Uncle Sam loves Tax Day

It's Tax Day, yo! Sure, a large percentage of folks reading this probably filed their taxes months ago, and have already blown whatever refund came their way on gigantic televisions or Lasik eye surgery, but for those who procrastinated, or for those who are legitimate enough that filing requires more than the most basic version of TurboTax and a box of wine ... this is it. Today is the day. Tax Day 2012.

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Sovereign's banner

Sovereign citizen Timothy Garrison of Mount Vernon went to federal prison for 42 months a few weeks back for filing false tax returns and threatening to arrest Skagit County officials for arresting him. His basic problem was that the government had a jail and he didn't. Nonetheless, his side is winning more converts who drive around with homemade licenses and believe that the laws of America don't apply to them.

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Back in September we wrote about a 9/11 "Truther" that was offering $1,000 to anyone who could prove him wrong about one aspect of his conspiracy theory regarding the Sept. 11 attacks. The following video shows what happened when someone took him up on that challenge.

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Last week we brought you tale of Seattle resident and friend of the paper Brad Hole and his rather unenjoyable fishing trip to Chilliwack, Canada. Hole, as it turned out, was one of several American anglers who got their tires slashed while they were trying to hook some of the area's famous salmon.

Since then, the town of Chilliwack has been a fit, fending off accusations of anti-Americanism.

Now the city's tourism department is doing whatever it can to convince people that Canadians are every bit as amiable and nonconfrontational as you may have previously heard (hockey rioters notwithstanding).

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Solitary man.

Accused terrorist plotter Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif is seen by federal authorities as a threat not only to the public but to his fellow inmates at the SeaTac detention center. In the words of government attorneys, he poses danger "to life, property, self, staff, other inmates, the public, or to the security or orderly running of the institution."

In short, allowing him to mix with other inmates could be "explosive . . . a powder keg," say prosecutors.

As a result, Abdul-Latif, arrested in June on charges of planning to shoot up a Seattle military processing station, has been confined to a small cell in solitary confinement and allowed out for just five hours total each week, his attorneys say. They suggest he's being punished without having been convicted, could be psychologically damaged by the confinement, and recently asked a judge to move him into the general prison population.

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Brad Hole, pre-slash.

Longtime Seattle angler Brad Hole and his dad and girlfriend were already in their car, a morning of salmon fishing along Canada's Vedder River under their belts, when they noticed something was wrong.

"A light lit up on the dash about the tires, and you could hear this grinding sound like they were riding on rims," Hole tells Seattle Weekly this morning.

It turns out that Mr. Hole and Co. weren't the only American fisherfolk to hear a similar sound when they tried to drive away from fishing spots near Chilliwack, Canada, over the weekend.

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Lindauer

A postscript to last week's item on 9/11 Truthers: Former Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Susan Lindauer is among the true believers of the inside-job theory. Lindauer made global headlines in 2004 as a reputed U.S. traitor and alleged spy for Saddam Hussein, then fell from the spotlight when she was confined to a federal mental facility in Texas--later freed when the case against her fell apart. Now the author of Extreme Prejudice, a popular book about her efforts to expose a 9/11 conspiracy, Lindauer thusly summed up her theories yesterday, on the attacks' 10th anniversary:

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Ten years after 9/11, why does Sealy, the mattress company famous for its talking-sheep commercials, still have the World Trade Center on the side of some of its trucks?

Walking to work yesterday, I saw one of said trucks slowly pass. Two things instantly grab your eye--the backside of a woman in a blue nightgown, and the skyline of New York City, complete with the Twin Towers.

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It likely doesn't help the 9/11 Truthers' cause that Charlie Sheen is among their supporters. On the other hand, ex-FBI Director Louis Freeh and former Sen. Bob Kerrey, a member of the 9/11 Commission, are among many who question whether we know the full truth about the terror attacks of 10 years ago.

The commission's report is a deeply probing and persuasive document--former U.S. Senator and commission member Slade Gorton, in a friendly Crosscut interview today, insists they got it right. But he perhaps unintentionally revealed that members agreed beforehand not to disagree: "...if we end up having dissenting opinions on what happened," he says, "we will have wasted our time, and the taxpayers' money."

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Richard Silverstein

Local Seattle blogger Richard Silverstein says that the "real story" buried in yesterday's New York Times piece headlined "Leak Offers Look at Efforts by U.S. to Spy on Israel" isn't that the U.S. government routinely spies on communication through the Israeli embassy.

What's more important, he says, is what the U.S.' spying actually uncovered.

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