You May Be A Criminal

This may be a first. The Smartfella? is here and now issuing an apology for this posting being as long as it is but this is serious stuff. Please read on. As usual, there will be humor but this is serious stuff.

Sometime in the past there existed a bedrock doctrine of Anglo-American jurisprudence called mens rea, or “guilty mind” or Criminal Intent. This by-the-wayside legal terminology held that a person shouldn’t be convicted if he has not shown intent to do something wrong.

This bedrock doctrine has been replaced by the oft-repeated bedrock doctrine made famous by Lamont Cranston (The Shadow) in his 1940s radio broadcasts, “Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse”.

At present there are 4,500 Federal Crimes (and growing). This is a tad more that the Founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution...Treason, Piracy and Counterfeiting.

Since the year 2,000 the number of people sentenced for violation of Federal Laws has reached 788,517 (and growing).

There are also 300,000 regulations (and growing) that go along with these 4,500 Federal Crimes (and growing).

Many people are being convicted because they broke laws they were not aware that they had broken.

My neswpaper just wrote an article about a Building Engineer who is now a Convicted Criminal. Here are the details about him and his “crime”...

• Many years ago, in order to escape the world of crime that he grew up in, he took a job making $1.80 an hour in the D.C. Education Department. In his life thus far he had seen the murder of his 3 brothers and the death of his father from a heart attack (upon hearing about his second son’s murder).
• He took facility classes at night to learn about power plants, boiler rooms and maintenance. He worked for 24 years and by the time he moved on to his present job in 1993 he was the Facility Engineer for the Board of Education.
• He raised his two youngest daughters alone, determined to show them how to lead a crime-free life.
• He committed his Federal Crime working as the Facility Engineer at a large Military Retirement Center.
• On occasion when one of his buildings flooded he diverted the backup into storm drains that he thought went into the waste treatment system.
• A Justice Department Court acknowledged that he did not know that his diversions actually went into a creek and the creek went into the Potomac River.
• Such diversions were a long standing practice at the facility that started long before our Building Engineer Hard Working Good Citizen became our Building Engineer Convicted Criminal.

From another article from my newspaper...

“The federal criminal code has grown so large it ensnares everyday citizens who have no idea they are violating the law, a bipartisan group of legal experts told a House panel”.

What’s the big deal about having a little bit of Criminal Conviction on your record...

• Applications for jobs, loans and occupational licenses – ranging from plumbers to auctioneers – ask about a person’s criminal record.
• Such convictions can affect international travel, joining the military and can be disqualifying for anyone seeking Federal Employment. (Actually this last one may be the only restriction we presently have on the growth of the federal workforce.)
• The stigma placed by society against one’s good name (some of us still care about such things).

Years ago I posted a blog about Congress passing too many laws and how I would be ready to support any incumbent for office who was useless (in a congressional sense). I quote from that blog...

I am coming around to the point of thinking where the incumbent who can verifiably proclaim in his campaign slogan, "I Did Not Do Anything Since You Sent Me to Congress", is the kind of Do-Nothing that will get my vote in the future.

Sometimes I surprise myself at how smart I am. 

I’m sure glad writing about Foolishness is not against Federal Law...Or is it?

You better hope that reading about Foolishness is not against Federal Law...Cuz it might be.

Would I kid u?