The Associated Press on a letter the Michigan Department of Human Services sent to suburban mom Lisa Snyder, warning her to stop watching her neighbors' children while they waited in the mornings for the school bus. Apparently Snyder was kind enough to do this as a favor for a few of her friends who are working moms. Initial reports do not indicate whether the warning letter is backed by possible criminal penalties.
What is certain, however, is that this is yet another example of overbroad laws that bureaucrats and prosecutors use against Americans who are doing nothing that should be considered illegal, much less criminal.
Small-time entrepreneur and inventor Krister Evertson was in Wasilla, Alaska, by SWAT-clad FBI agents. He had not known that he had to put a on his otherwise lawful UPS package.
A few years back, sixty-three year-old grandmother Kay Leibrand was at her California home of 30 years for failing to meet some Palo Alto bureaucrat's view of how high her hedges should be. (This is not a joke.)
George Norris, who was 66 years old at the time, had his house of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (!) carrying firearms. A retiree, Norris's home-based business was cultivating, importing, and selling orchids. He ended up serving almost two years in prison, finally getting free from federal supervision last December – at the age of 71 – for what amounts to .
Both Krister Evertson and George Norris's wife Kathy held by Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Ranking Member Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) in July.
To her credit, Michigan's Governor Jennifer Granholm has quickly called for amendments to the law that her Department of Human Services used to threaten Lisa Snyder for not having registered as a daycare with the state. Hopefully this law will soon be changed.
In the meantime, this overbroad Michigan law illustrates the thousands and thousands of state and federal laws that can be used to turn an average American's normal, law-abiding existence into a Kafkaesque nightmare.
In addition to their work passing laws that are actually needed, lawmakers at all levels need to diligently engage in the long, unglamorous work of eliminating bad laws – and making sure that the new laws they create are carefully drafted and cannot easily be used against the innocent.
Yes, but all those old laws could also be used to bully and/or force unruly citizens -- like well-dressed Nazi mobsters, for example -- into doing whatever the government wanted them to!
Thus, they stay.
Sure, most of these incidents will be worked out correctly over time, but think how much time, money, energy, and stress is involved in defending oneself from the sheer abject insanity of being nasty-gram'ed for watching a neighbor's kid at the bus stop, or arrested for not putting a sticker on a package! And yet, this is what happens when liberalism takes root - the ability to think, reason, and act independently disappears. All that matters is what the State dictates, and what they tell the people to say and do.
It's a scary world when liberalism is in charge.
There's my two cents.
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