Scott Roeder, the coward who murdered abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in cold blood in 2009, is back in the news again, and this time he wants conservatives to refuse to pay their taxes. Roeder was sentenced to 50 years incarceration without parole for his crime.
In a YouTube video, Roeder claims that income taxes are unconstitutional because the 16th Amendment, which grants the government authority to collect taxes, was never officially ratified. This is a popular misconception among some on the so-called “sovereign citizen” movement, which Roeder became a member of in the 1990s.
Speaking in the audio-only tape, Roeder states:
“If everyone were to go into their personnel department and tell them you need to have your W-4 revised, and you put ‘exempt’ where it calls for it, because now that you know the truth that the 16 Amendment is the only power the Congress has to tax the people on their income — which is not a law, it’s been proven that it’s not a law, it never was a law — it’s just another fraud that’s been perpetrated on American people.”
What he neglects to mention is that if you choose to commit tax fraud, you too can be in prison, just like he is. Maybe he’s lonely and needs some company.
Roeder also goes on to note:
“There are legal, ethical, moral, and biblical ways to stop funding the murder of the unborn through our income tax.”
There is also peaceful protest, organizing, and the power of the ballot box, but a domestic terrorist such as Scott Roeder has no use for legal means of changing the laws he disagrees with.
In 2013, Roeder was disciplined by the prison where he is serving his 50-year sentence when he made this statement about Julie Burkhart, a former employee of Tiller’s, who reopened Dr. Tiller’s clinic. Roeder said:
“To walk in there and reopen a clinic, a murder mill where a man was stopped, it’s almost like putting a target on your back — saying, ‘Well, let’s see if you can shoot me.”
A leopard, the old saying goes, cannot change its spots. Neither can a lowlife murderer like Scott Roeder.
