Many of the recent federal laws have nothing to do with things that people would be ashamed to do, or with terrorism. I forget the details of the case, but a woman was facing jail time for some offense related to harassing a whale by coming too close to it in a whale watching boat (since whales are an endangered species protected under federal law). Also, a lot of landowners have had their properties retroactively declared to be federally protected wetlands, making it a federal crime to erect new buildings on them. And at this time, manufacturing 100 watt incandescent light bulbs is a violation of federal law (or maybe this year it's down to 75 watts).
