Reply #11: The plan... [View All]

[jberryhill]

These guys were one of a bunch of "citizen grand juries" inspired by a nutter named Carl Swenson.

There is a constellation of broken ideas generally referred to as the "Sovereign Citizen" ideology, if you can call it that. These are the people who think you don't have to pay income taxes and that the yellow fringe on ceremonial flags has some sort of weird legal significance (along with names spelled in all capital letters).

In any event, in their alternative reality, the most powerful public official is the county sheriff. They believe that the sheriff has a duty to issue indictments on the basis of resolutions reached by self-selected grand juries. Swennson and his fellow nutters organized a number of these citizen grand juries around the country, and they all issued their findings to their local sheriff's, with varying comical results. You may note that Sheriff Joe Arpaio was recently presented with a similar pile of poo which he promised to look at.

In Monroe County TN, the head of the Citizens Grand Jury is a court-martialed former sailor named Walter Fitzpatrick. Walt kept trying to get his sheriff to indict Obama, and it was explained to him that only the actual Monroe County grand jury could do that. So, Walt demanded that the county grand jury indict Obama on the basis if his evidence. When that didn't happen, Walt attempted to arrest the foreman of the grand jury, and was of course arrested himself and detained in the jail at the county courthouse. I believe he was released pending trial, and that Darren and some other idiot were inspired to show up at Walt's next appearance in order to prevent another "unconstitutional" detention of Walt.

They are all quite insane.