that would include "structuring", the crime of making several smaller cash
withdrawals (and maybe deposits?) over a period of time.   amt and timeframe
to be determined by your bank.   and consider 3k (not 5k) the total combined
limit,
just to be safe (but maybe not).

We also have to report multiple cash transactions under the threshhold
that appear to be an attempt to avoid the thresshold.  

If you or your business deposit a thousand or two every day from
receipts, then that's not suspicious.  But you'll still get reported if
you make a cash deposit over the threshhold.

If someone has a payment due once every six months, and they come in
three days in a row to pay $2000 cash each day, that looks like an
attempt to avoid the threshhold.

(Note, I'm not a banker, I'm an insurance agent.  "Patriot" Act
reporting requirements are broader than pre-9/11 requirements, now
insurance companies are also watching for money laundering.)

  That statute raises some intriguing questions which, to the best of
my knowledge, have never been addressed in any court.

  I don't know how far the Smith Act goes, but it would seem to me that
 use of armed force in the defense of the Constitution and the
liberties protected therein is not only one of inclination but a sacred
duty.  If, for example, a Communist cadre were to take over our country
-- keeping the forms of the Constitution but disregarding its substance
-- would we not be obliged to take up arms against it?  Here is the
American oath of citizenship:

  "I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce
  and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, poten-
  tate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been
  a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution
  and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign
  and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;
  that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by
  the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the armed forces
  of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform
  work of national importance under civilian direction when required by'
  the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental
  reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."

http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/aboutus/history/teacher/oath.htm

  The salient passage: "I will support and defend the Constitution and
laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and
domestic."  When our public officials decide -- as they do from time to
time -- that they are *above* the law and scarcely have to even pay lip
service to it, are we not just inclined but actually obliged to take up
arms against them?

  By way of example, when a judge refuses to hear a case that he has a
duty to hear, Chief Justice Marshall called that "treason against the
Constitution."  If a ruling is repugnant to the law, the people have a
right -- and government officials, a duty -- to disobey it. And the law
also holds him criminally accountable.  For as the Supreme Court said
over a century ago (and Alabama’s judicial discipline board recently
said to its former Chief Justice Roy Moore):

  No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No
  officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity.
  All the officers of the government, from the highest to the low-
  est, are creatures of the law, and are bound to obey it.

United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196, 220 (1882).

  Our first, last, and only loyalty is to the Constitution, as opposed
to the government.  Yet, the Smith Act *specifically* criminalizes the
advocacy of the overthrow of the government, irrespective of whether it
is properly acting within the confines of its charter.  In Federalist
#78, Alexander Hamilton explained the difference:

  There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that
  every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the
  commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act,
  therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this,
  would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal;
  that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of
  the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting
  by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not auth-
  orize, but what they forbid.

  Obviously, you'd like to think that the system is self-correcting,
and that laws could be passed to correct the injustice.  But when we
talk of judges, we have to recognize that they are essentially beyond
the law -- the Madison v. Marbury paradox we all recall from the very
first week of Con Law.

  I tend to agree that Dennis v. U.S. is bad law, even to the point of
being unconscionable -- having been decided during the Red Scare, which
tends to explain its deviation from sound theory.  I am mindful of what
the Governator said at the RNC last cycle:

  "When the people are accountable to the government, there is tyranny.
  When the government is accountable to the people, there is liberty."

  The argument that our only loyalty is to the Constitution, and that
in that sense, the statute is overbroad and in facial violation of the
Bill of Rights, would make for an interesting challenge.  Any thoughts
from the highbrow constitutional lawyers in the audience?

under a DEMOCRAT.

Stupidity is the most powerful force in the universe, however as I
pointed out in one of the property seizure threads, at some point the
trend becomes too much to just be stupidity, especially when there is
profit.

The war on terror has exceeded that threshold for me. It's not stupidity
but as you state, a cloak of feigned incompetence that has lead to record
profits, record theft, and record increases in power.  

More or less.