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Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

> I'd actually be surprised if there were many of those.

There are entire books written filled with silly, outdated, or absurd laws and regulations (both federal and state).

Here's just a taste[1]:

> 18 USC §1382 & 32 CFR §636.28(g)(iv) make it a federal crime to ride a moped into Fort Stewart without wearing long trousers.

> 16 USC §551 & 36 CFR §261.16(c) make it a crime to wash a fish at a faucet if it's not a fish-washing faucet, in a national forest.

> 21 USC §461 & 9 CFR §381.171(d) make it a crime to sell "Turkey Ham" as "Ham Turkey" or with the words "Turkey" and "Ham" in different fonts

> 18 USC §1865 & 36 CFR §7.96(b)(3) make it a federal crime to harass a golfer in any national park in Washington, DC.

[1] http://www.freedomworks.org/content/19-ridiculous-federal-cr...

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I keep seeing this mistake made over and over again. Regulations are not laws like the above, which are written by the legislature. The vast majority of regulations are written by experts in the relevant fields working for agencies in the executive branch. The legislature grants regulatory agencies jurisdiction and provides general guidance/intent but the most of the specifics are left to the regulatory body to decide.

The job of the SEC, for example, is to provide a framework for the public to safetly invest in and own parts of corporations while providing qualified investors more freedom to invest in riskier ventures. The SEC decides what financial disclosures best fulfill its job requirements and imposes fines on violators. However, the laws that actually punish executives for breaking SEC rules are written by Congress and the courts are the last step that decides whether Congress or the agency are overstepping their bounds.

Regulations as a landscape change much faster than laws and are consolidated all the time so there's a lot less cruft than the rest of our legal code would lead you to believe.

I think that's why they cite both the authorizing statute, which creates criminal penalties for violating regulations, and the regulations themselves.

You're right, I read "USC section ..." and skipped to the description. Should have posted my rant elsewhere in the topic :)

Still though, I think it's helpful to point out that the legal nature of regulations allows them to move faster and reduce internal complexity while the legal code is mostly append only.

I'm just shaking my head at all the Hacker News armchair law professors who fervently believe each and every one of these is critical to the functioning of civilized society.

And that's why we have so much red tape. Apparently there's a type of person who can't abide not having all possible minutia of life legislated.

Shaking my head at nerds who believe that this administration will agree with them on which statutes should be eliminated.

Heh. I'd have thought the armchair law professors are the ones claiming that large portions of US law are mistakes, not the ones saying that things are the way they are for good reason.

Also, I don't think anyone is saying that they're critical to the functioning of civilized society, just that they're not ridiculous and outdated, and that being truthful about the topic of discussion is important in a discussion. We can, and should, debate whether they're needed! But we first need to understand what arguments there are in favor of keeping them.

> 21 USC §461 & 9 CFR §381.171(d) make it a crime to sell "Turkey Ham" as "Ham Turkey" or with the words "Turkey" and "Ham" in different fonts

Here's the law: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/9/381.171

This is one of a large number of sections of the law that define what food products mean, for every food product on the market, and lead to a consistent UX at markets. It's not like someone passed the Turkey Ham Font Sizes Act of 1947 or something.

It's these sorts of laws that prevent people from labeling, e.g., high-fructose corn syrup as "corn sugar". http://corn.org/facts-about-the-cra-petition-on-corn-sugar/

Trump has complained about "the FDA Food Police, which dictate how the federal government expects farmers to produce fruits and vegetables and even dictates the nutritional content of dog food."

So, expect to see corn sugar in your sodas as soon as a new federal regulation gets passed. And something else, as soon as people figure out what "corn sugar" is.

I'm not sure why I'm meant to be alarmed by "corn sugar". Sucrose is extremely unhealthy for you in the quantities consumed in naturally sweetened soda. High fructose corn syrup is "high in fructose" relative to corn syrup, not to sugar, which is itself naturally high in fructose.

More important context for the "ham" law is that the criminal penalty statute they're citing is actually meant to pair with this offenses statute:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/21/458

... it captures a bunch of other regulations by reference, including labeling laws, but that doesn't mean someone passed a law saying it should be a federal crime to use the wrong font for ham.

It's a euphemism for HFCS, which is a name that consumers have slowly come to recognize, independent of the validity of either the phrases "high-fructose corn syrup" or "corn sugar". Without regulation, there's nothing preventing a euphemism treadmill for products that consumers don't want. (Whether consumers are correct to not want HFCS is tangential, since all I'm arguing is that consistent labeling is a good thing for the law to be enforcing in the general case, but for my own edification - I thought that HFCS was strictly worse than sugar, which is pretty bad; is it equal to / better than sugar?)

HFCS is sugar, except it comes from corn instead of cane.

True. They're both simple sugars. HFCS has a higher fructose/glucose ratio than cane sugar. There are several varieties of HFCS which differ in their fructose percentage. It can be useful to know this distinction as fructose and glucose are metabolized differently.

This is mostly a misconception. Depending on the type of HFCS, it may have slightly more or slightly less fructose than table sugar, which the human body is especially adept at breaking into glucose and fructose.

HFCS is probably not significantly different from table sugar as far as human metabolism goes.

Thanks for pointing that out. The two common forms of HFCS are HFCS-42 (42% fructose) and HFCS-55 (55% fructose); the latter is generally what we find in soda.

The longitudinal nutrition studies in humans necessary to tease out the differences are difficult to perform well. I think it's worthwhile to at least keep in mind that these different sugars do have different effects on the body, especially given the levels of consumption we're seeing in the US.

Table sugar is 50%. HFCS-55 is 55%. This is not a significant difference. There is no evidence that sucrose has a different metabolic impact in humans than HFCS-55 --- any evidence would be surprising, because the human body is a ninja at separating glucose from fructose.

What is dangerous is the suggestion that sucrose is safer than HFCS; it misleads people into believing they are making a healthy choice when they drink sugared soda made with cane sugar. They are not. Sucrose in significant quantities is extraordinarily bad for you, for the same reason HFCS is!

We are in complete agreement that sugar in significant quantities is bad. I also don't see where I'm suggesting that one is worse or better than the other. I've actively worked not to make that suggestion.

The metabolic pathways are different. If you want to argue that this is not a meaningful difference given the evidence we have, that's fine. I can understand that. I clearly stated that doing the kinds of studies that would be able to show such evidence are difficult to do. Do you think this is a fair assessment? I get the impression that you think I'm trying to muddy the waters. That's not the case.

The metabolic pathway for table sugar and HFCS is not significantly different. We have an enzyme specifically designed to liberate the fructose from sucrose, and it acts at the same location --- the small intestine, which is the start of the pathway from your alimentary canal to the liver, where all fructose (whether it came from sucrose or from HFCS) is metabolized.

equivalent to sugar, as far as i understand

> 16 USC §551 & 36 CFR §261.16(c)

That should absolutely still be on the books. You'd have people cleaning fish in bathrooms.

It's also an inaccurate summary:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/36/261.16

"The following are prohibited: (c) Cleaning or washing any personal property, fish, animal, or food, or bathing or washing at a hydrant or water faucet not provided for that purpose."

This is the sort of thing that would just be a normal rule, in a contract or something, in a privately-managed park. For a federal park, it's perfectly reasonable for it to just be a federal law.

You could also imagine a world where it's simply illegal to be in a federal park without signing a contract with the government, which would get these sorts of things out of the CFR, but that seems like it would be worse for the American people at zero benefit. And personally, I'd still call things in those contracts "federal regulations".

You could also imagine a world where national parks become privatized.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic but in case you're not, the question is not whether it should be forbidden (e.g. by park rules) to "wash a fish at a faucet if it's not a fish-washing faucet, in a national forest" but whether there should be a law that makes such thing a federal crime.

How can something be forbidden in a national forest other than making it a federal crime?

Putting "Do not wash fish in faucet" signs up would probably go a long way. If the problem gets completely out of hand, make it a civil offense that carries a fine.

Here's the thing, though: federal lands are administered directly by the federal government. The only avenues they have for rule-making are Congressional statutes and agency regulations. There is nothing else available to them to achieve the goal of making and enforcing a rule, because that's how they're legally set up.

So to forbid washing fish at a faucet in a national park... you literally do have to make a federal law (or a regulation with the force of federal law).

This is also why they have their own law-enforcement agency (the United States Park Police): Congress was, for a very long time, reluctant to authorize a general federal police force, so many agencies have their own specific police force operating solely within that agency's jurisdiction. It also creates fun inter-jurisdictional issues since the U.S Capitol building has its own separate police force, but the Capitol building is on the National Mall, which is Park Police territory.

According to 16 USC 551, a fine is indeed what you're likely to get for violating this regulation.

The issue here is that the statute authorizing criminal penalties covers a whole range of national park regulations, some of which clearly merit stiff penalties, and some of which are just about washing fish safely.

But is it a "crime" (one that gets you a criminal record) as opposed to something like a parking ticket? This is what I thought we were arguing about but IANAL and might have misunderstood what OP meant.

It's a misdemeanor and gets you a criminal record. But so does a speeding ticket in states like Maryland or Georgia where all moving violations are misdemeaors.

Washington DC's unique status means that federal law governs what would otherwise be a city ordinance any other place in America.

That source uses "federal crime" to make it sound extra scary. These are misdemeanors, like speeding or red light tickets in many states.

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