Tax refuseniks Ed and Elaine Brown, convicted in January of tax evasion and later sentenced in absentia, had been holed up on their property in New Hampshire since February, armed and refusing to surrender. The Feds cut off the electricity, but the Browns had on-site solar and wind power. On Thursday, Federal agents finally got onto their porch by posing as supporters bringing food. (Four actual supporters have been arrested in recent weeks on charges of obstruction of justice.) The couple was taken away without gunfire.

Elaine Brown, writing on the couple’s own official website before the arrest, apparently believed she had what Herbert Spence called “the right to ignore the state”:

Title 28 USC defines the United States as a federal corporation. If you are not a part of that corporation, i.e., you have no contract with it, you are not employed by it, you are accepting no benefits from it, then by the ‘right of association’ clause of the first amendment, you are not required to obey any of its dictums; it has no jurisdiction over you.

Ed Brown apparently had what can charitably be called a deep conspiracy theory of government. A news story reproduced on the site notes that “Ed Brown, for his part, has named [trial Judge] McAuliffe as a possible target for his followers on several occasions, identifying him as part of a "Zionist Illuminati" plot to rob Americans of their freedoms.”