[bIlluminati]

Under this law, all current rules implemented by any government agency, organization, or entity created by Congress that has legislative or judiciary powers as defined above will become null and void five years from the date of passage unless approved by normal constitutional means.”

Make it by the end of 2012, unless you are certain we’ll do better in 2013. Any regs advanced by the agencies have been and are merely suggestions unless and until Congress votes on them.

And make any future regs null and void until Congress votes on and approves them, signed by the President or over his veto, and any attempt to enforce them be considered extortion, with the usual penalties for extortion. And make any unConstitutional law null and void, with enforcement considered theft under color of law. And throw in “Ignorance of the Constitution is no excuse.”

[supercat]

Another couple of laws I'd like:

1. Provide that the federal government must show, in any prosecution, that the nature of the defendant's conduct would interfere with the performance of the federal government's explicit legitimate enumerated powers (if allowing some activity would not interfere with an explicit power, then its prohibition wouldn't be necessary to effect that power);
2. Recognize the right of criminal defendants to have many key factual matters determined by a jury; including:
   1. Whether a particular search was conducted in reasonable fashion, and whether an officer seeking a search warrant had reasonable probable cause based upon direct observations of himself or persons related their observations under oath.
   2. Whether a particular punishment would be reasonable or excessive, given the particulars of the defendant's conduct and the circumstances surrounding it.
   3. Whether a particular fact or line of argument is irrelevant.
   4. In federal trials, whether the government met its obligation to demonstrate that their actions were based upon legitimate federal authority.
3. Explicitly provide that there is not, and cannot legitimately be, any civil or criminal immunity for government agents who knowingly act in illegitimate fashion.
4. Explicitly provide that a defendant's demonstrable reasonable belief in the legitimacy of his actions should, at a jury's discretion, be a defense against criminal prosecution, but not civil restitution. The phrase "ignorance of the law is no excuse" is properly applied in cases where the defendant shouldn't have been ignorant of the law, but not e.g. in cases where statutes and regulations are so complicated that nobody really understands them.

With regard to allowing juries to decide relevance, it would clearly be impractical to allow defendants carte blanche to put anything they want before a jury with no restrictions. Defendants could easily introduce fake but apparently-compelling evidence of their innocence, without giving the state a chance to scrutinize and refute it. Further, cases could get dragged out forever if defendants had unlimited time to put forth their case and could bring in as much arbitrary testimony as they saw fit. Nonetheless, I would suggest that if knowing some fact about a case would cause a jury to acquit, that's a pretty strong indication that the fact is relevant, even though prosecutors and judges might not want a jury to acquit on the basis of such information. I would suggest that a reasonable balance would be to require that in most cases when a line of questioning is blocked on the basis of claimed "irrelevant", the defendant should have the right to inform the jury what line of reasoning was blocked, and demand that the state justify such blocking for the jury (who could make of that information what they will). If the defendant in a federal marijuana prosecution wants to introduce evidence that he had a prescription and the federal prosecutors don't want to allow it, they should have to tell the jury that they are disallowing any evidence the defendant might want to introduce regarding prescriptions, so as to prevent the jury from wrongly presuming that no such evidence existed.