Posted on 07/31/2009 7:16:39 AM PDT by marktwain
Federal law now criminalizes activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison.
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Every year, thousands of upstanding, responsible Americans run afoul of some incomprehensible federal law or regulation and end up serving time in federal prison. What is especially disturbing is that it could happen to anyone at all -- and it has. We should applaud Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), then, for holding a bipartisan hearing today to examine how federal law can make a criminal out of anyone, for even the most mundane conduct.
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This is an inevitable result of the fact that the criminal law is no longer restricted to punishing inherently wrongful conduct -- such as murder, rape, robbery, and the like. Moreover, under these new laws, the government can often secure a conviction without having to prove that the person accused even intended to commit a bad act, historically a protection against wrongful conviction.
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So many thousands of criminal offenses are now in federal law that a prominent federal appeals court judge titled his recent essay on this overcriminalization problem, "You're (Probably) a Federal Criminal." Consider small-time inventor and entrepreneur Krister Evertson,
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Krister never had so much as a traffic ticket before he was run off the road near his mother's home in Wasilla, Alaska, by SWAT-armored federal agents in large black SUVs training automatic weapons on him. Evertson, who had been working on clean-energy fuel cells since he was in high school, had no idea what he'd done wrong. It turned out that when he legally sold some sodium (part of his fuel-cell materials) to raise cash, he forgot to put a federally mandated safety sticker on the UPS package he sent to the lawful purchaser.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. -Ayn Rand
Actually they did but since Federal Judges routinely lie to Jurors they probably had no idea that they could nullify this stupid law by refusing to convict.
L
The “abandonment” charge looks like something that ought to have been overturned on appeal — a matter of a bad application of law by the trial judge — but a peon like Evertson doesn’t have the money for federal appeals.
~ Tacitus
Indeed. An NFA violation (mere paperwork) is taken more seriously.
See post #4.
declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. -Ayn Rand
This is the Holy Grail of our rulers. They require absolute authority over every aspect of our lives. We are, in every respect, slaves to our government.
And for anyone wanting to look ahead enough to see if there is a problem with something beyond working a wage job, there aren’t any easily accessible encyclopedias. The result, of course, is to favor huge enterprises that have the lawyers who know the rules inside and out.
Later.
They almost had me there. Quick, somebody make sure they're not fishing for ideas!
But the safety at any cost crowd told me if I’m not doing anything wrong, then I have nothing to worry about.
Most laws are available online free at gov’t websites.
Making them accessible, however, does not make them comprehensible. For years I spent considerable spare time studying just sections 265 & 400 of NY Penal Code - and that was mind-bending.
And to think our masters want to pass a 1000+ page “health care” bill that even they haven’t read...
It is time for sunset provisions on ALL laws. My thinking is that they should automatically expire after 10 year, unless re-approved. This would also help to keep legislators busy and prevent them from cooking up new asinine laws because they have too much time on their hands.
Yeah... We're in deep doo-doo.
I would be willing to guess that nearly all of us are violating some arcane law or regulation on a daily basis. The IRS makes the Gestapo look like the Salvation Army.
It does not sound so bad -— unless you have actually seen and observed sodium...really dangerous stuff!
I'm certain he packaged it carefully (wrapped in wax or some other coating and in an unbreakable container).
Sodium is a metal, and an element. It reacts with oxygen and ‘air.’
It is a soft metal which can be very shiny if it did not oxidize immediately upon contact with ‘air.’
A pea sized amount of sodium dropped into a glass of water will cause it to react violently bubbling and releasing a gas which will ignite almost immediately on the top of the water. A larger chunk of sodium in this situation would create an explosion.
Pretty nasty stuff!
Of course, when combined with the poison iodine it becomes quite tasty and a necessary component of life - sodium iodine, or table salt!
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