James Timothy Turner, the president of the largest antigovernment “sovereign citizen” group in the country, was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison on Wednesday for tax crimes. Turner was convicted in March of every count he faced, including conspiracy to defraud the United States; six counts related to fake financial instruments; obstructing the Internal Revenue Service; and failing to file a tax return in 2009.

In delivering the sentence, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson said he considered two factors –– the vindictiveness Turner had shown in going after federal employees who had challenged his interpretation of the law and Turner’s age. At 57, Turner will be an elderly man when he is released from prison, even if he is released early for good behavior. ( continue to full post… )

A Canadian judge today extended an interim injunction prohibiting a bequest worth some $160,000 from being transferred to the National Alliance (NA), a U.S. neo-Nazi group. The estate was left to the group by a Canadian chemist and NA member who died in 2004, and included a collection of ancient Greek and Roman coins.

Attorneys for Isabelle McCorkill are contesting the will of her late brother, Robert McCorkill, on the grounds that giving the money to a hate group with a record of criminal violence violates Canadian public policy and law. Members of the NA have a long history of committing major crimes and acts of terrorism, and a book authored by its late founder inspired the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

The injunction, extending a preliminary ban that was for only 10 days, lasts until the matter goes to trial on Sept. 10. ( continue to full post… )

Steven Speece, author of the popular racist novel “Jack’s War: Through the Gates of Hell”

One of the more popular novels in racist circles is Jack’s War: Through the Gates of Hell, published last year. A crazy racial revenge story, the novel was put out under the pseudonym C.C. Conrad. Turns out C.C. Conrad is the Mobile, Ala.-based Steven Speece, a longtime neo-Nazi activist.

Speece was for years a key member of the National Alliance, which until the early 2000s was the most important and dangerous neo-Nazi group in the country (for a list of its members’ crimes, read here). Speece distributed the group’s literature and attended its leadership conference in April 2000 (right). He was at one time involved in White Aryan Resistance and various Klan groups. ( continue to full post… )

Jonathan Schmidt and friends

Jeremy Moody, a member of a small but violent racist skinhead gang called Crew 41, shocked South Carolina authorities last week when he told them that he and his wife shot and stabbed to death a middle-aged couple July 21 because the man was a registered sex offender.

But if ridding the world of sex offenders was Moody’s goal, he didn’t have to go outside of his crew to find one.

The head of the gang’s Colorado chapter, Archie Glen Ware Jr., is a registered sex offender, convicted of “accosting for immoral purposes.” ( continue to full post… )

Die Auserwählten, a little-known racist skinhead gang in Nebraska and several other states, is less than a year old. But in the last few days, the crew has been making a name for itself – in mayhem and murder separated by more than a thousand miles.

In a small college city in south-central Nebraska, the gang’s 28-year-old founder, Jonathan Schmidt, faces up to 50 years in prison if convicted of a brutal assault Saturday night.

But that’s nothing compared to what another suspected member of the gang, Jeremy Lee Moody, 30, and his wife, Christine, 36, are accused of doing Sunday afternoon about 1,200 miles away in Union County, S.C. According to local news reports, the Moodys were each charged yesterday with two counts of murder in the slaying of Charles Marvin Parker, 59, and Gretchen Dawn Parker, 51. ( continue to full post… )

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes has always trusted his intellectual pedigree to keep him above the fray.

Boasting a Yale Law School degree and a smooth-talking manner, Rhodes from the start described the group he formed in 2009 — made up largely of law enforcement officials and past and present members of the military — as merely standing up for the Constitution and American liberties. When he urged his members to resist orders to impose martial law or create detention camps, he said, his were merely theoretical worries. After all, he said, Hessian mercenaries once did help the British during the American Revolution and Japanese Americans were rounded up and detained in internment camps during World War II.

He was no conspiracy theorist.

But nearly four years later, if there were any questions still remaining about what the Oath Keepers really are, an event the group has planned for this weekend should lay them all to rest. Starting on Friday at the Farragut State Park outside Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, the Oath Keepers are hosting the Northwest Patriots and Self Reliance Rally. The lineup of participating allies is revealing. ( continue to full post… )

Caleb Orozco is a gay man in the tiny Caribbean country of Belize who is bringing an important legal challenge to a criminal statute that can land people in prison for 10 years for having gay sex.

He has been threatened. He has been physically assaulted. Now, he fears for his life. “I cannot walk the streets among a crowd anymore,” he said.

Attitudes in Belize have changed in recent times, Orozco said, and those changes can be traced to the involvement of U.S.-based religious-right groups that are providing legal expertise to the anti-LGBT forces in Belize and, at the same time, fomenting hate by spreading the same kind of false, demonizing propaganda they have developed in the U.S. ( continue to full post… )

A Canadian judge has granted a temporary injunction that blocks distribution of a major bequest left to a notorious American neo-Nazi group. The move, won by lawyers for the sister of the deceased man on Monday, means the National Alliance (NA) cannot collect an estimated $160,000, after taxes, for another eight days.

Attorneys for Isabelle McCorkill are contesting the will of her brother, Robert McCorkill, also known as McCorkell, on the grounds that it violates Canadian public policy by providing funding to the NA, a group whose members have a long history of bombings, assassinations, arson attacks and other terrorist activities. Her lawyer, Marc-Antoine Chiasson, told the National Post newspaper that she acted because she was “disturbed” by who the gift was going to, not because she sought money. ( continue to full post… )

Chris Simcox, co-founder of the Minuteman movement of armed civilians who patrolled the Arizona border looking for undocumented immigrants, has pleaded innocent to charges that he molested three young girls under the age of 10. In court papers, police identified one of the alleged victims as his own daughter.

Simcox, 52, faces two felony counts of molestation of a child, three charges of sexual conduct with a minor and one count of furnishing obscene or harmful materials to a child. According to the Phoenix New Times, Simcox could face life in prison under Arizona law if convicted of a single felony molestation charge. ( continue to full post… )

Miss Scarlett, the “Southern Avenger” has surrendered.

On Sunday, Jack Hunter, a close aide to U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, announced he had resigned from the Kentucky Republican’s Washington staff after a storm of controversy erupted July 9 surrounding Hunter’s past neo-Confederate statements and views, such as toasting the birthday every year of President Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

The resignation came despite Paul’s outspoken defense of his aide, in which the senator claimed that there was “no evidence” that Hunter had exhibited any bigoted beliefs or behavior. ( continue to full post… )