“Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.”
~Edmund Burke
Buck Sexton
The Blaze
9/30/2011
Should you spend time in prison for violating an obscure federal law you didn’t even know existed?
These days, the government’s answer increasingly appears to be a resounding “Yes.”
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported on the enormous volume of over 5,000 federal criminal statutes enacted over the past few decades, and the slow, deliberate destruction of a crucial principle in law called “mens rea.”
Meaning “guilty mind” in Latin, means rea doctrine limits your criminal liability to your intent and knowledge while committing an act.
Basically, “mens rea” says you must know what you are doing is wrong for it to be criminal.
But that’s all starting to change, and it’s a huge threat to the freedoms of every American.
The U.S. Congress has passed a vast array of laws that ignore “mens rea” as a necessary component of a crime. Increasingly, federal prosecutors don’t even have to try and prove your state of mind during the crime. Whether you know or not what you did is wrong, you can pay huge fines or even head to prison.
This is a perfect storm of sorts…
This article continues at The Blaze.
In the Comments Section of the site one reader included this link, World Prison Populations.
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