![]() ![]() Much is at stake for our freedoms and the freedoms of future generations. Today, our system fails the second of those goals. The other is to ensure that those who are innocent are either not prosecuted in the first instance or, if mistakenly prosecuted, are not convicted. One is to see that criminals are prosecuted, convicted and appropriately punished. If “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” then every American citizen – literally, every single one – is ignorant and in peril, for nobody can know all the laws that govern their behavior.Ī just criminal justice system, in the best sense of the word “just,” has a twofold goal. As the ABA task force reported, the body of federal criminal law is “so large … that there is no conveniently accessible, complete list of federal crimes.” Baker Jr., published a study estimating that the number exceeded 4,000. Just six years later, a leading expert on the overcriminalization problem, professor John S. In 1998, an American Bar Association task force estimated that there were more than 3,000 federal criminal offenses scattered throughout the 50 titles of the United States Code. Today, the criminal law has grown as broad as the regulatory state in its sheer size and scope. It reflected the beliefs and understandings common to the vast majority of our citizens. Second, a limited criminal law served a teaching function. Having few criminal laws and a short list of things not to be done limited the scope within which government can exercise its authority. Limiting criminal punishment to conduct that is inherently wrongful restricted governmental power in two important ways.įirst, and most important, it kept the range of governmental power small. Once criminal law was about criminal acts that everyone knew were inherently unlawful (like murder, rape and robbery). Today, he is far more vulnerable to being caught up in a criminal investigation and prosecution – and to actually being convicted and punished as a criminal – for having done something he did not even suspect was illegal.Ĭriminal law has changed in the past 50 years. They also suggest that Holder himself was aware.But such beliefs are no longer as well-founded as they once were. Despite Holder’s statements that Fast and Furious was a program run locally out of Phoenix, Ariz., there are now scores of documents that prove that Holder’s assistant attorney general, Lanny Breuer, acting ATF Director Ken Melson and senior Holder aide Gary Grindler were aware of Fast and Furious and its gunwalking tactics since the early days of the operation. ![]() In Fast and Furious, documents Holder has provided to Congress thus far show that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives facilitated the sale of approximately 2,000 weapons to Mexican drug cartels. Meese had admitted the income the administration procured from the secret weapons sales was then directed to help fund the Contras, anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua, after Congress had cut off funding to the militant groups. During Iran-Contra, the Reagan administration secretly facilitated the sale of weapons to Iran. “Having been attorney general, I know how hard it is, even when you have all the facts, to unearth some of these things, but without being there it really wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment.”ĭuring his tenure as attorney general, Meese admitted to involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal - a scandal similar in nature to Fast and Furious. “Well, again, without knowing all the facts its really, really difficult to comment,” Meese said. To date, no one has been held accountable. It’s been more than a year since Mexican drug cartel members used at least two of the 2,000 assault rifles Holder’s DOJ provided to them to murder Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, and even longer since many of the at least 300 Mexican civilians were killed with Fast and Furious weapons. Meese also refused to comment when TheDC asked him who should be held accountable for the deadly operation. But, more than that, I don’t know other than what I read in the newspapers so I can’t really comment in detail on it.” “We all know that it was, that it came to ruin, if you will, that it didn’t work out as it had been anticipated certainly and that there were a lot of problems with it, very serious problems, tragic problems in one case. “Well I have not commented on it because unless you’re actually there in the Department of Justice knowing everything that went on, it’s very hard to comment on it,” Meese told TheDC. Former Attorney General Edwin Meese, who served in the role former president Ronald Reagan, refused to comment when The Daily Caller approached him about the ongoing Operation Fast and Furious scandal plaguing current Attorney General Eric Holder and his Justice Department. ![]()
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