Archives 2006

Kent Hovind Behind Bars

The Pensacola News Journal reports that Kent Hovind was led away to jail after he and his wife were found guilty of tax fraud.

U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers released Jo Hovind until sentencing but denied Kent Hovind’s request to be released. He most likely will be detained at either Escambia County Jail or Santa Rosa County Jail until sentencing.

[Prosecuting attorney Michelle] Heldmyer said Kent Hovind was a flight risk and a “danger to the community.”

Kent Hovind? Flight risk? Say it ain’t so!… No, wait, they already did say it was so when he was arrested and the court took away his passport so he couldn’t flee the country (as it looked that he might).

Sentencing is scheduled to take place Jan. 9, so it doesn’t seem that Hovind will be having a happy Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year.

Oh, and by the way:

The jury also granted the prosecution’s request for the Hovinds to forfeit $430,400. That amount equals the value of the checks signed and cashed by Jo Hovind in the 44 counts.

I wonder how much of that $430,000 will come from Hovind’s bank accounts, and how much will have to come from auctioning off God’s guns and bits of pieces of CSE and Dinosaur Adventure Land.

Let’s hope Kent learns something during his time in prison.

Yeah, I know schadenfreude isn’t one of the nobler emotions, and I probably shouldn’t be enjoying Hovind’s conviction as much as I am, but hey, I’m descended from apes who survived by living in groups and had to punish individuals who obtained personal gain at the group’s expense, so I can’t help it.

Hovind Guilty


Well, that didn’t take long:

Jury deliberations took about three hours.

A federal jury has convicted Kent Hovind and his wife, Jo, of tax fraud.

The article doesn’t say whether they were found guilty on all charges, or what the sentence will be.

Also, at some point the PNJ started reporting that the Hovinds owed $845,000 in unpaid taxes, rather than the original $470,000. I don’t know what the deal is with that.

Update, 13:19: astute commenter DodgerDean provided a link to the booking photo, which I’ve added here.

Two Challenges for Theists

Goosing the Antithesis has two challenges for theists, neither of which ought to be terribly difficult:

  1. Define God (at 10,000 Reasons to Doubt the Fish)
  2. Prove Your Faith Like Abraham Did (at Kill the Afterlife)

(Thanks to Pharyngula for pointing these out.)

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Hovind Trial Whimpers Into the Final Stretch

I’ve been away for a few days, but imagine my surprise at reading this
in Wednesday’s Pensacola News Journal:

The prosecution has rested its case in the trial of Pensacola evangelist and tax protestor Kent Hovind and his wife, Jo.

The defense will not present a case.

And then today’s article:

Defense lawyers for Kent and Jo Hovind rested their case on Wednesday without presenting evidence or calling witnesses.

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Hovind Trial Update

Two more stories in the Pensacola News Journal about Kent Hovind’s tax evasion trial:

Christian College leader says taxes are part of religion

Hovind argues God’s workers are exempt

and

Lawyer: Hovind detailed actions

Evangelist said he ‘beat the system’

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Hovind Trial, Day 2

It’s day two of Kent Hovind’s trial for tax fraud, and still no
Mike Argento or
H.L. Mencken
has emerged to report live the unvarnished snark. Still, the trial’s being covered by the Pensacola News Journal. It’s not much of a media feeding frenzy, but I suppose the national outlets have juicier stories to cover closer to Dennis Hastert’s gravity well.

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Jury Picked in Hovind Trial

The Pensacola News Journal (“Still the only paper covering the Hovind trial!”) reports that a jury has been picked to decide whether Kent Hovind is an impoverished minister or a huckster who owes the IRS nearly half a million bucks in back taxes.

I’d love to see the trial transcripts, but I haven’t found them anywhere.

USA: Now, With Less Torture!*

* Some restrictions may apply. The definition of torture is subject to change without notice. Incarcerators’ decision may be final.

So anyway, we now have
a shiny new law that outlaws torture.

With a few caveats.

Like, the president gets to define what constitutes “torture”, so as long as he can rationalize that something is just high-spirited hijinks or “tough interrogation techniques” or approaches but does not exceed the pain of organ failure, or even if God just told him to do it, then hey, it’s not torture.

And what if you’ve been locked up when you haven’t done anything? Well, if the administration says you’re an unlawful combatant (at their discretion, natch), then you don’t even have the right to have a judge tell you WTF you’re locked up. In other words, if you think you’re being tortured illegally, who are you gonna complain to? And if you think you should have the right to habeas corpus because you’re not an unlawful combatant, well, the people who have you locked up say you are, so who are you gonna complain to?

Another sad and ironic part is that this certainly isn’t going to help our troops in the field. Not that this is news to anyone, except possibly the people at the head of this administration.

Back in the 4th century BC, Alexander the Great introduced a new wartime strategy. Unlike previous conquerors, when he captured a city, he didn’t slaughter the inhabitants and burn the city to the ground. Rather, he would execute the king and spare the population. This meant that the defenders were fighting to defend their king, their city, and their wealth, but not their lives, so they had less of an incentive to fight to the bitter end.

More recently, during WWII, Joseph Stalin decreed that any Soviet soldier taken prisoner by the Germans obviously hadn’t fought hard enough, and was therefore a traitor. Any POWs who were returned to the Soviet Union were executed for treason. Consequently, faced with a choice between possible death in combat, and surrender to the Germans, followed by months or years in a POW camp, followed by execution by firing squad, the Soviet army put up a hell of a fight.

Now we have become a nation that, shocked by the photos that came out of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, looked deep into its soul, and said, “I don’t think we should do anything like this… but why don’t you decide for us, Mr. President?”

In other words, we are a country that tortures.

And now, in Iraq and Afghanistan, any insurgent, terrorist, or poor schmuck caught at the wrong place at the wrong time and staring down the barrels of a dozen marines’ rifles is going to have to ask himself, “do I want to surrender, and probably be tortured, and spend the next forever chained naked to a cell door in a pool of my own shit, or do I want to risk fighting my way out, and maybe take a few of them with me?”

News flash: that’s not what we want them to think. What we want them to think is “Fuck this shit. This isn’t worth dying for. I’ll just surrender, and have some war stories to tell my kids.”

Is this really that hard to grasp?

(Crossposted to daily Kos.)

Hovind Trial Begins

The Pensacola News Journal reports
that jury selection for Kent Hovind’s trial begins today. If a jury is selected quickly enough, there might also be time for both sides’ opening remarks. I won’t speculate on whether this is likely, though.

Hovind himself hasn’t written anything about this since
Sep. 27, when he wrote

As for the media, well, they just need a new piece of meat to grind up every day to sell their papers. Truth and the destruction of innocent lives mean nothing to them.

This explains why the only paper to have covered this trial so far is the Pensacola News Journal, which has only published a few local news briefs like the one above.

Sorry, Kent, but you’re no OJ Simpson. The only people who care about your trial are creationism wonks like me.

Pagegate Just Got Gayer

…thanks to Lawrence O’Donnell at HuffPo, and this tidbit in the Post:

The staff member said Hastert’s chief of staff, Scott Palmer, met with the Florida Republican at the Capitol to discuss complaints about Foley’s behavior toward pages.

Palmer, who shares a townhouse with Hastert when they are in town, is more powerful than all but a few House members.

I know that prime real estate in DC is expensive, but Hastert makes $212 grand a year. I don’t know how much Palmer makes, but I bet he’s not hurting either, so I can’t imagine them being roomies for financial reasons.

I suppose it’s possible that Hastert and Palmer feel they need 24-hour access to each other in case an important issue comes up in the middle of the night, or because they’re firmly committed to saving gas by car-pooling, but let’s face it: you’re all thinking the same thing as I am: Hastert is teh gay.

Which wouldn’t—or shouldn’t—be a big deal, except for the fact that they’re members of the party that mobilized the troops in the last election by stirring up fears that OMG the gays are going to sap our precious bodily fluids!

It’s not the gayness. It’s not even the coverup (if any). It’s the hypocrisy.