Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!pasteur!ames!killer!texbell!sugar!ficc!jeffd
From: jeffd@ficc.uu.net (jeff daiell)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Freedom of hate
Summary: Reply
Message-ID: <3947@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 23 Apr 89 18:20:19 GMT
References: <14130@gryphon.COM> <8132@chinet.chi.il.us> <1216@frog.UUCP> <8271@chinet.chi.il.us>
Organization: Ferranti International Controls
Lines: 51

In article <8271@chinet.chi.il.us>, patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson) writes:
> 
> 
> Generally, your tax return is not just the sheet of paper you sign and
> staple your check on, but all the other enclosures in the envelope, by
> reference thereto. A tax return is supposed to contain nothing but the
> necessary facts required to calculate the amount of tax payment and/or
> credit. A letter to the President enclosed with your tax return thanking
> him for the good work he is doing could constitute a 'frivolous' return.
> Friviolity, it seems, is *anything* not directly related to the computation
> of taxes and making settlement for same with your payment.
> 
> I quite agree the IRS occassionlly gets very zealous in the enforcement of
> its rules. But since the IRS has nothing to do with the allocation of the
> money thus collected, the lady's questions and comments probably should have
> been directed to someone at the Pentagon rather than someone at the IRS.


Whoa!  Let me see if I understand it correctly.  You have no problem
with the IRS -- an administrative agency -- playing judge and jury
and fining this woman for asking a civil question?  I hope I'm
misinterpreting things.  How would you have liked it, back when we
had both the FAA and the CAB, if you had written to one and that
agency decided the letter should have gone to the other -- and
fined *you* big bucks?
  
> Contempt charges are abused a great deal. Depends on the level of the
> court and various other circumstances as to how extreme it can be.
> In the Circuit Court of Cook County and its branches (Chicago and
> some suburbs) there are three sources of authority. The authority of
> the judges is unlimited *only* in matters related to the detirmination
> of facts in cases before them. 

Then you're lucky.  In most places, judges are considered to have
*much* broader authority -- dangerously broader, IMHO.

Anyway, back to the concept at heart: the only things that should
be illegal are those things that violate the rights of others.  
Anything else is none of the Government's flippin' business.

Para un Tejas Libre,


Jeff Daiell


-- 
       "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those 
   who, in times of moral crisis, preserved their neutrality."

                                        -- Dante