

You Commit Three Felonies a Day - ctingom
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842.html

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tc
When I read this line,

 _Prosecutors identify defendants to go after instead of finding a law that
was broken and figuring out who did it._

I thought it made the whole piece. It's quite clear to anyone who follows
federal cases that this is exactly what is going on, and it is rather obvious
why anything that enables this is perverting justice.

~~~
pmichaud
The trend is pretty scary -- if any given normal activity could conceivably be
made into a "crime," then you end up with a sort of underclass of people
trying to keep prosecutors and police happy because they know that no matter
what they do they could be hauled into court at any moment. That's wrong.

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jrockway
The concept of punishment is also out of whack. If this guy was convicted of
wiretapping, he could go to prison for longer than someone who ran someone
else over with their car.

(The reason is that "intent" is well defined with respect to
murder/manslaughter, but not with newer crimes.)

~~~
nostrademons
And if he was caught with marijuana three times, he could go to prison for
life!

~~~
jrockway
Citation? 3-strikes laws are for felonies, and marijuana possession is a
misdemeanor in most (all?) places in the US.

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blhack
It is a felony where I live...in Arizona.

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weaksauce
Ouch... do they have a three strikes law there? By the way I just went to
Phoenix and I really don't like the speeding cameras. I am curious though, do
they work to make the traffic overall smoother? When I was there I didn't see
any traffic.

~~~
jrockway
Speeding cameras are a way to increase city revenues without raising taxes.

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natrius
As someone who navigates roads without a steel cage around myself, I wish red
light cameras were replaced with Red Alert-style Tesla coils. Running red
lights is dumb. Cameras make the roads safer.

~~~
weaksauce
I was actually only talking about speeding cameras. The red light cams are ok
with me as long as they don't change the yellow length to make more money. If
speeding cameras were used to improve overall flow of traffic I would be ok
with them too.

I can see them positively affecting traffic because I have seen how backed up
traffic can get when a cop pulls someone over for a speeding ticket.

Spelling mistakes == commenting from my iPhone.

~~~
natrius
Oops, I misread. Speed limits are set arbitrarily low in some places compared
with the design of the road, so I usually disagree with speed limits anyway.
If you want people to drive more slowly, change the road to make them want to
drive more slowly.

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rsingel
This is crap. Councilman did more than store emails. He gave away free email
accounts, then he spied on those who got emails from Amazon.com. The dude
argued that because the emails went into storage on his server for even a
second that he wasn't wiretapping. The judge agreed. On appeal, both the
Justice Department and the EFF wrote in to say that counts as wiretapping. Let
me repeat: in this case the EFF and the Justice Department agreed the dude was
wiretapping. The whole rest of the piece falls apart if you know anything
about the case. This is typical of the WSJ's opinion page -- which holds to
NONE of the standards of its news pages.

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billswift
"Congress has demonstrated a growing dysfunction in crafting legislation that
can in fact be understood."

They write so many laws, even without considering regulations and State and
local laws, that you can't even READ them all, much less understand them.
Where do you think the "tyranny of the lawyers" has come from; they've been
doing this for decades.

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swolchok
The article didn't do much to support the "Three Felonies a Day" thesis. More
support for the tired, more general "laws are bullshit" refrain, but not for
the thesis in the title.

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dionidium
Opposition to vague or unenforceable laws is not the same thing as opposition
to the rule of law, in general. In fact, I think -- as, e.g., Lawrence Lessig
has argued wrt copyright -- such laws might have a corrosive effect on general
support for the rule of law and could be opposed on those grounds.

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visitor4rmindia
Phew! I'm glad this doesn't apply to me.

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erlanger
More than that, but that's another story for another day.

~~~
davidw
And another site.

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erlanger
Er, "but that's another story for another day" isn't an actual promise to
spill the beans. Colloquially it means the speaker will likely never reveal
the secret(s), and when made in passing the reference is intended to be
lightly humorous. Time to roll up the Jump to Conclusions mat.

