it's a Federal crime
August 1, 2009 5:43 AM   Subscribe

 
He's probably right.
posted by caddis at 6:05 AM on August 1, 2009 [2 favorites]


Walsh does a compelling and thorough job of showing examples of two white, middle-class people who were absolutely screwed by ridiculous laws over the past couple of years. It is a rather thought-provoking piece. Walsh shows us who the system is working for, and who the system is working against. This should be on the cover of every newspaper. Imagine if there were similarly ridiculous laws that resulted in the incarceration of black, lower-class people. Liberals would go crazy about it.

And these were just two examples that Walsh gave. There could very well be dozens of white, middle-class people sitting in our prisons right now for violating unjust laws. Again, imagine the outrage the liberal media would show if it was discovered that there were dozens of black men sitting in prison for violating ridiculous laws.
posted by flarbuse at 6:26 AM on August 1, 2009 [61 favorites]


somehow, just somehow, with foxnews, edwin meese and the heritage foundation on board this is more about the jeff skillings of the world then poor Krister Evertson... requiring 'showing intent' would demolish most 'financial' crimes.

“This is how we reward innovators in America?” asked senior legal policy analyst Andrew Grossman of the Heritage Foundation, his inflection turning the statement into a question. “They wind up in jail?.... This isn’t the way regulation is supposed to work.”

Among Grossman’s assignments at the conservative Washington think tank is working with former Attorney General Edwin A Meese on the foundation’s Over-criminalization Project.

The project was initiated by Meese, who heads Heritage’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, to oppose the growing trend in government and the legal community in which trivial conduct is punished as a crime.

Evertson’s story has become a favorite illustration in Meese’s efforts.


oh god... meese is scum. this is his pr. these people are total human scum.
posted by geos at 6:35 AM on August 1, 2009 [3 favorites]


Walsh directs Heritage's projects on countering the abuse of the criminal law and criminal process...

I prefer my civil liberties advocacy with a more ACLU/EFF flavor, not this Heritage wonk with a hard-on for oppressed entrepreneurs and an axe to grind against the notion of endangered species.

Still, a good illustration of the "thinktank --> foxnews" phenomenon. It's like that butterfly in South America that causes a squall in Nova Scotia. Somehow enforcement actions against one guy illegally importing rare orchids means we should reject the Kyoto Protocols. Or something.
posted by werkzeuger at 6:36 AM on August 1, 2009 [14 favorites]


Fair enough, flarbuse, but fucked-up is fucked-up.
posted by you just lost the game at 6:36 AM on August 1, 2009 [4 favorites]


So I'm six paragraphs in, and he's still not told me what conduct is being criminalised. So far I've got this:

Moreover, under these new laws, the government can often secure a conviction without having to prove that the person accused even intended to commit a bad act, historically a protection against wrongful conviction.

And I'm thinking that strict liability offences are quite commonplace.

Krister never had so much as a traffic ticket before he was run off the road near his mother's home in Wasilla, Alaska, by SWAT-armored federal agents in large black SUVs training automatic weapons on him.

Wasilla's in the news a lot more now, eh?

Norris made the mistake of not knowing and keeping track of all of the details of federal and international law on endangered species -- mostly paperwork requirements --

Those pesky, inconsequential paperwork requirements. Y'know - like tax returns, or birth certificates...


He's like the Gladwell of Fox - two anecdotes make a trend.
posted by djgh at 7:05 AM on August 1, 2009 [8 favorites]


Crazy idea, I know, but I think we could even let both groups out of jail. I know, I'm running wild again, aren't I?

I think the difference here is that, if you're selling dope, you're aware that it's illegal. I think it's a dumb law, but you are at least making a semi-informed choice to embark on behavior which you know can land you in the slam.

The idea that selling a naturally-occurring element, present in large quantities in our bodies and in our table condiments, could put you in federal prison — but for a sticker — would come as a surprise to many. These are the Surprise Laws. Drug laws, while annoying, mostly baseless, and often racist in origin, are a surprise to no-one.

We ought to get rid of both.
posted by adipocere at 7:12 AM on August 1, 2009 [3 favorites]


The idea that selling a naturally-occurring element, present in large quantities in our bodies and in our table condiments, could put you in federal prison...

I think your overall point is good, but I think he was talking about sodium metal, not table salt. Sodium metal has properties that make it quite dangerous, especially to someone handling it unawares. If he was such an inventor, he would have known those risks and that he was endangering others by not properly labelling a shipment.
posted by werkzeuger at 7:17 AM on August 1, 2009 [16 favorites]


Just to clarify, I think anybody should have the right to purchase chemicals for experimentation and inventing and whatnot, just not to burn a hole through a hapless UPS employee.
posted by werkzeuger at 7:20 AM on August 1, 2009 [7 favorites]


No, no I agree. this is exactly like incidents such as tulia,texas.

way to play the race card.
posted by djduckie at 7:20 AM on August 1, 2009


Sigh... that was a terribly written article and this post is pretty poor for (only) linking to it rather than including some surrounding context. Particularly frustrating is the way this particular article gets on a high horse about how our federal laws are so atrocious, without even hinting, in the first half, exactly what laws he thinks are so atrocious.

First, some general context: this is a brief riff on a much richer and more detailed article of the same title by Ninth Circuit judge Alex Kozinski and one of his clerks. It can be found on Google Books here. Or, if that link doesn't work, it's in a collection called In the Name of Justice, edited by Timothy Lynch. Obviously the full article is much better than this Fox News hack job (although it is somewhat law-nerdy as the point of the entire collection is to respond to a classic essay on criminal law).

As to the Evertson hazardous waste case, it is described in more detail here. Ultimately, Evertson "transported 10 metric tons of sodium metal from its port of entry at the Seattle-Tacoma Port Complex to Salmon, Idaho, where he used some of the sodium in an effort to manufacture sodium borohydride. Everston arranged for the transportation of the sodium metal not used in the manufacturing process and several above-ground storage tanks which contained sludges and other liquids to a facililty in Salmon." This is not some guy who had a small jar of sodium, properly stored under oil, in his back seat or something. He transported 10 TONS of the highly reactive metal, in a shipping vessel also containing water-based liquids; elemental sodium is highly reactive with water and could literally cause an explosion under these conditions.

As to the Norris orchid case, additional details are available at this blog, the author of which claims to have "written extensively" about the case before. It does sound like the CITES convention is worded poorly and is enforced harshly against amateur farmers.

Hopefully these these articles (particularly the original Kozinski essay) can enrich the conversation here, and any of them could've been incorporated in the FPP with 10 minutes of searching.
posted by rkent at 7:24 AM on August 1, 2009 [41 favorites]


Hold up. He transported and stored sodium illegally. This is not some harmless chemical we are talking about. Sodium explodes if it touches water. So you are a small time entrepreneurial inventor. Cry me a fucking river. Being a classic garage inventor should be no excuse to violate laws for shipment and storage of hazardous materials. Shipping sodium in an unmarked package is dangerous in a way that smoking crack doesn't even come close to.
posted by idiopath at 7:24 AM on August 1, 2009 [17 favorites]




I think your overall point is good, but I think he was talking about sodium metal, not table salt.

And we're talking about ten tons of the stuff, too. As said above, strict liability crimes is just not that uncommon. I'm sure there are injustices in enforcement and prosecution, but it seems like this is a pretty transparent right-wing attack on the idea of governmental regulation of all forms, not just the problematic ones.

Presenting Evertson as a small-time investor/entrepreneur who got caught up with some confusing paperwork makes me less sympathetic when I realized the scope of the problem. If someone is dealing with 10 tons of hazardous materials, they know that they better be careful.
posted by allen.spaulding at 7:32 AM on August 1, 2009 [11 favorites]


Well, it's to bad the article is so poorly written. I can think of a few examples off the top of my head of "rich people" being oppressed by potentially bogus federal prosecutions. Let's see. There was the Anthrax case where the FBI hounded someone for years. Then gave up and started hounding someone else untill they killed themselves. There was also This case where an infectious disease specialist was treated like a criminal for (essentially) not handling research samples (which were of bubonic plague) properly. There was This Case which we covered on Metafilter, where a small military contractor was prosecuted on basically totally bogus charges for underselling large contractors. Then there was Don Siegelman the governor who was prosecuted for accepting a campaign contribution even though it probably didn't happen. In that case Karl Rove was (allegedly) pushing the prosecution.

There was recently this story about datacenters being raided with really weak or convoluted evidence. One of the people who had his house raided posted an article about what happened. I can't find it right now (maybe he removed for legal reasons, it struck me as not the kind of thing you write when you're under federal investigation) but one of the things he said was that the lawyers he talked to all recommended taking a plea deal -- because federal prosecutors had a 90% conviction rate, even if he was innocent he would probably still get convicted for something or other.

Of course there are lots of people who are not rich businessmen who get screwed over by our justice system. For example, just in the past few days a court ordered the release of Mohamed Jawad from Gitmo, for lack of evidence (or at least, evidence not discovered under duress or torture). This is a guy who was picked up in Afghanistan at age 15, and now the Obama administration is threatening to press criminal charges against him in order to keep him in prison, despite the fact that there isn't even enough legitimate evidence to detain him in Guantanamo.
posted by delmoi at 7:34 AM on August 1, 2009 [2 favorites]


The U.S. Federal criminal law is interesting. It seems to serve a largely symbolic function as an assertion of federal authority. (I read an article discussing this function, but I can't remember where.) Federal criminal law covers a broad range of conduct, but in practice the prosecutors are very selective about who they go after. So on an average Federal court's criminal docket, you will see mostly (perhaps 70%) gun cases and drug cases, with the balance being made up of things like child pornography, bank robbery, mail fraud, mortgage fraud, fraud involving government programs, and cases involving official corruption (like corrupt jailers smuggling drugs into prisons, politicians taking bribes, and cops stealing drugs and money seized from drug dealers). And then you have a tiny number of prosecutions for obscure violations of the law like the ones described in this post.

My impression is that Federal criminal prosecutions are "more fair" in a socioeconomic sense. Federal law enforcement and prosecutors prepare far more exhaustively for a Federal prosecution than state law enforcement and prosecutors, because the Feds have more resources and there is less pressure on them to get garden-variety criminals off the streets. State prosecutors don't really choose their workload like the feds do --- state prosecutors have to prosecute every homicide, armed robbery, burglary, etc., that comes their way, or else face community outrage. So state prosecutors face crushing workloads of common street crime, with the result that they generally are not seeking to lock up people who are violating obscure statutes concerning the labeling of orchids.

Federal prosecutors, on the other hand, aren't responsible for that street-level crime (except for federal gun and drug statutes), so they can be more thoughtful and selective in their prosecutions, and their prosecutions are not motivated by public pressure to clean up the streets, but by top-down policy imperatives imposed by the federal government. The result can be that some federal criminal defendants are people who were not "bothering" anyone, who were law abiding citizens, but happened to do something proscribed by federal law that hardly anyone realized was a crime.
posted by jayder at 7:42 AM on August 1, 2009


My impression is that Federal criminal prosecutions are "more fair" in a socioeconomic sense.

They are maybe more fair in terms of who they go after, but the fact that they have so many more resources to go after people means that if you do get prosecuted and the prosecutor cares more about getting a conviction then about being fair, you're unlikely to be able to defend yourself very well - and you'll have to spend a fortune to defend yourself.
posted by delmoi at 7:49 AM on August 1, 2009 [2 favorites]


Ugh, I can't believe I just unwittingly clicked on a link to Fox. Good thing I have AdBlock Plus, I guess; I don't want them getting any revenue.

Why does he think I'm probably a federal criminal? Does he think I've sold elemental sodium without applying the mandatory safety sticker? Does he think that I've abandoned hazardous materials? Does he think that I started a business smuggling endangered species?

In any case, regardless of whether he thinks I've done so or not, I fail to see what's bad about having laws against any of those things.
Walsh does a compelling and thorough job of showing examples of two white, middle-class people
Why do you think they're white?
posted by Flunkie at 7:49 AM on August 1, 2009 [3 favorites]


Yes, I've handled sodium. I had to take semester-long safety courses on all kinds of terrible things that can happen if you're not careful with your chemistry. I have also dropped freshly-polished lumps of sodium into a bucket for fun.

Notice how carefully we're being misled here:

1) Sodium is dangerous!
2) Ten tons of it was shipped over water!
3) We convicted this guy!

But it turns out, if you believe the articles, that "... he forgot to put a federally mandated safety sticker on the UPS package he sent to the lawful purchaser." That's what they got him for. Not shipping ten tons of sodium in a tanker. #3 is not connected to #2.

The idea that a sticker is going to make things all better is what galls me. Either shipping sodium is a good idea or it's a bad idea, but it's not an idea a sticker will significantly affect. "Oh, wow, this package has a sticker on it. We'd better put it on the truck where we don't hose all of the packages down partway through."

When shipping a package containing dry ice, my local post office was unable to figure out precisely what to do. "Just write 'DRY ICE' on the outside and it will be okay," I was told. Who knows what I violated there?
posted by adipocere at 7:50 AM on August 1, 2009 [1 favorite]


The idea that a sticker is going to make things all better is what galls me. Either shipping sodium is a good idea or it's a bad idea, but it's not an idea a sticker will significantly affect. "Oh, wow, this package has a sticker on it. We'd better put it on the truck where we don't hose all of the packages down partway through."

Well, what do you mean? If a package is missing it's sticker, how will people know it contains hazardous materials? I would assume UPS has a policy against shipping explosives, would Sodium qualify? I would imagine that UPS probably wouldn't even take the box if it had the sticker

The sticker isn't supposed to "Make it all better" it's supposed to alert people to the presence of hazardous material so they can be more careful.

Still, it doesn't seem like the kind of thing you would send someone to jail for. But I would expect a hefty fine.
posted by delmoi at 7:58 AM on August 1, 2009 [9 favorites]


adipocere: this guy actually has multiple convictions, one was the UPS situation you cite, and the other was the 10 ten tons that were found to have been transported unsafely, after his initial conviction and while he was still serving time. Both situations are cited in the FPP article and framed in a way that is either dangerously ignorant or outright deceitful. Multiple convictions most likely means a systemic irresponsibility or that someone was out to get him.

Chemical labeling laws and hazardous waste storage laws are a no-brainer. I can't believe anyone is actually arguing against this. Sure, we can refine the minutiae of what should be considered necessary procedure for shipment or storage, but the fact is that this is dangerous material, and this guy is clearly handling it in unprofessional and dangerous manner. And proper labeling is a part of this. It is not that "a sticker will make it all better", but rather that we need to have a clear and understandable protocol for transporting hazardous materials, part of which has to be proper labeling. No other safety measure actually makes much sense without proper labeling.
posted by idiopath at 8:05 AM on August 1, 2009 [4 favorites]


In case anyone is wondering, here is the cert petition from the right-wing Washington Legal Foundation.

As far as I can tell, this sticker stuff is a red herring. He was prosecuted for storing hazardous waste, not for anything to do with shipment.
posted by allen.spaulding at 8:08 AM on August 1, 2009 [2 favorites]


Yeah, I'm sympathetic to the idea that there may be such a byzantine collection of laws that people may unwittingly become criminals.

But as people have said in this thread, sodium is pretty much an explosive. Anyone who thinks it's an overreach of the federal government to require proper labeling and handling of explosives needs to have their head examined. It almost makes me think the article is banking on its readers not knowing the chemical properties of sodium and confusing it with table salt.

And the article doesn't give any specifics about the second "federal overreach" with the paperwork on the orchids ... only some ridiculous scare mongering about it being a federal crime to violate any fish or wildlife law of any nation on earth (if this is true, I'd expect the article to provide some real documentation about the scope of this law ... but I don't think actually providing information was the point of that sentence). But you know, there are billions of dollars in damage, and widespread ecological upheaval, being caused by invasive species. I don't think that rules about sending exotic species to new locations are in any way unreasonable.

Is it entirely possible that two years in prison was a hugely disproportionate response to the violation? Sure. I don't know the details, and the article doesn't provide them. Is it completely possible that the thicket of federal law has become unreasonably dense? Sure. But the article picks weak examples.

And given the company that these folks are keeping - like Ed Meese - I don't trust a word of it, on any level. These people think that any attempt by the federal government to protect the environment is unconstitutional, and would prefer to gut most environmental and safety protections on the books. Before I'm willing to consider the idea that federal law needs to be pruned or overzealous prosecutors need to be leashed, someone's got to prove to me this isn't just the next salvo in the tiresome "all government is bad" war.
posted by Chanther at 8:08 AM on August 1, 2009 [5 favorites]


Now I see - there were two different charges. Apparently he was selling the sodium on eBay in order to finance a gold mining operation, which conceivably he would run to make the profits to return to the fuel cell business. This is why the word entrepreneur more often than not means asshat these days. Not sure if anyone is better off with him in jail, even if he did everything described, but it seems pretty clear that he's a charlatan of sorts.
posted by allen.spaulding at 8:12 AM on August 1, 2009 [1 favorite]


Walsh a guy from a noted conservative think tank does a compelling and thorough job of showing examples of two white, middle-class people who were absolutely screwed by ridiculous laws over the past couple of years. It is a rather thought-provoking piece. Walsh shows us who the system is working for, and who the system is working against.

So, who is the system working for here? Not those who were arrested, surely, but I would like to know who this is "working for," other than those agents who enjoy playing dress-up.

In the case of Krister, as has been mentioned above, the guy had been transporting and storing an incredibly reactive material. Does that mean he should get pulled over by people in SWAT armor? Probably not. But on the flip side, is he well-served by an article that juxtaposes a portrayal of him as a "small-time" inventor who started working on his field "during high school" with a report of his illegal actions in the same paragraph, leading me to believe these things happened concurrently or at least around the same time period?

As for the George Norris case, I have no idea what to think due to the complete lack of detail. But again, the leading language. The apparent crime was that he had some orchids that were illegally transported to the country, but since it's a Heritage article it's implied that this only happened because he was making a "small business" of it. Again, age is used as a factor in gaining reader sympathy, despite the fact it's irrelevant -- is it any less tragic when an unjust law convicts someone in their 30s or 40s who's not taking care of a sick mother or on their last legs of retirement?

I don't think it's more tragic when it's someone who is poor or a member of a minority, flarbuse. Throwing that in just clouds the issue -- if these two men were prosecuted for unjust reasons, that stands on its own. Let it do so, because after reading your comment I was almost dismissive of their cases, because casting them as dramatic victims doesn't do either of their cases any credit and just makes the whole story seem like what Walsh has written it as -- a whining Heritage commentator looking for tears about the evils of Federal government.
posted by mikeh at 8:12 AM on August 1, 2009


Just for the record, the laws regarding importation of orchids into the US are archaic and bizarre. The CITES rules for botany were written by a famous orchid collector, who specifically designed them to make it as hard as possible for anyone else to import orchids, with no regard for the actual environmental need. Nearly every single orchid on earth is classified as endangered and illegal to import for this reason, even some of the most common varieties. Furthermore, in many cases the illegal importation has allowed large scale commercial breeding, which slowed or stopped the drain on the wild population.

The guy in the story broke the law. And he knew he was breaking the law. None the less, that law is counter-productive to our stated aim in having such a law, to the point where it actually does harm by encouraging this type of behavior.

Also, FoxNews looks very professional with everything AdBlocked.
posted by paisley henosis at 8:14 AM on August 1, 2009 [1 favorite]


I'm going to focus on this rather than healthcare or the economy.
posted by luckypozzo at 8:16 AM on August 1, 2009 [5 favorites]


I think the difference here is that, if you're selling dope, you're aware that it's illegal. I think it's a dumb law, but you are at least making a semi-informed choice to embark on behavior which you know can land you in the slam.

Actually, you can get arrested for being an "accidental" drug dealer if you are a doctor who prescribes opioid painkillers in high doses to pain patients and the DEA decides the doses are too high or that your patients are really addicts. I wrote about this here

And yes, it was the for the libertarian magazine Reason because the liberal magazines are more concerned about how evil doctors and drug companies are turning innocent patients into junkies (even though the vast majority of the junkies turn out to have been pre-existing and the "accidental" addicts turn out to have prior drug problems).

If the feds want to get you, there *are* lots of ways they can use criminal law to do so, even if you haven't committed what many people would recognize as crimes-- and prosecutors have had precious little checks on their power due to the drug war. That article may have used bad examples-- but this is an area where I do think liberals and conservatives could find common ground and should work to rein in abuses to protect civil liberties across the economic spectrum.
posted by Maias at 8:32 AM on August 1, 2009 [7 favorites]


What is especially disturbing is that it could happen to anyone at all

Because most Americans send dangerous explosives by UPS willy-nilly.
posted by grouse at 8:37 AM on August 1, 2009 [2 favorites]


Regarding the George Norris case, "Norris instructed Arias to ship through South Florida because U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors at Miami International Airport were less vigilant than their counterparts in Houston, according to papers and e-mails seized in the investigation."

Doesn't sound to me like "Norris made the mistake of not knowing and keeping track of all of the details of federal and international law on endangered species -- mostly paperwork requirements -- before he decided to turn his orchid hobby into a small business." He knew the law, tried to skirt it, and got caught.
posted by Knappster at 8:39 AM on August 1, 2009 [2 favorites]


10 tons of sodium exploding in water, ca. 1947.
posted by scalefree at 8:48 AM on August 1, 2009 [13 favorites]


Laws like this are dangerous in the hands of social engineers and ambitious lawmakers -- not to mention overzealous prosecutors -- bent on using government's greatest civilian power to punish any activity they dislike.

Conservatives: "OH SHIT maybe making up laws against behaviors we personally dislike cuts both ways! Maybe getting the Federal government involved in every little thing is working against us!"

I'm sure they'll change their tune once another Republican comes to power, of course.
posted by Avenger at 8:52 AM on August 1, 2009


While we're about it, let's throw the designer of that awful CITES logo in the clink.

Prosecutor: We've got you on the illegal use of a bad typeface.

Prosecutor: (Dramatically whips off sunglasses) You've exceeded the "cap height" of stupid.

Designer: Hey! That logo was brought to me by the client! Their nephew drew it -- not me!

Prosecutor: A likely story. And what about these lines? You thought these little lines would hold after we'd photocopied and faxed the logo seventy times? You bastard.

Designer: Woe is me! Woe is me! (Begins weeping silently.)

Prosecutor: I think we've heard enough, your honor.
posted by Kikkoman at 8:56 AM on August 1, 2009


You're (Probably) a Federal Criminal Guilty of Disorderly Conduct


There. Made it a bit more relevant.
posted by darkstar at 8:57 AM on August 1, 2009


Okay, this is actually a good link. (Makes mental note to find out about de-Googlifying links) Apparently, they initially went after 37 eBay sales. (Over and over again, they talk about how he "offered" it for sale 89 times — sodium-pusher!). Total sales, 41 pounds, or a little over a pound each sale. This doesn't look like they're going after ten tons, to me, but I am hardly a legal scholar. I find 41 pounds to be less than ten tons, but all someone has to do is say "ten tons" and it sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? Not that a pound of sodium is to be trifled with, but it isn't ten tons, either. Very misleading.

No word on if the packages were labeled, only that they weren't in accordance with some federal statute. Note that he could have written "YO SODIUM DO NOT GET THIS WET Y'ALL" all over the packages and not been in compliance with 49 C.F.R. 173.13(a). They don't say much about this, which is interesting, given how chatty the rest of it is:

"The officers found a lot of 'fairly dangerous chemicals' in the garage." Bleach and ammonia could be fairly dangerous. What does this even mean? They cite muriatic acid later — I can buy that at Home Depot. Battery acid — present in, say, my car battery. It begs for scare quotes, doesn't it?

What they finally got him for was for "transporting un-placarded tanks and drums on an unplacarded trailer down a highway without proper shipping document" (again, not the ten tons, but they sure do love to mention it!). Two counts on the storage, which looks weird to me. Oh, that PDF is amusingly marked "NOT FOR PUBLICATION;" click at your own risk. Hey, I've probably violated a federal law, too!

In that PDF, the court later issues a smackdown to the district court for trying to impose nearly a half-million dollars to be paid while he's in jail, since it turns out that restitution isn't part of those particular laws. Which means that there was an attempt to just ... drop this enormous fine out of the air onto this guy. That's a little spooky. Apparently they decided to clean it up for him and then charge him for the cleanup. That's kind of strange if the guy intended to go back for it, but they don't care about intent, since they say they have never held "intent to dispose is required."

I'd like to know more; this would be nice to have in some kind of coherent narrative, with some actual documents rather than the vagueness offered.

Or take the orchid thing. So, if you raised orchids in a hothouse, shipping them is still illegal, even though they wouldn't have existed if you didn't grow them yourself. Really?

Which is the point of this article (especially seeing its intended audience, people who are into Fox News): should the federal government decide to come after you, they can do so over and over again until they find something to send you to jail for. They can only do this because enough of the laws are vague and broad, and on the whole, so numerous, that at any given time, you've probably done something convictable.

That's what the article is about, not the hyperspecific details of cases we're meant to retry in the court of public opinion. They're illustratory, meant to show you that the black helicopters could land on your front lawn, which is one of the fears that your basic Fox News viewer has.
posted by adipocere at 8:58 AM on August 1, 2009 [3 favorites]


adipocere: these are two cases where sleazy individuals got caught doing sleazy things. This does not prove that the feds aren't arbitrary and vindictive in their enforcement, or that some laws are not arbitrary and cruel. But the laws these two men broke are there for good reason, and they were both caught doing sleazy things. If this is the best that they can cite as examples of the feds being overboard, I don't think the feds are that bad.

While it might seem odd that the sodium shipper can be charged for abandoning his sodium stores while he was incarcerated, having stores of a chemical that hazardous without some system in place for caring for them in his absence is criminally negligent.

The orchid guy was importing not hothouse grown orchids, but orchids harvested from clearcuts, and was intentionally importing them through a different city because he thought he would be less likely to get caught.

Really, using these guys as examples does the case much more harm than it does good.
posted by idiopath at 9:16 AM on August 1, 2009 [5 favorites]


And maybe they are sleazy, but so is going after people, over and over again, as well as deliberately muddying the waters with "ten tons," in nearly every press release you can find. And while the original article isn't great journalism, I find the ten ton mantra, in government documents, to be Fairly Freaking Spooky.

It's like that infamous "bag may have contained drugs" bit out of How To Get Ahead in Advertising (obligatory YouTube link, about 0:55 in).

I don't want a spooky government attempting to mislead people in press releases into thinking that a guy was busted for hauling ten tons of sodium in a tanker. I don't want a government that thinks that it is okay to say, "wow, dangerous chemicals, he had muriatic acid *hushed silence of pure terror*." I hate government propaganda and scare tactics, and that's exactly what I see here.
posted by adipocere at 9:35 AM on August 1, 2009 [1 favorite]


adipocere - did you read the district court opinion you linked to? That's for a separate charge than the one mentioned here, the storage violation. It amazes me how much Walsh gets wrong. Not for publication doesn't mean what you think it does. Nor is this a smackdown of the district court - it's a smackdown of Evertson's motion to dismiss.

So to piece together the eBay stuff - Evertson registers a post office box in Wasilla and gives a fake home address and name. He also sometimes uses that name, Krister Erickson, in other situations, like when he registers his car. Kris then uses that box as a return address for eBay sales of sodium metals under the username "vial of life." He ships these metals without a hazardous warning label, exposing postal workers to a fairly serious risk.

The police catch intercept a shipment, trace it back to the PO Box and find a fake name and address. They get his IP from ebay and realize that Kris Erickson and Kris Evertson are the same person. That's some mighty fine police work there, Lou. They get a warrant and search his house, finding more evidence that he is the person shipping these materials. He tries to get all of that evidence excluded, claiming that there was no way for the police had a sufficient basis to believe his house contained dangerous materials. I mean, there was absolutely no way they'd figure out his dastardly scheme.

Somehow he beats this charge. Maybe he did have the labels on the shipments. Maybe the Alaskan jury didn't want him to go to jail. Maybe the prosecutors messed up. Anyway, he was then brought up on other charges regarding his storage of 10 tons of hazardous materials in Salmon, Idaho. And he was convicted, went to jail, became a cause-celebre of the libertarian fringe legal right, testified before congress, and worked with Heritage to get wide coverage of an inaccurate view of his ordeals.

With the name "vial of life" and the behavior described here, I have to stand by my earlier claim that he's just a bad business charlatan more than a criminal. And not a bright one. Being a stupid snake oil salesman shouldn't automatically send you to jail, but if he really was shipping these things without warning labels and improperly storing 10 tons of sodium metal, then it looks like the feds acted appropriately.

I'm not someone who normally sides with the cops, nor do I think incarceration under current prison conditions is ever a humane idea. That said, the man appears to have acted with gross disregard to the safety of postal employees and disposed of hazardous waste without proper precautions. And he also looks like he was trying to scheme up some get-rich-quick scheme with a gold mine and was hardly a small businessman or scientist. What is with gold and crackpot charlatans? It's like what magnets are to perpetual motion machine nuts. They just can't help it.
posted by allen.spaulding at 9:37 AM on August 1, 2009 [10 favorites]


I hate government propaganda and scare tactics, and that's exactly what I see here.

Me too, but I hate conservative wing-nut propaganda and scare tactics even more, and that's exactly what I see in this article.
posted by grouse at 9:37 AM on August 1, 2009 [7 favorites]


I'm surprised this comment is unchallenged in the thread:

Imagine if there were similarly ridiculous laws that resulted in the incarceration of black, lower-class people. Liberals would go crazy about it.

Really? Federal mandatory minimum sentences and disproportionate penalties for, say, crack vs. powder cocaine, etc., put the lie to this statement. There are plenty of ridiculous laws, and ridiculous enforcement of those laws, that have victimized black, lower economic class people for a long time now, and liberals have been mostly pretty comfy in their nice subdivisions along with all the other middle and upper class people.

There is a real problem here that is poorly served by both this article, and dumb demagoguery.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:43 AM on August 1, 2009 [2 favorites]


10 tons of metallic sodium in water.

The problem with Fox, and the modern American right wing in general. Even when they're right, they're right for the wrong reasons.

If articles like this become a trend then we're probably seeing a replay of the IRS hearings in 1998, where wealthy tax dodgers and 'income tax is illegal' lunatics were given free reign to talk up how their dealings with the IRS had been abusive and horrible. This was to provide Republicans political cover in a push to gut the IRS budget and staff, making it ever more difficult to enforce the law.
posted by Grimgrin at 9:45 AM on August 1, 2009 [3 favorites]


I'm even suspicious these problems were created by lobbyists for the biggest polluters. A large company will often buy adjustments to regulations that force small scale competitors off the market. In particular, environmental laws really should take the scale of the violation & the means of the violator into account, i.e. you usually don't need to send people to jail, but no corporation should feel comfortable just paying the fine either.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:47 AM on August 1, 2009 [1 favorite]


MIDDLE AGED WHITE MEN: DID YOU KNOW THAT DOING THINGS THAT ARE ILLEGAL MAY RESULT IN YOU GOING TO JAIL? READ ALL ABOUT THIS SHOCKING NEW DEVELOPMENT AT FOX NEWS.
posted by ob at 9:49 AM on August 1, 2009 [6 favorites]


I'm surprised this comment is unchallenged in the thread:
Imagine if there were similarly ridiculous laws that resulted in the incarceration of black, lower-class people. Liberals would go crazy about it.
You really ought to adjust your irony meter.
posted by grouse at 9:49 AM on August 1, 2009


The federal government requires the proper labeling and storage of chemicals that explode when in contact with water, JUST LIKE COMMUNIST RUSSIA!
posted by dirigibleman at 10:06 AM on August 1, 2009 [2 favorites]


Really, using these guys as examples does the case much more harm than it does good.

The "case" is dishonest. The author's using rhetorical slight of hand, getting readers to worry about one thing (government overreach) so they can move public opinion about something else (corporate crime). The people they're trying to influence aren't like us, they're not going to dig up the court records & weigh the merits of the cases for themselves. Honestly they probably wouldn't have noticed if the article hadn't included any supporting evidence at all, twisted or not.
posted by scalefree at 10:06 AM on August 1, 2009 [1 favorite]


I think it might be true that there's a certain specificity to some resolutions that makes understanding the appropriate laws problematically difficult. This creates a negative friction where you need to consult with a lawyer and deal with a bureaucratic apparatus in ways that are expensive and time consuming. There are also, of course, good reasons for many of these rules and regulations. This push in pull between the costs and benefits of various regulations is a good subject to debate and I think pushing for generally less intrusive regulations may well be a good thing. I want to be clear here. I think the argument in the article was terrible, because it was essentially: these regulations were bad (or seem that way based on a one sided capsule summary of the cases) so regulations qua regulations are bad. Wrong Dumb.

But some regulations actually are bad, they're finicky. They're in places too exacting, the sometimes correct trivial problems, or are engineered by existing firms to raise barriers to entry, regulations are often poor way to solve the problems they address. I think a pragmatic approach to this is something that conservatives and liberals could likely work together towards, but there's just too many bad faith attempts at manipulation.
posted by I Foody at 10:29 AM on August 1, 2009 [2 favorites]


You really ought to adjust your irony meter.

If so, disregard my response. But straight-faced irony just doesn't work so well in print, because I can see neither face nor body language to determine sincerity vs. irony. And even on Metafilter people say some crazy shit sometimes.
posted by LooseFilter at 11:02 AM on August 1, 2009


Maias: And yes, it was the for the libertarian magazine Reason because the liberal magazines are more concerned about how evil doctors and drug companies are turning innocent patients into junkies (even though the vast majority of the junkies turn out to have been pre-existing and the "accidental" addicts turn out to have prior drug problems).

Thank you, Maias, I very much agree. Libertarians like Radley Balko and Ed Brayton do tend to focus on these issues much more than liberals in general seem to do, even if I have little use at all for their general economic ideas (at least as I understand them.)
posted by metagnathous at 11:06 AM on August 1, 2009


So, who is the system working for here?

people who prefer not to live next door to someone who has 10 tons worth of explosive material on hand?
posted by pyramid termite at 11:08 AM on August 1, 2009 [10 favorites]


Stossel though should be hosing regurgitated Happy Meals off some Mickey D's parking lot, for eternity.
posted by metagnathous at 11:11 AM on August 1, 2009 [3 favorites]


This is a piss-poor article on a serious topic that deserves more informed debate. I don't really care about the guy who thinks it's a good idea to ship 10 tons of highly reactive materials without complying with basic safety regulations getting convicted. What I do care about is the awful federalization of criminal law and its incursion into what has traditionally been the realm of the states - and it seems like there has been little, if any, discussion of that.

The states have traditionally had the primary authority for defining and enforcing criminal law. But then came the 1960s, the "law and order" movement, and legislation like the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. And then Supreme Court decided that you don't really need to show a specific nexus between interstate commerce and the particular offense being prosecuted - all you need is a congressional finding that a class of activities has a substantial effect on interstate commerce, and the federal government is then free to punish them.

There are serious negative consequences to the federalization of criminal law. Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. Federal criminal prosecutions are a tremendous strain on the limited resources of the federal judiciary, resulting in delays of resolution of both civil and criminal cases, and impairing the courts' core constitutional functions. Further, the fact that all states are subject to the same federal statutes means that states are less able to adjust their own criminal statutes to correspond to their local needs. And even where states disagree with the wisdom of a particular policy, they are not exactly free to go their own way - like the Gonzalez v. Raich decision, for example. Finally, the great deal of prosecutorial discretion that federal prosecutors enjoy, coupled with the fact that the breadth of federal criminal statutes can mean that the same activity can be prosecuted under different statutes with significantly different sentences, creates a powerful and largely unchecked potential for prosecutorial abuse.

Those are real problems. What a shocker that the article doesn't even touch them.
posted by Pontius Pilate at 11:34 AM on August 1, 2009 [5 favorites]


adipocere: these are two cases where sleazy individuals got caught doing sleazy things. This does not prove that the feds aren't arbitrary and vindictive in their enforcement, or that some laws are not arbitrary and cruel. But the laws these two men broke are there for good reason, and they were both caught doing sleazy things.

I don't think selling Sodium and Orchids really fit most people's definition of "sleazy" Stupid in one case and rather inconsequential in another.

While it might seem odd that the sodium shipper can be charged for abandoning his sodium stores while he was incarcerated, having stores of a chemical that hazardous without some system in place for caring for them in his absence is criminally negligent.

Then the people would be negligent in that case would be the prosecutors who threw him in jail. You can't hold people responsible for things that are done to them. That's like throwing a woman in jail for drunk driving, then charging her for child endangerment for being in Jail rather then taking care of her kids.
posted by delmoi at 11:52 AM on August 1, 2009


I don't think selling Sodium and Orchids really fit most people's definition of "sleazy"

Um, buying hazardous materials from China, negligently storing them, selling some of it piecemeal on eBay, using a fake name and a fake address, not putting on the legally required warnings on the packages, such that postal workers could have been harmed, and then partnering with a right-wing think tank to spin your story into a fake message about the evils of government regulations? Sleazy might not be the first word that comes to mind, but it seems to fit.
posted by allen.spaulding at 11:59 AM on August 1, 2009 [6 favorites]


If he wants to claim we're all federal criminals, a better angle would probably be copyright infringement. MP3s, downloaded TV, video game ROMs or cracks, etc -- we're all guilty of that kind of thing.

I mean you're all guilty. My..uh..friend told me about this stuff.
posted by graventy at 12:10 PM on August 1, 2009 [2 favorites]


If he wants to claim we're all federal criminals, a better angle would probably be copyright infringement

The focus of the article (and the Kozinski article it's based on) is on federal criminal law - not civil law. There are many real concerns about the federalization of criminal law, Pontius Pilate did a good job describing them (although the counterpart, the unique rejection of VAWA and Morrison is not mentioned). What you're talking about is civil, not criminal. Sure it sucks to be sued by the RIAA, but you're not going to jail. Unless some crackpot AUSA decides to sue you for violating a TOS and claims a CFAA violation. But we've had that discussion.
posted by allen.spaulding at 12:14 PM on August 1, 2009


The thing that alarms me most about this article is that it frames all of this under "new" laws. In other words: "See the black foreigner socialist is oppressing you! Be scared! We're all going to go to concentration camps any day now!"

They completely fail to mention that many of these "new" laws were put in to place under the former administration and recommended by… get this… the Heritage Foundation.
posted by vertigo25 at 12:37 PM on August 1, 2009 [6 favorites]


Libertarians like Radley Balko and Ed Brayton do tend to focus on these issues much more than liberals in general seem to do.

There's no shortage of liberals posting about this stuff in places like Huffington Post, Salon and Alternet -- including Maias herself. The problem for some journalists is that those places rarely seem want to pay for anti-drug war copy.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:44 PM on August 1, 2009 [1 favorite]


I'm so confused by this! nickyskye: Is there more to this or has your account been hijacked by the thought police? I mean this lovingly, usually your posts are a lot more comprehensive and I feel like surely, I must be missing something!
posted by grapefruitmoon at 12:47 PM on August 1, 2009


The idea that a sticker is going to make things all better is what galls me. Either shipping sodium is a good idea or it's a bad idea, but it's not an idea a sticker will significantly affect. "Oh, wow, this package has a sticker on it. We'd better put it on the truck where we don't hose all of the packages down partway through."

No, it means you put it in the truck that's clearly marked as a hazardous materials truck, with a driver who will have training in dealing with them. It may well affect route selection, since hazmat transport may well be barred or constrained in locations like tunnels, city centres, and so on. And it means that if you crash your truck, for example, when the fire crew show up, they'll see that it's got a hazmat cargo and not, say, spray water over it and kill a bunch of people.

You're normally smarter than this.
posted by rodgerd at 1:29 PM on August 1, 2009 [1 favorite]


allen.spaulding, there is such a thing as felony copyright infringement. If I make ten infringing copies of MSWindows, for example, I'm a Federal felon.
posted by hattifattener at 1:29 PM on August 1, 2009


Presenting Evertson as a small-time investor/entrepreneur who got caught up with some confusing paperwork makes me less sympathetic when I realized the scope of the problem. If someone is dealing with 10 tons of hazardous materials, they know that they better be careful.

I agree he's less sympathetic as details come out, but there's a big difference in my mind between "not sympathetic" and "should do lots of jail time." Then again, I think prison is a generally inhumane thing that should be use a lot more sparingly than we do in our society. Probably only on the clearly dangerous, or those have already seriously fucked up some people, or as a last resort on the persistently uncooperative who don't respond to anything else.

Yeah, somebody could have gotten seriously hurt. Nobody did. Some other kind of penalty could probably have been used as a way of sternly drawing his attention to the relevant laws.

And I'll echo adipocere here: hey, maybe it'd be a good idea to cut back on arbitrary imprisonment for everybody and it's not a zero sum game.
posted by namespan at 1:32 PM on August 1, 2009


As for the sodium guy being sleazy: I'm still wondering about the use sodium may have in fuel cells. Heck, fuel cell research isn't exactly a field easily within the reach of "small-time inventors". For my money, the guy is at best a crackpot or a crook, at worst something altogether worse. I can see why, post-9/11, the Feds may be slightly anxious about people importing, storing and shipping large quantities of highly reactive materials without proper oversight. I can even see why they may pull every arcane law and statute to put and keep such people in jail.
posted by Skeptic at 1:35 PM on August 1, 2009


The idea that a sticker is going to make things all better is what galls me. Either shipping sodium is a good idea or it's a bad idea, but it's not an idea a sticker will significantly affect. "Oh, wow, this package has a sticker on it. We'd better put it on the truck where we don't hose all of the packages down partway through."

That is a bit willfully obtuse. It's not just a sticker, it's a whole set of guidelines. I used to sort boxes at UPS, and HazMat packages are pretty highly regulated and watched. There's a different set of procedures for handling them, they're carefully tracked, and any leaks are immediately reported.

While I don't know, I'm sure there are specifications for what they are shipped in, as well. All of which would be easily ignored, if you're just pretending to ship a Wii or something, endangering the lives of everyone involved in delivering those packages.

So fuck this guy. Regulations like this exist for a purpose.
posted by graventy at 2:02 PM on August 1, 2009


What I do care about is the awful federalization of criminal law

Important distinction: the federalization of criminal law is awful because of how the United States is going about it (via a backdoor process, essentially), not because it's root bad. Uniformity of criminality in a country is, on balance, much fairer than state-by-state jurisdiction.
posted by mightygodking at 2:24 PM on August 1, 2009


Libertarians like Radley Balko and Ed Brayton do tend to focus on these issues much more than liberals in general seem to do.

PeterMcDermott: "There's no shortage of liberals posting about this stuff in places like Huffington Post, Salon and Alternet -- including Maias herself. The problem for some journalists is that those places rarely seem want to pay for anti-drug war copy."

Yeah, well. I do read alternet regularly, read Salon once in a while but generally have little use for Huffington Post. Still, though I've been checking out various liberal sites fot several years now, I find that few of them take on police corruption and related issues to the extent that Balko and Brayton and a few others do. I'd really like to see that change.
posted by metagnathous at 3:13 PM on August 1, 2009


I'm surprised this comment is unchallenged in the thread:

Imagine if there were similarly ridiculous laws that resulted in the incarceration of black, lower-class people. Liberals would go crazy about it.


You must be new here.
/checks
/dies in shock
posted by mrnutty at 4:19 PM on August 1, 2009


In the UK, we have seen thousand of new offences created since 1997. Although I object to this in principle, it makes me uncomfortable to see the article's suggestion that federal laws should be punishing 'inherently wrongful conduct'. Inherently wrong? Who decides that? The Bible?
posted by marmaduke_yaverland at 4:29 PM on August 1, 2009


hattifattener - I'm aware that there are criminal laws regarding copyright, but that's usually not what people think about when talking about personal file-sharing. IIRC, less than a dozen people a year will be tried under 17 U.S.C. § 506(a)(2), most of them running some small-scale commercial enterprise (like a video store that just makes copies and rents them out). That law has been there for a while and is not often the focus of copyright reformers, although it is problematic itself. I shouldn't have intimated that infringement is a solely civil problem, but rather, copyright infringement does not properly belong in the category of "increased federalization of criminal law that makes us all offenders without intent."
posted by allen.spaulding at 5:02 PM on August 1, 2009


One interesting thing of note about the newsreel showing disposal of metallic sodium is the announcer stating that it is being dumped in a lake because "no public carrier will accept it for shipment to a purchaser."

Hmm...
posted by [expletive deleted] at 5:05 PM on August 1, 2009


My SO was the research assistant for a paper on this subject published by The Heritage Foundation. Here are the Talking Points:
• Congress has enacted 452 new crimes over the eight-year period between 2000 and 2007——a rate of about 57 new crimes per year——for a total of 4,450 federal crimes in the U.S. Code.
• This growth rate is basically unchanged from the rates that prevailed during the 1980s and 1990s, despite that the growth of the federal criminal law has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years.
• Election politics may be driving the growth of the federal criminal law. The data show that Congress creates more criminal offenses in election years.
• Troublingly, many new crimes lack a mens rea requirement, a traditional element that protects those who did not intend to commit wrongful acts from prosecution and conviction
• The trend of “overcriminalization” continues unabated as Congress subjects more and more activities to criminal sanction and weakens the role of mens rea. In the process, the criminal law’s power as a system of moral education and socialization is diminished.
Paper Here.

(Mens rea: Latin for "guilty mind"; guilty knowledge or intention to commit a prohibited act.)
posted by vapidave at 5:27 PM on August 1, 2009


Maias> Actually, you can get arrested for being an "accidental" drug dealer if you are a doctor who prescribes opioid painkillers in high doses to pain patients and the DEA decides the doses are too high or that your patients are really addicts. I wrote about this here

And yes, it was the for the libertarian magazine Reason because the liberal magazines are more concerned about how evil doctors and drug companies are turning innocent patients into junkies


Really? You know, I don't read magazines like The Nation, In These Times, Mother Jones, or The Washington Monthly that often any more, but let me be the first to say I don't buy for one second that "the liberal magazines" have written any significant number of articles criticizing drug companies, let alone doctors, for the prescribing of opioid painkillers to chronic pain sufferers.

But hey, I'm willing to be proven wrong. Did you approach "the liberal magazines" about publishing your article and did they respond by turning you down? Or did you not bother because you saw all the articles in these magazines which took the DEA's side on this?

And if it's the second, can you link to some of these articles? No need to go overboard: I'll be satisfied that you're right if you can find me 3 published in the last 20 years.
posted by UrineSoakedRube at 6:09 PM on August 1, 2009


This snippet here his interesting:

[Elemental sodium] is also an ingredient for methamphetamine and improvised arson and explosive devices, according to an FBI affidavit.

And indeed, as it turns out, elemental sodium is not just explosive, but also a crucial catalyst for meth labs. Which possibly explains why there was such an avid market for sodium on eBay, why Evertson/Erickson sent it in unmarked boxes, and why the FBI was so intent in putting him behind bars. Even his eBay nickname "Vial-Of-Life" takes a completely new meaning under this light. Gold mine indeed...

Hmm, I wonder if the Heritage Foundation knows about this.
posted by Skeptic at 6:31 PM on August 1, 2009 [2 favorites]


Yes, I did approach many of those publications numerous times. And I have written for Mother Jones on other subjects, as well as for the American Prospect. In fact, my publication list is dominated by liberal publications.

And, here's Mother Jones supporting the DEA against Purdue.

Here's the Nation, attacking it more obliquely by railing against Giuliani for representing them.

Here's Washington Monthly

Searching those pubs on oxycontin comes up primarily with coverage of how bad it is or Rush Limbaugh jokes, not anything about pain patients. I didn't go far down into the results in all of them, but so far, not found anything supporting pain patients.

And, for example, the New York Times for years had Barry Meier covering Oxycontin-- and his reporting was highly reliant on law enforcement sources and rarely quoted any pain patients. The title of the book he soon wrote on the subject? "Pain Killer," -- as in, Oxycontin is an evil killer drug marketed by big pharma pushers and the DEA and prosecutors are heroes for going after them.

To their credit, they did eventually run some counterbalancing articles
by Tina Rosenberg-- but that was after years of Meier "evil drug company" coverage.

Search Meier's name at the NYT and you'll find far more than three proving my point. You might say the NYT is more "establishment" than liberal-- but it's certainly not socially conservative or libertarian.

Was Oxycontin overly hyped by Purdue as less prone to produce addiction than other similar medications? Yes, and it *was* less prone to producing addiction *if taken as directed.* But once people started to defeat the time-release mechanism to get high, the media went crazy, advertising it as the next crack and "hillbilly heroin" and if there were any addicts who didn't know about how to do it, all they had to do was turn on the TV and there was a demo. Purdue should then have stopped promoting it-- but they weren't wrong in what they did before that, they weren't lying about its addiction potential used the way it was designed.

A great piece of media criticism by a local alternative paper did trace how pharmacy robberies aimed at getting Oxycontin tended to FOLLOW (not precede) media investigations of the big horrible local Oxycontin problem. In other words, the media was mostly advertising the stuff.

Anyway, my point was that the liberal media had a blind spot here because they were so eager to condemn pharma that they forgot pain patients.
posted by Maias at 7:02 PM on August 1, 2009


rogerd, the way I read it, you're conflating two things.

First they try to get him for the eBay sales (the stickers I mentioned) and fail.

Then they nail him for shipping the presumably (though the amount remains unstated) much larger quantity of waste on the truck.

However, the government did lose the first case, so I have to wonder if it is as cut and dried as everyone is making it out to be.

People, even in this thread, are being misled into thinking that he got busted for shipping ten tons of sodium in a hazardous manner, but that wasn't what he was convicted of, at all. It's as if a medical marijuana supplier was taken to court for an improperly labeled, small shipment of dope, and the press release would just keep saying that the company was found to have shipped ten tons of pot per year. The impression formed is far different from what actually happened. Most of the people in thread think he got busted for shipping ten tons of sodium in a hazardous manner, but that is not what he was actually charged with, at least, according to the documents I found.

That doesn't creep you out?

And the part where the court doesn't hold that intent is all that important in conviction, that doesn't creep you out?

Again, the guy could be sleazy, or a weirdo, or sloppy, and probably is (and I did find "vial-of-life" to be kind of a WTF moment), but what I don't want is a sleazy government. I don't want a government that misleads people in official documents, and I most certainly don't care for laws where intent no longer factors in. I don't want a government that says that "dangerous chemicals" were found, and goes on to list muriatic acid, which I can buy at any big box home improvement store without so much as a blink from the cashier.

Not that we must choose between the two, we do not, but if we were forced to choose, I'd much rather have the odd chunk of sodium go by than have a government issue misleading statements and impose some fairly heavy penalties without intent required. And, also, I would like them not to drop enormous fines onto people, as special sauce, such that a later court has to remind them that they don't actually have the power to do that.

Let's make a deal — we can have fun convicting sloppy sodium shippers and we can try busting the chops of government officials who attempt to mislead the public, make overreaching laws, and impose random fines, at the same time.
posted by adipocere at 7:58 PM on August 1, 2009


Maias> Yes, I did approach many of those publications numerous times.

Which ones specifically? That isn't a challenge, by the way, I'm actually curious.

And then there are the cites. Taking each one in turn:
1) And, here's Mother Jones supporting the DEA against Purdue.

Actually, the article says nothing about the DEA. Were they behind the case? But okay, leaving aside the actual merits of the civil case, you're right, Corn is certainly more concerned with Purdue Pharma's marketing than the potential for Oxycontin to aid chronic pain sufferers.

2) Here's the Nation, attacking it more obliquely by railing against Giuliani for representing them.

In other words, Ari Berman doesn't attack Purdue at all in that blog post and it has nothing whatsoever to do with evil drug companies turning innocent patients into junkies. There is a brief mention of Oxycontin, and Berman mentions that Oxycontin has become popular as a recreational drug, which you yourself agree is true ("people started to defeat the time-release mechanism to get high").

3) Here's Washington Monthly

Wow, you read that summary (and presumably the Washington Post article linked to in the brief blog post) and you weren't bothered by Purdue Pharma's attempt to make an end-run around the legal system by whispering into the ear of the Deputy Attorney General? But leave that aside, that blog post has nothing to do with "evil ... drug companies ... turning innocent patients into junkies". It has to do with an evil drug company subverting the rule of law. And the context for that blog post was not Oxycontin or Purdue Pharma, it was the politically motivated firings of attorneys that Rove had a hand in.
Okay, so that's one. None of those, by the way, have any mention of evil doctors addicting patients. And the New York Times is neither a magazine (which is nitpicking, sure) nor is it liberal (which is not: I "might say" that because it's true, and the fact that it isn't socially conservative or libertarian doesn't make it liberal or relevant to your point, not even by implication), and what Barry Meier wrote is irrelevant.

Searching those pubs on oxycontin comes up primarily with coverage of how bad it is or Rush Limbaugh jokes, not anything about pain patients. I didn't go far down into the results in all of them, but so far, not found anything supporting pain patients.

Except that your claim was that "the liberal magazines" are "more concerned about how evil doctors and drug companies are turning innocent patients into junkies" than "[doctors] get[ting] arrested for being an 'accidental' drug dealer if you are a doctor who prescribes opioid painkillers in high doses to pain patients and the DEA decides the doses are too high or that your patients are really addicts." So the fact that they criticize Rush Limbaugh for his gratuitous hypocrisy in breaking the drug laws is completely irrelevant. Posts about how bad it is might serve to prove your point, if Purdue and overprescribing doctors come under fire, but are otherwise irrelevant.

And the other problem is that your point was about opioids, not Oxycontin. If you want to say that a search on those publications shows that they devoted more space to the "evil doctors" and "drug companies" than to the arrest of doctors for overprescribing opioids to chronic pain sufferers, then a search for Oxycontin simply isn't enough, because it isn't the only opioid. I bet I could find an article in "the liberal magazines" which takes the DEA (or federal drug laws generally) to task for the arrest of doctors for overprescribing, say, morphine, to chronic pain sufferers.
posted by UrineSoakedRube at 8:09 PM on August 1, 2009


adipocere -"People, even in this thread, are being misled"

This is where you put the rabbit into the hat. You're conflating people being confused because of a poorly written hatchet piece with people being misled by the government. The government is not making false claims or intentionally being vague here. You're selectively taking things out of context (specifically you're continuing to misunderstand the ruling on the motion to exclude and what value that plays) to make it seem like there's a conspiracy.

The only people actively misleading people are the Heritage Foundation and the Washington Legal Foundation. The fact that people here didn't unravel the story based on a FPP with only their side of the story is unsurprising. There's no government conspiracy here.

Furthermore, you also don't understand public welfare offenses and the reason why we have strict liability crimes. Again, these things aren't nearly as creepy as you're making them seem, but you've got filters on so strong that you believed that you confused a routine unpublished motion for a government cover-up. Take off the tinfoil hat for a second and realize that this is not the corruption you believe it to be - in fact it looks like the far right has successfully convinced you that the big bad over-regulatory government is out to take away all your liberties.
posted by allen.spaulding at 8:36 PM on August 1, 2009 [1 favorite]


And one other point I forgot to mention above: you stated that "the liberal magazines are more concerned about how evil doctors and drug companies are turning innocent patients [my emphasis] into junkies". So articles in liberal magazines about how people who haven't been prescribed Oxycontin and obtain it through other means (like Rush Limbaugh) are also irrelevant to your point. Not that you have attempted to claim this, but I wanted to state this now to head off any claims that articles about Oxycontin abuse in general prove your thesis.
posted by UrineSoakedRube at 8:45 PM on August 1, 2009


So articles in liberal magazines about how people who haven't been prescribed Oxycontin and obtain it through other means (like Rush Limbaugh) are also irrelevant to your point.

Actually they are relevant. Rush has some medical problem with his butt that causes him pain (no, really) & he was prescribed OC for it.
posted by scalefree at 4:52 PM on August 2, 2009


Urine, do your own googling. The case against the manufacturer of Oxycontin and the "overprescribing" of it was driven by federal prosecutors (AKA Brownlee, mentioned in at least one of those stories) working with the DEA. That's why I used it as an example.

bet I could find an article in "the liberal magazines" which takes the DEA (or federal drug laws generally) to task for the arrest of doctors for overprescribing, say, morphine, to chronic pain sufferers.

If you can find one (which I doubt), I bet you can't find one that appeared *before* Reason covered this. And I bet, if you can find *one* which has as its primary focus the problem of pain patients and doctors (not a few asides in an article about prescription drug misuse), that will be all you will find. Any such article would have included the word Oxycontin because the hysteria over prescription drug misuse began with the hysteria over Oxycontin.

Alternet and Huffpo do not count-- nor does anything I've written. I always search before I pitch, so although it's possible I've missed something behind a pay wall, the truth is, these publications have not been out front on this issue. Reason has.

I don't want to get into an argument over whether the NYT (which HAS a magazine, for which Tina Rosenberg, in fct, writes) is "liberal" or not, but it's considered socially liberal and this is a social issue.
posted by Maias at 4:56 PM on August 2, 2009


scalefree> Actually they are relevant. Rush has some medical problem with his butt that causes him pain (no, really) & he was prescribed OC for it.

Except that he then attempted to get more Oxy off-prescription, and in a particularly ugly twist, threatened his maid in an attempt to get some of the pills that were prescribed to a relative of hers. It was Rush's hypocrisy on illegal drug use which made him into an even bigger laughingstock than he was before.

Maias> Urine, do your own googling.

Maias, you stated that it was an example of an article in a liberal magazine (or its website) where it sided with the DEA. There was no mention of the DEA in the article; I asked a simple question. And as I said, I accepted that the David Corn article was an example of an article in a liberal magazine (or its website) which fit your description. I do note that you're not trying to pretend anymore that the blog entries in The Nation and The Washington Monthly are actually examples that bolster your point.

Maias> I don't want to get into an argument over whether the NYT (which HAS a magazine, for which Tina Rosenberg, in fct, writes) is "liberal" or not, but it's considered socially liberal and this is a social issue.

One, I noted already that the magazine/newspaper distinction was nitpicking, but I thank you for letting me know that the New York Times has a magazine (gee, who knew?). Two, you don't want to get into an argument about whether the New York Times is liberal? Well then, you shouldn't have used examples from the New York Times. But you seem to want to have things both ways by counting the New York Times as a liberal newspaper (with a Sunday magazine), so it's up to you to make the case that it is. That's the advantage of sticking with magazines -- unlike newspapers (well, most newspapers: the Village Voice comes to mind, but with its weekly publication schedule it's more like a magazine in tabloid format), most of them have clear editorial stands which make it clear what their politics are. And three, if you're going to make the claim that the New York Times counts as an example of a "liberal magazine" that is "more concerned about how evil doctors and drug companies are turning innocent patients into junkies" than doctors who "get arrested for being an 'accidental' drug dealer if you are a doctor who prescribes opioid painkillers in high doses to pain patients and the DEA decides the doses are too high or that your patients are really addicts", because it's "socially liberal", then your entire argument falls apart, because Reason magazine is a socially liberal magazine as well.

UrineSoakedRube> I bet I could find an article in "the liberal magazines" which takes the DEA (or federal drug laws generally) to task for the arrest of doctors for overprescribing, say, morphine, to chronic pain sufferers.

Maias> If you can find one (which I doubt), I bet you can't find one that appeared *before* Reason covered this. And I bet, if you can find *one* which has as its primary focus the problem of pain patients and doctors (not a few asides in an article about prescription drug misuse), that will be all you will find. Any such article would have included the word Oxycontin because the hysteria over prescription drug misuse began with the hysteria over Oxycontin.

Maias>Alternet and Huffpo do not count-- nor does anything I've written.

Let's take that last one first. The Huffington Post does take a clear moderate-liberal editorial line. Alternet, from what I've read, takes a clear liberal editorial stance as well. Do these publications not count because they're not magazines, or is there some other reason?

As for saying that nothing you've written counts, well, nice try, but that runs directly counter to the claim you originally made. It was you that said that you wrote an article about "get[ting] arrested for being an 'accidental' drug dealer if you are a doctor who prescribes opioid painkillers in high doses to pain patients and the DEA decides the doses are too high or that your patients are really addicts" in Reason magazine "because the liberal magazines are more concerned about how evil doctors and drug companies are turning innocent patients into junkies". If the "liberal magazines" did actually publish one of your articles on the topic, then your entire argument falls to pieces: liberal magazines don't take a break from being liberal just because they published one of your pieces on this topic.

Actually, since you're calling me out on my bet, let me take a second to unpack all of the claims in your comments.
1) Liberal magazines haven't published any articles decrying the arrests of doctors who have been deemed to overprescribe opioid painkillers, or at least not until "Reason covered this". I assume that you're using the August/September 2004 date on your article as the starting date after which articles won't count (because you're claiming that the "liberal magazines" wouldn't print such an article when you were trying to shop your story, but came around at some later point. Note that you do not limit yourself to Oxycontin, but you do express a belief that any such article would have to include a reference to Oxycontin.

2) Liberal magazines are, at this moment, more concerned about doctors, whom they depict as "evil", who are turning "innocent patients into junkies" than the issue in 1) above.

3) Liberal magazines are, at this moment, more concerned about drug companies who are turning "innocent patients into junkies" than the issue in 1) above. Note that you used the plural companies, which you now seem to be backing away from in an attempt to focus all attention on a single company: Oxycontin's manufacturer, Purdue Pharma.
You've provided no proof for 2) at all. You've started to provide proof for 3), but have only given a single example which attacks one company. Frankly, the fact that liberal magazines and their writers attack Purdue Pharma isn't proof that they reflexively do so because they're biased towards the DEA's point of view. It could be because Purdue Pharma are a bunch of sleazebags.

Which leaves us with 1). Now I have a very strong memory of this issue coming into play before Oxycontin with doctors who overprescribed other opioids to patients suffering from pain. You seem to think that that's wrong: in your words, "any such article would have included the word Oxycontin [my emphasis] because the hysteria over prescription drug misuse began with the hysteria over Oxycontin."

You know, I really should have specified a dollar amount to my bet in my previous comment. Anyway, here (pages 1, 2, 3) is an article dating back to April 27, 1997 in Time Magazine (and no, I'm not claiming that Time is liberal; this only addresses your strange claim that any such article would have to include the word Oxycontin.) Some quotes:
Unquestionably, people who take a narcotic for a long period will become physically dependent on the drug. But researchers have learned that dependence is not the same biological phenomenon as addiction. Most patients don't become addicts that easily, perhaps because they lack the addictive body chemistry, perhaps because they take the drugs in a social setting different from that of illicit users. "When addicts use drugs, they become less functional, more isolated, and they move away from the mainstream," says Dr. Richard Patt of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center of Houston. "When pain patients use drugs, they become more functional, much less isolated, and they move toward the mainstream." And when they no longer need the drugs, Patt says, they have, almost without exception, no difficulty gradually eliminating their intake.

That doesn't mean a doctor can prescribe narcotics with impunity. For one thing, this can be hazardous to one's career. Medical-review boards in some states, notably Tennessee, West Virginia and New York, are notorious for singling out physicians who prescribe a lot of narcotics and yanking their licenses. "I tend to underprescribe instead of using stronger drugs that could really help my patients," a West Virginia doctor admits. "I can't afford to lose my ability to support my family."

A physician who nearly did lose her license is Dr. Katherine Hoover, formerly of Key West, Florida. In December 1993, Hoover got into trouble with Florida authorities because she had treated the chronic pain of seven of her 15,000 patients with narcotics. A pain specialist testified at her 1995 hearing that she was practicing within accepted guidelines. But the review board censured her anyway--a decision that was reversed on appeal. Says Hoover, who now practices in West Virginia: "There is a belief that anyone who prescribes narcotics is a bad doctor."
Losing your license isn't nearly as bad as getting arrested and charged by the feds, but it's still pretty bad. Of course, if you make a fetish of "federalism" and "states' rights", as many libertarians do, there really isn't any ground to complain about the treatment of overprescribing doctors by state medical boards.

But what about those awful, awful "liberal magazines" which wouldn't publish any such article, at least not until Reason magazine bravely blazed the trail? Well, I refer you to the November 5-11 2003 issue of the Village Voice, which published an article by Frank Owen, titled "The DEA's War on Pain Doctors". Granted, this article does focus on Oxycontin, but mentions other drugs such as Vicodin and Dilaudid. An excerpt:
Some in the medical community call it "a war on pain doctors," others "a government jihad" or "state-sponsored terrorism." However you describe the current campaign, which according to pain-patient advocates began under Janet Reno, but which they say has increased in intensity under John Ashcroft, the DEA's hardball tactics—storming clinics in SWAT-style gear, ransacking offices, and hauling off doctors in handcuffs—have scared physicians nationwide to the extent that legitimate pain sufferers now find it increasingly difficult to get the medicine they need.
I'm not a freelance writer, so I have no idea why magazines decide to take a pass on certain articles. It might have been because other issues (the Iraq war comes to mind) were taking up a lot of people's attention at the time.

Or maybe you had a hard time shopping your article to the "liberal magazines" because they decided that a fairly definitive one had already been published fairly recently and there was no need to revisit the issue so soon.
posted by UrineSoakedRube at 7:58 PM on August 2, 2009


Except that he then attempted to get more Oxy off-prescription

But the original point was that "the liberal magazines are more concerned about how evil doctors and drug companies are turning innocent patients into junkies". Rush may be a hypocrite, laughingstock or whatever other epithets you wish to hang around his neck; but his addiction started out as a legitimate treatment for pain.

As for the larger point of who's responsible for his addiction; his doctors, the drug companies, his own weakness or maybe his genes; I'll leave that to others to sort out.
posted by scalefree at 9:28 PM on August 2, 2009


scalefree> But the original point was that "the liberal magazines are more concerned about how evil doctors and drug companies are turning innocent patients into junkies". Rush may be a hypocrite, laughingstock or whatever other epithets you wish to hang around his neck; but his addiction started out as a legitimate treatment for pain.

Except that I've never read a single liberal who blames Rush's doctor(s) or Purdue Pharma for his addiction. So, no, it's not germane to Maias' argument.
posted by UrineSoakedRube at 9:33 PM on August 2, 2009


Why are people here so into taking sides? Politically, I mean.

I am still politically involved. I write my representatives a handful of times a year, and once even called one's office.

Is it that a particular political platform fits one's worldview so much? Or does it work the other way around?
posted by beingresourceful at 10:11 AM on August 3, 2009


Beingresourceful, yeah, I have to agree. To wit:
“…in fact it looks like the far right has successfully convinced you that the big bad over-regulatory government is out to take away all your liberties.”

So, under Bush, this happened all the time, but now, yeah, it’s all different.
“But the laws these two men broke are there for good reason, and they were both caught doing sleazy things. If this is the best that they can cite as examples of the feds being overboard, I don't think the feds are that bad.”

Totally. If you have to have begin a 50 day long siege and spend millions of dollars and lives over a $200 tax, so be it. You can’t just grab the head guy when he’s jogging or at a grocery store in town. That’d be..uh…crazy.

As crazy as not illegally detaining people for years based on their ethnic or religious make up.

Or having a gas or electricity or cable guy sort of keep an eye on you, y’know, helpfully giving the government tips.

Whatever the case, the feds (who aren’t that bad) need total information awareness and all the help they can get.

Man, get a Dem in the white house everything the government did is totally forgotten. Same damn song with the GOP. Surveillance, oppressive arbitrary law, totalitarianism, whatever, is just fine apparently as long as it’s “our guy” doing it. Or it’s being done to “them.”
Oh, the systematic restriction of basic civil liberties through government excess since 9/11 under the auspices of Homeland Security, the TIPS program, and the Patriot Act, along with secret detainees, deportations, and illegal surveillance… yeah, that’s all totally changed now.
Uh huh.

I like Obama, but inertia and bureaucracy are universal physical laws.
This piece isn’t great. And one can trust or not the descriptions of what happened in the specific instances. But it is amazing how selective people are when it comes to government excess. Oh, THIS guy had it coming.

Well, even if he did, so? You don’t hook people on arbitrary law just to get them. It doesn’t make the law good. Or the enforcers of it heroes. Or even really legitimize imprisoning someone. It’s not enough that someone did something wrong, it has to be a clear and fair and just law and they have to have a proper trial. In all cases.
Otherwise you’re employing the same exceptionalist logic that Bushco enjoyed in torturing terror suspects: “Yeah, maybe it’s bad law, whatever, these are bad guys! They’re not covered under certain laws or rights.”

I mean, fuck Meese, but dammit RTFA(s): “…a federal jury in Alaska acquitted Krister of all charges” and then they went after him for not being there when they had jailed him. Maybe. Either way, the feds lost the first case. That says a lot – especially if he was working with dangerous materials.

But me, I like oversight. Given its verifiable, other than that political platform doesn't much matter.
posted by Smedleyman at 3:44 PM on August 3, 2009


I want to make sure I have the facts straight on the cases cited in this article:

Person a owned ten tons of elemental sodium, stored it improperly, and used a fake name and address to sell it in 20 pound lots over ebay, sending it in unmarked packages.

Person b imported orchids harvested from South American clearcuts, and had his supplier intermingle them in with greenhouse flowers, and had them sent through Florida customs, rather than the closer Texas border, because Florida customs was less stringent.

Just so you don't misunderstand me, Smedleyman, the "if" in "if this is the best they can cite" was sarcastic. I know that federal prosecutors have done worse and continue to do worse. The point I was making was that both of these people seem to deserve punitive measures.

The people responsible for this article are not agitating for civil rights, they are agitating against federal legislation of industry.
posted by idiopath at 6:46 PM on August 3, 2009 [3 favorites]


The people responsible for this article are not agitating for civil rights, they are agitating against federal legislation of industry.

Just to carry this forward, they're deliberately & deceptively agitating against Federal legislation of industry under the guise of agitating for civil rights. It's a classic bait & switch. But listen, anytime you want to put together a campaign against TIPS, TIA & USA PATRIOT, make sure you let me know so I can join in. Because that's just bad news under any Administration, Republican or Democratic.
posted by scalefree at 10:47 PM on August 3, 2009 [1 favorite]


"The point I was making was that both of these people seem to deserve punitive measures."

Sure, ceded. And I agree in the estimation of the motivation of the people behind the article.
But - A. 'deserve' has nothing to do with the fairness of the law in execution. My point being - a given criminal might deserve any number of things. That doesn't give us the right to hound them or write arbitrary catch-all laws that are easily abused by authority or set aside equity or reasonable response in law enforcement operations because someone 'has it coming.'

And B. you still have this nutty bureaucracy and entrenched mindset in the federal government in the way of doing things that is a big problem - legislative matters aside.
I mean, if we're talking Heritage they had the same song and dance under James Watt, Lujan, Kempthorne, etc.
But I was addressing more the partisan tone. Which I find distracting generally. And seems to distract other folks as well from a dispassionate analysis. Not specifically yours or anyones. It seems fairly ubiquitous really.

"Person a owned ten tons of elemental sodium, stored it improperly, and used a fake name and address to sell it in 20 pound lots over ebay, sending it in unmarked packages."
Then our facts differ. As I understand it he shipped a certain amount safely in accordance with federal law, but labeled it improperly. So again "a federal jury in Alaska acquitted Krister of all charges" - which, if he was doing this dangerously, and if he 'deserved' punishment - makes it all the worse that the feds failed to prove their case.
And, in the meantime, while he was in custody, they charged him with not being there - essentially 'abandoning' his materials. Well that's just stupid.

I have the same beef with the DOJ operations, and the same criticism of torture (apart from the obvious human decency, rights, etc. etc. etc. issues) - it leads to sloppy work and you don't get convictions in any honest court of law.
So one's argument is either - remove the arbitrary nature of the law and the abuse of power in execution or, y'know, eliminate the equity in the judicial system and have kangaroo courts.

So, regardless of what they're going for, I think the appropriate response is not to fall for the specifics either way. I mean, the response to an assertion that federal agents are engaging in harassment with an eye toward removing restrictions on industry isn't a response to the specifics but a demand for greater oversight and clarity in the law.
Mostly because it's a principled response that can be generally applied without regard to partisanship. Which is pretty easy to see once the argument progresses to specifics.

So 'these guys are getting hosed by the fed and their daffy broad-reaching rules' - 'ok, let's have more clarity as to exactly how materials need to be shipped and the proper law enforcement response to ...' 'Well, wait just a second there hoss...'
Clarifies pretty quickly.

I'm arguing for a more equal game, and that once one allows for that equality, political positions become very obvious very quickly. (And hopefully can be argued on their own merits).
I'll take it as read though some folks want to monkey with the rules themselves. I'm not casting that assertion on anyone here. Just pointing out, once one does assert those principles as opposed to engaging in the partisan labels/ gameplaying, any opposition quickly reveals itself as simply wrongheaded.
posted by Smedleyman at 10:15 AM on August 4, 2009


I mean, the response to an assertion that federal agents are engaging in harassment with an eye toward removing restrictions on industry isn't a response to the specifics but a demand for greater oversight and clarity in the law.

What we have here, is failure to communicate. It's not Federal agents who are trying to remove restrictions on industry. It's the authors of the article. They're dishonestly portraying cases that are not clear cut examples of overreach & definitely not typical of the laws they want to weaken, in order to prevent the next Enron or Health South criminals from going to jail because prosecutors can't prove they not only defrauded their clients but that they intended to defraud them as well.
posted by scalefree at 11:04 AM on August 4, 2009 [2 favorites]


A couple corrections, since there seems to be some misunderstandings:
  1. To those who said they prefer civil liberties campaigns by the ACLU rather than Heritage Foundation (my employer until the end of this week), thanks for the ad hominem. And by the way, the ACLU is actually a part of the coalition working on this issue and was involved (along with Heritage and other groups) in bringing both Krister Evertson and the Norrisses to Washington to testify before Congress.
  2. Krister was acquitted of the labeling charge. In a nutshell, the label is only required if the item is to be shipped by air, so that it isn't put on a passenger flight. Krister shipped the packages by "ground." He didn't know, however, that in Alaska, UPS ships "ground" packages by air. He only found out after the SWAT team nabbed him.
  3. Selling the sodium was perfectly legal. No one--at least no one who's familiar with the law--disputes that, not even the government.
  4. The federal prosecutors were miffed about two things: That Evertson refused to plead guilty and then that he had the audacity to be acquitted. So they indicted him again, for a very questionable violation. This is the problem with overcriminalization: it becomes the rule of men and their prejudices, not the rule of law. Doing your best to comply with the law is no longer enough to avoid prosecution and conviction, especially if some prosecutor or bureaucrat has it out for you.
  5. The charge was that Evertson had abandoned waste without a permit. Evertson's defense was simply that it was not waste and he had no abandoned it--in fact, the materials were quite valuable, they were safely stored, and Evertson intended to return to his invention when he had raised some money. The courts rejected this defense, however, ruling that if the EPA said, it was waste, then it was waste--end of story.
  6. That last sentence should be frightening: It means that the government can prosecute and even win the conviction of anyone who has any hazardous chemical at all--e.g., swimming pool chemicals or Drano. Interpreted this way, the law is ridiculously overbroad and has nothing to do with the traditional purposes of criminal law.
  7. George Norris was not importing wild orchids, but greenhouse-grown orchids that were (for technical reasons that I describe at greater length here) difficult to get certified under CITES.
I've been away from MeFi for a few years, and seeing all the ad hominem attacks, both on two real hard-luck individuals as well as my employer and colleagues, is very disappointing. I think (and hope) that folks who actually looked into these cases and the trend they represent--rather than spewing partisan vitriol and questioning the motives of others--would feel some sympathy and much concern about this serious assault on Americans' civil liberties.

OK, let the smears begin.
posted by gdog at 2:17 PM on August 4, 2009


"What we have here, is failure to communicate."
Or, y'know, a misstatement on my part (because I haven't slept in 42 hours)

By that I mean the people asserting that federal agents are engaging in harassment in order to better put forth their agenda to removing restrictions on industry - the response to those people shouldn't address their specifics (if we're talking good government).

That is, we shouldn't engage them on specifics, if we're looking to address the excesses of federal agents and other bureaucratic excesses, but rather, to treat it as one piece, without regard to partisan position, and demand greater oversight and accountability and clarity in legislation.
If you're looking to address the dishonesty in the specifics, by all means do so.

I thought "And I agree in the estimation of the motivation of the people behind the article" was a dead enough giveaway of my position.
You're arguing a point I've not only ceded, but agreed to.

Do you disagree that allowing bad government of any kind to be cast as a partisan argument weakens the grounds of opposition?
Doesn't look like you do, 'cos you agree that TIPS (et. al) is bad news under any administration.
Just a small point I'm making there, and it's obvious, so probably easily mistaken. I've read the thread. I haven't taken exception with anything other than the partisanship - on the (granted somewhat tangential) topic of federal government excess.

It just chaps my hide to see people argue differently through different filters apparently because a democratic administration is in office, suddenly everything the fed does is 'good' even though it's the same song and dance in many ways.
And I said "democratic" but that goes both ways, under Clinton there were major increases in the number of federal agents, their equipment budgets and dynamic entries. Bush increased that yet more and added mercs on top of it. And yet some of the same guys yelling about Ruby Ridge were stone silent when Blackwater operators confiscated firearms after Katrina.

But again, in terms of the source and federal regulation, hell I'm a conservationist, last people I'd back is the heritage foundaiton. Those people tried to stop me from giving my own money to buy land in common so we (hunters) could hunt on it. Screw 'em. But as I said, I'm not talking them, I'm speaking generally.
posted by Smedleyman at 2:48 PM on August 4, 2009


(And to ... well, perhaps further obfuscate the matter... gdog can be perfectly correct that these guys are hard luck stories, or they can be deserving of serious prosecution as idiopath says; this can be a politically motivated bait and switch, or it can be an on the level example of government malfeasance, it doesn't matter as long as we recognize this transcends, or at least should from anyone fighting it, partisan politics. Pretty sure some of the people who cast it that way are intentionally muddying things, no? Bitch that the dems or the GOP are eroding your civil liberties - and even now cranks that ignored the totalitarian march under Bush are now shouting that Obama is turning the U.S. into a socialist police state - and you're sure to have nearly 1/2 the people on your side. Meanwhile principles get trashed. All I'm sayin')
posted by Smedleyman at 2:57 PM on August 4, 2009


This is a publication from the Heritage Foundation we are talking about, and you are accusing me of being partisan? The Heritage Foundation advocated for the EXPANSION of federal powers under the Bush administration, they were in favor of the PATRIOT act and the other assorted legal perversions of The War On Terror. Feel free to go to their website if you want to know more about their tactics and positions on political issues, but I am not going to increase their pagerank by linking them here.
posted by idiopath at 8:19 AM on August 5, 2009 [1 favorite]


It turned out that when he legally sold some sodium (part of his fuel-cell materials) to raise cash, he forgot to put a federally mandated safety sticker on the UPS package he sent to the lawful purchaser.

So basically this guy sent unlabled volitile material through the mail endangering people's lives and this is an example of too much government regulation?
posted by Pollomacho at 9:34 AM on August 5, 2009


"and you are accusing me of being partisan?"

You talking to me?

"So basically this guy sent unlabled volitile material through the mail endangering people's lives and this is an example of too much government regulation?"

yeah, I'm in love with a carrot.
posted by Smedleyman at 12:07 PM on August 5, 2009


New battery could change world, one house at a time

Inside Ceramatec's wonder battery is a chunk of solid sodium metal mated to a sulphur compound by an extraordinary, paper-thin ceramic membrane. The membrane conducts ions -- electrically charged particles -- back and forth to generate a current. The company calculates that the battery will cram 20 to 40 kilowatt hours of energy into a package about the size of a refrigerator, and operate below 90 degrees C.

No real meaning, just a curious piece of synchronicity.
posted by scalefree at 9:02 PM on August 13, 2009


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