How the Feds Criminalized Alternative Energy Entrepreneurship

Conn Carroll / July 29, 2009

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Over-Criminalization of Conduct/Over-Federalization of Criminal Law. Heritage fellow Brian Walsh wrote at the time:

We should applaud Reps. Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Louie Gohmert (R-TX) for holding a bipartisan hearing today to examine how federal law can make a criminal out of anyone, for even the most mundane conduct.

Federal law in particular now criminalizes entire categories of activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison. … Consider small-time inventor and entrepreneur Krister Evertson, who will testify at today’s hearing. Krister never had so much as a traffic ticket before he was run off the road near his mother’s home in Wasilla, Alaska, by SWAT-armored federal agents in large black SUVs training automatic weapons on him. (more…)