I did not know this was a thing » « Friday Cephalopod: Seachild

Delusional defenders of Kent Hovind

There isn’t much news yet out of Pensacola and the trial of Kent Hovind. There are a few protesters with signs marching around, and there are plenty of opinions, like this one by Kathleen Green: The real victim is Kent Hovind.

People hate Brother Hovind not for who he is but for whom he testifies to: Jesus Christ. He preaches the Gospel of Jesus Christ and points people to the truth of the Holy Bible and the lies of the culture, the educational system, and the media. He is not a tax evader; he is not a tax protester. He is a patriot who loves America, loves freedom, loves Jesus Christ and is unashamedly about his purpose to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world. He cares for the souls of people.

Um, actually…

The majority of the people who arrested and convicted Hovind of tax evasion were not atheists; we haven’t infiltrated every branch of government, you know, and Northern Florida is really a Christian stronghold. If we atheists were running the show, though, we wouldn’t be criminalizing Christianity, but the country would look a lot different: there wouldn’t be any debate over abortion or gay rights, and scientists would be getting elected to congress all over the place.

And I’m afraid Hovind is a convicted tax evader. That isn’t the issue here. That’s a settled fact. Another op-ed by Dee Holmes makes that clear.

Kent Hovind was convicted of 12 counts of tax evasion, 45 counts of structuring financial transactions to avoid bank reporting requirements and one count of obstruction of the IRS in 2006. In addition to his 10-year sentence, the jury found Hovind and his wife, Jo, liable for a forfeiture of $430,400 as part of the structuring conviction.

Really. That’s what got him jailed, not his Christian beliefs, or even his kooky Young Earth Creationist beliefs. If those are crimes, why isn’t Ray Comfort or Kirk Cameron in a prison camp right now? It could be argued that Cameron deserves it for his recent movies. But stupidity, ignorance, incompetence, and lousy movies really are not criminal offenses.

I am kind of annoyed at anyone who claims Hovind is a patriot. He isn’t. He is one of those Sovereign Citizen kooks who has renounced his citizenship and claims Florida and America have no standing to try him.

1.  WITHDRAW YOUR CONSENT for the proceedings. Not just withdrawal of consent from the criminal trial, but withdrawal of consent to the current fraudulent de facto STATE OF FLORIDA, and United States. This apparently renders unlawful and fraudulent all Commander in Chief presidential Executive Orders. Thus, despite being in prison for eight years, I am not the property of the Court. Under no circumstances may I be detained in any way whatsoever, nor at any time, past, present or future.

Ta-da! America doesn’t exist! Now let me go home!

2. CLAIM THAT NO COURT HAS JURISDICTION because he is, quote A shipowner who sends his vessel into a foreign port, and is In Uniform, with a fully marked vessel flying flags claiming dual citizenship status.

3. RENOUNCE YOUR U.S CITIZENSHIP (again): I have never been, I am not now, nor will I ever be, a 14th Amendment UNITED STATES or Article XIV citizen.

It’s actually rather revealing that so many people defend a guy who has been ripping off Christians for years and who has renounced America by claiming that he’s being persecuted for his Christianity and is a True American Patriot. It’s impressive how powerful a good loud thump of the Bible is, overwhelming people’s own interests.

I did not know this was a thing » « Friday Cephalopod: Seachild

Comments

  1. drst says

    there wouldn’t be any debate over abortion or gay rights

    That’s a bit of a stretch. I’ve seen plenty of atheists on the internet opposing abortion because science (especially common in the libertarian atheists IME).

  2. richardh says

    Brother Hovind

    He’s a monk, then? They take vows of poverty, don’t they?

    [am I doing this sovereign:citizen-speak right? Hello? Hellooo?]

  3. howardhershey says

    It is my understanding that non-citizens living in and earning money in the U.S. have to pay taxes just like us native-born or naturalized citizens. They would have to do so even if they wore a ship-owner’s uniform and even if the government running the country were merely “de facto”. OTOH, if, as he claims, he is a non-citizen, he can always be deported as an undesirable alien by the “de facto” government. Sounds like a good solution to me.

  4. says

    Hovind’s supporters have been calling for the judge running the trial to be “taken out” (by God) calling her a Jezebel, and the sovereign citizens are there too. One of them went to the jail Hovind is being held in to visit an inmate supposedly “saved” by Hovind recently, only to find he would have to give them his social security number. He could not, since that would be entering into a contract with the state, and so had to leave.

    Brother Hovind

    I’ve seen Pastor Hovind recently too, even though he’s not ordained. Perhaps he’ll be Pope by the time he leaves prison.

  5. says

    It is my understanding that non-citizens living in and earning money in the U.S. have to pay taxes just like us native-born or naturalized citizens.

    We do indeed. Now, where’s my representation?

  6. k_machine says

    @3
    It’s my understanding that sovereign citizens have an idea of a dual state: evil de facto US and good de jure US (where you don’t have to pay taxes etc.). So Hovind sees himself as a member of only the good US after renouncing his citizenship.

  7. Crimson Clupeidae says

    It’s amazing what people will do and say to avoid admitting that 1) their leaders are clearly in it for the money and 2) they’ve been dumb enough to fall for it and send money.

  8. Rey Fox says

    If we atheists were running the show, though, we wouldn’t be criminalizing Christianity, but the country would look a lot different: there wouldn’t be any debate over abortion or gay rights, and scientists would be getting elected to congress all over the place.

    Nuh uh! NUH UH! Atheism is only lack of belief!

  9. Trebuchet says

    The real question is this: Is there Gold Fringe on the flag in that courtroom?

    They see courts as being a place of business intended to make profit for the government corporation. They sometimes refer to these courts as “de facto courts.” When they receive a summons to appear in court, they insist that this is not a summons but, in fact, an invitation to a place of business to discuss the matter at hand.[30][26] When one initially enters a court they are then operating under “admiralty law” rather than (their version of) “common law”. American freemen will sometimes try to argue that if the flag in the court has a gold fringe, this signifies that it is an admiralty court. British courts tend not to have flags of any type, so this claim has largely failed to cross the Atlantic.

    From here: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Freemen_on_the_land#Admiralty_law_and_court_appearance_techniques

  10. Menyambal says

    Where I come from, it’s Brother Kent. Calling someone brother, but still using their last name, is not brotherhood.

    And, hey, citizenry in a nation rates ‘way below Christianity. The two are so unequal as to not belong in the same paragraph – especially as Brother Kent has practically renounced his nation.

  11. justiceforall says

    This article is a joke… babbling vomit

    Get a life you [deleted. Say it again and get banned].

  16. weatherwax says

    #15 justiceforall provided link: “There are many anti-Hovind detractors. These people are generally atheist evolution proponents that would like to see Hovind spend the rest of his life in jail, (for tax related charges, of course!). It is obvious that these people are not rational, and are motivated against Hovind based on ideological philosophy.”

    Got us there. We believe in rationality, not delusional devotion to an imaginary sky daddy. And that people who run scams belong in jail.

    “Judge Rodgers has an anti-Christian bias, having issued a court order in the past to a school district to refrain from promoting religious activity at school events.”

    That only proves she follows the law, not that she’s biased for or against any particular religion.

  17. Randomfactor says

    Why aren’t these guys just praying Hovind out of jail?

    Have they no faith?

  18. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Justice for all, your presuppositional links aren’t evidence. They are your equivalent of claiming your deity isn’t imaginary, but providing not one iota of solid physical evidence for it.
    Try the real legal system, where you not only point to the law, but the court decisions involving the law.
    Then show, with that evidence, Hovind is not required to pay taxes on his personal income.
    Until you can show real evidence, your claims are dismissed as delusional fool wishing.

  20. Usernames! (ᵔᴥᵔ) says

    CRIMINALS PROSECUTING KENT HOVIND
    — justiceforall

    It is pretty neat how the links in your blog end up back to the original posts. It is almost like your logic is equally distant from a single point.

    Reminds me of the quote from Wolcott Gibbs: “Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind.”

  22. says

    Why aren’t these guys just praying Hovind out of jail?

    And what if Kent Hovind is exactly where God wants him to be? After all, he claims to have brought hundreds of prisoners “to the Lord” so perhaps that his true calling, and any attempt to get himself out of jail is disobedience in the eyes of God…

  23. grumpyoldfart says

    It’s actually rather revealing that so many people defend a guy who has been ripping off Christians for years

    They are too embarrassed to admit that they were conned, so they simply deny that it ever happened. The thinking goes like this: If the preacher had conned me then I would not have stayed with him, but I have stayed with him – which proves that I haven’t been conned.

  24. robro says

    They see courts as being a place of business intended to make profit for the government corporation.

    Sadly, the DoJ report on Ferguson, Mo. suggests that’s exactly what the courts and the police are up to there: making a profit off the poor.

  25. raven says

    3. RENOUNCE YOUR U.S CITIZENSHIP (again): “I have never been, I am not now, nor will I ever be, a 14th Amendment UNITED STATES or Article XIV citizen”.

    1. This is cafeteria US citizenship. They simply pick and choose what laws to obey and which not to obey.

    2. It’s the same with the bible. They pick and choose what to believe and what not. Even Kent Hovind is a cafeteria xian, as he is not a Flat Earther like it says in the bible. (I think anyway, he might be.).

  26. gupwalla says

    Hovind has about two dozen people flapping their gums (and typing fingers) in his defense. They will talk about everything but the evidence. The evidence is unkind to Hovind and his alleged co-conspirator.

    To answer someone above: Yes, there is a decorative fringe on the courtroom flag. No, that does not invalidate the court’s jurisdiction. Yes, Hovind’s supporters are in a twist about it anyway.

    Hovind and Hansen are on trial for conspiring (via the U.S. Mail) to file false notices of liens in a stubborn and futile attempt to prevent the IRS from repossessing Hovind’s property to pay off Hovind’s previous tax liability., in direct violation of a federal court order instructing them to not do that very thing.

    I suspect they will be found guilty because the government’s evidence is both meticulous and damming, and because the defense strategy involves the co-defendents throwing one another under the bus.

  27. Ogvorbis: qui culpam, non redimetur says

    Um, even if he renounces US citizenship, he would still have to pay taxes and obey all the laws, right? Or am I (as usual) mossing something?

  28. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I suspect they will be found guilty because the government’s evidence is both meticulous and damming, and because the defense strategy involves the co-defendents throwing one another under the bus.

    Actually, which isn’t their plan, is that their own words and actions will throw themselves under the steamroller.

  29. says

    “CRIMINALS PROSECUTING KENT HOVIND:”

    “PROSECUTOR SILENCING JURY AND EVIDENCE:”

    “PROOF: Judge Margaret Casey Rodgers is anti-christian and bias:”

    “PROOF: Judge Margaret Casey Rodgers anti-christian Judge:”

    Okay JusticeforAll, let me explain the world to you. I am an actual lawyer, with a law degree, admitted to the bar, and have nearly twenty years of experience as a practicing attorney. You have no idea what the law is, or how it works. Your links are flatly wrong on almost every point of law. The people prosecuting Kent Hovind are not criminals. Hovind, on the other hand, is a convicted felon. The judge isn’t silencing the jury or suppressing evidence. The instructions given are very ordinary instructions that are given in many court cases to exclude irrelevant arguments and improper pleadings. The judge is not anti-Christian. She is, in fact, enforcing the law of the United States. Law of which you clearly don’t have any understanding.

  30. chrislawson says

    There’s a great legal document listing the myriad ways the “Sovereign Citizen” and related movements work (via Making Light) — WARNING: it is an EXTREMELY LONG document, but unusually lively reading for a summation of a divorce judgement.

    Some of the high points (my emphases throughout):

    Defining terms, or, what is an OPCA?

    This Court has developed a new awareness and understanding of a category of vexatious litigant. As we shall see, while there is often a lack of homogeneity, and some individuals or groups have no name or special identity, they (by their own admission or by descriptions given by others) often fall into the following descriptions: Detaxers; Freemen or Freemen-on-the-Land; Sovereign Men or Sovereign Citizens; Church of the Ecumenical Redemption International (CERI); Moorish Law; and other labels – there is no closed list. In the absence of a better moniker, I have collectively labelled them as Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument litigants [“OPCA litigants”], to functionally define them collectively for what they literally are. These persons employ a collection of techniques and arguments promoted and sold by ‘gurus’ (as hereafter defined) to disrupt court operations and to attempt to frustrate the legal rights of governments, corporations, and individuals.

    On magic hats

    Another branch of the immunity category flows from an argument that a person has some status or has undertaken certain steps that renders the OPCA litigant immune to court action. I have given this category the name ‘magic hats’ to capture the manner in which OPCA gurus and litigants approach these arguments. They freely wear, remove, and switch ‘magic hats’ as need be. Many OPCA schemes are a combination, or succession, of ‘magic hats’.

    On magical thinking in the OPCA movement

    When gurus do appear in court their schemes uniformly fail, which is why most leave court appearances to their customers. That explains why it is not unusual to find that an OPCA litigant cannot even explain their own materials. They did not write them. They do not (fully) understand them. OPCA litigants appear, engage in a court drama that is more akin to a magic spell ritual than an actual legal proceeding, and wait to see if the court is entranced and compliant. If not, the litigant returns home to scrutinize at what point the wrong incantation was uttered, an incorrectly prepared artifact waved or submitted.

    On the split person

    Mr. Meads clearly subscribes to the OPCA concept that he has two aspects, what I later discuss as the ‘double/split person’ concept. The German folk term “doppelganger”, a kind of paranormal double, is a useful concept to describe this curious duality. Mr. Meads labels one aspect as a “person” or “corporate entity” while the other is his “flesh and blood” form.

    On the uses of the split person (my personal favourite from the judge)

    From a review of these documents, it appears that Mr. Meads is purporting to split himself into two aspects. One gets his property and benefits, the other his debts and liabilities. The ‘Mr. Meads with liabilities’ has entirely indemnified the ‘Mr. Meads with property’. He also appears to instruct me and the Bank of Canada to use a secret bank account, with the same number as his social insurance number or birth certificate, to pay all his child and spousal support obligations, and provide him $100 billion in precious metals.

    On the quality of OPCA logic

    It appears that Mr. Meads’ guru is American… For example, in one of his April 27, 2012 “Affidavit in Support of Order to Show Cause” documents he references “Title 18 United States Code”, which is the criminal and penal code for the federal government of the United States. Stating the obvious, this [Canadian] court will not be applying that legislation.

    On the success rate of OPCA strategies

    You cannot identify one instance where a court has rolled over and behaved as told. Not one. Your spells, when cast, fail.

    The money quote

    This is, of course, nonsense. As I have noted to Mr. Meads, these materials have no force or meaning in law, other than they indicate an intention on his part to evade his lawful obligations and the authority of the Court and government.

  31. zetopan says

    justiceforall:
    Electing to defend a con artist, who is peddling irrationalism, by providing links to a web site peddling more irrationalism does not constitute “proof” except in the minds of most extreme intellectually unendowed irrationalists. If you examine the court documents, Hovid went to prison for tax evasion, not for his astoundly stupefying counterfactual beliefs. I see that you share some of his same counterfactual belief aberrations, which actually starts with your wildly inaccurate pseudonym.

  33. Al Dente says

    Like many Sovereign Citizens Kent Hovind thinks that if he utters the precise magical incantation then he will be set free, given large amounts of money, and the government will never bother him again. So creationism and Biblical literalism aren’t the only delusions Hovind suffers from.

  35. Ichthyic says

    I’ve seen plenty of atheists on the internet opposing abortion because science

    anyone who thinks science has a bearing on how the right to privacy is applied, never bothered to even read Roe V Wade, and can be rightly completely ignored, or laughed at, your choice.

  36. raven says

    I’ve seen plenty of atheists on the internet opposing abortion because science…

    1. Which makes no sense whatsoever. Science has nothing to say about the morality of abortion. Morality is a human construct.

    2. It is also very stupid and immoral. The issue isn’t abortion. It is whether other people can control your life and own your body and make major life choices for you and a future human.

    If you don’t own and control your own body, what are you? A slave.

    It’s quite possible to think abortion is an undesirable act. And still support the right of other people to make their own decisions and live their own lives. I know several who do exactly that.

    If you don’t believe in abortion don’t have one. If you are going to try to run other people’s lives, get lost, just NO. That is immoral.

  37. twas brillig (stevem) says

    re Raven@36:

    Which makes no sense whatsoever. Science has nothing to say about the morality of abortion[controverse]. Morality is a human construct.
    [emphasis added by brillig]

    <risking derail> This was a major point pseudo-raised at The Infinite Monkey Cage, Live at NYU Thurday (3/5/15). The question, proposed, and mumblejumbled past, was the question, “Is SCIENCE good or evil”. They kinda said “this science is okay, this other science is bad, …” While never addressing the Good/Evil part of the question. I agree with raven, that it is a fallacy to identify Science (or any particular field of which) as good or evil. Science is a tool, and it is only how it was used, that observers can assign it the moral label of “good” or “evil”. That G&E are the actions WE take, that G&E can only be applied to our behavior. Science just is, Science is not a being that can choose to be good or bad. It is just a method of how to understand the reality we exist in.
    Analogy time: Is a knife good or evil? When a chef uses it to make a meal; it’s good, when a slasher uses it to kill somebody, it’s evil. WRONG. The chef was good, the slasher was evil, the knife was just a tool they used to accomplish their tasks.
    wrapping up: The show was good (in the quality sense, not the morality sense). The above is just a minor complaint of a well done show. Nye was an ‘almost adequate’ substitute for the missing Tyson (who was blocked by weather, flying back from Montana. Redirected to Boston, then delayed at LaGuardia by a previous plane skidding off the landing strip. He SKYPE’d to the show, briefly, from his airplane, still taxiing at LaGuardia.)

  38. Igneous Rick says

    I thought “Render unto Caesar” was pretty clear in its meaning. I guess if you are selfish enough and self-righteous enough you can twist anything to suit your purposes.

  39. says

    @38:Rick

    Hovind’s claim is that none of what the government says he owed belonged to the government. In other words, he did not have to render anything to Caesar, because it all dedicated to the Lord’s word — i.e. it belonged to God, not Caesar.

    As with anything in the Bible, it’s very easy to argue your way around just about any commandment, no matter how clear it is.

  40. says

    I was listening to one of Hovind’s calls from prison this week and apparently he has, or will be, publishing a book/pamphlet on an email debate he had with PZ at some time in the past? It one of 37 he supposedly wrote while behind bars.