Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2001 00:20:32 -0700
From: apfanning@yahoo.com ("Alan Fanning")
Subject: [lpaz-repost] Fw: [SSfS] Siege At Sagle
Cc: lpaz-repost@yahoogroups.com ("ALP Repost")
----- Original Message -----
From: "M.A. Johnson" <michaelj@america.net>
> ~~for educational purposes only~~
> [Title 17 U.S.C. section 107]
>
> Siege At Sagle
> by Jeff Elkins
>
> "Get the guns!" We don't know exactly what alerted
> 15-year-old Benjamin McGuckin. It could have been one
> of the family dogs, warning the boy when a jackboot
> broke a twig. Perhaps one of the Sagle, Idaho, storm
> troopers attacking the McGuckin home cursed softly
> when he slipped on some gravel. However it happened,
> the boy called out an alarm that precipitated a
> dramatic five-day standoff with the Bonner County
> Sheriff's department.
>
> Sheriff's deputies had already captured Benjamin's
> mother, JoAnn McGuckin, after luring her from her
> home with a lying promise to take her to buy groceries.
> Instead of a trip to a grocery store, Bonner County
> sheriff's deputies arrested McGuckin on various
> charges; County Prosecutor Phil Robinson has claimed
> she spent the family's meager resources on liquor,
> and has slyly insinuated that her husband, Michael
> C. McGuckin's recent death was not from multiple
> sclerosis but from deliberate starvation of a
> terminally ill man by an insane wife.
>
> Oddly enough, we heard no tales of methamphetamine
> laboratories or child sexual abuse from Herr
> Prosecutor Robinson; items from the typical government
> play book he missed. One must suppose that charges of
> insanity, alcoholism, child abuse and possible homicide
> were deemed sufficient.
>
> In the aftermath of the siege against the young
> home-schooled children, five weapons were found,
> according to Robinson. The small collection consisted
> of shotguns, rifles, and handguns and of course was
> referred to as an 'arms cache'. Despite Benjamin
> McGuckin's cry to 'Get the guns!' none of the McGuckin
> children were ever seen brndishing a weapon. The
> brave deputies of Bonner County were chased off the
> McGuckin property by the family dogs.
>
> The final not-so-stealthy assault on the McGuckin home
> was the culmination of a four-year campaign by Idaho
> authorities to steal their property via tax warfare.
> The McGuckin property, which is worth nearly $500,000,
> was seized for $5,000 in back taxes and sold at
> auction for $50,000 to a Schmuel and Amy Korengut.
>
> As I write, Mrs. McGuckin sits in jail having bravely
> refused the state of Idaho's embarrassed offer to
> release her on her own recognizance; that order was
> contingent on her agreement to not attempt contact
> with her children. "Those children are my children,
> not wards of the state," McGuckin said in a statement.
> "The state needs to learn its place and that is not
> in family business. I do not accept the charges
> against me."
>
> The children, Kathryn, 16, Benjamin, 15, Mary, 13,
> James, 11, Fred, 9 and Jane, 8 are in state custody,
> the state having refusedan offer of temporary foster
> care from a family friend of ten years who lives on
> a nearby 140 acre ranch.
>
> Odd circumstances indeed for the surviving family of
> a former Boston Brahmin. Michael C. McGuckin was a
> graduate of the prestigious Groton prep school,
> class of 1957. His father, an Army major, was a
> Harvard graduate and a Cambridge Fox Club member.
> His mother was Jane Shreve, of the distinguished
> Boston jewelry firm, Shreve Crump & Low Co.
>
> McGuckin went on to study engineering at the University
> of North Carolina, and served in the US Army, where
> he learned Arabic. After discharge he moved to
> California to set up a series of successful businesses:
> furniture manufacture, textile plants, and home
> construction. After a divorce, he moved to Idaho
> to start a new family and a new business, a sawmill.
>
> Ultimately the sawmill failed, even with infusions
> of cash from McGuckin's Massachusetts relatives. A
> federal tax lien filed in 1988 listed McGuckin as a
> debtor to the IRS for $18,842. Then McGuckin was
> diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and slowly,
> inexorably, the McGuckin family fell into tax hell
> as they became unable to pay state and local property
> taxes on their extremely valuable lakefront timberland.
> The end result was the kidnapping of the mother and
> this pitiful siege against children by the State.
>
> The McGuckin children can count themselves lucky in a
> way; marginally more merciful local sheriff's deputies
> were in charge of the assault. Had federal jackboots
> been involved, the children would have undoubtedly been
> subjected to tape recorded screams of dying rabbits
> projected at ear-smashing decibel levels and at least
> one of them would have been assassinated by an FBI
> sniper. Perhaps Mr. Horiuchi would have been recalled
> to Idaho to duplicate his superb marksmanship of Ruby
> Ridge fame.
>
> Sadly, the ending of the McGuckin affair is all too
> predictable. Their lives, already devastated by the
> tragic loss of a beloved father, have been ruined
> forever and their homestead stolen by government. JoAnn
> McGuckin, demonized and charged as a felon by a
> power -- and publicity-mad prosecutor, will probably
> have the charges dropped or reduced; but she'll remain
> under the watchful eye of the Idaho Department of
> Health and Welfare, unable to raise her children without
> government interference. Those children, five healthy
> young Americans, will no longer enjoy roaming the
> family timberland or canoeing in Beaver Lake. Nor will
> they have the benefit of a home-schooled education,
> they will undoubtedly be forced into a government
> reeducation center, to be molded into proper servants
> of the State.
>
> For our masters, all turned out well in Sagle, Idaho.
> For the rest of us, it's another tragic tale of liberty
> denied and freedom crushed, under the jackbooted heel
> of Leviathan.
>
>
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