You'd better watch what you say (if you know what's good for you).

I guess I've been expecting this for a while, but now it's happened.

An article, a couple of weeks ago, by Joan Whitely at the Las Vegas Journal-Review told of a business that made use of a bit of a loop-hole (at best) in tax law regarding payment of their contractors (employees?). Essentially, they violated the spirit of the law by paying their people (employees, contractors, whatever) in gold or silver coins, of the US mint. So what? It's real money, right? But the catch is that the noted dollar value has since multiplied several times in today's inflated, fiat-based dollar value. So the employers reported the face value of the coins regarding taxation, whereas those paid received current-day dollar values much higher than the face value would lead one to believe.

Oh, horror! (Never mind the practices of the Fed have opened up the staggering difference between minted face value and comparative "paper" dollar values found today.)

So, that's enough of a story right there. The feds are prosecuting for "tax evasion, tax fraud, and criminal conspiracy" (a bit harsh).

It turns out, the Las Vegas Journal-Review has an area where readers can comment on the article. This is where it gets spooky, as author Thomas Mitchell writes:

This past week the newspaper was served with a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. attorney's office demanding that we turn over all records pertaining to those postings, including "full name, date of birth, physical address, gender, ZIP code, password prompts, security questions, telephone numbers and other identifiers ... the IP address," et (kitchen sink) cetera.

Tantamount to killing a gnat with an A-bomb.

There was no indication what they were looking for or what crime, if any, was being investigated, just a blanket subpoena for voluminous and detailed records on every private citizen who dared to speak about a federal tax case.

Can you believe that? Off-hand comments and rantings in the comments section of a news article are being subpoenaed by a federal grand jury? Really? Welcome to our brave, new world, folks. Apparently what we're endowed by our Creator, is revocable by mere mortal.

Yep, I anticipated something like this happening here--someday.

In contrast, I never really expected a lecture on the nature of freedom from ex-leadership personnel from ex-USSR. And yet, we have a fine article to that effect today by none other than Mikhail Gorbachev--calling, essentially, for a second American revolution in the spirit of perestroika. Wow.

I guess I've got my surprise quota for the day.