Article originally appeared on thefederalist.com.
Imagine going out to take your dog for a walk on the National Mall and ending up in handcuffs, all because your dog was not on a leash. This scenario sounds absurd in America. But it happened to Fox News commentator Dana Perino’s husband under the National Park Service’s regulations for the National Mall, which have criminal consequences.
The National Park Service is not an outlier. Across the federal government, federal agencies have seized a broad grant of power from Congress to write whatever regulations they deem “necessary” and back them with the power of criminal enforcement. These regulations are quietly passed through rule-making, where only the very most attentive of people would notice. The result is many people are regularly violating criminal laws that they do not even know exist.
To make matters worse, many of these regulatory crimes do not require …
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