[pyre]

In Canada, there is a product called Kinder Surprise. It's illegal in the United States, but it's just a hollow chocolate egg with a toy inside. The FDA says you can't put a toy inside of food. If you buy one at a convenience store in Canada, and come back across the border with it? Federal offence:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder_Surprise#Prohibition_on_...

[anigbrowl]

That doesn't support your argument very well. We've had this conversation before, and in it I suggested you stop focusing on anecdata and isolated examples and employ some statistical rigor instead.

[pyre]

What statistical rigor do you suggest? How do you gather stats on "people that unwittingly were convicted of Federal crimes that most normal people wouldn't know about (or wouldn't think are crimes)?"

[jlgreco]

Even more importantly, since the idea is not to arrest everyone but rather to be able to arrest anyone, how do you gather statistics on how many people are breaking laws without knowing it, and not being arrested for it?

Because that is, by design, what will happen the majority of the time.

[anigbrowl]

Data on number of actual prosecutions and convictions. you're arguing like someone who finds a bug in a piece of software and decries the entire computer industry as a conspiracy to part him from his money. Of course the law fails on occasion, look at how many lines of code are in it.

But the idea that everyone is breaking 5 or 6 federal laws every day and is at risk of financial ruin or indefinite incarceration at the whim of an indifferent judiciary (or as jlgreco asserts below, as part of an evil plot to render us legally helpless) is utter nonsense. You could, theoretically, break numerous laws in one day and place yourself in substantial legal jeopardy...but only via a sequence of unlikely coincidences. Stop taking the linkbait for fact: the reality is that young black men or ex-felons bear a far, far higher burden of extralegal discrimination than anyone does as the result of ham-fisted federal rulemaking.

This essay is from 1964, and no less relevant today: http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-ame... I urge you to read it and consider the possibility that the federal government does not, in fact, exist for the purpose of making your life miserable.

[kbolino]

There is no doubt that the legal system is institutionally unjust in statistically significant ways to certain groups of people. And there is also no doubt that it is short-sighted and selfish for people not in those groups to expend more effort decrying infrequent injustices instead.

But two wrongs do not make a right. You are not likely to fall into a situation where you are arrested/convicted/imprisoned for an act that most people perform on a regular basis and do not consider a crime. But such laws do exist, real people have been arrested/convicted/imprisoned because of them, and it is still wrong.

Also, every person is subject to more jurisdictions than just the Federal government. I presume that we elide them from most discussions because of the wide variation from place to place, but they are no less able to arrest, convict, and imprison people (some can even execute).

Furthermore, one can recognize the effect of something--e.g., the existence of frivolous laws enables abuses of the justice system--without attributing it to willful intent. It may not be an "evil plot" by an all-knowing mastermind, but that doesn't mean it's not happening (also known as, unintended consequences).

[anigbrowl]

It's still wrong, but so is the assertion that everyone is breaking 3 federal laws a day, and the implicit assertion behind that the federal government is therefore a Bad Thing.