When the IRS seized the home of war tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner for fourteen years of back taxes, their community rallied around them, and the civil disobedience was only beginning. Then “When a young couple buys the contested home at auction from the U.S. government for $5,400, they become involved in a political and moral battle much larger than what they originally bargained for.”

The documentary An Act of Conscience tells this story. It’s coming up on Link TV next month, so set your DVRs.

Rick Gee published a very thorough review of the movie a few years back that, depending on your tastes, will either give away too much of the “plot” or whet your appetite to see it.

I’ve finished transcribing the excerpts from Thoreau’s journals in which he touches on topics of political philosophy. This turned out to be more of a project than I’d counted on — sifting through something like 6,800 pages of transcripts for those moments when he’d look away from his turtles and trees and telegraph harps, gaze with contempt on civilization, and make an observation or two about how people treat each other.

He tells the following anecdote of muster-time in Concord, when the State militia came out for their semiannual practice:

I went to the store the other day to buy a bolt for our front door, for, as I told the storekeeper, the Governor was coming here. “Aye,” said he, “and the Legislature too.” “Then I will take two bolts,” said I. He said that there had been a steady demand for bolts and locks of late, for our protectors were coming.