How much danger does the federal government’s unprincipled, out-of-control body of criminal law pose to, say, the average American small-business person? Well, suppose you were a small-business owner, and for twelve years both U.S. Customs and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had been inspecting the shipments of seafood …
Aspiring inventor Krister Evertson received a two-year sentence for allegedly abandoning materials that he had stored in sealed, stainless-steel containers, thus doing no harm to the environment. Indianapolis 500 champion Bobby Unser was prosecuted and convicted because federal prosecutors estimated that he and his snowmobiling companion wandered into a national …
The Wall Street Journal this weekend documented several sad features of the federal government’s proliferation of poorly written criminal laws, many of which leave it to prosecutors to pick and choose which Americans to prosecute as criminals. The Journal chronicles the stories of a half dozen Americans who became the …
Today the U.S. Supreme Court will consider the connection between an international convention to eliminate chemical weapons and a suburban Philadelphia love triangle. Remarkably, the first and apparently only person prosecuted under the United States’ implementation of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention is Carol Anne Bond, a Lansdale, Pennsylvania, woman …
What happens when the Florida legislature eliminates the centuries-old requirement that the government must prove that an accused person acted with criminal intent before he may be punished as a criminal? It risks making almost anyone a criminal – both those who intend to commit a crime and those who …
One of the reasons that John Stossel’s face, voice, and trademark “Give Me a Break” tagline are so familiar to conservatives is that he has mastered the art of illustrating the absurdity of arbitrary, overreaching decisions by bureaucrats, lawmakers, and other government officials. Tonight, his show on Fox Business focuses …
7:30 Alt on Kagan’s Activism and Willingness to Interpret the Constitution based on Foreign Law Robert Alt entered into the record a written statement in support of his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this evening. Alt’s statement explains why Kagan’s activism calls into question her fitness for a lifetime …
In Day Three questioning of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, conservative senators continued to press for clear, forthright answers to resolve the serious questions surrounding Kagan’s unlawful policy on military recruiting at Harvard Law School and her views on the reach of federal power to regulate details of American life, …
Day two of the Elena Kagan confirmation hearings saw a little less posturing than yesterday’s opening salvos by Senators bent on diverting attention from Kagan’s record by excoriating the current Supreme Court and falsely characterizing it as a bunch of “conservative activists.” Unfortunately, there was the same lack of meaningful …