You Broke the Law, But did you Know?

Before you even get out of your driveway or leave the parking lot, how many laws did you break?

You’ve probably broken the law, and you don’t even know it

FreedomWorks: April 1790, the first Congress passed the Crimes Act, a law that established a criminal code in the United States. The Constitution listed only three crimes — counterfeiting, piracy, and treason. The Crimes Act codified those crimes and added a little more than a dozen others, including murder, larceny, and perjury. The list of federal offenses was short and easily defined.

Today, however, there are more than 4,500 federal statutes that carry criminal penalties. That is, at least, the best estimate. There has not been a full accounting of the number of criminal penalties since 2008. In 2013, the House Over-Criminalization Task Force asked the Congressional Research Service to, once again, take on this task. “CRS’ initial response to our request was that they lack the manpower and resources to accomplish this task,” Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), co-chair of the task force, said at a June 2013 hearing. “And I think this confirms the point that all of us have been making on this issue and demonstrates the breadth of over-criminalization.”

This onslaught of federal criminal offenses is relatively recent in the United States’ history. The American Bar Association, in a 1998 report, noted that “[m]ore than 40% of the federal provisions enacted since the Civil War have been enacted since 1970.” If this explosive growth in the federal criminal code was not jaw-dropping enough, it pales in comparison to the number of federal regulatory crimes.

A 1991 study, Does ‘Unlawful’ Mean ‘Criminal’? Reflections on the Disappearing Tort/Crime Distinction in American Law, noted that “there are over 300,000 federal regulations that may be enforced criminally.” Twenty-four years later, some estimate that there are as many as 400,000 regulatory offenses, many of which are punishable by fines and prison sentences.

It has long been said that ignorance of the law is not a defense, but the laws and regulations on the books in the United States are so voluminous that it is impossible to know when they are being broken. This is why, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you broke the law but did not realise until it was too late, you should get yourself a lawyer. Maybe you should take a look at someone like these Raleigh criminal defense lawyers to give you a better idea of how they could help you. Harvey Silverglate, a civil liberties and criminal defense attorney, has, quite literally, written the book about the epidemic of over-criminalization. In his 2009 book, Three Felonies A Day, Silverglate, who offers several horror stories involving over-criminalization, theorizes that the average American commits, as the title suggests, a trio of felonies on a daily basis, often without ever knowing that a crime was committed.

These offenses can still be successfully prosecuted. Take the case of Alison Capo, for example. Her 11-year-old daughter, Skylar, saved a baby woodpecker from being eaten by a cat. Capo did not know that she ran afoul of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, under which the woodpecker is protected. She was fined $535 and threatened with jail time. The US Fish and Wildlife Service dropped the citation only after the case received publicity in the news.

“Kids should be able to save a baby bird and not end up going home crying because their mom has to pay $535,” Skylar told a local reporter. “I just think that’s crazy.” Indeed, it is crazy. Sadly, there are many more egregious examples of over-criminalization. The Heritage Foundation highlighted 21 specific instances from across the country in a publication, USA vs. You: The Flood of Criminal Laws Threatening Your Liberty, where the purported “criminal” broke laws or regulations that they could not have possibly known about.

Unfortunately, federal law and regulations often lack mens rea, or guilty mind, a requirement that derives from the common law tradition. Essentially, with mens rea, prosecutors would have to prove that the accused had criminal intent for them to be culpable for a crime. The criminal intent requirement has, however, been eroded in American law as the number of criminal offenses passed by Congress and promulgated by unelected bureaucrats have exploded.

A May 2010 report, Without Intent: How Congress Is Eroding the Criminal Intent Requirement in Federal Law, from the Heritage Foundation and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers noted that of 57 percent of the 446 proposed criminal offenses in the 109th Congress (2005-2006) “lacked an adequate mens rea requirement.” Of the 36 proposed criminal offenses enacted by this particular Congress, almost 64 percent had a weak mens rea requirement or none at all.

Testifying before the House Over-Criminalization Task Force in July 2013, John Baker, a well respected and accomplished legal scholar who has written extensively on over-criminalization, explained how the American legal system came to such a perilous state that puts the liberty of the people at risk. “[W]hen we look at state criminal law, it is relatively easy, even though states have added many non-common law crimes, it is easy because the meat and potatoes of a local prosecutor, which I was, in murder, rape, robbery, theft, burglary, that is what we dealt with. And most juries do not have difficulty figuring out what those crimes are,” Baker told members of the task force. “Indeed, in most state prosecutions the issue is not whether there was a crime, the issue is whether the defendant is the person who did it.”

“In Federal law it is just the opposite. The issue is not whether the defendant did something; it is whether what he did was a crime. And we know with 4,500 statutes out there, there are plenty to pick from,” he said. “And it is easy to pick up one that has, if not a lack of mens rea entirely, a confused mens rea.” In his prepared testimony, Baker noted that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, under which Alison Capo was unnecessarily harassed, does not have a mens rea requirement.

“You know, at the state level we know that we found many people who are innocent in jail because they were factually not guilty,” Baker explained. “The problem in federal criminal law is that we have innocent people being convicted not because we have the wrong person, but because they really did not commit a crime” because they did not intend to do so.

In Baker’s view — as well as the view of most conservative, libertarian, and even some progressive legal scholars — is a default mens rea requirement. This would be applied across the board in federal offenses, providing some necessary relief for people who may unwittingly break some arbitrary statute or regulation enacted by Congress or promulgated by a federal agency.

Much of the focus of justice reform efforts in Congress has been on overhauls of front-end sentencing and back-end reentry. These efforts are vital because of the high costs of incarceration and the current approach to corrections, which essentially warehouses offenders, rather than rehabilitate them. But the need for default mens rea is another aspect of justice reform that Congress must consider due to the epidemic of over-criminalization that represents a threat to virtually every American.

 

Obama’s White House Shouting ‘Oh Ashley!’ After the Hack of Database

In part from Wired: Hackers who stole sensitive customer information from the cheating site AshleyMadison.com appear to have made good on their threat to post the data online.

A data dump, 9.7 gigabytes in size, was posted on Tuesday to the dark web using an Onion address accessible only through the Tor browser. The files appear to include account details and log-ins for some 32 million users of the social networking site, touted as the premier site for married individuals seeking partners for affairs. Seven years worth of credit card and other payment transaction details are also part of the dump, going back to 2007. The data, which amounts to millions of payment transactions, includes names, street address, email address and amount paid, but not credit card numbers; instead it includes four digits for each transaction that may be the last four digits of the credit card or simply a transaction ID unique to each charge. AshleyMadison.com claimed to have nearly 40 million users at the time of the breach about a month ago, all apparently in the market for clandestine hookups.

“Ashley Madison is the most famous name in infidelity and married dating,” the site asserts on its homepage. “Have an Affair today on Ashley Madison. Thousands of cheating wives and cheating husbands signup everyday looking for an affair…. With Our affair guarantee package we guarantee you will find the perfect affair partner.”

The data released by the hackers includes names, addresses and phone numbers submitted by users of the site, though it’s unclear if members provided legitimate details. A sampling of the data indicates that users likely provided random numbers and addresses, but files containing credit card transactions will yield real names and addresses, unless members of the site used anonymous pre-paid cards. One analysis of email addresses found in the data dump also shows that some 15,000 are .mil. or .gov addresses. Read more here.

Between being unable to respond to terror attacks (Benghazi) and being unable to kill terrorists massing on the Iraq border (ISIS) to being dumb enough to register for an infidelity hook-up site with their White House email accounts.

From Twitter: I’ve come to the conclusion that the Obama administration IS the JV team they warned us to look out for.

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For access to the database, go here.

The Latest Planned Parenthood Video, the Beating Heart

States are investigating Planned Parenthood while others are moving to defund the organization. This is NOT an issue of abortion it is an issue of organ trafficking and illegal harvesting. Here is information on Title X.

Horrific Claim in New Planned Parenthood Video: Intact Brain Was Harvested From ‘Late-Term Male Fetus Whose Heart Was Still Beating’

A pro-life, medical ethics group has released the seventh video in an ongoing undercover and investigative series alleging that Planned Parenthood sells aborted fetal parts and tissue for profit.

The latest 10-minute clip from the Center for Medical Progress includes a shocking claim from Holly O’Donnell, a former blood and tissue procurement technician for StemExpress, that the heart of a baby was still beating after an abortion.

“The third episode in a new documentary web series and 7th video on Planned Parenthood’s supply of aborted fetal tissue tells a former procurement technician’s harrowing story of harvesting an intact brain from a late-term male fetus whose heart was still beating after the abortion,” a press release reads.

The majority of the video focuses on O’Donnell recounting how she was once asked to help procure brain tissue from the aforementioned fetus — an experience that she said shook her to her core.

The former technician recalled her coworker one day calling her over to “see something kind of cool.”

“So, I’m over here and this is the moment I see it. I’m just flabbergasted,” O’Donnell recalled of seeing the late-term aborted fetus. “This is the most gestated fetus and the closest thing to a baby I’ve seen.”

She said that her coworker then tapped the aborted baby’s heart and that it immediately started beating.

“I’m sitting here and I’m looking at this fetus and its heart is beating — and I don’t know what to think,” O’Donnell said. “I knew why it was happening, because the electrical current, the nodes were still firing, and I don’t know if that constitutes it’s technically dead or if it’s alive.”

O’Donnell went on to describe the fact that the baby had a face that included eyelids and a pronounced mouth and nose, but it’s what happened next that she said pushed her over the edge and showed her that working at StemExpress was no longer feasible.

“Since the fetus was so intact [my coworker] said, ‘This is a really good fetus, and it looks like we can procure a lot from it. We’re going to procure brain,’” O’Donnell recounted. ”She takes the scissors and she makes a small incision… and goes, I would say to maybe a little bit through the mouth, and she was like, ‘Okay, can you go the rest of the way?’”

While she didn’t want to do it, O’Donnell said that she complied, and that she immediately regretted her decision to do so.

“I’m just sitting there like, ‘What did I just do?’” she said. “That was the moment that I knew I couldn’t work for the company anymore.”

Terrorism Works, U.S. Chart Proves Vulnerability

Chart Lists Terrorists in U.S. Due to Lax Immigration Policies

The Obama administration’s lax immigration policies have allowed a large number of terrorists with documented ties to ISIS and other radical Islamic groups into the United States, including individuals from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Uzbekistan who have been criminally charged in recent years.

Examples include a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia (Hinda Osman Dhirane) charged with conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, a lawful permanent resident (Akhror Saidakhmetov) from Kazakhstan charged with conspiracy to provide material support to Al Qaeda in Iraq, a Yemeni national named Mufid A. Elfgeeh who also supported a foreign terrorist organization, possessed illegal firearms and attempted to kill U.S. government officers and a Syrian national named Mohamad Saeed Kodaimati who knowingly made false, fraudulently and fictitious statements to the FBI.

That’s just a snippet of a long list of foreigners with terrorist ties who have been granted U.S. entry by the Obama administration. The document was provided this month by a pair of federal lawmakers attempting to pinpoint the tragic consequences of Obama’s negligent immigration policies. The legislators, both U.S. senators, are asking Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Secretary of State John Kerry to provide details on the immigration history of the individuals—as well as their family—that appear on the chart. The list features 72 people involved with or sentenced for terrorist activity in the last year alone.

They include individuals who have engaged in or attempted to engage in acts of terrorism; conspired or attempted to conspire to provide material support to a terrorist organization; engaged in criminal conduct inspired by terrorist ideology; or who have been sentenced for any of the foregoing, the senators, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Ted Cruz of Texas, reveal. “We would like to understand more about these individuals, and others similarly situated in recent history, and the nexus between terrorism and our immigration system,” they write in a letter to Lynch and Kerry. Sessions chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Cruz chairs the Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts.

They ask that the State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ) coordinate with other relevant agencies to provide answers to their questions by early next month. Among the senators’ inquires is an unredacted copy of each non-citizen or naturalized citizen’s alien file and a breakdown by immigration status of those who at any time after entering the U.S. got flagged as a member of a terrorist organization or political/social group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity. The lawmakers seek other information as well, including the identification of subjects with terrorist ties who have been deported from the U.S. and those who have been placed in removal proceedings but were allowed to remain inside the country.

As if it weren’t bad enough that terrorists are entering the U.S. legally thanks to our weak immigration policies, the Obama administration also has a terrorist “hands off” list that permits individuals with extremist ties to enter the country. The disturbing details of this secret list come from internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents exposed last year by a U.S. senator. Specifically, an electronic email exchange between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) asks whether to admit an individual with ties to various terrorist groups. The individual had scheduled an upcoming flight into the U.S. and was believed to be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a close associate and supporter of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Islamic terrorists are also sneaking into the U.S. through the porous southern border. Judicial Watch has reported this for years and, more recently, published a series of stories documenting how Mexican drug cartels are smuggling foreigners with terrorist links into the El Paso, Texas region. The foreigners are classified as Special Interest Aliens (SIA) by the government and they are being transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road – Highway 20. Once in the U.S., the SIAs wait for pick-up in the area’s sand hills just across Highway 20. JW has also reported that Mexican smugglers are moving ISIS operatives through the desert and across the U.S.-Mexico border with tremendous ease.

America’s Dramatic Drop in Freedom, Shameful

Ronald Reagan is shuttering in his grave

Every person in the United States has a DUTY to be a watchdog of government and to protect the legacy of our Founding Fathers. As noted below, the failure belongs with us.

What are you ready to do and when do you start to remove this shame?

United States Drops In Overall Freedom Ranking 

Daily Caller: A new report on the freedom of countries around the world ranks the United States 20th, putting countries like Chile and the United Kingdom ahead of the U.S.

Last year, the U.S. was ranked 17th, but a steady decline of economic freedom and “rule of law” has dropped the level of freedom, according to the Cato Institute, Fraser Institute and the Swiss Liberales Institut, which created the study together.

Co-author of the report Ian Vasquez told The Daily Caller News Foundation that the steady growth of government and increased regulations of business and labor contribute to the U.S. low rating.

“Since the year 2000, the U.S. has been on a decline in terms of economic freedom,” Vasquez told TheDCNF.

The other main reason for the United States’ low rank comes from the “rule of law” measure. Vasquez told TheDCNF that increased invasions of privacy through the war on drugs and war on terror have contributed to the decline in freedom.

Also, the increased use of eminent domain is factored in as a violation of property rights.

The other indicators used to make the list were security and safety, movement, religion, association, assembly and civil society, expression, relationships, size of government, legal system and property rights, access to sound money, freedom to trade internationally, regulation of credit, labor and business.

Based on those measures, here are the top 25 countries.

 

1. Hong Kong

2. Switzerland

3. Finland

4. Denmark

5. New Zealand

6. Canada

7. Australia

8. Ireland

9. United Kingdom

10. Sweden

11. Norway

12. Austria

12. Germany

14. Iceland

14. Netherlands

16. Malta

17. Luxembourg

18. Chile

19. Mauritius

And then finally..

20. United States

Just after the U.S.,

21. Czech Republic

22. Estonia

22. Belgium

24. Taiwan

25. Portugal

“The U.S. performance is worrisome and shows that the United States can no longer claim to be the leading bastion of liberty in the world,” Vasquez wrote.”In addition to the expansion of the regulatory state and drop in economic freedom, the war on terror, the war on drugs, and the erosion of property rights due to greater use of eminent domain all likely have contributed to the U.S. decline.”