"Don Foreman" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:36:31 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"cavelamb" wrote in message
news:09CdnVbNlae2C1_XnZ2dnUVZ_vWdnZ2d@earthlink. com...
Ed Huntress wrote:

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not siding with the kid. But I'm opposed to
a
few things in this world, and one of them is taking the law into one's
own hands.



Someone please resolve for me the dichotomy of 'ignorance of the law
is no defense' with congress critters telling me they don't read the
bills because you need a team of lawyers to understand it.
Wes 2009

The principle is not exactly what some people think it is. In fact, in
Blackstone, the Latin phrase which means what you said ("ignorance of the
law excuses no one") was modified to "ignorance of the law which everyone
is bound to know, excuses no man." That's closer to what the law is in
most
countries today, including the US.

There have been successful defenses based upon ignorance of the law. See
Cheek v. United States, USSC 1991, and Lambert v. California, USSC 1957.
They're very rare, because the hypothetical situations people imagine when
they ponder this question are rare. Most crimes are committed with
knowledge, or approximate knowledge, that a crime is being committed. If
it's a case of administrative law, which can be illogical to a layman, and
arcane, most people who would be in a position to violate the law are also
in a position to question what the law actually is -- businessmen should
inquire with their legal counsel about matters relating to tax law, for
example.

A key issue in some cases is intent, and that is further hinged on the
question of responsibility versus negligence. You aren't likely to find
yourself in commission of a crime about which you had no reason at all to
believe was a crime. More likely, it would be a case of "you should have
known better," or "you had enough at stake that you should have asked a
lawyer."

None of which addresses Wes's valid question. What do legislators have
to do that is more important than reading and understanding the
legislation they vote to pass or not?

Aha. I see, after some searching, that you're referring to Wes's reference
to Conyer's statement in another thread. I rarely follow links if there is
no comment or description of what they're about, and I hadn't heard Conyer's
comment myself.

The answer to the question, I think, is that any bill that runs over 1,000
pages is a pile of junk. Conyers is right. And in retrospect, it looks like
Obama, in trying to avoid the buzzsaw that Hillary Clinton ran into nearly
two decades ago, has found *another* way to create a piece of nightmare
legislation.

I've read something like 160 pages of the thing, selectively, and it looks
like a horse designed by a committee. Turning the whole thing over to
Congressional committees was not the answer, either. It's so full of hedges
and compromises that it *would* take a team a lawyers days to figure out
exactly what it says.

I've been despairing about health care reform for a couple of months now. I
doubt if much is going to happen, because too many powerful interests don't
want anything to happen, in the first place. In the second place, any bill
this unwieldy is an invitation to fear and fear-mongering by those
interests, no matter what it contains. Nobody knows what kinds of traps and
pitfalls lie buried inside of it.

As for Congress voting on legislation they haven't read, that happens every
year, with the budget. It raises the question of whether this country is
governable in this complex age -- at least, with the structure of government
we now have. The real work is done by lobbyists and the bureaucracy, while
the legislative arms, mainly Congress, look more detached from it all the
time. They seem to vote by their sense of smell and the readings of the
polls.

It's probably going to take at least another couple of tries, IMO, and
another decade. In the meantime, we'll go broke if we don't do something, so
some patchwork bits and pieces will be enacted between now and then. Health
care could get worse. The entrenched financial interests, especially the
private insurance companies, don't care about that. They only care that the
money keeps flowing their way. And they've aligned their pitch with the
conservatives to make sure nothing much happens.

If I had to put my finger on one thing that has created this mess, I'd say
it was Obama's faith in bipartisanship. The insurance industry, Big Pharma,
and other medical interests have played that failed effort for all they're
worth, and they've almost succeeded in doing exactly what they wanted to
do -- stop the whole thing cold.

It looks to me like Obama is wising up to the fact that he's going to have
to be more like LBJ to get anything done. I hope it's not too late. But a
50-page bill can be sold and defended; a 1,000-page bill cannot. If the Dems
get over their infatuation with making nice-nice with the Republicans,
there's just a slim chance they can get something worthwhile done. If they
can't, we're screwed.

--
Ed Huntress