welcome back to the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour thousands of american citizens break the law every day why do we do it and can anyone stop them also another state is intent on executing

a prisoner who may have been wrongly convicted why are they refusing to reexamine the case and internets dealy take republicans a lot now want to make it really hard when you go to the bathroom. does the rest of the news there are between a hundred thousand and a half a million americans who believe the united states government and its court system are completely illegitimate as a result these americans typically don't obey many laws sometimes drive without driver's licenses and don't pay taxes and no i'm not talking about general electric instead i'm talking about the sovereign citizen movement it's a loosely organized group of americans from around the nation and for the most part operate under the radar and with numerous lawsuits against police and public officials and behaviors of those outside our legal system sovereign citizens are becoming a real thorn in the side of locals. and federal governments and now the state of

georgia wants to fight back republican state representative b.j. pac introduced legislation to disarm sovereign citizens are on their most frequently used tactics the filing of lawsuits and liens to tie up public officials in costly legal battles the legislation would criminalize filing false liens with a fine of up to ten thousand dollars and jail terms of up from one to ten years so how will this bill affect the sovereign citizens movement and what exactly are they after joining me now is alfred ask sovereign citizen and constitutionalist as well as a talk radio host and the author of several books including the nature of money for walk a tight and i don't great to have you with us now if i understand this right what you call american common law has been hijacked by admiralty law which is why our birth certificates and driver's licenses are printed in all capital letters and when we're born our government creates a secret shell corporation using our name in all caps and keeps hundreds of thousands of dollars in that account is that

a reasonable description of your position it's not a reasonable description of my position but it's a reasonable description of a number of people's positions and i'm aware of a bunch of different theories and you know when you talk about people talk about sovereignty movement as if it was monolithic and it's not there are a large there's a large variety of people who have different slants on the sovereignty concept so and the one you're describing is embraced by some people but it's not embraced by all ok so you said this isn't it this isn't one that you particularly what then for you makes you a sovereign citizen as a you know as opposed to the person that i just described the declaration of independence. if you understand sovereignty going to go back in history to begin to grasp the concept when you ted a king in england or a king in france or a king in spain they were sovereign the reason they were sovereign is because they went through a coronation ceremony in

a church the church declared them to be king and they gave them a crown to wear on their head and that crown was intended to emulate the corona you see around the heads of the christ and the saints in medieval paintings the idea was that the kings the sovereigns received their rights to rectally from god they had the divine right of kings and jefferson put that aside out he didn't just flip it upside down he destroyed it everyone in england the only person in england who was a sovereign was the king he got his rights directly from got all else were subjects because they did not get their rights from god go i get that one and i totally get it you know what jefferson was saying is that we the people are the sovereigns in this nation but the declaration of independence was written by a group of people who were occupied by a foreign nation and they threw off those occupiers way through much like you know the people in iraq or afghanistan to try to get rid of us i think. we are not to

the best of my knowledge right now occupied by a foreign nation we are occupied by us our government has nothing to do with whether you're occupied or not sovereignty flows from god what people most people don't understand including people in the village sovereignty movement they don't understand that this is a spiritual concept this is not simply politics this is spiritual it's based on the idea what was i doing different alters what would you make you different from today's you know phase government if right now in u.s. government recognition there's a case called chisholm vs georgia seven hundred ninety three the supreme court this is four years after the constitution was have to seventeen years after the declaration of independence and i'm looking at it and i'm reading from right now. it says in part they are talking about the situation in england and europe how it compared to of two a particular case and the court says the same feudal ideas run through all the jurisprudence meaning the english jurisprudence and constantly remind us of the

distance so you think america is becoming feudalistic and the subject is becoming fascist ok this is it isn't it is a problem for you that you know ok let me go ahead. this is important you can find this for yourself if you look up the case choose on bursars georgia seven hundred ninety three it continues they first they talk about feudalism where the prince is different from the subject the prince being the sovereign it says no such ideas obtain here at the revolution the sovereignty devolved on the people and they are truly the sovereigns how is that different from today it's a absolute here's a different example auburn if i'm a sovereign the government is my public servant if i'm not a sovereign i'm a subject and the government is my master so and that is the fundamental conflict that's going on right now so do you think that you shouldn't be able emotion have to answer to a police officer is as you're speeding and that at all there's some people that they they take that idea and they run with it the sovereign there are some people who claim that they are sovereigns and they don't have to obey any laws right most

people aren't sovereigns they are anarchists there's a completely different situation but what about the sovereign citizens who complain that america is getting less right more brown less christian and more muslim and atheist and therefore it's not consistent with the founding thoughts on that i don't think that it's relevant to sovereignty declaration says all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that establishes we are all getting our rights from god it establishes that we are all sovereigns in same sense that the king of england was a sovereign because he had the divine right of kings how is our sovereignty infringed upon by having to pay taxes. no not necessarily not necessarily what what is inherent in our sovereignty our individual sovereignty. well what is infringing on our individual sovereignty yeah whenever the government violates the terms of the concert sampson for example there's a reason to believe that the income tax was designed to apply only within the territories of the united states so in the so the so the income tax then is

a violation of our sovereignty you know the income tax is legal within the territories but it may not be legal within the states of the union so it's legal in puerto rico but not here it's possible that it appears there's reason to believe that might be true all right and it's part of the reason why when people go to court and they complain about the constitutional constitutionally of a law the court will routinely decide in favor of the laws constitutionality see if it could be constitutional anywhere it's ok it's not us constitution alfred thanks so much for being with us i'm sorry we're flat out of time to do i think you a brilliant job approval presenting your perspective thank you so much for joining us thank you now to hear from the other side of the sovereign sort of citizens movement is mark potok senior fellow at the southern poverty law center mark welcome well it's great to be here once again we just we just heard from a sovereign citizen. didn't quite sound like a hate group guy you're characterizing the sovereign citizen movement as

essentially a hate group in fact i think we use that term by. well no we don't call them a crips and we've not just that was a close it's funny i've actually sat in al at us living room in the dallas area back on the days when i was reporting on the militia movement in the one nine hundred ninety seven and to be perfectly frank he's a bit of a nuts you know and i think that he was being a bit disingenuous in describing his own beliefs you know when he says that for instance the income tax may only apply in the territories that goes back to the origins of the sovereign citizen movement which in fact began with rights of premises troops not i'm not a pusing being a white supremacist i don't think that's true but the reality is is that these ideas originated in a group called the posse comitatus in the one nine hundred seventy s. in the one thousand. eight it. stops states.

i'll ask god to say they essential you believe that god gave america the right man and therefore because it's this relationship between god and man no man can kind of stand between happened thus their idea for instance that the government can't tax you but the government can't tell you that you got a driver's license well kinds of other things the government supposedly chand not to when the old when a posse and a lot of sovereigns for kit were team member and citizens which is a kind of core concept of sufferance what they're really talking about is the idea that lap people in america among others will lap people were made citizens by the fourteenth amendment which is to say they were made citizens by an act of man as opposed to a god as opposed to an act of god so what that means is that latin americans

having accepted citizenship from nan from an act of government they have essentially signed a contract and now have to do everything the government tells and they're and they're not the same kind of citizens as a white people is this what animates the whole obama birth certificate movement well no because the reality oddly enough is that means very racist origins of the sovereign citizens movement have been largely forgotten there are enormous numbers of black americans right now dabbling in sovereign farriers you know there's a whole theory that you mentioned about the government keeping secret accounts and if you thought right documents and so on you can get millions of dollars but you know what it's like. and punctuation for instance a lot of sovereign groups refuse to capitalize the new united states they have odd ways of style in their names and punctuating their names when they put them down in government and then it kind of official documents and the reason is they believe.

if in some additional document they capitalized that you in united states they are agreeing on the fact that the government is real. and then entering into a contract with the government bear or day two because just like arkansas isn't so me it sounds like what you're describing is paranoid schizophrenia or or paranoia anyway well it's a rather on one hand it's an amusing and amusingly kind of crappy set of beliefs and it does vary from place to place and sat in such as the other people murder police officers sometimes time we've seen a lot of conflicts between sufferance were pulled over by police officers who say you know you have no right to let me go or show the officer typically made up kind of license or car registration you know on may twentieth of two thousand and ten or there's an infamous case in which a father son steam of cell phones murder two west memphis arkansas police officers

in cold blood would cold know for days since it is a trap mark mark thank you we're we're we're out of time i'd love to spend a lot more time on this we will revisit this topic in the future thanks for dropping by tonight a pleasure keep an eye on the sovereign citizens the true believers and like the members of the iran cult and the libertarian cults are looking for new recruits. and tonight's daily take republicans are working as hard as they can to ruin your bathroom experience i'll explain if humans. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old because it's called the truth. i confess and i am in total get of that has happened. and. he was kind of the jester. i'm very proud of the role that

al-jazeera and its place. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here see some of the part of it and realize everything you saw you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

are we about to execute another innocent man in alabama questions are swirling around arthur a man convicted of murder three decades ago he said to be executed in march since his conviction a key witness has recanted her testimony another man has admitted to the murders and others lawyers are calling for d.n.a. tests they could prove their client is innocent and fortunately the state isn't budging and is moving forward with the execution regardless of whether or not d.n.a. testing might exonerate arthur so why is that in ohio as you're joining me now he

is the editor of think progress just this an attorney and a policy analyst with the center for the american private sort of american progress is action fund always great to have you with sydney back bay has such great insights into these issues how much doubt is there surrounding this guy's conviction there was certainly a reasonable doubt certain surrounding his conviction i mean you. witnesses who testified against them or can it and then on recanted their testimony and then you have this we. know it's likely that the murderer was wearing this that was in police custody where the murder was committed and there's d.n.a. on this way that probably belongs to the person who was wearing it while the murderer was from it is the killer right and all that mr arthur wants is he says look i will pay for the test but it's not going to cost the state and all i want to do is provide me with the evidence i'll pay for the tests and if it shows that i wasn't the one wearing that way we can go from there this will cost the state nothing if he's guilty they can serve they can execute the sentence and i did this

it was so fun pay for the test but i mean why or why would his state why would the state of which which is as old as alabama right would the state of alabama be afraid of an innocent man demonstrating his innocence you know there's two very different theories of the constitution going on here and concepts that were once guaranteed to due process and i believe due process means that we should convict the guilty and we should set free the innocent but the supreme court unfortunately in the state of alabama have a different issue they say that due process means you gotta check all your pocks if you give them a trial you give them enough process this was a case just two three years ago this was the alaska case from two thousand and nine was very similar facts a man was convicted in alaska he had there was d.n.a. evidence they could exonerate him he said i will pay for the s. just please let me just please let me have it and the supreme court said no you cannot pay for the city to do the test that might prove that you were innocent certainly seems inconsistent with the fifth through eighth amendment to the constitution it's really striking and it's striking especially because it's

happening in the death of me contacts to you know where there's no possibility of appeal if you exactly you know once you're dead you can't is no way to take that back for it and so you know i think again the purpose of the justice system is convict the guilty set free the edison but in the death penalty context you better be. shore and they're not in thanks so much for being with us tonight thank you this is a scary case the death penalty costs more it doesn't deter crime it's administered on evenly particularly across racial and socio economic lines and as long as it exists and the potential to execute an innocent person exists right alongside it there's no good reason to still use it so let's unplug the electric chairs empty the drug cocktails and clear out the gassed years. just.

it's the good the bad and the very very. pros sipp the asli believe they're good bill gates gates told a crowd of energy entrepreneurs and scientists yesterday that it's a little crazy how our funding energy to what i have to use two years ago along with other members of the american energy innovation council gates also called on the federal government to investigate to invest sixteen billion dollars per year in research aimed at energy innovation over the government has fallen far short of that benchmark and gates is stunned. the answer freshly to see that a member of america's corporate elite is actually fighting for clean energy innovation and investment rather than just me moaning it like the koch brothers the bad for junior governor bob mcdonnell mcdonnell yes signed a bill yesterday overturning that state's landmark one gun a month law that was inactive back in the early one nine hundred ninety s. his decision to sign the bill came just days after he had spoken with families of

the victims of the two thousand and seven virginia tech shooting tragedy in the conversation with the families who were arguing against his signing that bill o'connell offered no legitimate reason for why he was supporting feel a mcdonald's just as just helps to ensure that sense and some completely preventable violence will continue to plague virginia and the rest of america and a very very ugly alabama state republicans since the state republicans in acted the extreme immigration law h b fifty six children have been forced to stay home from school and been inside food stamps despite being born in the united states over a new report by the southern poverty law center dock. it's far worse effects of the law in some cases public utility companies that cut off service to which you know those who cannot provide proof of birth in the u.s. causing some families to be forced to live without water or electricity report also shows that alabama residents feel that they can now openly harass and intimidate

the latino population without fear of punishment alabama state republicans have succeeded in returning that state to the racial violence and intolerance of decades ago and that it's very very ugly. imagine imagine a life with no water you wake up you can't take a shower you can't brush your teeth can't use the bathroom. can't cook can't clean you can't do laundry here earlier anyway i mean luckily this isn't really a problem facing most americans but it might be soon that's because it's not just our roads and bridges that are deteriorating across the nation it's also our water pipes

a new study by the american water works association reveals that america's underground water pipe infrastructure is rapidly deteriorating and needs to be revamped to the tune of one trillion dollars those water pipes were laid down more than fifty years ago and today after more than thirty years of star starve the beast reaganomics it didn't invest one dime in our infrastructure those pipes are past the end of most of their life spans the study also called for replacement of waste water pipes which will cost another trillion dollars so here we are the richest nation on the planet with a rotting third world water pipes underneath us. but that's not all our entire infrastructure from our roads to our schools to our dams desperately needs repair or replacement the american society of civil engineers puts out a report card on america's infrastructure and the latest grades are from two thousand and nine here they are right here aviation d. bridges c. dams d. drinking water d. minus energy d. minus hazardous ways d.

in waterways d. minus levees d. minus parks and rec c. rail sea roads d.s. school you know to see a pattern here the solid ways c. laws transit and waste water d. and d. minus i mean this is america's infrastructure g.p.a. a d b s the estimated five year investment needed to zero point two trillion dollars with these abysmal grades the united states now ranks third team in the world when it comes to injure infrastructure investments so now what does all this mean it means it means we need to to take back those trillions of dollars that reagan bush clinton and bush and even obama here's another way here's where we are with infrastructure. down here in this all these other countries germany singapore france were the red united kingdom the netherlands united arab emirates korea denmark canada spain sweden all of them are just beating us terribly so i know we

did we did take all those tax cuts that were given by all those presidents even obama gave to millionaires and billionaires and a giant transnational corporations in the form of historically low tax rates and once we get back to tax rates like we had during the truman eisenhower kennedy johnson nixon ford and carter years years by the way of the greatest growth and prosperity in american history. we need to use that money to rebuild america which works really well because investments in infrastructure put millions of americans back to work building things like roads schools power plants high speed rail our economy is begging for us unfortunately the republicans in congress are not budging rather than investments republicans want austerity at a time when the government has to spend money to make america competitive again they want the government to be a tight rope and once they can get in unless they get

a phone call from their paymasters in the oil industry like the koch brothers or exxon mobil then of course rather than updating our water pipelines they want to build a new oil pipeline that red china was speaking rather than renovate public schools they want to close public schools and they want to let for profit corporations make money educating our kids rather than fix seventy five thousand structurally deficient bridges that millions of americans drive across every day and want to give more massive tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires and last time i checked millionaires and billionaires are investing their fortunes and building bridges across america but most disturbingly beyond ideological politics are the role of government republicans are against these crucial infrastructure investments because they don't want the economy to improve they know they know that if they pass legislation to move america into the twenty first century with the new smart energy grid with new water pipes with new high speed rail systems and millions of

americans will be put back to work and our economy would boom and president obama would get the credit for that president obama getting the credit for that's unacceptable to a republican party who has openly stated that their first objective is to make president obama a one term president. so it's pretty simple we as americans need to ask ourselves what sort of infrastructure do we deserve in the wealthiest nation on earth we deserve a great infrastructure like we have if so then yeah he threw publicans in charge of the purse strings in congress but if you think we deserve a great aid infrastructure like the rest of the developed world is building then it's time to hold those republicans in congress accountable because if we don't get serious. it's water. with a lot of pain on the water pipe plus that as the big picture for today for more

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