Long overdue. It is likely that most people break more than one federal law every day and don’t know it.
That is a symptom of being under the tyranny of the Rule of Man rather than the freedom of the Rule of Law.
America is meant to be run by the Rule of Law, the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land. But for over 100 years, the feds have gone willy-nilly passing laws on a whim regardless of Constitutional limits - thus the tyranny of the Rule of Man.
The feds tried to shut down my kids selling arrow heads basically because they have my surname (Irish).
Mind you, my wife is 100% Apache, my kids are enrolled in the Mescalero tribe, we live in Ruidoso, NM (home of the tribe), and they make the arrow heads on the reservation from flint we scavenge out of the River Ruidoso, as their very Apache great-grandfather taught them.
Promptly resolved, but having three feds cuff and threaten 11, 12, and 14 year old kids making a buck after school by putting stuff on Etsy is absurd.
(The “crime” was “fake Native American-made goods, not made by Native Americans.” No, they were quite real.)
They did not apologize.
I heard decades ago that the average American at any given laws is in violation of 3-5 federal statutes.
I am paraphrasing from memory, but I recall In the famous Citizens United v. FEC in which Kagan argued the government position, I had heard that Kagan was purportedly asked by the justices if certain speech in a given time frame around an election was punishable by law, and censorship could be enforced by incarceration.
Kagan (or one of her FEC comrades) replied something like “Yes. That could happen as the law allows for it. But it isn’t something that we would pursue or actively prosecute, even though the law allows us to do it.”
Scalia stood up and leaned over the bench above her, and while looking down at her said angrily and forcefully (I have to paraphrase) “I am not going to support any law that allows government bureaucrats to prosecute or not prosecute someone based on the mood they are in on any given day!”
I remember reading that somewhere, and although I have not found it any transcripts, it has the ring of truth.
I reminds me of the anecdote about Admiral Ernest King in WWII (who was a strict disciplinarian who popular myth held was so tough he “shaved with a blowtorch”) who supposedly growled at the beginning of the war: “When they get in trouble, they send for the sons-of-bitches.” when asked later if he actually said this, the quick-witted King replied that he had not, but said he would have said it if he had thought of it.
I don’t know if Scalia actually said this, but...I will bet upon hearing the story, he wished he had.