Rick's Sentence (Comments)

My friend Dale Williams has the following to say about Rick's sentencing:

For Rick Stanley this sentence looks like maybe 3 to 4 years of hard time (message below). He's going to have trouble beating the rap on appeal because there was an attempt, however justifiable, to worry the judge. That is revolution, a goal that Rick was probably correct in striving for, but which carries a heavy penalty for failure -- usually much heavier than this sentence.

I look at the way the Freemen have been railroaded and kept quarantined, gulag-style, almost as if they carry a deadly virus that could easily run rampant through the population if they were allowed outside contact. I observe the way that the Fed.s backed away from a group of outraged farmers and other citizens at Klamath Falls. And now the powers appear to be offering Rick a chance to salvage some kind of life for himself if he survives prison. I think that they are nervous knowing, perhaps in some instinctive, institutional way that there is great resentment toward all levels of government by those in the middle class, and by those formerly in the middle class, at being the only people who have no way to take shelter from crushing levels of taxation -- at being the human chattel that bear the burden of making liberal dreams come true.

Federal prosecutors usually send people up for longer than this. They must be conscious of the need to not create a martyr. -D.W.

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