Reverend Colonel William Potter Gale must be spinning in his grave

Brent Wilson copycat Jackiya Ford had her first day in court yesterday.  From the front-page story in today's (30 April, 2010) Missoulian she's certainly following Brent's game plan, even if it's a water-downed version.

Not guilty plea entered for woman accused of stealing Lolo home

A woman accused of staking claim to a man's home by inhabiting the residence refused to enter a plea at an arraignment hearing Thursday because she does not recognize Montana as a legal entity.

[...]

Thursday's court hearing revealed little more of the ideology behind Ford's alleged acts, but a lawsuit she filed against county officials who stymied the deed transfer suggests a pronounced sense of entitlement.

In the lawsuit, Ford accuses officials of preventing her from filing her land patents with the county, of violating her birthright and of being unruly toward her. Ford, who said she is pregnant, is seeking compensation for "mental damage and scars due to duress and coorersion (sic) of all parties involved."

[...]

At Thursday's arraignment hearing in Missoula District Court, Ford asked to have the criminal case transferred to U.S. District Court, where she filed the lawsuit against Missoula County, and asked for access to the jail's law library.

When Desmond read Ford her rights, she asked the standing judge to clarify.
"Question. Are these rights outside of the Constitution of the United States?" Ford asked.

No judge sassing, no demanding to be her own lawyer, nothing as entertaining as Brent.  There is, however, one thing Brent can't top.

She's black.

What difference does that make?

Jackiya Ford essentially followed the instructions of the Redemption Movement by the book with preemptive lawsuits against county officials and filing land patents.   The Redemption Movement evolved from the Sovereign Citizens Movement, both of which came out of the Posse Comitatus (the vigilante group founded in the 1970s, not the 19th-century law).  The Posse Comitatus was key to Identity Christianity growing from an obscure cult to the de facto religion of white supremacists.  The late Rev. Col. Gale of this post's title was the founder of The Church of True Israel, as well as the Posse Comitatus and other paramilitary organizations.  Another group with the same lineage is the Aryan Nations.

I love it.

You go, girl!  This is post-racial America.  A pregnant African-American woman has every right to join up with the Sovereign Christian Redemption posse to get some real estate she's entitled to.  Emphasis on the Christian part as Jackiya is a professional gospel singer with her own record label / production company / sect. She has a single available on iTunes and a video, of sorts, on the YouTube.

Some of the more extreme tax protesters have been linked with white separatists / supremacists. Lots of people have already connected the extremist tax protesters to the Tea Baggers Party, and Tea Party rhetoric sounds a lot like sovereign citizen / redemption rhetoric.

Wow!  The Tea Party isn't exclusively white after all!

The front page of today's Missoulian is now doubly ironic.  Right next to Jackiya's story is one about a bunch of asshats in Kalispell propagating a Montana stereotype:

Protesters rally as white separatists watch Nazi film in Kalispell library

At least the protesters outnumbered the dickweeds 20-to-1.  So much for the "white homeland."

Brent Arthur Wilson in the media spotlight

Chuck Shepherd wrote up Brent's doings the Creme de la Weird entry for his News of the Weird column of 25 April, 2010. 


Edit 6 May 2010: URL updated with permanent archive address.

Real Estate Scams = Domestic Terrorism? Why not.

As Tristan Scott wrote in the second story:

The allegations against Ford smack of the recent case of Brent Arthur Wilson, 53, who faces felony charges in Lake County for his alleged attempts to steal a $300,000 house in foreclosure.

California woman charged with moving into, claiming Lolo home she didn't own

Jackiya D. Ford, 37, was arrested on April 14 and her belongings removed from a house built by Bob Paffhausen. She made an initial appearance in Justice Court on April 19 and her bail was set at $50,000.

Paffhausen said Ford had showed up about two weeks earlier to view the house as a prospective buyer. Sometime after that, prosecutors say Ford delivered paperwork to Paffhausen claiming ownership of the house and the land in a 20-mile radius around it. She offered to drop the lawsuit if Paffhausen would pay her about $900,000 in pure silver and gold.

Paffhausen received a call from NorthWestern Energy saying someone had reported a natural gas leak at the house. Paffhausen went to the house, where he found the locks and garage door codes had been changed and notices were posted on the doors claiming the house had been given to Ford by "our Lord and Savior Yahushua."

Smacks of Brent indeed.  I like the part about wanting to be paid in real money instead of the Fed's worthless fiat script.  And her name.  It seemed a straightforward copycat crime.  Brent's meme was spreading.  Why should Wall Street types be the only ones to get paid by the government to commit white collar real estate crime?  Everyone should be able to get in on it!

The next day the Missoulian published this story:

Alleged Lolo 'house theft' may have been inspired by extremist websites

Some highlights:

"It's very difficult to unrecord a document once it's been recorded, so we try to catch these things when they appear on the verge of legality," said Debbe Merseal, Missoula's chief deputy clerk and recorder.Merseal said Ford's filings were so unusual that she sent the paperwork to the legal eagles in the Missoula County Attorney's Office for review. She said the woman tried to have several certified deeds and patent documents re-recorded, but refused to give a reason for the request.

"This definitely was an unusual document," Merseal said. "She described it as a ‘patent sandwich.' I don't believe we've ever seen anything like this."

[...]

The woman first came onto the radar of local law enforcement when she became disorderly in the Missoula County Attorney's Office and had to be removed. She filed "bogus" lawsuits against several sheriff's deputies, said Lt. Rich Maricelli, and demanded settlements be paid in gold and silver.
"It's been an absolute nightmare," Maricelli said.

[...]

Ford told the deputies that she was a "sovereign citizen of the republic of America" and therefore officials had no authority over her. She said she owned the whole mountainside and that they were on private property.At the time of her arrest, she had been living in the house about two weeks.

Ford's alleged intimidation tactics are consistent with the Sovereign Citizen Movement, whose adherents use "paper terrorism" as a form of harassment.

Paper terrorism involves the use of fraudulent legal documents and filings, as well as the misuse of legitimate documents and filings, in order to intimidate, harass and coerce public officials, law enforcement officers and private citizens, according to an FBI news release warning of the practice.

[...]

That FBI issued its news release one day before Ms. Ford was arrested.  The Sovereign Citizen Movement is the third in an ongoing series to educate the public about "U.S.-based extremist ideologies."  The Montana Freemen of the 1990s were sovereign citizens.  This is just one more indicator that they're back.

I don't think Brent is involved with the neo-Freemen, or any other sovereign citizens.  I'm pretty sure his motives are from divine inspiration, and/or getting his share of the good times like everyone deserves and not just Wall Street fatcats. 

I have no idea what motivates Ms. Ford.

New and Removed Entries on the Panoply of Blogs

The following blogs have been moved to the Defunct, but not Forgotten blogroll:

A canna’ change the laws of physics

Adnoxious

Ask A Urinal - Wisdom From Bathroom Graffitti

Fuck You, Penguin

Grammar Police a.k.a. GrammarCops

Making Maps: DIY Cartography

Musings of a phenomenologist

Scalpel or Sword?

Things I've Learned from Wikipedia

This is why we love them

Why The Fuck do You Have a Kid?

They still have great content and, like back issues of Skymall Magazine, if you haven't read it before it's new to you.

Crass-Pollination: An ER blog is now invitation-only.  Pole Leaning Douchebag and Don't Judge my Hair completely vanished.  The latter is sorely missed.

The good news is there are new blogs to take up the space, although not necessarily the place, of the recently removed entries:

Autocomplete fail

Gross N00dz

Learn from my fail

My Very Worst Job

My Very Worst Roommate

People Of Public Transit

That's my boss

Tweetbaggery

Up On The Fridge

Woman fail

Autocomplete fail is the fifth such site I've come across.  Gross N00dz is just that, some of the grossest people you've ever seen with no clothes on.  There may not be enough bleach on the planet to clean your eyes.  The content warning, or something, prevents the last update and title from coming through.  Remember: once seen, it cannot be unseen.

I managed to get the Picture Pool from Texts from Last Night to update.  You need to have a Flickr account to see it.  I still can't get the Horse Head blogs to cooperate.

Forum Software Upgrade

In preparation for the upcoming degradation upgrade of the Crazy Meds Talk forum software I'm updating some operating system software today.

Short notice because I was too stupid to first read the system requirements for the new forum software.  Otherwise I would have planned for this.  I want to test the new forum software and I sure as hell can't do that without installing it.

I have no idea how long the interruption will last. Assuming anyone notices.

------------------

I doubt anyone noticed a thing.

Hero The Cult - Round 2

There are new ads for the HTC Hero smart phone.  A day or two prior to those ads showing up new ads for Scientology appeared.  The old ads for Scientology are in a higher rotation now.   Perhaps the new Scientology ads didn't test as well, or perhaps it's because the new Scientology ads are not as similar the new HTC Hero ads as the old Scientology ads are.

Funny how the Scientology ads kind of vanished until right before the new HTC Hero ads started showing up everywhere.  Suddenly the ads for Scientology were everywhere.  It's as if the clams couldn't afford the air time until HTC's next big media buy, then they suddenly had the money to spend on advertising.  Sort of like how the first big ad blitz featuring those ads that look and sound so much like the previous set of HTC Hero ads appeared shortly before said ads.  Makes you wonder about things, doesn't it?

As the only TV I get is via satellite, my advertising landscape is different than it is for those who watch via cable, over-the-air local reception, or teh InterTubes, so "everywhere" for me is somewhat less hyperbolic than you might think.  Agencies can buy in bulk from companies that own multiple channels and really save, on the proviso that most of the spots will be preempted by local carriers.  So buying five spots an hour on the Discovery networks means I have the opportunity to see the same ad five times an hour on seven different channels (the People Blowing up Stuff at Work Channel, the Way Too Many Children Channel, Animal Planet, the Sex, Drugs and Circus Freaks Channel, the War Channel [not to be confused with A&E's Nazi Network], the Science Films They Should be Showing in Schools Channel, and the Serial Killer Channel), while someone with basic cable would see the same ad once or twice an hour, the other times local ads and national ads targeting a specific region would be seen.  Basic cable would probably have only the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and TLC to watch it on.  While it's possible for the satellite provider to preempt a bulk ad with one they've sold, that doesn't happen nearly as often.

As Ian Flemming wrote, "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."  Given how complicated the world is these days I'm willing to add a margin of error of one.  Twice may still be anomalous, or it could be evidence of collusion.