Dear Senator Ron Johnson:

I read in the Oshkosh Northwestern (our hometown newspaper) today that, as part of your official duties as a U.S. Senator, you are producing videos of people who have been harmed by government intrusion or red tape. The paper went on to describe the subject of your first video, the sad story of Steve Lathrop, “a man who bought an old dump in a flood plain and converted it into a lake to prevent future flooding”…

The nearly three-minute video says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers subsequently threatened Lathrop with fines and jail time unless he converted the land back because the Army Corps had designated the area as wetlands. The video said the Corps of Engineers also referred Lathrop to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for prosecution, but the EPA declined to charge him. Lathrop instead planned to follow EPA guidelines to create new wetlands on the adjacent farm, which required a permit. The permit still has not arrived from the Corps of Engineers even though Lathrop applied for it 14 years ago, the video said.
…
Johnson is inviting people who watch the first video to click on a link and share other stories that could provide the basis for future installments.

Waiting for a permit for 14 years! What an injustice! How intrusive!!

Well, if you really want to expose intrusive government, there’s no need to wait for people to click on your link. There are 305 stories just begging to be publicized over at The Innocence Project. These are stories not of people who have been waiting for a permit (to do something they apparently don’t want to do anyway), but rather of people who have been convicted by the government of crimes they did not commit, and as a result have rotted away in prison for, in some cases, over thirty years. I suggest you direct your keen eye for intrusive government at them; here are a few of the most egregious cases to get you started:

Cross-posted at blogherenow.net