Once upon a time, states handled most domestic issues. The federal government addressed defense and other truly national issues, intruding into state affairs only in important matters--hence the expression. If the feds were involved, it had to be a big deal.
This is one of the big things the feds prosecute:
In 2007, Mr. Lewis and his staff diverted a backed-up sewage system into an outside storm drain—one they long believed was connected to the city’s sewage-treatment system—to prevent flooding in an area where the sickest residents lived. In fact, the storm drain emptied into a creek that ultimately reaches the Potomac River.
Eight months later, Mr. Lewis pleaded guilty in federal court to violating the Clean Water Act. He was given one year’s probation and placed under court-ordered supervision.
“I got a criminal record from my job—when I thought I was doing the right thing?” says Mr. Lewis, 60 years old.
Mr. Lewis was caught in Washington’s four-decade expansion of federal criminal law. Today, there are an estimated 4,500 federal crimes on the books, a significant increase from the three in the Constitution (treason, piracy and counterfeiting). There is an additional, and much larger, number of regulations written to enforce the laws. One of those regulations ensnared Mr. Lewis.
There you go. Treason, piracy, counterfeiting, and releasing untreated sewage into a river. You can see how you'd want to make a federal case out of every one of them.
This is sickening. And given how many federal crimes duplicate state crimes, the protection against double jeopardy is gravely undermined since the different jurisdictions mean that technically the same action can be considered two different crimes.
If the ACLU had more to say about the imperial expansion of the federal government into areas it should not be involved in, I'd have more respect for them. I still think making United States senators directly elected by voters was a mistake. States lost their champions with that change.
