Free Wesley Snipes!

This is an outrage.

Three years in prison might be appropriate for someone who'd stolen something that didn't belong to them. Wesley Snipes was sentenced to three years in prison for keeping his own money.

It's not 'Uncle Sam's' money: Uncle Sam didn't pay dues in show business and make a bunch of movies millions of Americans have enjoyed. Snipes was well paid, to be sure, but that's because he delivered what moviegoers wanted.

Plus, Snipes has, to my knowledge, avoided being as weird and creepy as, say, Tom Cruise.

I've said it before, I know (broken record), but how much money you earn and what you do to earn it is a private matter. Unless you're running a dog-fighting operation or a kiddie-porn ring or something like that, it's simply not the state's business.

For that matter, even a child pornographer's income isn't the issue: it's his criminal conduct. Which would still be criminal even if he did it for free or lost money at it.

For crying out loud, this country was founded on tax resistance. It's the single unifying idea behind the Declaration of Independence.

We could fix this pretty quickly: ban income tax withholding. Everyone has to pay their federal tax bill on their own come tax day. First off, it would alert millions who erroneously feel they've gotten a bonus when they get a few dollars back. This would change the sheeplike acceptance of the income tax. Plus, millions upon millions of people would have the option of NOT sending that check.

We may have a great appetite for jailing people in this country, especially black people, but in the face of thirty million middle class tax resistors, what's the government going to do? Put everyone under house arrest?