Schaeffer Cox takes the stand in the hopes of demonstrating to the court that he is essentially harmless. I think he may have demonstrated something else entirely.

As I mentioned on Monday, Schaeffer Cox is now serving as his own co-counsel and has, in his infinite legal wisdom, decided to put his best character witness on the stand. Himself.

Now there is probably no sweeter sound in the word to Francis "Schaeffer" Cox than the sound of his own voice (They do not call him "the preacher" for nothing.), and you can see that for yourself by visiting You Tube and watching video after video of the domestic terrorist wannabe demonstrating a seemingly affable, if perhaps kooky, personality, while openly discussing "standing up to the Federal government."

Cox clearly has a great deal of confidence in his persuasive capabilities. (After all didn't he talk this rag tag group of idiots to help him plan to kidnap and kill law enforcement in Alaska?)

So having sat in relative silence for a week, Cox was anxious to explain away all of this silly nonsense about him being a dangerous person in front of the courtroom. I don't think it went the way the thinks it went.

This from Alaska Dispatch:

On Tuesday Cox blamed everybody but himself for his predicament, in which he faces a possible life sentence if convicted of the most serious charges. 

He told the court he believed he was the target of twin murder plots. He thought a man now known to be a government informant would kill him if Cox didn't instigate violent conflict. And he believed that federal agents had sent an out-of-state hit squad to Alaska to murder his family, a government plot to end Cox's outspoken ways. He believed government feared his rising influence and would go to any lengths to stop him. (In fact there was NO plot to murder Cox.  A fact that should be obvious to all except those suffering severe anti-government paranoia. Which indeed MOST 2nd Amendment quoting sovereign citizens types suffer from.)

Schaeffer Cox with his fellow Alaska Peacekeepers militia members.

He'd had a brush with the Office of Children's Services, brought about by a domestic violence incident he had with his wife. As a result of the case, the child welfare agency was required to make sure Cox's young son was safe in the home. Cox believed it was a ruse to get him to use force to prevent anyone from taking his child, thus sparking the conflict federal agents needed as an excuse to kill him. Cox took steps to protect himself. He wore body armor. He carried a gun. He traveled with an armed security detail at the ready. He didn't want a shootout, but he was ready for the fight if he found himself in the middle of one. (The Office of Children's Services employees do NOT carry weapons and are certainly not going to engage a parent in a shootout, especially since their focus is protecting the safety of a young child. I cannot imagine the jurors not being horrified to hear Cox's response to their concern for his son's well being.)

"There were U.S. Marshals that were trying to corner me and my wife into a shootout to fix the 'Schaeffer Cox problem,' and using my son to do it," he told jurors, explaining that the scenario was his "greatest fear."  (And the theme continues.)

But Cox was also facing, he said, life and death pressure to instigate the very violence he claimed an aversion to. Bill Fulton, a weapons dealer from Anchorage, who was later found out to be one of the government's paid informants, pushed Cox hard to lash out at the government in retaliation for any effort by state officials to go after his toddler-aged son, Cox said. 

In one breath, Cox boasted and bragged about his gun-toting force of militia members. In another, he espoused the ethics of non-violence. He wanted, he claimed, to be more like Ghandi than Rambo. But with Fulton in his face, a Ghandi-like approach could prove his undoing. 

"I was instilled with a very real fear that if I kept trying to pull a Ghandi, Bill Fulton would kill me, blame it on the feds and try to start a war," Cox said on the stand Tuesday. (I have a feeling that Cox compares himself to Ghandi simply because that is the most peaceful character he can conjure up, with apparently no understanding of Ghandi's absolute insistence on non-violent responses to aggression.)

Cox often speaks in extremes, something he's done when addressing judges and state troopers alike. He told a state court judge people would rather kill her in her bed at night than quibble with her in court, and he once told a state trooper he could have law enforcement "outmanned and outgunned." 

These were threats, investigators and prosecutors suggest. Cox answers that they were merely a "communication technique," a tactic of saying something shocking to get people off balance and "pull them out of their comfort zone and into a new frame of thought." After making a statement about his available force, or some impending conflict, Cox generally follows up with a line about how he doesn't want that to happen, about how it's preventable if both sides work toward peace. (So in the mind of Schaeffer Cox threatening judges and law enforcement with a violent response or murder is simply his way of opening a dialogue?)

There's more but I think you probably get the drift.

I have to imagine that THIS is why Schaeffer's legal team kept him off of the stand.  They had to have realized that he was suffering from severe paranoia and that having him on the stand would certainly NOT convince a jury that he was harmless, but would in fact have quite the opposite affect.

I think this testimony has probably had a chilling effect on the jury, and would not at all be surprised that they want to make sure this guy stays caged up for as long as possible.

The interesting thing is that Cox's entire defense was predicated on the idea that the plans to kidnap judges and engage law enforcement in a firefight were REALLY coming from the FBI informants, even claiming that he was "held hostage in Alaska" and was unable to leave because one the the informants would not provide transportation out of the state, and that HE was the one trying to calm everybody down and take the path of a peaceful outcome (You know, like Ghandi.)

That is a hard case to make once you admit to wearing bulletproof vests while visiting with OCS employees and having armed security accompany you everywhere, and then suggesting that you made violent threats against law enforcement in order to "pull them put of their comfort zone."

Well I have to imagine that hearing this kind of testimony has pulled the jury out of their comfort zone as well, and that Cox is possibly looking at a very uncomfortable couple of decades of his own.

And the truly troubling aspect of all of this is that lunatics with a very similar mindset to Schaeffer Cox are now in charge of the Republican party in Alaska. I worry that our troubles may just now be starting here in the Last Frontier.