Posted on 10/06/2009 4:11:36 PM PDT by khnyny
Brian Walsh with the Heritage Foundation has this hilarious, ridiculous, depressing story at the Washington Times:
“You don’t need to know. You can’t know.” That’s what Kathy Norris, a 60-year-old grandmother of eight, was told when she tried to ask court officials why, the day before, federal agents had subjected her home to a furious search.
The agents who spent half a day ransacking Mrs. Norris’ longtime home in Spring, Texas, answered no questions while they emptied file cabinets, pulled books off shelves, rifled through drawers and closets, and threw the contents on the floor.
The six agents, wearing SWAT gear and carrying weapons, were with – get this- the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Kathy and George Norris lived under the specter of a covert government investigation for almost six months before the government unsealed a secret indictment and revealed why the Fish and Wildlife Service had treated their family home as if it were a training base for suspected terrorists. Orchids.
That’s right. Orchids.
By March 2004, federal prosecutors were well on their way to turning 66-year-old retiree George Norris into an inmate in a federal penitentiary – based on his home-based business of cultivating, importing and selling orchids.
Mrs. Norris testified before the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime this summer. The hearing’s topic: the rapid and dangerous expansion of federal criminal law, an expansion that is often unprincipled and highly partisan.
Chairman Robert C. Scott, Virginia Democrat, and ranking member Louie Gohmert, Texas Republican, conducted a truly bipartisan hearing (a D.C. rarity this year).
(Excerpt) Read more at biggovernment.com ...
How about a report of when and who got paid off in Congress to pass the Orchid-laws. Or, is it just federal government regulation?
Which President signed it into law?
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Part 2, Chapter 3, Page 404
------------------------
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.
Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power.
What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing.
All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.
They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.
We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
Power is not a means; it is an end.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
The object of persecution is persecution.
The object of torture is torture.
The object of power is power”.
-George Orwell, 1984, Part Three, Chapter III, page 263
In the totalitarian state that which is not forbidden is required and the line never clear.
Bingo.
Historically, the greater the amount of “laws” the more corrupt the government. Those in power can use those laws to selectively target their oppononents - or anyone really.
I see a Lexington and concord in the future if this crap does not stop
Growing orchids without a permit. You?
They got me for running an ad against an incumbent 60 days before the election.
Damn! You're really in trouble!
It gets ever more scary...
I say bring it, THEY WILL LOSE!
Bunch of socialists traitors!
I expect the government to do the same to people growing their own tobacco.
And more absurd.
A treaty, it was.
Another way I’ve read that is:
“The sign over the entrance to the ant hill reads:
‘ALL THAT IS NOT FORBIDDEN IS MANDATORY!’”
>“You don’t need to know. You can’t know.”
Let’s see how long your domestic military terror mission secrecy lasts after I introduce you to Mr. Waterboard and Mrs. Blowtorch.
No my dear, you don’t get to have a lawyer. The Courts say that’s OK now.
How about these stupid, nanny-state tyrannies?:
A NY school board fines a Mom for violating their regulations on modes of transport by riding a bike to school with her son.
A California man is fined for lighting up a cigar on his own deck.
Connecticut students cannot order French Fries at school any more. Bake sales are banned. The state is watching OUR waistlines even as their own expands exponentially.
A town council in the UK that spent a large sum researching, creating, and distributing salt shaker tops with fewer holes to Fish & Chips shops in order to reduce the salt intake of patrons. (I swear it’s true.)
In September, the European Union banned the sale of 100-watt incandescent light bulbs, with lawbreakers facing up to $70,000 in fines. Over the next few years, bans on lower-wattage bulbs kick in. In the United States, similar legislation comes into play in 2012. The light bulb, iconic avatar of a brilliant idea will be relaced by the state’s favored, but mercury laden CFLs.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has launched “Resale Round-up,” to enforce new limits on lead in children’s products and makes it illegal to sell any items that doesn’t meet the standards or have been recalled for any other reason. Yes we now live in a time when Garage Sales are a part of the Nanny State.
Best of all, when your head is about to explode from all this unsolicited “advice” the state of Michigan cautions: “”Do not clench your teeth (Living Healthy and Loving It). Instead, “dance to the radio” and “take deep cleansing breaths throughout the day” (Living Healthy and Loving It). OY!
Bumper sticker material???
Or at least it could be a 2012 Obama campaign slogan, possibly???
Or am I reading that wrong??? ;-)
I have long been in favor of an expiration date on regulations (and term limits on legislators).
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