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"People tend to conform their factual beliefs to ones that are consistent with their cultural outlook, their world view," Braman says. The Cultural Cognition Project has conducted several experiments to back that up. Participants in these experiments are asked to describe their cultural beliefs. Some embrace new technology, authority and free enterprise. They are labeled the "individualistic" group. Others are suspicious of authority or of commerce and industry. Braman calls them "communitarians." In one experiment, Braman queried these subjects about something unfamiliar to them: nanotechnology — new research into tiny, molecule-sized objects that could lead to novel products. "These two groups start to polarize as soon as you start to describe some of the potential benefits and harms," Braman says. The individualists tended to like nanotechnology. The communitarians generally viewed it as dangerous. Both groups made their decisions based on the same information. "It doesn't matter whether you show them negative or positive information, they reject the information that is contrary to what they would like to believe, and they glom onto the positive information," Braman says.

"Basically the reason that people react in a close-minded way to information is that the implications of it threaten their values," says Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale University and a member of The Cultural Cognition Project. Kahan says people test new information against their preexisting view of how the world should work. "If the implication, the outcome, can affirm your values, you think about it in a much more open-minded way," he says. And if the information doesn't, you tend to reject it. In another experiment, people read a United Nations study about the dangers of global warming. Then the researchers told the participants that the solution to global warming is to regulate industrial pollution. Many in the individualistic group then rejected the climate science. But when more nuclear power was offered as the solution, says Braman, "they said, you know, it turns out global warming is a serious problem."And for the communitarians, climate danger seemed less serious if the only solution was more nuclear power.

King's comments weren't recorded, but a staffer for Media Matters, who heard the comments, provided TPMmuckraker with an account. The staffer, who requested anonymity because she's not a communications specialist, said that King, an extreme right-winger with a reputation for eyebrow-raising rhetoric, appeared as a surprise guest speaker on an immigration panel at the conservative conference. During his closing remarks, King veered into a complaint about high taxes, and said he could "empathize" with the man who flew a plane into an IRS building last week. During the question and answer session, the Media Matters staffer asked King to clarify his comment, reminding him of his sworn duty to protect the American people from all sworn enemies, foreign and domestic. In response, said the staffer, King gave a long and convoluted answer about having been personally audited by the IRS, and ended by saying he intended to hold a fundraiser to help people "implode" their local IRS office.

Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, spoke to ABC's "Good Morning America" from her home in Norway. Asked during a phone interview broadcast Monday if she considered her father a hero, she said: "Yes. Because now maybe people will listen." Authorities say Stack, 53, targeted the IRS office building in Austin on Thursday, killing employee Vernon Hunter and himself, after posting a ranting manifesto against the agency and the government. he apparently set fire to his home before flying his plane into the office building. Hunter's son, Ken Hunter, said he's alarmed by comments that the pilot was a hero. "How can you call someone a hero who after he burns down his house, he gets into his plane ... and flies it into a building to kill people?" Hunter told ABC." "My dad Vernon did two tours of duty in Vietnam. My dad's a hero." Bell said she offered her deepest condolences to Hunter's family. She said her father's last actions were wrong. "But if nobody comes out and speaks up on behalf of injustice, then nothing will ever be accomplished," she told ABC. "But I do not agree with his last action with what he did. But I do agree about the government,"

Stack was upset that §1706 did precisely what it was designed to do: Deprive him of the chance to exploit independent contractor status to avoid paying taxes through non-filing or through the understatement of income, overstatement of deductions, and avoidance of income tax withholding. In spite of the overwhelming advantages attendant to employee status, Joe Stack desperately wanted to be treated as an independent contractor for one simple reason: It would have made his tax protesting easier.4 Footnotes: ¹  We have met many taxpayers who worked as independent contractors for years without so much as a peep of protest until they realized, ex post facto, that it might have better for them to have been treated as employees. In our experience, workers tend to be content with their independent contractor status until one of the following happens: They get fired or quit They get hurt on the job They get sued for something they did while on the job They need a bank loan (and employment verification)  ²  If Stack had been an independent contractor and was subsequently “fired” by his principal, my hunch is it would have taken him less time to file a claim for unemployment compensation than it takes Apolo Ohno to finish short track. ³  Indeed, §1706 was included in TRA ‘86 because the CBO had estimated that the government was losing up to 30% of taxes because independent contractors were either not reporting all of their income on their tax returns or were claiming fraudulent or questionable deductions against that income. 4   Like all tax protestors, Stack knew that once the IRS had collected his taxes through payroll withholding it would never give it back to him based on previously refuted tax protestor arguments. Consequently, his only chance of avoiding taxes was to control his own tax payments and then use his frivolous arguments to evade or at least defer paying taxes.