The Ron Paul dollar

I had no idea that some crackpots were minting their own dollars in Ron Paul's image.

The ardent supporters of Rep. Ron Paul, the iconoclastic Texas libertarian whose campaign for the presidency is threatening to upend the battle for the Republican nomination, got word yesterday of a new source of outrage and motivation: reports of a federal raid on a company that was selling thousands of coins marked with the craggy visage of their hero.

Federal agents on Thursday raided the Evansville, Ind., headquarters of the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and Internal Revenue Code (Norfed), an organization of "sound money" advocates that for the past decade has been selling a private currency it calls "Liberty Dollars." The company says it has put into circulation more than $20 million in Liberty Dollars, coins and paper certificates it contends are backed by silver and gold stored in Idaho, are far more reliable than a U.S. dollar and are accepted for use by a nationwide underground economy.

Somehow, I can't imagine knowingly accepting one of these on the promise of an unknown organization that it's backed by some hidden trove of silver or gold. Of course, if they look enough like US coinage, I can see being duped to accept them. That, of course, would be counterfeiting. Somewhere, sometime, I heard that counterfeiting was illegal. Just can't remember where or when.

And, of course, now that the dollar floats, the amount of gold it would take to back the dollar changes by the minute.