The act of cheating or taking something of value from a victim or causing the victim an expense in either time, money, or something else of value should all be classified as theft. Tax fraud, false or misleading insurance claims (including claims for self-inflicted injuries or damages), over-billing customers, bribery, ransom demands, willfully wrong IRS judgments, etc., should be treated as theft. Compensation plus a punitive multiple should be paid up to several times the amount of the fraudulent or dishonest economic transaction.

Forcibly demanding illegal payments, such as ransom demands, wrongful IRS judgments followed by threats to pay, etc. should be considered a completed theft of the original amount demanded even though that amount may not have actually been paid by the victim.

The definition of terrorism should be as follows: Any action or threat that is meant to, or whose primary goal can reasonably be assumed to, frighten, hurt, or kill individuals who are not directly involved in hindering the legitimate goals advocated by the proponents of such an action or threat.

This would include hate speech that calls for the killing or harming of other people due to some invalid criteria as race or different gang affiliation. Under these rules, any individual such as a white supremacist, a singer, a gangster or anyone else who openly admits to seriously hating or wanting to harm or kill other people (the threat doesn’t have to be directed at a named individual), would be able to be arrested and charged with terrorism for the mere statement. A successful conviction would result in very severe punishments. If the threat or action resulted in the death of the targeted person, then the death penalty should be applied.

Terrorism should not be made into a new class of offense.  It should either be treated as a military attack (if it is significantly sponsored by a state) or as merely a crime in the conventional sense.  No special governmental departments should be created to deal specifically with the threat of terrorism.  No special funding for anti-terrorism related expenditures should be made.  We already have the military to address military threats and the police to address criminal threats.  Anti-terrorism efforts should fall mostly within the police domain, though at times, the military could be involved if the evidence warrants.

Anybody can initiate terror (both civilian and military personnel), and thus be a terrorist. Terrorism should be defined by the target and/or goal of the act, not necessarily by the type of act or who commits it.

Resistance against political or military rule (if their goals are supported by a sizable portion of the suppressed population (perhaps at least 20%)) employing actions or threats meant to frighten, hurt, or kill individuals directly associated with their political or military subjugation or control should not be considered terrorism. If less than the critical percentage of the population support the major thrust of the resistance movement, such acts should be considered criminal offenses. In either case, however, if the targets of these attacks or threats are against civilians or others not directly involved in hindering the political aspirations of the offensive group, then it should be called terrorism.

The bluntness of the weapons employed should also be an important factor to consider in whether to define an act as terrorism. The technological or financial ability of the ‘terrorists’ to use more surgical weapons/methods in order to reduce collateral damage, but their decision not to, will facilitate the defining of that action as a terrorist act (depending on the actual amount of collateral damage).

The more significant an opponent’s individual target is or the higher it’s value, the higher the collateral damage would need to be in order to classify the action as terrorism. For example, attacking or killing the head of the opposition would justify much higher collateral damages (including more innocent civilian deaths) than would an attack on a rank-and-file soldier or police officer. To use another example, the carpet-bombing of large areas during WWII would be far more justified than such actions today (especially by modern countries) because of the much more ready availability of technologies and weaponry that could accomplish the same objectives with far less collateral damage, especially involving innocent civilian deaths.

Penalty for Terrorists

The death penalty should be applied to actual and attempted terrorists if it is learned that their planned terrorist acts were mainly targeted towards and would have almost certainly caused the death of innocent individuals or if their plot included the use of either nuclear explosives, ‘dirty’ nuclear/conventional explosive bombs, deadly, contagious, or severely debilitating biological agents, deadly or permanently debilitating chemical agents, or the use of explosives with an estimated energy yield with a cumulative total of greater than one ton of TNT.

Military & Political Espionage

Military and especially political espionage should be globally illegal. Each should be punished severely. Prison time should be given until the possessed knowledge is outdated and/or heavy fines should be applied to any person working as a military or political spy against the United States and who transferred or can be proven to have been on the verge of transferring classified and/or ‘sensitive’ information relating to intelligence or national security to foreign entities. In cases where the leakage of information has resulted in the death of another person, the spy should be given the death penalty but only at the end of very lengthy debriefings and other punishments and perhaps also after the convicted spy had paid for all costs associated with his crime (at least court and detention costs). Penalties for lower magnitude military or government spying should include the immediate revocation of all security clearances, a lengthy prison sentence or very close supervision, and a large fine, an order to never communicate without supervision with people who have access to classified information or with people who may reasonably be assumed to desire important information that the spy may have or know. Punishments for espionage should also include intensive education consisting of lengthy explanations as to why it is essential that certain information not be divulged.

Exceptions would be allowed if the transfer of such information would have clearly benefited the populations of both countries (or all parties) involved. Immoral or clearly illegal activities would also be exempt from punishment if such information was first revealed through the proper channels or chain of command.

Economic Espionage

The spying on any business or industry (foreign or domestic) is obviously immoral and should be globally illegal and punishments should be severely enforced.  These crimes should be described as thefts and denominated mainly in terms of money.  Though many foreign governments habitually engage is such activities far more often than Americans, all should be prosecuted with the same heavy standard.  Attempts to justify these actions (including bribery) by claiming to ‘level the playing field’ with competitors should be completely invalid defenses. It should be widely advertised that, as with any other crime, any person who has information about any past, current or future crime that would lead to the capture of the criminal(s), that person should be rewarded with an amount of money equivalent to an average of about 10% of the total financial penalty imposed on the criminal(s) (namely the spies and the beneficiaries of such illegal information). Courts should assign a value for the illegally obtained information and punishments should be widely advertised, as they should for all crimes.  This way the general population would always have a general idea in their minds as to how much money a person would earn for turning over information to the authorities. Then when a spying episode surfaces, the entire population would theoretically already know what the rewards would be. This may make for a potentially quicker resolution and capture of the spy.

In addition to punishing specifically identified criminals responsible for espionage, national government should also have the right to impose (or have an international authority impose, if one were to exist) tariffs on the imports of products from countries which have benefited from such spying. For example, there was a case in the 1980s when the French intelligence agency (DGSE) helped win a $2 billion fighter airplane deal with India. Such actions should be punished by an international authority (ideally) through the imposition of a fine on the French government (ideall). However, the second option would be for the victimized party (the U.S.) and any other nations who agree in principal, to impose tariffs on all imports from France and keep them in place until a predetermined amount of revenue has been raised.

Additional punishment options could include sanctions of some sort or temporary bans on imports of certain products from offending countries.

Naturally, espionage (especially economic) and bribery constitute forms of corruption that make the world less fair for everyone.

It is currently the case that some countries engaged in significant spying against the United States are those that receive significant military or economic aid from the US. This aid, either in the form of military or other economic aid, should be used, at least in part, as leverage to encourage such countries to cease their spying on us and to actually encourage them to help police this area and find out who else is spying on us. Enforcement could be done by withholding an aid amount equivalent to whatever the estimated damage of a spying scandal has been. Further, aid could be increased when such countries submit information that leads to the proper resolution of other spying activities against the US. Such a punishment and reward principal has been previously proposed in these points. This principle would work the same regardless of the entity or the scale of the entity that is participating.

Bribery should be given a punishment equivalent to that given for theft. Both the person offering and the corrupt person receiving the bribe should be charged with the theft of an amount of money equal to the bribe, and the person receiving the bribe should be required to surrender the entire amount of the bribe to authorities.

The penalty for defamation (also vilification, slander, ethnic slurs), false light (defined as technically correct but still misleading) and libel should mainly be financial. The penalty system described below refers to the punishment and compensation for the defamation itself. Other damages which may be proven to have resulted from such defamation (such as lost income due to customers being deterred, loss of job, etc.) would be in addition to those described below and would be treated as a form of theft guided by the principles stated here.

Such a penalty for defamation should be determined in two parts.

First, a base penalty should be determined by the courts, be dependent on the actual facts of the case and based on the nature of the defamation. The more serious its nature, the higher the penalty. For example, accusing someone of murder may possibly result in a $1,000,000 fine, while accusing someone of stealing a sandwich may result in a minimum defamation fine of $1,000. (A minimum defamation fine is set due to the minimal deterrence an incrementally decreasing fine amount would have. In addition, lower value judgements would tend to ‘waste’ courts’ time.)

Second, an additional penalty should be determined based on the number of people exposed (either actually or potentially saw or heard the defamation). These people should be divided into a few categories: 1) those well-known to the victim (family, relatives and close friends), 2) those known to the victim (friends and acquaintances) and 3) those who ‘know’ the victim (for example people who just recognize their name, as a politician, an actor, radio personality, etc.). An estimate of how many individual fall into each of these categories would need to be agreed upon in court.

Then a certain monetary figure should be applied to each of these categories. For example, a judge could rule that the additional fine amount for each person in category #1 would be $10, and for category #2 it would be $2 and for category number #3 would be 5 cents.

Example: Let’s say a US Senator was falsely accused of accepting $100,000 in bribes. We’ll assume the courts have determined that the severity of this false accusation is worthy of a $100,000 fine. Now let’s say that the Senator has 200 close family and friends, 500 acquaintances, and 5,000,000 people who recognize his name because he is a popular politician. According to the formula above, the criminal (originator of the defamation) would need to pay $100,000 (the original base defamation fine) plus $2,000 (200 x $5 for the #1 family and friends fine) plus $1,000 (500 x $1) plus $250,000 (5,000,000 x 5 cents. This equals out to be a total fine of $253,000 against the criminal and awarded to the victim.

Distinction Between Intended and Incidental Audiences

There should be a distinction between the intended audience (such as the intended recipient of a text message) and the incidental audience (such as the newspaper that got a hold of that text message and broadcast it to the whole nation). The particular charge for each viewing within each category in order to determine the final fine amounts, would need to be determined by the particular facts of each case in court. However a rule of thumb could be that the incidental viewings should cost at least 100 times less than the intended viewings.

The punishment for disowning or inhumanely treating a daughter (such as under Islamic law) because she was raped should be loss of custody of the daughter, the requirement to pay full financial support to the daughter until she becomes an adult and a $25,000 fine for every year until she becomes an adult or until they accept her again into the family and she agrees.

People who are involved in the production and sale of counterfeit items, such as currency, art, clothes, ‘blood diamonds’, illegally harvested ivory, etc., should be charged with the theft of an equivalent number of authentic items at full-price. For example, if 1,000 pieces of counterfeit pants are produced and sold, and the authentic item sells for $20 in the stores, the counterfeit producers should be charged with the theft of $20,000 ($20 x 1,000 units) and ordered to pay a punitive multiple that would be decided by the courts. Equipment used in the production of the counterfeit items should be liquidated first to pay the imposed fines. Then any additional fine amounts that are still outstanding should be required to be paid by the criminals. For counterfeit operations that total at least an estimated $25,000 per year, then any transportation equipment used to facilitate the production, shipping or marketing of such counterfeit items should be liquidated to pay off this amount. Market prices should determine the amount that is received for such liquidated goods and the criminals would be required to find the buyers. The government may possibly survey the ultimate buyer quickly to make sure that such equipment is not planned for further illegal use. If the equipment is only valuable for counterfeit production, then the government should not allow its resale and its market value would be zero. In exchange for the forced liquidation of their transportation vehicles, criminals should be given the opportunity to pay 200% of the estimated market value of their vehicle(s), instead.

The production of imitation uniforms or uniform parts (including badges, etc.) should be prohibited. No person should be allowed to wear real or fake uniforms unless they are employed at a place that requires the use of uniforms. The purpose is to prevent people from posing as police officers or phone or gas company employees and thereby gain entry to a home to steal or do other damage or harm. True employees at organizations that require uniform and who use them to facilitate the committing of a crime should be charged an extra penalty because of the deception. Soldiers who are not really soldiers should be prohibited from wearing authentic soldier uniforms.

‘Spoofing’ telephone numbers, email addresses or the manipulation of any other information to mislead or conceal it’s true origin or the falsification of any other true characteristic should all be illegal and heavily penalized.

The importation and selling of exotic species should be banned (preferred), heavily restricted, or at least taxed to various degrees depending on the potential dangers posed to ecosystems due to their potential introductions into or removals from the wild.  The rule of thumb regarding allowing the importation of any living species should be to ban all imports (even exports) unless the species in question is on a ‘clean’ list of approved animals for importation.  Such a ‘clean’ list would be constructed by academics and researchers who have vetted the species to ensure against possible harmful effects in the local ecosystems into which importation is allowed.

Everybody, but especially primary school children should be intensively educated about the potential problems associated with the global transplantation of species. Perhaps the revenues generated due to both the taxation of these activities as well as the revenues generated through the fines and penalties imposed upon the violators of these rules could be used to educate the general public and to help fund exotic species removal programs.

People stealing or trafficking illegal materials, such as elephant ivory tusks, endangered animals (birds, monkeys, etc,), certain kinds of wood or plants, drugs and maybe some minerals or anything else of value, should be charged with theft and be required to pay up to several times the estimated market value of the material in question.

The confiscated material would be owned by the level of government responsible for the seizure and would be returned to the rightful owners if possible, unless it is illicit materials. If they are live animals, attempts would be made to return them to the wild, if that is from where they were taken. The government may have the option of declaring the seized materials legal (such as elephant tusks) and could sell it on the open market, keeping all the revenues that are generated. Such actions would tend to slow the slaughter of more animals by partially satisfying the market with the seized supply. It would also prevent the stash from going to waste.

Any information, distributed on any medium, which instructs or encourages others to participate in or perform illegal or wrong activities, should be banned. For example, the creation or distribution of instructions or products on how to make pipe bombs, evade police, grow or sell illegal drugs, commit murder, etc., should all be banned. Furthermore, nobody should be allowed to buy or use anything that would assist them in breaking the law or preventing enforcement of the law. For example, police radars or laser detectors, telephone dial tone recorders, anti-photo license plate covers, hacking lessons or hacker software, etc., should all be illegal. Spoofing, in all forms, should also be illegal.

It should be a crime to use US currency to fund or aid the commission of a crime, especially, for example, terrorist acts, international drug dealing, international prostitution, etc. Perhaps the penalty for using US currency in such a way could be set at somewhere between one and five cents per dollar used.

Withholding Information

No person should ever have the right to withhold information concerning any illegal activity from any appropriate law enforcement agency. Neither clergy nor any other religious personnel, neither parents nor any other family member, neither friends nor any other entity, not even journalists or the criminal himself, should ever be given any legal protection or allowance to withhold the divulsion of information concerning any past, present, or potential future crime from law enforcement. It is every individual’s, including every criminal’s, absolute obligation to do their part to prevent and solve crime, even when it involves them.

Journalists should not be allowed to claim press freedoms or any form of media shield protections or any other privileges that would otherwise allow them to withhold  from a court any type of information, including but not limited to notes and unpublished information. Such information may be requested to be reviewed behind closed doors by the judge so that he/she could make a final determination regarding its relevance and/or the level of protection or privacy such information may warrant.

Any individual withholding such information for any length of time considered longer than reasonable by the courts (generally, after a two-week grace period) would be considered as an accessory to or facilitator of the criminal behavior and this would, in fact, be considered a crime on its own. In addition, the punishment for withholding such information should be equivalent to the punishment the actual wrongdoer would receive if convicted of the offense. If the information is divulged, leading to the wrongdoer being caught, the person withholding the information should only be given a punishment equivalent to a percentage of the punishment the wrongdoer receives, namely, a fine for each unit of time (like each day), beyond this two-week grace period, that has passed without divulging the information. In addition, if investigators find or attempt to find the information through some other means, the individual(s) withholding the information should be charged for all or a percentage of the investigative expenses of those other means which have accrued after the end of such a grace period.

Accordingly, no individual should ever have the right against self-incrimination. If somebody did something wrong, it is their obligation to do all that they can to rectify the situation. This would include fully divulging their role in the matter and offering any other relevant or useful information. This section of the 5th Amendment to the US Constitution should be revoked immediately.

Destroying Information

Official files and any other important historical information that could, with a reasonable possibility, be used for future historical reference, should be required to be kept. Any person who is involved, in any way, illegally destroying records with potential value should be punished severely with heavy fines depending on the details of each particular case. But as an example, this case of Veteran’s Affairs Cleveland medical center employees deciding to destroy or deliberately misfiled up to 1,800 records. The penalty imposed should be constructed to reflect the magnitude of the crime, and should be based on each unit (record) misplaced or destroyed.  Naturally, every case is different and the courts would need to come up with a just cost, but in this case, perhaps a penalty of $1,000 per record should be the minimum. This cost may reflect the costs (including emotional costs) to the victims of these lost records if they happen to request them, as well as the costs to other associated  entities who may need such records for research or statistical purposes. To give these criminals an incentive to correct their misbehavior, they would be given the option (perhaps the requirement) to find as many records as possible within a certain period of time (like 12 months) in order for the judge to reduce the ultimate fine amount by a certain percentage.

Historical information is very valuable because it cannot be easily recreated, if even at all. So the penalties for what can be described as the permanent loss of such potentially information information should be very heavily punished.

Worms Viruses, Etc.

It should obviously be illegal to author or promote, in any way, any computer program (worm, virus, etc.) that has any illegal or malicious intent. The authors of such programming codes should be charged with the theft of an equivalent amount of money estimated to be the final total damage costs for which their code was responsible. This same principle should be applied to any form of vandalism or any other crimes.

Unauthorized Computer Information Access

All information/data on any computer, server, network, etc., (public, private, government, corporate, etc.) not intended for public accessibility (i.e., protected by any kind of security feature, including firewalls, passwords, etc.) should be considered to be private, and all unauthorized access would be treated as a violation of privacy, at a minimum (depending on the nature of the accessed information).

Curbside Trash

Trash placed on the curb intended for collection should also be considered private property because of the potentially sensitive nature of documents that could be placed in the trash. Government or private collection agencies should have the right to sort through the trash in preparation for recycling or for salvaging items of interest (though obvious document searches for personal information should be prohibited).

Illegal drugs should be made legal only if no reasonable or acceptable substitute for medical or rehabilitative reasons exists for those drugs. However, such drugs should be offered only through a prescription and only for medical or rehabilitative reasons. All other illegal drugs should remain banned.

However, the use of and the possession of ‘personal use’ quantities of virtually all illicit drugs should be decriminalized. This means that punishments other than prison terms should be given to offenders. Enforcement measure like fines would become the primary means of combating the problem.

Plants from which drugs are derived should also be permitted to be grown by any person as long as the plant is not altered or changed physically or chemically from its natural state in order to produce or aid in the production or concentration of chemicals capable of producing unnaturally significant bodily effects. For example, people could be allowed to grow the coca plant (from which cocaine is derived) and chew on the natural leaves of the coca plant or to make tea from the leaves to obtain its mild benefits. The mere growing of a drug-producing plant should generally not be prohibited; only unacceptable uses should be prohibited. Perhaps a permit for the growing of such plants should be obtained from the local government jurisdiction so that the government knows where such plants are located and can follow up on their status if necessary.

Any person knowingly (or even if they should have known) working towards or contributing to an illegal or immoral activity, should be given the full penalty (if they played a critical role) associated with that illegal or immoral activity or a certain fraction of the penalty if they played only a minor role towards the illegal or immoral goal. Not even scientists working for their corrupt or immoral governments should be exempted from such prosecutions.

Pornography

Pornography is like a drug which desensitizes its viewers to sex, requiring ever greater doses and ever more exotic forms to maintain satisfaction.  The ideal solution is for pornography to be banned but, like the alcohol prohibition of 1920-33 showed, any product with a large, determined market cannot be benignly banned.

However, the next best thing would be to heavily regulate and heavily tax this industry so that it operates safely and also so that an effective degree of resistance could be placed on the demand.  The adult film industry should be required to ensure a healthy, disease-free labor environment and provide proper compensation for its employees.  A vice tax of 100% should be imposed upon the transaction of any pornographic item (including films, toys, etc.).  This tax would be distributed proportionately among the different levels of government with jurisdiction over the place of sale (city, county, state, national).

Prostitution

Ideally, prostitution should also be prohibited because of the intrinsic wrong of selling and casually using one’s deepest physical acts with direct, negative spiritual implications.  Furthermore, studies have shown that the vast majority of prostitutes would have strongly desired to not have been a prostitute.  The demand will always exist, but a properly regulated market is preferable to a black market.

Prostitution services should also be charged a vice tax of 100%.  This tax money should be equally distributed into the general funds of every level of government with jurisdiction over the place of sale.  Brothels should exist in narrow zoned areas, health and labor standards must be enforced.

Nude Behavior

Such behavior should be outlawed in public.

Law enforcement agencies should seize all property that can be shown to have been purchased with dirty or ‘laundered’ money or money otherwise obtained illegally or immorally. The punishment for knowingly holding property obtained through such means should be similar to the punishment for the theft of property with an equivalent value, namely a penalty of up to several times the market value of such property. If the sellers knew that dirty or ‘laundered’ money was used to purchase their property, they should also be punished with a punishment similar to the buyer’s.

If, after being purchased with dirty money, the property was legitimately sold or given to innocent buyers or receivers, those innocent people should be allowed to lawfully keep the property unless the property was unlawfully or unfairly obtained from the identified legitimate previous owner, in which case that previous owner would be entitled to the immediate return of the property if he/she so chooses. If this previous owner chooses to take possess of the property, he/she would be required to exchange any direct compensation he/she may have originally received, for the property itself. If the legitimate owner does not desire the return of the property but was unfairly or partially compensated at the time of the illegal removal of the property from his/her possession, the legitimate owner would be entitled to an inflation adjusted proportional compensation of the uncompensated portion of the property’s value at the time of the theft or loss, plus a punitive multiple based on this amount.

Any money or compensation needed to correct the situation should all come from the party or parties who either originated or used dirty money or acted illegally or unfairly. At no time should innocent parties be required to suffer financially. If the government cannot find the people responsible for such unjust transactions, the government must bear the direct cost, not the victims.

Banks or other financial institutions should be required to report suspected and actual laundered money to their respective law enforcement officials. Such institutions who fail to to so in good faith should, as punishment, be held liable for the entire amount of such moneies that have passed through them. Preferably, to reduce the financial risk to such institutions, they should catch such activities while the money is still inside their systems. It should be reminded, that these institutions, as any other entity, either individuals or businesses, could stand to profit from their reporting of any criminal activity if these principles were to be implemented.

Governments should set a maximum Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) of 0.04% in order for a person to operate any type of mobile vehicle/machinery or heavy machinery. Employers could set a lower limit if they so desire. Governments could also set a lower limit for certain workers, such as pilots, nuclear plant operators, etc. People in public should never have a blood alcohol level of greater than 0.12%.

Consensual sex with or between minors aged 15 through 19, with partners that are no more than 10 years older, should not be a criminal offense. No age restrictions should be imposed on individuals 20 years and older.

Cruelty to soulish animals should be prohibited. Fines should be imposed based on the degree of cruelty inflicted and they should be doubled if cruelty is inflicted for entertainment purposes.

Pedestrians who illegally cross a non-residential street in a way that causes an unlawful disruption or delay in the flow of traffic (causing a vehicle to at least tap on their brake lights, delay through traffic or delay left or right turning vehicles), especially if pedestrians do not obey traffic signals, or if they interfere in any manner that creates greater risks for either themselves or others, should be fined at least $250. If sufficiently able-bodied pedestrians began crossing the street legally on the green signal, but did not finish crossing before the light turned red, they should also be subjected to the $250 fine. If there were no cars near enough to be reasonable affected or disrupted by the illegally crossing pedestrian, then no ticket/fine/warning should be given.

Any person who takes a shopping cart outside the defined boundaries of a store’s or shopping center’s parking lot should be charged with the theft of that shopping cart. The thief would be required to pay the store both restitution and a punitive multiple based on the cost of the shopping cart.

Those who are caught shooting guns randomly into the air (like for New Year’s or any other occasion) at any time in an urban area should be charged with littering, vandalism, and low-level endangerment of human life and fined the minimum amount for all these offenses.

If a bullet actually hits somebody accidentally, and kills them, then the shooter should be charged with involuntary manslaughter. Naturally, any damage that is found to be caused by a bullet should be charged to the shooter. The gun’s registrant should also be penalized if somebody else was illegally shooting the gun.

Students who are in the primary and secondary grades and are found out of school during school hours should be fined $100 unless they have valid excuses that are confirmed by authorities (parents, teachers, etc.)

Cursing should be illegal in public places, with increased penalties for cursing in confined public places like buses, trains elevators, etc., and still higher fines if children were present. Curse words should be ranked on a two or three step scale, based on the degree of vulgarity. Fines should be levied for each offense where curse words are spoken several times during a short period of time. Minor offenses in which curse words number one or two over the course of a conversation or other reasonable length of time should require that only a warning or small fine (such as $5 per word) be given. Such language used within earshot of minors should require much stricter enforcement and possibly increased penalties. Roads, parks, sidewalks, schools, and public/government buildings are some examples of the public places in which cursing, vulgarity, or other types of obscene language should be prohibited.

People who call 911 and who do not have a true emergency should be fined $50.

Heckling, especially at sporting events, that is of a derisive or abusive nature, or that is clearly defamatory, untrue, or malicious, should be illegal. Penalties should be set at perhaps a minimum of $1,000 per verbal heckling incident. In cases where the heckle is non-abusive or non-threatening or contributes to the general enjoyment, then no punishment should be imposed.

Flag-burning (or any sort of flag or symbol treatment) should always be a legally permissible activity.

People should have the right to decline the forced pledging of allegiance to the US flag.

There ought to be a public dress code requiring all people in public places to avoid wearing anything that is:

• vulgar
• sexually explicit or with clear sexual implication
• sexually revealing (including the intentional revealing of underpants in an intentional and significantly lewd or indecent manner)
• or anything with a defamatory message or implication.