Oregon's own, wacky Ed Fadeley has made the tax geek news across the country this week. He and his wife underpaid their federal income taxes in 2000 and 2002 by substantial amounts. And in dealing with the IRS and appearing on his own behalf before the U.S. Tax Court, he behaved like a clown, drawing thousands in penalties.

Fadeley and his wife never filed their federal tax returns until the Tax Court judge "asked" them to. And when they did, they claimed a bunch of outlandish deductions, $91,000 of which were promptly tossed out by the court. Add six to eight years of interest onto the bill, and you've got yourself a real mess. Just another day at the office for Fadeley.

Some interesting facts from the court's opinion: The former Supreme Court justice collected state pensions of around $82,000 and $85,000 in the two years in question, and he paid $100,000 in attorney's fees over the scrape he got into with the State Bar disciplinary process in the 1990s. He and his wife claimed that the land around their home was a working farm, but they never made a nickel of income from it. In defense of his claim that his farm was a business, Fadeley noted "that one of the horses fell into a ditch and died and that cougars and an English bulldog killed some of the sheep and three pygmy angora goats."