{"id":17775,"date":"2025-05-14T19:05:39","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T19:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=17775"},"modified":"2025-05-14T19:05:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T19:05:40","slug":"the-federal-governments-175000-pages-of-regulations-turn-the-rule-of-law-into-a-cruel-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=17775","title":{"rendered":"The Federal Government’s 175,000 Pages of Regulations Turn the Rule of Law Into a Cruel Joke"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“After mountain runner Michelino Sunseri ascended and descended Grand Teton in record time last fall, his corporate sponsor, The North Face, heralded<\/a> his achievement as “an impossible dream\u2014come true.” Then came the nightmare: Federal prosecutors charged<\/a> Sunseri with a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail for using a trail that the National Park Service described as closed, although it had never bothered<\/a> to clearly inform the public of that designation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Canaparo noted other examples gathered by Mike Chase<\/a>, author of the comical yet accurate book How to Become a Federal Criminal<\/a><\/em>. It is a federal crime, for instance, “to sell a tufted mattress unless you have burned 9 cigarettes on the tufted part of it,” “to submit a design to the Federal Duck Stamp contest if your design does not primarily feature ‘eligible waterfowl,'” and “to sell a small ball across state lines unless it is marked with a warning that says, ‘this toy is a small ball.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting a handle on this bewildering situation will require more than prosecutorial restraint, a matter of discretion that is subject to change at any time. Canaparo argues that Congress should eliminate “excess federal crimes,” add mens rea<\/em> (“guilty mind”) requirements to provisions that lack them, and recognize a defense for people who did not realize their conduct was unlawful. As he notes, rampant overcriminalization makes a mockery of the old adage that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.””<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/05\/14\/the-proliferation-of-regulatory-crimes-turns-the-rule-of-law-into-a-cruel-joke<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“After mountain runner Michelino Sunseri ascended and descended Grand Teton in record time last fall, his corporate sponsor, The North Face, heralded his achievement as “an impossible dream\u2014come true.” Then came the nightmare: Federal prosecutors charged Sunseri with a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail for using a trail that the National Park Service described as closed, although it had never bothered to clearly inform the public of that designation.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Canaparo noted other examples gathered by Mike Chase, author of the comical yet accurate book How to Become a Federal Criminal. It is a federal crime, for instance, “to sell a tufted mattress unless you have burned 9 cigarettes on the tufted part of it,” “to submit a design to the Federal Duck Stamp contest if your design does not primarily feature ‘eligible waterfowl,'” and “to sell a small ball across state lines unless it is marked with a warning that says, ‘this toy is a small ball.'”<\/p>\n

Getting a handle on this bewildering situation will require more than prosecutorial restraint, a matter of discretion that is subject to change at any time. Canaparo argues that Congress should eliminate “excess federal crimes,” add mens rea (“guilty mind”) requirements to provisions that lack them, and recognize a defense for people who did not realize their conduct was unlawful. As he notes, rampant overcriminalization makes a mockery of the old adage that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.””<\/p>\n

https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/05\/14\/the-proliferation-of-regulatory-crimes-turns-the-rule-of-law-into-a-cruel-joke\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[280,236,551],"class_list":["post-17775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-criminal-justice","tag-regulation","tag-regulations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17776,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17775\/revisions\/17776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}