Posted on 07/23/2010 10:30:44 AM PDT by jpl
That's because we have a Constitution. My daughter spent 6 weeks studying in Russia earlier in the summer. She personally witnessed petty criminals like purse snatchers, pickpockets, and shoplifters being beaten senseless by Police officers, then left bleeding and lying on the street. It reminds me of training puppies. Once you smack them with a newspaper a couple of times, they learn.
Rather than being aghast, she suggested that we could reduce crime in the US by adopting a similar strategy.
And think about that. For most of us, even six months in prison for breaking a law we didn't even know about would be enough to lose our jobs, our homes, our cars, all of our possessions and wipe out our savings accounts. You'll get out of jail after six months and find your car repo'd, your home foreclosed and everything you owned sold off by the bank. Have fun starting over again from scratch, with a criminal record to boot.
“Spring Texas isn’t what one thinks of when you hear international criminal or trafficking in endangered species, but a local resident has been uncovered as the head of an international criminal syndicate involved in importing endangered plants from South America.
In an effort to halt this practice officials were tipped to this smuggling operation and obtained a search warrant to search the property of George Norris. Six officers executed a search warrant and recovered 37 boxes of evidence that took three pickup trucks to move.
It took five months to process all of that evidence and prosecutors described Mr. Norris as the kingpin of an international smuggling ring. Mr. Norris has refused to cooperate with prosecutors on his accomplices and claimed that he never made more than $20,000. The facts were laid before a grand jury and Mr. Norris was indicted. With the evidence, proof of his coordinating efforts out of the country, and undercover buys from a federal official, Mr. Norris pled guilty and was sentenced to 17 months in prison.
Released on appeal Mr. Norris, did not prevail and garnered further problems when caught smuggling drugs into prison. Mr. Norris received 71 days in solitary for this offense, but received no additional criminal charges.”
It isn’t about Mr. Norris or this story; it’s about how the news is presented. The writer spins this story and so far, many have happily been led down the garden path. This story could have been about anything-food, politics, religion, economics, etc. That isn’t the point. The point is to understand the writer isn’t conveying information, he is conveying a very specific and slanted view. I have no idea if Mr. Norris is an innocent man run through the machine of an uncaring over regulated society, or a crook with an unusual scam. After reading the piece written here, no one else does either. What really happened? How can you trust the rest of the article when the first was so patently biased?
Is it any wonder that so many people are gullible? How many liberals have you met who were good people but believe the most amazing things? Articles like this are the reason why.
Yes and maybe. Some laws, like murder, robbery, rape, etc., need to be permanent. Legislators waste enough time and money as it is, I don't want to pay them every 5 or 10 years to go back and renew hard laws like murder, robbery, rape and the like!!
However, there ARE "laws" that I agree need to be reviewed periodically that the sunset provision should apply to.
Climb in the trucks boyzs, we gots us a live one. It says heeare on this warrant, that this slimeball, is selling illeegal flyeers. Be shore to put on yur flak jackeets, lock and load. It’s partay time!
YEE HA!
Friggin embilciles.
Thanks to a recently passed law, very soon, simply not having health insurance is going to be a crime, punishable by possible prison time.
Are you OK with this? I'm sure as hell not. I'm growing weary of having this government trying to control every single aspect of my life, and threatening to throw me in prison if I don't comply with their schemes.
OK with what? It is not an opinion piece, it is propaganda. To agree with it or oppose it goes along with the “Fake but accurate” mentality.
You could argue against over regulation. You could argue with over imprisonment. But with facts and reason. NOT with what is presented here.
It isn’t this topic either, it could be any subject. You have to have a foundation in the desire for objective truth before you can write an honest opinion piece.
Too dangerous to go after gangs running drugs (besides they have corrupted law enforcement agencies and politicians on both sides of the border).
Too politically incorrect to go after sex slave trade or other illegal immigrants and those who traffic in them.
Besides it's more profitable to fine someone than to lock them up.
Next they will be putting on flak jackets to raid flea market CD vendors.
Every Juror should be given a pamphlet explaining “Jury Nulliufication”.
So you'd rather that they have time to make up more useless enormous costly bills? Like, for example, Obamacare? Cap & Tax? Financial “reform”?
Personally, I LIKE the idea of keeping them too busy to have spare time for nonsense.
And, you deduced that how??
What I want is for Congress to be in session no more than about 3 months every other year to pass a budget and then . . . GO HOME!!! I don't want them in session ~10 months out of every year because all they do is get into mischief. If the president needs them for something, he can call a special session and when, whatever it is is resolved, they can GO HOME!!!!
'Zat answer your question??
Don't know how much time they got, but laws against transporting water hyacinths across state lines make a lot of sense.
Exactly, like govt mandated warnings on products.
I'd wager 7 out of 10 jurors have never heard of the Jury Nullification option.
But does removing such an offender from the productive ranks of society and incarcerating them at great expense make sense? Is there not a better way to punish this crime than making someone a ward of the state where they have to be housed and fed on the taxpayers' dime?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing against prisons. Prisons are effective at protecting society from those classes of criminals who threaten our life and liberty. But the idea that every broken law merits prison sentences, and increasingly long ones, is archaic, expensive and counterproductive to society, unless of course one is in the business of building prisons. There's plenty of other ways to punish non-violent criminals without locking them up that would better serve society.
I do not advocate the same sort of thing in the United States. I'm just pointing out that it is the natural progression of things when authorities are allowed to selectively enforce the law.
It’s the prison industrial complex. And it needs new inputs all the time.
By making darn near everything a felony, we’ve turned a significant portion of the population into convicted felons. And in the final analysis, you still can’t walk in areas of any good sized city at night.
This is a failed and immoral strategy.
OK.
I got sucked in.
It took a while to get to the heart of this article, another diatribe by the "drug users are misunderstood" contingent.
Wish they had made the point sooner and saved me lots of time.
Obama and others like him believe society should be one huge concentration camp. We used to call those people communists, now they call themselves progressives.
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