Again Ray Arachelian wrote:

...

Of course, it would be difficult to wash away all the FUD the government has disseminated about the Bell case by now.

Not so difficult. Remember that Bell stink-bombed those offices allegedly. This could easily be seen as a teenage-mentality prank. Play that part up, and the ludicrousness of everything else he was "schemeing", and it makes the IRS look very very bad. They are pushing the bad ass terrorist view of him.

One way of looking at it is that a greater crime than he committed has already been 'paid for'. Whatever they add to his sentence will serve to increase the value of the 'gift certificate' Bell is buying for some lucky CypherPunk for Christmas. Since much of the authority of society revolves around guilt/shame, then a crime already paid for allows us to committ it without guilt. e.g. - Tim McVeigh I am tired of the whiners who cry out for the public hanging of every person deemed guilty by the justice system of 12 million jurors whipped into an emotional frenzy by the press and the government spin doctors, and who then bitch and moan when some servant of the Tao, such as Terrible Timmy, exercises the other side of the two-edged sword. Since McVeigh was a dead-duck anyway, it is a shame that he didn't just stand up in front of the jury with a history book and a calculator, do some figuring, and say, "By my calculations, not only is my crime already paid for, but 'we the people' still have plenty of 'credit' left on the account." ~~~ YouCanBetYourSweetAssIAmSending*This*PostAnonymouslyMonger