In a sad story about a mentally ill “sovereign citizen” who killed two police officers, there was this detail:
This is where Mr. Kane made a show of cutting his long grass with a pair of scissors when police officers came to his property to enforce city codes, a neighbor recalled. This is where he demanded to be paid $100,000 a day in gold or silver, “the only legal form of payment in the Constitution,” when he was sentenced to community service for traffic violations. This is where Mr. Kane’s brother has a plaque on his porch with a fake gun affixed to it. “We ain’t dialin’ 911,” it says.
And this is where Mr. Kane drew his son, who the authorities said participated in the shooting, into his web of conspiracy theories and suspicion of authority. By age 9, Joseph, who was home-schooled, could recite the Bill of Rights from memory and carried a realistic toy gun everywhere he went, Sheriff Gene A. Kelly of Clark County said.
I couldn’t find any reference to gold and silver in the constitution except this:
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
(bold mine)
What does this mean exactly?
Update. Atrios explains:
It just means that states can’t declare that debts can be paid in seashells or ReaganDollars, though they can, if they want, declare that debts can be paid in gold or silver.
I suppose that “Thing” here means something other than regular federal currency.
