being denied procedural rights found in law courts, andreally do need to establish jurisdiction) or in a court established by statute and court-made rules.
But I haven't yet disproved the admiralty law claim.
I found an important clue the other day. I'm reading Churchill's history of the english speaking peoples.
I'm on volume 4 right now. These patriot folks tend not to trust anything written after 1913 or so; they harken back to the founders. The founders, it turns out, wrote a lot about how the common law, and their rights as englishmen, were being oppressed, and people were getting hauled into admiralty courts, and treated without due process.
Because, in their day, this really happened.
Between the restoration, 1689 or so, and the revolution 1776, the british did take away important rights from the colonists, and did use admiralty courts to do so.
So, when the modern patriots, suspicious of modern courts, looked to the founders, they found a lot of stuff about admiralty courts oppressing us. I hazard a guess that that is where some of this comes from.
It's just a hop skip and a jump to the yellow-fringed flag.
all for now. may update with more from churchill, or more sites or cites.
nice argument that the fringe is flag desecration and mutilation.
http://user.icx.net/~drherb/fringe.html
typical site, looks like a mix of true and false.
Comments:
Post a Comment
