GOPMOM Note: Show your love for freedom this Valentine’s Day
I just wish I’d thought of it first. I’m off to Staples to order a dozen for family and friends. Is there any better way to say “I love you” than with an act of civil disobedience? I suppose picketing outside IRS offices would suffice, but clever is so much better.
From DaveG at Where’s the change?
I think it’s time for a comeback for civil disobedience. The only thing that angers me more than the rampant elitism and corruption in our government is that apparent tolerance for it that was demonstrated most recently with the appointment of what is almost certainly a tax cheat as the Treasury Secretary. Surely I am not alone in wondering why I am a big enough sap to pay tens of thousands of dollars in Federal taxes each and every year, while our Washington bureaucrats seem to get away consequence free with a pattern of cheating and fraud.
H/T – Michelle Malkin
Popularity: 11% [?]
Review this site
the only criminal statute regulating the
destruction or defacement of U.S. currency requires fraudulent intent.
The statute itself is broader than simply banning the fraudulent
modification or attempt to pass defaced currency:
———————————-
Title 18 United States Code, Section 331
Whoever fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs, diminishes,
falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the mints of
the United States, or any foreign coins which are by law made current
or are in actual use or circulation as money within the United States;
or
Whoever fraudulently possesses, passes, utters, publishes, or sells,
or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or brings into the
United States, any such coin, knowing the same to be altered, defaced,
mutilated, impaired, diminished, falsified, scaled, or lightened -
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five
years, or both
———————————-
This statute can be found online on Cornell Law School’s Legal
Information Institute website:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/331.html
The statute is also available on the website of the United States Mint
(where they emphasize the word “fraudulently”.
http://www.usmint.gov/consumer/18USC331.cfm
There are, however, intellectual property factors which must also be
considered, if the currency is modified instead of being destroyed.
The United States Mint owns, by assignment, the design of several
commemorative designs. The statute authorizing this ownership by
assignment, 17 USC 105, is also found on Cornell Law School’s Legal
Information Institute website:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/105.html
An official summary of the law governing the alteration, destruction,
or use of United States currency in advertising, may be found on the
United States Mint website’s Business Awareness section:
http://www.usmint.gov/consumer/index.cfm?flash=yes&action=busguide&sub=Altered
Research strategy:
I started by looking up the statute on Cornell Law School’s Legal
Information Institute website, Title 18 (Crimes and Criminal
Procedure), search term “mutilated coins”:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/
I then searched Google for the specific statute, “18 USC 331″ (”USC”
being the standard abbreviation of “United States Code”):
://www.google.com/search?q=%2218+USC+331%22
I verified the results through a subscription service, Westlaw, using
the United States Code library (This is a paid site. You can purchase
a subscription, or access its databases on a fee per search basis):
http://www.westlaw.com/
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