New ways to break the law! (are you a criminal? Probably)

Here's a question for you: Can you get through 24 hours without breaking a law? Before you answer, consider:

In January, an Atlanta man was arrested and handcuffed for selling a subway token at face value. Donald Pirone observed another passenger having difficulty with a token vending machine, so he gave him a $1.75 token. After the man insisted on paying him, Pirone was cited by a transit officer for a misdemeanor, since state law prohibits selling tokens -- even at face value. A MARTA spokesperson denied that handcuffing a customer for helping another customer was excessive. "There are customer service phones for people who are having trouble getting tokens out of the machine," she said.

Meanwhile, in late 2005, an Ohio man spent three days in jail because he didn't put identification tags on his family's pet turtles and snakes. Terry Wilkins broke a state law requiring owners of native reptiles to tag them with a PIT (personal-integrated transponder). The tags, which are the size of a grain of rice and can be inserted under the animal's skin, contain a bar code readable by a scanner. Wilkins refused to tag the animals because he said PIT tags cause health problems in small reptiles.

It goes on. In Kentucky, Larry Casteel was arrested for not attending a parenting class for divorcing parents, as mandated by state law. He spent the night in jail. In New Jersey, police are giving tickets to people who leave their cars running for more than three minutes in store parking lots. Stopwatch-wielding police hit the offenders with a $200 fine for violating the state's anti-idling law. In northwest Georgia, 49 convenience store owners were arrested for selling legal products to customers. The owners -- mostly of Indian background -- sold cold medicine, baking soda, table salt, matches, and lantern fuel. Police said the ingredients could be used to make methamphetamine. In Burlington, Vermont, police are ticketing people for not removing keys from the ignition and locking their cars. Police said the state law prevents car thefts. Violators are fined $79.

So -- are you still sure you can get through a day without violating a law? If so, don't worry. Legislators are making more things illegal. In New York City, a city council member wants to make it a crime to ride a bike without a registration number tag. Violators would face up to 15 days imprisonment. In Illinois, a state senator wants to make it a crime not to have a carbon monoxide detector installed in your home. In Pennsylvania, a state senator filed a bill to allow police to fine drivers $75 if they don't clean snow off their car. In Virginia, a state legislator wants to make it illegal to show your underwear in public. Girls (or boys) with low-rider pants would get hit with a $50 fine if their thongs show.

Novelist Ayn Rand once wrote: "There's no way to rule innocent men. 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 to live without breaking laws."

Have we reached that point? Is it impossible to live without breaking laws? Before you answer, better check to make sure that your pets have transponder tags, that you didn't leave the keys in your car, and that your underwear is not showing.

MARTA token: http://abcnews.go.com/US/print?id=1390140 Pet TIPs: http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/13309603.htm Parenting class: http://www.reason.com/brickbats/bb-2005.shtml NJ anti-idling law: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060108/LIVING/601080331/1004/LIVING&theme=

VT locked cars: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060108/LIVING/601080331/1004/LIVING&theme= Convenience store: http://www.iacfpa.org/p_news/nit/iacpa-archieve/2005/08/19/civil2-19082995.html NY bikes: http://ridl.us/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=4889&sid=7bad222acdd8dc2f133555e0e62b5f34 CO2 detector: http://www.pioneerlocal.com/cgi-bin/ppo-story/localnews/current/ba/01-19-06-807026.html PA snow: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/08/874.asp VA underwear: http://www.timesdispatch.com/

My understanding of the underpinnings of the Constitution is that the three branches check and balance each other.

The legislative branch generates laws
The Executive branch determines how those laws will be enforced. and
The Judicial branch overturns those laws if they violate the constitution

A juror is a citizen drafted into the Judicial branch. As such he or she has a deep underlying duty to uphold the Constitution as well as decide the facts of a case.

If you think that the idea of nine appointed judges being able to thwart the will of the majority is bad, think about the idea of twelve randomly selected citizens being able to do the exact same thing.

I've never even heard of a jury being selected randomly. Instead both sides devote a tremendous amount of effort into insuring that the jurors are anything but random, they are carefully selected by each side to be malleable in that side's hands. Indeed there are a number of jury selection consultants whose entire reason for existing is to skew the jury towards a desired verdict, before a single scintilla of facts or law is ever presented.

Maybe it's time we selected jurors based on the ability to reason, not the ability to be led around.

Man's enduring nature will overcome the mysticism he has harbored for 2,500 years.

mysticism: believing in non-reality as though it were real -- believing in illusions as though they were real. Acting on non-reality believing it is real -- acting on illusions believing they are real.

Politicians, bureaucrats and parasitical elites are dependent on people's mysticism. For it is by manipulating people via their harbored mysticism that they enrich themselves while draining the host -- parasitical elites leeching off value producers.

For each law there are politicians and bureaucrats and often special interest lobbyists asserting that various harms will come to people without the proposed new law. The law intends to head of or halt the inevitable harm to people. That's how the large majority of laws and regulations come to pass. It's the great harm and suffering that the new laws and regulations are meant to squash.

That's the underlying premise.

Surely, without the this year's new laws and regulations persons would run themselves and society headlong toward destruction. That's what politicians and bureaucrats premised their creating of this years new laws. Just as they did last year, decades before, centuries pat for over two millennia. Be it political rule or religious rule, the premise has always been to save man and society from man himself.

But what has really changed over the past two thousand years? Has the nature of man changed?

It certainly seems appropriate to state that politicians and bureaucrats believe that man's nature is to self-destruct. However wrong they are -- very wrong -- with almost every person breaking the law several times each year -- most people unaware when they are breaking the law -- people and society have not self-destructed.

How can it be that just a hundred years ago man and his society were able to so greatly increase the health and prosperity of people and society without the new laws to come in 1907 and new laws in 1908 and the years and decades that followed with evermore new laws and regulations? Why did the people of those past times not self-destruct themselves and take society down with them? How is it that people of our current day do not run themselves and society headlong to destruction without the benefit of the new laws and regulations to come in 2007, 2008 and for the next twenty-five, fifty and one-hundred years?

Man is not by nature self-destructive. Man's nature has not changed for over 3,000 years -- not since the discovery/invention of consciousness. For 2,500 years man has increasingly prospered. Slowly at first, but increasingly. With rapid increase over the past one-hundred-fifty years.

What has consistently changed at all times except for the Dark Ages is technology. It is because of the men and women who discover, invent and create new technologies that persons and society have increasingly prospered. And it is precisely that which politicians and bureaucrats aim to hinder and sometimes destroy. While proclaiming to protect people from certain harm due to man's supposedly self-defeating nature -- a false premise -- in reality is man's nature to create a better life for himself, his family and humanity that politicians and bureaucrats attack. The false premise is just an illusion -- not real. For in reality man's nature is to creatively and productively benefit himself and herself and others.

It is the essence of man that the politicians and bureaucrats attack and cause countless harm and suffering. For example, taxes in the United States: Tax Freedom Day is right around May 15. That's the date when a person is no longer working to pay taxes. In other words, a person works January 1, to May 15, just to pay his annual tax bill. That's four-and-a-half-months of time effort and energy mostly wasted on paying politicians and bureaucrats to create more new laws and regulations that attack man's greatness -- attack the essence/nature of man. So not only does a person waste almost half a year of time, effort and energy, the product of that waste is turned against him via new destructive laws and regulations.

A War of Two Worlds:

Value Producers
versus
Value Destroyers

"It is a war of rational honesties versus irrational dishonesties."

Maybe it's time we selected jurors based on the ability to reason, not the ability to be led around.

Actually, randomness might be better. I'd suggest having a pool of 36 or 48 jurors in six or eight randomly-drawn groups of six. Each side's lawyer gets to strike two/three of the six/eight groups for any reason or no reason, but does not get to pick and choose.

BTW, one thing I was wondering about awhile ago: what happens or should happen if, during a case, a juror becomes aware of something that might impair his impartiality, but which he could not have known before the case?

As a hypothetical example, suppose that during a trial, a jury recognized one of the defendant's character witnesses as a shoplifter he'd observed in the act but failed to aprehend? Unless the jury was shown photos of all the witnesses before the trial (which I don't think is generally the case) there would be no way for the juror to know of the issue beforehand, but the juror's knowledge about the witness would preclude a fair and impartial evaluation of his testimony. What would be the legally correct and proper thing for the juror to do in such a case?

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