Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Tyler Cowan of The Volokh Conspiracy expounds on the overcriminalization of economic conduct.

He quotes:

“Estimates of the current size of the body of federal criminal law vary. It has been reported that the Congressional Research Service cannot even count the current number of federal crimes. The American Bar Association reported in 1998 that there were in excess of 3,300 separate criminal offenses. More than 40 percent of these laws have been enacted in just the past 30 years, as part of the growth of the regulatory state. And these laws are scattered in over 50 titles of the United States Code, encompassing roughly 27,000 pages. Worse yet, the statutory code sections often incorporate, by reference, the provisions and sanctions of administrative regulations promulgated by various regulatory agencies under congressional authorization. Estimates of how many such regulations exist are even less well settled, but the ABA thinks there are “[n]early 10,000.””

Makes it hard to keep them all straight in your head, doesn’t it?

After treating a black Lab for an arrow wound, a veterinarian took a moment to plomb the deep recesses of the dark soul of hunters:

A lot of hunters take the hunt as seriously as a religion, and anything that gets in their way is going to get blasted to kingdom come,” Jones said. “Of course the dog probably ran around in this woods all year round. The hunters were probably there illegally.”

Spurious assertions made to split hunters from the mainstream, where they yet remain in the suburbanifying northern Jefferson County region of Missouri? Back off, man, he’s a scientist armed with a D.V.M. degree, so he can explain the lizard-brain-mentality which undoubtedly comes from an excess of blood and not enough phlegm in some sects of the population.

If you’re going to say a lot of hunters are murderous skybusters (or ground-level busters), you can just as easily assert that quite a few black Labs exhibit suicidal impulses or innumerable veterinarians are nitwits. However, I cannot comfortably assert spuriously based on personal anecdotes. Our veterinarian is not a nitwit and the most avid hunter I know hasn’t yet blasted everything in his way to kingdom come, I’d have to think that spurious assertions only serve to make good newspaper copy, and to be a Jedi mind trick for weak minded legislators fools.

The New York Daily News, writing about another suicide at New York University, characterizes the incident thusly:

A 19-year-old New York University student plunged from a friend’s sixth-floor window in Manhattan last night in an apparent suicide, cops said.

The incident marked the third reported suicide by an NYU student this fall.

Ouch. Might I recommend you share my pretentious reference to this season as autumn to avert these situations?

Draft Wesley.

(Link seen on Boots and Sabers.)

Like her boss, “Mad” Albright is campaigning against attacking Bush for his foreign policy. Because I give her point of view these days the same credibility I would give an Internet Troll, I am going to give her remarks the corrective treatment favored by Frank J. and my beautiful wife by rewriting “cleaning up” her remarks:

US President George W. Bush’s foreign policy “is what we should have been doing in the Clinton adminstration all along.”

“America is much stronger than a multilateral system, they better be on the our side, work with us. Or else it’s America versus the others.”

She said that UN chief Kofi Annan, who has come out against a US draft resolution on Iraq currently before the UN Security Council, was the “best secretary general since the creation, for what that’s worth” of the world body.

All right, that’s getting dull. What could she have said to characterize herself and her peers properly?

“It’s not difficult to be in France and criticise my government. But I’m doing so because I think I am a Dixie Chick because in the Clinton administration, we had the depth and breadth of pop stars.”

On Iraq, Albright said “I fear that there really is chaos there. We don’t know what’s going to happen. One or two Americans a day are killed. We should have sent our soldiers on costly-but-safe excursions that outlasted their exit date by a decade or more, like Bosnia.”

Even if ridding Iraq of its “terrible” leader had its merits, Albright added: “I don’t understand why the war happened now. I would have liked to see us concentrate on Afghanistan because this Karzai guy is a mad tyrant and needs to be overthrown.”

I have to do these things, you understand, to keep this vein in my forehead to keep from throbbing painfully.

Ron Simpson does:

“That is not a real gun,” Simpson told the robber. “This is a real gun,” he said, pulling a .25-caliber derringer from his front-right jeans pocket.

(Link seen on TheHighAndAlmightyPundit.)

Yesterday’s Opinion Journal feature story claimed that Democrats were in trouble because the economy was turning around, which means their operatives wouldn’t have the spoon with which to stir economic discontent in time for next year’s elections.

Man, it must put a burden on Democrats and their backers. Whatever could they do to make the economy look bad?

Knight Ridder headline: Killing of 3 in Gaza makes U.S. a target.

Those of us who think linearly, and try to express reality with words, might have phrased it Palestinian Irregulars Target U.S. Civilians, Kill 3 in Gaza, but that implies this act passes for Palestinian military action and that these Palestinians purposefully decided beforehand to attack and kill 3 U.S. civilians, the official storytellers want to describe a different narrative.

In spite of a liberal arts education, I avoid passive voice and write clearly, so I am not qualified to work at Knight Ridder.

In his Chicago Tribune column today (registration required), Steven Chapman identifies inconsistencies on a woman’s right to choose what’s right for her body and her life.

As Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Gloria Feldt puts it, “We stand for the principle that women–in consultation with their families and their physicians–should make their own reproductive and health decisions. Not politicians and not the government.”

But this week, they changed their minds.

Not about abortion. On that intimate issue of women’s physical autonomy, they still believe the government should get out and stay out. But when it comes to breast implants, they think women can’t be trusted to decide for themselves. On the former question, they sound like hard-core libertarians. On the latter, they are models of intrusive paternalism.

You get to free will, Citizen, whenever your betters tell you to choose.

Certainly you’ve heard the story about the jubilant Missouri football fan who rushed onto Faurot Field after the Missouri Tigers beat the Nebraska Cornhuskers last Saturday, wherein a Nebraska Cornhusker football player rung his bell. If you haven’t, go read the story and watch the video. I’ll wait right here for you.

Okay. So read what the police chief has to say. To sum up, via cut and paste:

COLUMBIA, Mo. — The man punched by a Nebraska football player after the game at Faurot Field last Saturday could face a first-degree trespassing charge, the University of Missouri-Columbia police chief said.

“That is part of the investigation,” Chief Jack Watring said Wednesday.

Fans were told by the public-address announcer to not go onto the field after the game.

Watring said the man who was hit, Matthew Scott of Lee’s Summit, Mo., has been told by investigators that he could be charged himself if he presses action against Nebraska place-kick holder Kellen Huston.

Sorry to make you work for a living, Chief. The investigation, huh? You mean popping the video into your videocassette player and enjoying a nice mocha while a loop shows Scott getting punched by a football player, a professional athlete for all intents and purposes.

If the victim decides maybe a one-game suspension and a forced apology is not enough and he wants just recourse through the legal system, you shall punish the victim for bothering you.

Does anyone else here suspect that the following tidbit, buried in the bottom of the story, might be germane to Watring’s threat?

Scott is not a student at the university, Watring said.