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Who are "sovereign citizens"?

Anti-government U.S. extremists who don't pay taxes and ignore requirements like social security cards and drivers licenses are on the rise. Called sovereign citizens, some have become violent and the FBI considers them a domestic terror threat. Byron Pitts reports.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7366128n&tag=contentMain;contentA...

The FBI has been paying more attention to so called“sovereign citizen extremists" around the country out of concerns that they will react violently when they interact with government officials. FBI’s attention raises questions about why focus on this group as opposed to others, when only 18 were arrested in 2011 and 2010 and 10 in 2009 primary for white collar crimes.

FBI targets "sovereign citizen extremist" in my town in Florida this summer. The FBI gives its criteria for what they consider to be a "sovereign citizen extremist". Very disturbing. While the story cites alleged violence by the man arrested, I did not hear him make any threat on the video link. There is an interesting addition to the story about a man and his teenage son traveling back to Clearwater. This incident with man and son ends in violence. It is interesting to see how they link the two stories together.

The so-called “sovereign citizens” movement — men and women who believe they are exempt from most state and federal laws, regulations and tax codes — is spreading like a prairie fire. While many of these are tax resistors or perpetrators of “paper terrorism” – the filing of nuisance liens and such – some sovereign citizens have demonstrated a willingness to resist police and government authority with violence.

The FBI held a press conference Monday to “increase the visibility of the threat” that people who oppose taxes and regulations, government intrusions into their private property, and the desire for sound money allegedly pose to local authorities.

This is an FBI report on what to watch out for. Short blurb below.

They could be dismissed as a nuisance, a loose network of individuals living in the United States who call themselves “sovereign citizens” and believe that federal, state, and local governments operate illegally. Some of their actions, although quirky, are not crimes. The offenses they do commit seem minor: They do not pay their taxes and regularly create false license plates, driver’s licenses, and even currency.

A return to the gold standard by the United States within the next five years now seems likely, because that move would help the nation solve a variety of economic, fiscal, and monetary ills, Steve Forbes predicted during an exclusive interview this week with HUMAN EVENTS.

Among the silliest things that people say about gold standard systems is that under them, the “money supply” grows about 2% per year, due to mining. This is demonstrably false – not only that, but so utterly wrong as to induce falling-off-the-chair guffaws from those who understand such things. For an example in the United States in 1775, the total amount of currency in circulation (primarily gold and silver coins) was an estimated $12 million. In 1900, it was $1,954 million – an increase of 163x!

To think, before she portrayed people who considered themselves to be Sovereign citizens as being nothing but a bunch of stoned, cross eyed Charles Mansons with dreadlocks, I wanted to make her my future baby's momma. Now she's gone & ruined it. >=(