Wood = Felony?

The Insanity of the Law:

We've reached a point in our history at which we honestly have no idea what the law says. For example:

This amendment deals with illegal plants -- the primary thrust being illegal wood. Henceforth, all wood is to be a federally regulated, suspect substance. Either raw wood, lumber, or anything made of wood, from tables and chairs, to flooring, siding, particle board, to handles on knives, baskets, chopsticks, or even toothpicks has to have a label naming the genus and species of the tree that it came from and the country of origin. Incorrect labeling becomes a federal felony, and the law does not just apply to wood newly entering the country, but any wood that is in interstate commerce within the country. Here are some excerpts from a summary:

[...]

Anyone who imports into the United States, or exports out of the United States, illegally harvested plants or products made from illegally harvested plants, including timber, as well as anyone who exports, transports, sells, receives, acquires or purchases such products in the United States, may be prosecuted.

So, if you buy an incorrectly labeled pack of toothpicks, you've just committed a felony.

Did you know that? Of course you did not. Nobody knew it. These omnibus bills create new crimes all the time.

How many new felonies are in the more-than two thousand pages of the Senate's health care bill? Will we know by the time they vote on it, scant days after compiling it? How many of them will have read it?

I'm sure you read that Texas appears to have accidentally banned all marriages.

This break-neck, all-the-time changing of the law is the absolute enemy of liberty.

First, it hems in the space in which we are free.

Second, and worse, it undermines the rule of law itself. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse" is a bedrock legal principle: you can't claim, as a defense in court, that you weren't aware of the law governing your actions. When the law becomes unknowable, due to rapid, massive, and constant changes, that bedrock principle becomes unjust.

A standard often invoked in the law is 'the average, rational person.' If the average, rational person honestly can't know what laws he lives under, how can the system be just? How can it be valid? How can we morally prosecute anyone for violating such laws?

The law, in such a system, becomes wicked. It no longer protects that average, rational person. The average, rational person becomes a felon.

The government must be stopped from changing the law all the time. We need to find a way to put on the brakes.