On 10/22/13 11:31 -0400, Kelly John Rose wrote:
Stuff like this almost always makes me wish the DoJ was more diligent. If
you want to see excess laws removed from the books, have them enforced as
written. Suddenly a lot of senators families will be arrested and rich
individuals in jail (along with almost everyone else).
What kinds of laws are we talking about? I'm genuinely interested in laws
(particularly US federal) that may unwittingly end me up in jail if I were
to encounter an over-zealous prosecutor.
The book mentioned below seems to focus on something different, based on
this Amazon review:
"With such a provocative title, I expected a thorough list of ways that
ordinary citizens can be unwittingly trapped by federal law. Maybe a
handful of frightening anecdotes, maybe some telling historical analysis.
Instead, after two lengthy introductions, I find a dense chapter defending
... a Florida politician accused of corruption. And a Massachusetts
governor. And a Massachusetts House speaker. When I got to the chapter
defending Michael Milken I started skimming instead of reading.
Don't get me wrong: if those people were railroaded, then they deserved
better. But those aren't the sort of stories that excite people's sympathy.
I'd much rather hear about innocent doctors getting tried for prescribing
legal painkillers (which Silverglate does address, albeit later), or
citizens being sent away for behavior that nobody knew was illegal. When
Silverglate writes about one politician going after another, my blood
doesn't exactly boil at the injustice being done.
Silverglate writes with a didactic, passionate style. It's likely to
inflame the hearts of people who already care about civil liberties. But
for people who don't see expanding federal power as that big of a deal, a
sob story about how Ken Lay was strung up won't elicit any sympathy.
All of the above would make the book 4 stars. I'm giving it 3 stars because
it's a substandard Kindle edition. There's no table of contents. The
footnotes don't hyperlink to the end of the text (a feature in every other
footnoted book I've read on Kindle). And for a book that's been out nearly
a year, it's still far too expensive."
After that the politicians will fall over themselves to remove the law from
the books. Or at least amend it.
On Tuesday, October 22, 2013, David wrote:
<http://www.harveysilverglate.**com/Books/ThreeFeloniesaDay.**aspx<http://www.harveysilverglate.com/Books/ThreeFeloniesaDay.aspx>
>
Three Felonies a Day is the story of how citizens from all walks of
life—doctors, accountants, businessmen, political activists, and
others—have found themselves the targets of federal prosecutions, despite
sensibly believing that they did nothing wrong, broke no laws, and harmed
not a single person. From the perspective of both a legal practitioner who
has represented the wrongfully-accused, and of a legal observer who has
written about these trends for the past four decades, Three Felonies a Day
brings home how individual liberty is threatened by zealous crusades from
the Department of Justice. Even the most intelligent and informed citizen
(including lawyers and judges, for that matter) cannot predict with any
reasonable assurance whether a wide range of seemingly ordinary activities
might be regarded by federal prosecutors as felonies.
--
Dan White