Posted on 04/09/2015 7:52:36 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
What began as a trickle has become a stream that could become a cleansing torrent. Criticisms of the overcriminalization of American life might catalyze an appreciation of the toll the administrative state is taking on the criminal-justice system, and liberty generally.
In 2007, professor Tim Wu of Columbia Law School recounted a game played by some prosecutors. One would name a famous person — “say, Mother Teresa or John Lennon” — and other prosecutors would try to imagine “a plausible crime for which to indict him or her,” usually a felony plucked from “the incredibly broad yet obscure crimes that populate the U.S. Code like a kind of jurisprudential minefield.” Did the person make “false pretenses on the high seas”? Is he guilty of “injuring a mailbag”?
In 2009, Harvey Silverglate’s book Three Felonies a Day demonstrated how almost any American could be unwittingly guilty of various crimes between breakfast and bedtime. Silverglate, a defense lawyer and civil libertarian, demonstrated the dangers posed by the intersection of prosecutorial ingenuity with the expansion of the regulatory state.
In 2013, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, University of Tennessee law professor and creator of Instapundit, published in The Columbia Law Review “Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime.” Given the axiom that a competent prosecutor can persuade a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, and given the proliferation of criminal statutes and regulations backed by criminal penalties, what becomes of the mens rea principle that people deserve criminal punishment only if they engage in conduct that is inherently wrong or that they know to be illegal?
Now comes “Rethinking Presumed Knowledge of the Law in the Regulatory Age” (Tennessee Law Review) by Michael Cottone, a federal judicial clerk.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
And yet we’re eager viewers of Law & Order-type programs with heroic prosecutors finding ever-more clever ways to “stretch” the law to charge “perps.”
A few months ago I read where for centuries there were only seven types of felonies and that was based on old English law dating from way back. We now have so many felonies, classified in different classes that many once-minor misdemeanors have become felonies.
I really believe this is due to our politicians wanting to ensure they have all of the citizens turned into convicts and placed under their boot and with so many felonies those once-citizens may not vote or own firearms.
I wish I could remember where I read that article and maybe it was from a post here on FR, but It was right after I had one of my knees replaced and I was on some pretty strong pain killers. I am now too busy at work and lazy at home to try to find it but it was an interesting read and something we should try to revert back.
Add to your list the Repeal of the 17th Amendment. That would make it much harder for either party to pass frivolous laws, by preventing an election of a super-majority majority Senate.
Good point! The term "lawmaker" drives me nuts.
I've been going through a sort of late-midlife thing by reading a lot of books about my sports and music heroes from the '50s-'70s. Here and there you see little things that were normal back then that would get the SWAT team called out now. The frog has definitely boiled.
Look up the concept of anarcho-tyranny. Samuel Francis identified the issues here over 20 years ago.
Yeah, no kidding. It's like they can't do otherwise, even if it's horrific law that they 'make.'
Yes we now live in a police state. We have had a soft coup and the totalitarian dictatorship has been installed. I have grave doubts the ballot box can fix things.
Why????????????????
.
I had two friends shot dead here in Atlanta a few weeks ago trying to walk back to their car in a bar district. There is a police substation 15 steps away from the scene of the double homicide. No one around to help.
However, that same night there were likely 20+ DUI’s issued to patrons leaving those same clubs. Pulled over by police officers lying in wait around the corner, securing thousands in fines for the city. Thanks Moms.
There is both under and over criminalization rampant today.
Under criminalization is the phenomenon where liberals want to forgive and forget any transgression - serious or not - by a beloved and protected class of perp.
Over criminalization is where the administrative rules are crossed by unwitting peoples pursuing their own lives.
(sarc) The only solution is to shoot the politicians and start over! (/sarc)
Then you're a potential felon. Isn't big government grand?
You cannot store prescription medications in anything other than the labeled bottle they are dispensed in. Don't ask me why. It's "the law". And as anyone here on this site that worships The Law will tell you, it doesn't matter if the law is right or wrong, because it's The Law, and if some FedGov whackjob with a gun decides to prosecute you over it, they bloody well can because there is a big difference between these cretins who work for the government (at just about any level) and you, and that's if you resist, they have no problem whatsoever with killing you for disobeying The Law.
Some even on this forum will cheer them on as they do so.
This never gets old:
http://drunkard.com/issues/07_02/madd_dog.htm
“You cannot store prescription medications in anything other than the labeled bottle they are dispensed in. Don’t ask me why. It’s “the law”
—
As an 82 year old grandmother I always felt that I led a quiet and honorable life.
I now find that because of the way I store medications I am a lawbreaker and living on the edge.
Neat !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.
Kinda warms you up a bit doesn't it?
Welcome to the 21st century America, where if you're breathing, you're breaking some kind of law.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.