Economic Meltdown (seconda parte)

[Zenda]

• A 12-year old girl arrested and handcuffed for eating one French fry on the Washington subway system.

• A cancer-ridden grandmother arrested and criminally charged for refusing to trim her hedges the way officials in Palo Alto, Calif., were trying to force her to.

• A former high-school science whiz kid sent to prison after initially being arrested by FBI agents clad in SWAT gear for failing to affix a federally mandated sticker to his otherwise legal UPS package.

• A 67-year-old grandfather imprisoned because some of the paperwork for his home-based orchid business did not satisfy an international treaty.

• A Port St. Lucie resident faces one count of criminal mischief, a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 60 days in jail, for writing "Color fades and so does hatred" on the sidewalk with sidewalk chalk.

You forgot to mention these anecdotes are quoted from The Heritage Foundation. The original writer seems to think it somehow proves that too many laws turn innocents into criminals, but if these 'telling examples' show anything, it's that zero-tolerance policy sometimes makes 'innocent' victims, and that it doesn't care about age or medical condition. Did you expect otherwise?

Look at the first case, about the girl being arrested for eating fries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Trans...nvironment

It was not big bad governement harassing its citizens, but simply zero-tolerance policies by local authorities, in combination with a lack of regulations. The girl wasn't arrested for eating, but for refusing to stop eating when asked. The officer had no choice but to arrest her, because there were no other legal actions possible. The handcuffing was a mandatory part of the arrest. Since then, over 10 years ago btw, new regulations have made it possible to give non-adults a citation in such cases, avoiding the need for arrests.

It's obvious that the other stories will turn out to be very similar, if you go looking for more information.

Except the story about the 67-year-old orchid-growing grandfather, which was used in another piece on The Heritage Foundation site:

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports...nalization

Since I'm into orchids myself, this caught my attention. Luckily, the Heritage piece provides some names, so it was possible to retrieve information on the sentence:

http://openjurist.org/452/f3d/1275/unite...v-w-norris

As it turns out, Mr. Norris and his accomplice smuggled rare and protected orchids into the US. Not to keep them, but to sell them for thousands of dollars. To avoid detection, they falsified documents and mislabeled plants.

According to the Heritage Foundation it was a mixup between (rare and expensive) Phragmipedium and (somewhat more common but unprotected and much cheaper) Maxillaria. But someone working with orchids for 20 years would not make that mistake. Phragmipedium are quite easily recognized, and grow, unlike other orchid types, in normal soil. Maxillaria have a distinct way of flowering, and might be mistaken for Lycaste, but never for a slipper orchid. Not surprisingly, both Mr. Norris and his accomplice confessed to all charges brought up against them.

So, maybe it's better you find your own examples for whatever it is you are trying to show, and check them out as well.