http://blog.jim.com/politics/you-are-probably-a-federal-felon.html Liberty in an unfree world Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:11:26 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://blog.jim.com/politics/you-are-probably-a-federal-felon.html/comment-page-1#comment-1571 Constantinople Sun, 26 Jul 2009 02:06:40 +0000 http://blog.jim.com/?p=449#comment-1571 The effect is increasingly to give the government the power to arbitrarily imprison anyone at any time, which is lawless power. It is disguised by the appearance of law. The government may imprison anyone at any time, but should anyone truthfully point out that this is lawless power, the government can simply responds, "what do you mean lawless, since you broke such and such law and we are consequently operating within the limits of the law". Of course society has long tolerated this, for example the use of tax laws to fight organized crime. So this is not new. Anyway it illustrates the inadequacy and superficiality of the usual notion of "rule of law", which this lawless government satisfies. The effect is increasingly to give the government the power to arbitrarily imprison anyone at any time, which is lawless power. It is disguised by the appearance of law. The government may imprison anyone at any time, but should anyone truthfully point out that this is lawless power, the government can simply responds, “what do you mean lawless, since you broke such and such law and we are consequently operating within the limits of the law”. Of course society has long tolerated this, for example the use of tax laws to fight organized crime. So this is not new. Anyway it illustrates the inadequacy and superficiality of the usual notion of “rule of law”, which this lawless government satisfies.

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