{"id":8220,"date":"2011-09-30T17:13:47","date_gmt":"2011-09-30T21:13:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/watchwomanonthewall\/?p=8220"},"modified":"2011-09-30T17:13:47","modified_gmt":"2011-09-30T21:13:47","slug":"you-may-have-committed-3-federal-crimes-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/watchwomanonthewall\/2011\/09\/you-may-have-committed-3-federal-crimes-today.html","title":{"rendered":"You may have committed 3 federal crimes today!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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The Feds Criminalize Ordinary Life<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/td>\n

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Finally, some front-page attention to a major, and frightening, American problem!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The overproliferation of federal criminal laws and regulations (the U.S. system was designed to keep most criminal statutes at the state and local level), combined with the extreme weakening of mens rea requirements, now means that ordinary Americans on average commit ‘three felonies a day.’<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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Tuesday\u2019s\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>featured an in-depth look at how federal laws increasingly apply criminal penalties for violations involving no\u00a0mens rea<\/em>, roughly translated as a \u201cguilty mind.\u201d The stricture against criminal penalties for unwitting violations is an age-old, bedrock legal principle. Alas, in today\u2019s dangerously armed, bureaucratic super-state, ancient legal principles go by the wayside when politicians pretend to be \u201ctough on crime\u201d and when officious civil \u201cservants\u201d indulge their fetishes for power.<\/p>\n

U.S.governments at every level these days are prone to \u201covercriminalization,\u201d which means turning ordinary activity into violations of the law, turning what should be civil violations into criminal ones, and applying penalties far harsher than should be warranted.<\/p>\n

On the\u00a0mens rea<\/em>\u00a0front, the\u00a0Journal<\/em>\u00a0explains: \u201cIn recent decades, Congress has repeatedly crafted laws that weaken or disregard the notion of criminal intent. Today not only are there thousands more criminal laws than before, but it is easier to fall afoul of them\u2026. Today, there are an estimated 4,500 crimes in federal statutes, plus thousands more embedded in federal regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Journal<\/em>\u00a0highlighted the case of Wade Martin, who legally hunted sea otters but then sold them to a person not qualified to buy them (Martin says he thought the buyer was legal). Another man was charged with illegal ownership of a firearm for keeping a single bullet (no gun) in a box in his room. Yet another, Robert Eldridge, accidentally caught a humpback whale in his fishing net, took care to free the whale, but was unable to remove about 30 feet of netting from the whale\u2019s body. He was criminally charged because he failed to contact authorities to find a trained rescuer to finish removing the net.<\/p>\n

These stories are just a microcosm of the problem. In 2010 I contributed a single chapter to the Heritage Foundation\u00a0book<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0One Nation Under Arrest: How Crazy Laws, Rogue Prosecutors and Activist Judges Threaten Your Liberty<\/em>. I\u00a0wrote<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0of how Krister Evertson, an inventor trying to produce an environmentally friendly fuel cell, was first arrested for putting the wrong label on an otherwise perfectly legal mailing package \u2013 and then imprisoned for improperly \u201cdisposing\u201d of an environmental hazard that he had\u00a0not<\/em>actually disposed of and that was stored in a\u00a0non<\/em>-hazardous fashion.<\/p>\n

Other horror stories in the book included that of a 71-year-old imprisoned for importing otherwise legal orchids without proper paperwork, the honor student arrested for having a \u201cweapon\u201d on school grounds (while she moved into her own apartment, a kitchen knife had fallen behind the seat of a car she then parked on campus), the grandmother arrested because her bushes were too high and the seafood importer\u00a0imprisoned for eight years<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0because he packed lobster tails in plastic instead of cardboard.<\/p>\n

The orchid and lobster cases involved violations of one of the most idiotic laws imaginable, the\u00a0Lacey Act<\/strong><\/a>, aimed against \u201ctrafficking\u201d in wildlife and plants in ways that \u2013\u00a0get this<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 violate\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0U.S. laws but the laws of foreign nations. This is the same law being used, and abused, by the crypto-criminal conspiracy known as the Obama\/Holder Justice Department to conduct the now-infamous\u00a0raid<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0onTennessee\u2019s Gibson Guitar factory.<\/p>\n

More often than not, these arrests are\u00a0carried out<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by gun-wielding thugs in uniform, with the alleged violators treated like murderous madmen rather than ordinary citizens with weak record-keeping skills. Who knew, after all, that even the Small Business Administration and the Railroad Retirement Board need armed agents? That\u2019s at the federal level. At the local level, oft-poorly-trained SWAT teams proliferate unnecessarily, leading to far too many stories like the\u00a0notorious one<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0of the small-townMaryland mayor whose dogs were killed and family abused in a mistaken drug raid.<\/p>\n

The overproliferation of federal criminal laws and regulations (the U.S.system was designed to keep most criminal statutes at the state and local level), combined with the extreme weakening of\u00a0mens rea<\/em>requirements, now means that ordinary Americans on average commit \u201cthree felonies a day.\u201d That is the conclusion of noted lawyer Harvey Silverglate, whose\u00a02009 book<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0of that title\u00a0makes the point that all of us, without ill intent, act in our everyday lives in numerous ways that are \u201cpotentially criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ordinary life should not be treated as a criminal conspiracy.<\/p>\n

Read more:\u00a0http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/index.php\/commentary\/54-state-of-affairs\/1156-the-feds-criminalize-ordinary-life<\/a><\/p>\n

Former U.S.attorney generals Ed Meese and Richard Thornburgh\u00a0asked<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0Congress\u00a0last winter merely to ensure that any bills carrying criminal penalties be referred to the Judiciary Committee for review. To their great discredit, the House GOP leadership failed to adopt such a rule.<\/p>\n

In truth, Congress should do far more. It should undertake a comprehensive review of the federal criminal code \u2013 and perform some radical liposuction on it.<\/p>\n

Read more:\u00a0http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/index.php\/commentary\/54-state-of-affairs\/1156-the-feds-criminalize-ordinary-life<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Feds Criminalize Ordinary Life Finally, some front-page attention to a major, and frightening, American problem! The overproliferation of federal criminal laws and regulations (the U.S. system was designed to keep most criminal statutes at the state and local level), combined with the extreme weakening of mens rea requirements, now means that ordinary Americans on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":403,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1474,7,1361,3100,599,344,435,1871,1367,1867,1121,1502,355,1498,450,434,1920,2838,806],"tags":[3147,3142,3145,3140,3143,3146,3141,3144],"class_list":["post-8220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abuse-and-abusers","category-america","category-anti-christian-bias","category-big-brother-is-here","category-big-government","category-bullying","category-communism","category-constitutional-unconstitutional","category-deceptions-and-lies","category-evil-plot","category-failed-policies","category-godlessness","category-hate-crimes","category-insanity","category-politics","category-propaganda","category-taking-america-back","category-wake-up-america","category-warning","tag-3-federal-crimes-today","tag-bureaucrats","tag-civil-not-criminal","tag-federal-crimes","tag-fetishes-for-power","tag-harsh-penalties","tag-mens-rea-guilty-mind","tag-overcriminalization"],"yoast_head":"\nYou may have committed 3 federal crimes today! - Watchwoman on the Wall<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/watchwomanonthewall\/2011\/09\/you-may-have-committed-3-federal-crimes-today.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"You may have committed 3 federal crimes today! - Watchwoman on the Wall\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Feds Criminalize Ordinary Life Finally, some front-page attention to a major, and frightening, American problem! 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