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Posted on 05/14/2025 3:15:37 PM PDT by karpov
After mountain runner Michelino Sunseri ascended and descended Grand Teton in record time last fall, his corporate sponsor, The North Face, heralded his achievement as "an impossible dream—come true." Then came the nightmare: Federal prosecutors charged Sunseri with a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail for using a trail that the National Park Service described as closed, although it had never bothered to clearly inform the public of that designation.
Sunseri unwittingly violated one of the myriad federal regulations that carry criminal penalties—a body of law so vast and obscure that no one knows exactly how many offenses it includes. An executive order that President Donald Trump issued last week aims to ameliorate the injustices caused by the proliferation of such agency-defined crimes, which turn the rule of law into a cruel joke.
The Code of Federal Regulations "contains over 48,000 sections, stretching over 175,000 pages—far more than any citizen can possibly read, let alone fully understand," Trump's order notes. "Worse, many [regulations] carry potential criminal penalties for violations."
How many? As Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and co-author Janie Nitze note in their 2024 book on "the human toll of too much law," even experts cannot say for sure, although "estimates suggest that at least 300,000 federal agency regulations carry criminal sanctions today."
At the federal level, in other words, regulatory crimes outnumber statutory crimes—another uncertain tally—by a factor of roughly 60 to 1. Since the latter category has exploded during the last century, that is no small feat, but it is what you might expect when unaccountable bureaucrats are free to invent crimes.
"Many of these regulatory crimes are 'strict liability' offenses, meaning that citizens need not have a guilty mental state to be convicted of a crime," Trump notes.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
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Regulations not passed by a legislative body and signed by an executive into law should have to be renewed every 6 months or expire. That would put a stop to these bureaucratic mussolinis.
Remember Ronald Reagan with a tall stack of government regulation forms to open a new business and his holding the one sheet required to get onto a new welfare account?
DOGE really has that as an ancestor.
Many years ago I went to a talk given by an NRA lawyer. He said there are thousands of federal and state gun laws, so many that there are folks in the audience who have accidentally committed firearm felonies.
My very honest friend scoffed at that. “Not me,” he said. Then the lawyer went over some of those laws.
“I’m a felon,” said my friend.
The entire Code of Federal Regulations and the attendant penalties are simply un-Constitutional.
Congress has no right to delegate their obligations to propose and pass legislation.
“This status quo is absurd and unjust. It allows the executive branch to write the law, in addition to executing it.”
The problem in a nutshell.
Just simply revoke the entire CFR and force Congress to vote on each and every item. They don’t want to? Great. No law then.
The ending of the Chevron Deference should be able to wipe many of these 30k fed regulations.
Every once in a while someone comes across a law still on the books that becomes a joke.
One: Illegal to take a bath without one’s clothes on.
Another: The driver has to have someone go ahead and wave a flag in the street as he drives a motor car into town to warn pedestrians and farmers who have to get their animals safely out of the way.
Massachusetts: No gorilla is allowed in the back seat of any car.
Nevada: It is illegal to drive a camel on the highway.
One of the lists.
https://forestgrove.pgusd.org/documents/Computer-Lab/Strange-State-Laws.pdf
Isn't that racist?
Bingo.
Bingo. Just shows that humans are incorrigibly prone to evil. Does not the Bible say that? Oh yes, guess the Feds forgot that.
LOL! I looked up my State:
Maryland:
• Baltimore City: Though you may spit on a city roadway, spitting on city sidewalks is
prohibited. You may not curse inside the city limits.
• Eating while swimming in the ocean is prohibited.
• In Baltimore it is illegal to mistreat oysters.
• In Baltimore, it is illegal to wash or scrub sinks no matter how dirty they get.
• In Baltimore, Maryland, it is illegal to take a lion to the movies.
• It is a violation to be in a public park with a sleeveless shirt -$10 fine.
• You cannot throw a bale of hay out of a second story window in Annapolis.
The political benefit is in the selective prosecution of those innumerable laws and regulations.
Political enemies feel the full weight of all and political allies nothing.
Democrats have become quite skilled in this area as all good totalitarians do. Just ask the J6 political prisoners, Ashli Babbitt’s family, those investigating election fraud, President Trump and those in his orbit, etc.
On the other hand, remember the BLM summer of love, etc.
That works.
A very sad case was an elderly female artist who had a hawks nest in a tree in her yard. She incorporated shed feathers from the hawk into her art work. Her art work was seized and she was fined $25,000 (when that was a lt of money), her art was seized, she also faced jail time.
About thirty years ago a congressman asked the DOJ for a list of regulations, not laws, at all levels of government that required a prison sentence if violated. The response was that they existed at all levels of government and all governments in the US. There were thousands of them and no way to compile a list. In Florida you can go to prison for “touching” a gopher tortoise. There are fines and prison sentences for catching too many of a certain fish, or too small a fish, or out season. The lists go on and on.
Excellent post.
bttt
One of them: You may not curse inside the city limits.
True 1966 story. One of my friends in college was arrested in Detroit for “using swear words in the hearing of a woman.” The cop heard it, the women were not complaining about it but he said the law was to protect women from vulgar men and it was still enforceable.
True 1967 story. I was given a ticket along with three other guys. Crossing from one bus stop to another adjoining street but running across rather than spend 5 minutes going to the next stoplight down the street. The cop let the two girls with us go saying “Girls don’t know what they’re doing and depend on men to protect them. You guys know what you’re doing and crossing like that is wrong.”
RE: it is illegal to take a lion to the movies.
But in The Hangover it was okay for Mike Tyson to have a tiger at home. Not in Baltimore and who would argue with him.
Sweet guy as he was in the movie.
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