The tiny town of Lakota, N.D., is quickly becoming a key testing ground for the legality of the use of unmanned drones by law enforcement after one of its residents became the first American citizen to be arrested with the help of a Predator surveillance drone.

The bizarre case started when six cows wandered onto Rodney Brossart’s 3,000 acre farm. Brossart, an alleged anti-government “sovereignist,” believed he should have been able to keep the cows, so he and two family members chased police off his land with high powered rifles.

After a 16-hour standoff, the Grand Forks police department SWAT team, armed with a search warrant, used an agreement they’ve had with Homeland Security for about three years, and called in an unmanned aerial vehicle to pinpoint Brossart’s location on the ranch. The SWAT team stormed in and arrested Brossart on charges of terrorizing a sheriff, theft, criminal mischief, and other charges, according to documents.

Brossart says he “had no clue” they used a drone during the standoff until months after his arrest.

CONTINUED at US News.

Pornographic toys, magazines and videos were stolen from a Linda sex shop, but the store’s owner is surprised by what wasn’t taken.

Kevin Couch owns Fantasy Factory across the street from a strip club, and Monday night someone broke into his adult store. But the culprits never touched the cash register.

“They just took the toys and left,” he said. “They didn’t take the money or anything so I was lost. The sheriff’s department was lost. When he saw all the stuff in here and he goes ‘that’s all they took?’ and I was like ‘yeah.’”

So Kevin thinks it was kids just trying to make a little mischief in forbidden territory.

“They see the adult store here, they can’t come in here they can’t purchase this stuff so they are bored and they break in and come in and take it at night when no one is here,” he said.

So far, there are no suspects, just a suspected age range: boys probably about 13 to 17 years old.

“If I was to do it I’d probably go for cash, not adult toys,” Linda resident Rodney Foster said. “I don’t really understand why somebody would take that, that’s kind of gross and weird.”

The thieves busted in by using a chunk of asphalt to crash through the door. It will cost Kevin about $800 to fix the door and he’s out about $150 worth of merchandise.

It’s the second time his store has been broken into in a year.

Source: CBS Sacramento. Video at link.

*Note.. that is not a picture of the store front, it’s just funny.

Regulators now have a more complete picture of money transfers in the final days of bankrupt brokerage MF Global, but must sort out which transactions were legitimate before more money can be released to customers, a top official told Reuters on Wednesday.

Jill Sommers, who is heading the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s review of MF Global, said regulators “are far enough along the trail” that they know where the money went.

“Now it’s just finding out which ones of those transactions are legitimate and which ones of them are illegitimate,” Sommers said.

The CFTC and the trustee liquidating the firm are under intense pressure from lawmakers and customers to provide answers about what happened to hundreds of millions of dollars in customer money that went missing as the firm collapsed.

MF Global officials, including former Chief Executive Jon Corzine, have told lawmakers they simply do not know where the money is, and deny authorizing any misuse of customer money.

“We certainly don’t want to lead anyone to believe we don’t know what happened. We do know, and we see where all the transactions went,” said Sommers, a Republican commissioner, in an interview on Wednesday.

She declined to reveal details on the fund transfers until investigators have determined the purpose of all the transactions. Sommers could not estimate when regulators will complete their investigation, but said “really good progress” is being made.

Fellow CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton, a Democrat, tempered expectations. Chilton said in a statement after Sommers’ remarks were published that a thorough accounting of all customer funds remains a work in progress.

CONTINUED at Reuters.

Jon Corzine told the House Agriculture Committee, “I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date.” The public is outraged that the former CEO of bankrupt global financial-derivatives broker and prime dealer in US Treasury securities MF Global doesn’t know where the missing $1.2 billion in client funds went.

Corzine is the member a few exclusive clubs: he is a Goldman Sachs alum, former US senator, and former New Jersey governor. After the incumbent Corzine was beat by Chris Christie in the 2009 New Jersey gubernatorial race, the MF board probably rejoiced, believing the guy to fix their problems was suddenly available. Now he’s in the club of taking a mere 20 months to create the eighth largest bankruptcy in history.

As a stand-alone entity, MF Global was born in 2007 when it was spun off from UK hedge-fund giant, Man Group. MF booked revenues of $4 billion that year from interest earned by using its customers’ funds, an operation that sounds like fractionized banking: short-term embezzlement used to make profits.

For banks, the practice was sealed in English common law in 1811 in the court case of Carr vs. Carr, where Master of the Rolls Sir William Grant ruled that debts mentioned in a will included bank accounts since the money had been deposited into the bank and wasn’t earmarked in a sealed bag. The deposit was thus a loan rather than a bailment.

The same Judge Grant ruled the same way five years later in Devaynes vs. Noble, despite an attorney’s argument that “a banker is rather a bailee of his customer’s funds than his debtor … because the money in … [his] hands is rather a deposit than a debt, and may therefore be instantly demanded and taken up.”

In 1848, in Foley vs. Hill and Others, Lord Cottenham ruled,

Money, when paid into a bank, ceases altogether to be the money of the principal; it is then the money of the banker, who is bound to an equivalent by paying a similar sum to that deposited with him when he is asked for it.… The money placed in the custody of a banker to do with it as he pleases.

CONTINUED at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Written by Doug French.

Meet the Brossarts, a North Dakota family deemed so dangerous that the local sheriff needed unleashed an unmanned Predator drone to help bring them in.

The Brossart’s alleged crime? They wouldn’t give back three cows and their calves that wandered onto their 3,000-acre farm this summer.

The same aerial vehicles used by the CIA to track down and assassinate terrorists and militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan are now being deployed by cops to spy on Americans in their own backyards.

The Brossarts are the first known subjects of the high-flying new surveillance technology that the federal government has made available to some local sheriffs and police chiefs – all without Congressional approval or search warrants.

Local authorities say the Brossarts are known for being armed, anti-government separatists whose sprawling farm is used as a compound. Rodney Brossart, 55, and his wife Susan live in a house and a trailer and two RVs with seven of their eight adult children.

When the cattle wandered onto the Brossarts’ land, Sheriff Kelly Janke, who patrols a county of just 3,000 people, rounded up some sheriff’s deputies and arrested Mr Brossart for failing to report the stray livestock.

They also took away his daughter, Abby, after she allegedly hit an officer during the arrest.

When cops returned to collect the lost cattle, three of Brossart’s sons – Alex, Jacob and Thomas – confronted Sheriff Janke with rifles and shotguns and would not allow officers on the farm.

CONTINUED at the Daily Mail.

Jon S. Corzine, the former U.S. senator and New Jersey governor who presided over the collapse of the commodities brokerage MF Global, says he cannot explain what happened to “many hundreds of millions of dollars” that the firm was holding for customers.

In testimony prepared for delivery to Congress on Thursday, Corzine says he was “stunned” to learn shortly before the firm sought bankruptcy protection at the end of October that MF Global could not account for the money.

“I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date,” the former MF Global chief executive says, according to the testimony.

Regulators pushed MF Global into bankruptcy court on Halloween after an effort to sell the troubled firm unraveled. The firm is now in liquidation.

The firm was required to keep clients’ money separated from its own. But more than $1.2 billion might be missing, the trustee overseeing the firm’s liquidation said last month. An attorney for the trustee reiterates that assessment in testimony submitted for Thursday’s hearing.

The FBI, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and other authorities are investigating and have had difficulty figuring out what happened to the missing funds.

Meanwhile, the firm’s collapse has become a major disruption for customers and others who depended on MF Global.

The House Agriculture Committee, whose jurisdiction includes agricultural commodities and one of the federal agencies that regulates MF Global, subpoenaed Corzine to appear at a hearing Thursday on the firm’s bankruptcy. The committee turned down Corzine’s request to testify voluntarily in January, he says.

CONTINUED at the Washington Post.

*Taken from Deal Book.

The amount of customer money missing from the collapsed trading firm MF Global may be more than $1.2 billion — double previous estimates — the trustee dismantling the firm’s brokerage unit said on Monday.

But the surprise finding, which caught regulators off guard, may be overstated, according to a person briefed on the investigation. Some regulators say they believe that the trustee double-counted $220 million that had been transferred between units of MF Global, this person said.

Still, the much higher number highlights the disarray of MF Global’s records and raises significantly the hurdle for tens of thousands of customers seeking to get their money back. The trustee’s estimate represents a significant portion of customer funds held by MF Global.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from CBS St. Louis.

Thieves have nabbed a 3-foot-long copper sword atop Lincoln’s Tomb in what is believed to be the first theft at the site in more than a century.

An employee noticed last week that the sword was cut from a statue of a Civil War artillery officer, the (Springfield) State Journal-Register reported Saturday. Officials think the sword was stolen sometime between September and early November.

Nothing had been stolen from the Springfield site, which is the final resting place of Abraham Lincoln, since the sword on the same statue was taken more than 100 years ago, said Dave Blanchette, a spokesman for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. Then, the sword was bronze.

CONTINUED..

*Written by Cody Bennett.

What we now know as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) began as an act by President Lincoln and Congress in 1862. It created the position of the commissioner of Internal Revenue and enacted an income tax to pay for the expenses of the Civil War (Revenue Act of 1862). Initial rates were around 3% for incomes exceeding $800, which allowed for the majority of the working populace to be exempt. However, by 1864, rates had risen to 5% for low-income families, and up to 10% for anyone making $10,000 or more. By the end of the war, more than 10% of Union families were paying some sort of federal income tax.

In 1872, Congress allowed the temporary wartime tax to expire and federal income taxes didn’t become an issue again until 1894. The case of Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan & Trust Co. was a five-to-four landmark decision by the Supreme Court that the Income Tax Act of 1894 was unconstitutional on the grounds that it was a direct tax. Under the Constitution at that time, direct taxes must be apportioned among the states based on population. Since the act allowed for Congress to distribute the funds without apportionment, it was deemed unconstitutional.

Early in the 20th century, there was a populist movement for tax reform that climaxed on February 3, 1913 with the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

This is one of the worst blemishes on the United States Constitution. It holds no regard for individual liberty and exists only to further the existence of the State, by whatever means necessary. It fundamentally changed the entire nation, nullifying a very important part of the Constitution. Forty-two states ratified the amendment. I can happily say that Florida didn’t even consider the issue.
The Bureau of Internal Revenue was founded once again. In the first year of its new existence, the BIR doubled its workforce, creating a whole new system of collection and organization. The newly revitalized institution was slowly becoming a standing army of tax collectors.

The first Form 1040 appeared that same year after Congress levied a 1% tax on net incomes above $6,000, and a 6%-10% progressive tax on incomes exceeding $500,000. However, five years later, the top bracket was being taxed up to 77% in order to finance our efforts in WWI. Percentages dropped sharply during the 1920’s, and remained low until the Great Depression.

In less than a century, what was basically a tax revolution seems commonplace to most Americans. Filing an annual income tax return has become an accepted must do. And you should file for a return, not because the IRS will get you, but because that money belongs to you anyway. The problem is that it shouldn’t have been taken from you in the first place.

I have a buddy who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He paid $2700 total in NY State and NYC income taxes for the fiscal year 2010. He only got $135 on his return. If he were investing $2700 into private stocks and received the same sort of return, I can bet he would fire his broker, withdraw his assets, and invest elsewhere.

The problem, though, is that you can’t fire the federal government, and you can’t opt out of paying taxes, either. The money Congress appropriates each year for its budget is your money. For too long they’ve been making mal-investments resulting in bad returns. The Chicago Climate Exchange is a good example of this. It was supposed to be a $10 trillion a year industry. Now it’s bankrupt.

In the 1950’s the BIR changed its name to the “Internal Revenue Service” to emphasize the “service aspect of their work”, even though its essential function remained the same. This is propaganda at its finest.

One of my heroes, Karl Hess, practically had his life ruined by the Internal Revenue Service in the 1960’s. He was the principle speechwriter for Barry Goldwater in the ’64 presidential election. Goldwater lost to Lyndon B. Johnson by a landslide. Shortly thereafter, Johnson had the IRS audit Hess. They charged him with tax resistance, confiscated nearly all of his property, and placed a 100% lien on all of his future earnings. You call that “service”?

When Hess questioned an IRS collector about a certain deduction that didn’t seem right, the agent told him, “it doesn’t matter if it’s right, what matters is the law.”

Feeling that the IRS would have a good sense of what is right and what is law, Hess sent them a copy of the Declaration of Independence with a letter attached telling them he would never pay taxes again. The IRS responded by revoking his ability to use American money. When he told them that he wouldn’t be able to feed himself if he couldn’t use money, they replied, “That’s not our problem.”

Hess became a heavy-duty welder, using only cash and bartering for food and supplies. He went on to become a prominent practitioner of “appropriate technology” and has been a major influence on libertarian thought over the last fifty years. He died in 1994…an anarchist.

If 10 million Americans had joined Hess in his anti-tax crusade, it would have transformed, perhaps even abolished the way we handle taxes in this country. I suggest we do exactly that.

Abolish the Internal Revenue Service.

The IRS is the single-most authoritarian institution in the country. In 1998, under Clinton’s watch, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights III was passed. It’s hardly a step toward more liberty, though. This law shifts the “burden of proof” from the taxpayer to the IRS. This means the IRS can legally seize assets and enforce liens without obtaining judgment in court. It allows for those in power to silence their political enemies by physical coercion. THIS IS TYRANNY.

Economist Murray Rothbard defines a State as two things: a) an entity that acquires its revenue from the general population by physical coercion, and b) an entity who has a monopoly on the provisions for defense and protection.
The IRS is the physical arm of the state—the hand in your pocket—that takes what does not belong to it, and turns it over to congress for appropriation without apportionment among the many states. And if you don’t allow their hands in your pockets, they’ll be around your neck.

We are at a critical point in history. Our children and grandchildren will ask us, decades from now, where we were and what we did. Will we be the silent observers? Or will we lead a charge for independence? Will we be able to tell them stories of how we actually dismantled the system, and that we did it without throwing bricks or turning over police vehicles, that we killed the beast from within, using its weaknesses against it, that the revolution was not a lie?

*Taken from MSNBC.

Authorities say four people were indicted in a Houston bank robbery after bragging about it on Facebook.

Federal prosecutors say two former tellers at the International Bank of Commerce recruited a boyfriend and a brother to steal more than $62,000 on March 23.

Prosecutors say former tellers 18-year-old Estefany Danelia Martinez and 19-year-old Anna Margarita Rivera; Martinez’s boyfriend, 19-year-old Ricky Gonzalez; and Rivera’s brother, 22-year-old Arturo Solano were indicted Wednesday on charges of bank robbery and embezzlement.

Authorities say an anonymous tip led investigators to Facebook posts. In one Martinez wrote, “IM RICH.” Another post said: “WIPE MY TEETH WITH HUNDEREDS.”

Gonzalez’s attorney, Lance Hamm, says his client is “extremely remorseful for what he’s accused of doing.”

Attorneys for the others did not immediately return messages Wednesday night.