REPORT - Bill Benson in Federal Court on the 16th Amendment

RestoreTheRepublic.com - Allan Stevo | Two years ago at a tax trial in Chicago, the IRS made an enemy of me when for 5 straight days I stopped by the federal courthouse and saw government attorneys, and the judge as well, giving a guy named Bob Keliher a hard time. Eventually, Bob would end up at a federal prison camp in Duluth, MN.

I’d just seen Freedom to Fascism a few months earlier and was just beginning to make sense out of its statements about the sixteenth amendment. What the federal attorneys and judges showed me that week was that, regardless of the law, Bob Keliher looked a whole lot more decent than the government employees who persecuted him. I honestly had no complaints with the IRS until I saw that trial.

Two years later, on October 28, 2008, I walked into a courtroom in the federal courthouse in Chicago and had that lesson expanded upon.

If you follow this link: http://RestoreTheRepublic.net/audio1/benson.mp3 you can hear what I heard yesterday day in court. The US Justice Department requesting – 1. A list of people who have purchased the work of Bill Benson. 2. A court order forbidding Bill Benson from publicly expressing his disagreement with lower judges in the federal court system over the issue of the income tax. 3. A court order preventing Benson from selling his collection of public records – IRS documents, government forms, copies of Supreme Court decisions.

By just listening to the oral arguments, what you will miss will be the site of my jaw dropping open when I realized this wasn’t some “fringe” (or “nutty” to use the words of Federal Judge Bauer yesterday) 16^th Amendment trial. For all practical purposes, it was a 1^st Amendment trial. The key question was “Does the government get to limit Bill Benson’s rights to say ‘You can believe whatever you want, but I disagree with the decisions of the court in these cases….and I agree with the opinion of the courts in these other cases……”

The idea of socialism and other forms of statism is regularly praised and criticized in American discourse. The idea of free speech, to most people, remains largely sacrosanct. That’s something that made the behavior of Judges Bauer and Evans especially shocking.

By listening only to the oral arguments you would miss attorney Jeffrey Dickstein raising his voice as he waved the public documents in the air, the publicly available government documents that Benson is being tried for distributing.

You would have missed seeing the “time’s up” light go on, and the judge in the middle immediately cutting off Dickstein. You would have missed that the “time’s up” light went on, the Assistant Attorney General tried to wrap up, and the judge informed her that she could take more time.

If you listen to the oral arguments, you won’t miss judge Bauer claiming that the Supremes have over and again upheld the 16^th Amendment as justification for the income tax. Oh yeah judge Bauer? Well, Dickstein didn’t care much for that. He insisted that judge Bauer name those cases. He couldn’t and another judge saved him from his bumbling self by informing Dickstein “Judges ask the questions! You have to answer them.”

By just listening to the oral arguments, you miss that there were 40 people in court watching the oral arguments in support of Mr. Benson. You miss that the usual two bailiffs were sitting in the front of the court, keeping things in order, but that two more bailiffs than usual were standing in the back of the court intimidating the gallery.

If you just hear the oral arguments, you miss that Bill Benson and about 20 supporters went down to the second floor cafeteria and talked for another 45 minutes after they were told to leave the hallway of their public courtrooms. You would miss the detail shared by Dickstein that Edwin Vieira lent some of his expertise and helped Dickstein prep for the case. You would have missed Dickstein’s admission that Dickstein has been banned from practicing before the US Supreme Court and that Vieira is among the folks considering filling in for him when this case goes to the Supreme Court. You miss all that, but what you get by listening to the oral arguments is – 1. A lawyer passionately arguing his convictions for every bit of his allotted 15 minutes, 2. Bill Benson, getting insulted and cheated by his own government, 3. A government attorney shamelessly trying to limit Benson’s freedom of speech under the guise of “commercial speech.”

I don’t know if Benson’s book is right or not and I’m not going to make it a point to read it right now. There are other fish I’d like to fry. What I do know is that government is bullying one of my elders and telling him that he won’t be able to shout “HELP!” at the crimes he sees being perpetrated.

Allan Stevo is a teacher and the author of three books. This year, Allan was a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. To contact Allan Stevo, you may write him at allanstevo@yahoo.com.

Note from the author: If you’ve enjoyed this piece, please, take a moment to say thank you to the gentlemen who inspired it. You can visit Bill Benson through his website, www.thelawthatneverwas.com/ something he can still access while he’s a free man. To contact Bob Keliher, will take a little more effort via mail: Robert J. Kelliher / Inmate Number: 16959-424 / DULUTH FEDERAL PRISON CAMP / P.O. BOX 1000 / DULUTH, MN 55814. Sending a few dollars in a money order will help make Keliher’s time in jail a little easier. Dickstein’s coverage of the case can be found at: http://jeffdickstein.com/