A government of secret laws is inimical to both prosperity and liberty.
"English common law contains a tradition, known as mens rea — Latin for “a guilty mind” — which is intended to protect people from prosecution for unintentional offenses. According to the doctrine of mens rea, if you did not knowingly commit a crime, then you are not a criminal, and should not be treated like one.
Every day brings us stories of citizens being prosecuted for actions no reasonable person could have suspected were crimes. Some of these events, such as a guitar maker being subject to an armed Gestapo raid by commandos in the employ of the federal Fish and Wildlife Service (!), would make hilarious material for a surreal novel or film satirizing insane bureaucracy. Unfortunately, however, these cases are real, and not fiction, and the reality they exemplify is dangerous in the extreme.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article which detailed many such exemplary abuses, the roster of federal crimes, which stood at 20 in the original criminal act of 1790, has now grown to at least 4500 statutory offenses, with unknown thousands of additional grounds for criminal prosecution contained within obscure regulations generated in ever burgeoning amounts by government agencies. "
[Pajamas Media]
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