Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
If there's a good criminal case against someone who was in office, the next government should bring it, even if it means they are indicting someone from the other political party. Part of what is delicate about this republic is the rule of law, and lawyers accusing people of crimes is only a problem if they're wrong.
|
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonie.../dp/1594035229
Our state and fed criminals code are already ridiculously overbroad. The question is rarely if a person committed a crime as much as if a person is an attractive target upon whom the codes may be inflicted.
We have strict liability crimes. We have crimes that are considered crimes even if no one is actually directly harmed by them. Most of our laws are designed to protect property rights. You can rape someone and do a fraction of the time you will for fraud.
Setting these ludicrous rule books (written by a mix of dimwitted legislators' aides and corporate lobbyists) loose in the political realm is already problematic enough. I don't think we should be encouraging more of it, particularly where this power could be abused by a wanna be autocrat like Trump.
ETA: Aaron Swartz, decades of targeting minorities via the War on Drugs, this sort of shit -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov I think we have more than enough lawyers running around throwing rule books at people. Christ, we jail more people per capita than the Chinese! The financial and human losses accrued from our overly litigious civil and criminal justice systems, and their legislative enablers, must be somewhere in the several trillions per decade.
Threaded Mode