Catch me if you can - a great plot for a movie…

…a horrible and tyrannical way to govern

In 2002, Leonardo DiCaprio starred in the film Catch Me if You Can, the story of Frank Abagnale Jr., a con-man who passed almost $2.5 million in bad checks. During his check-forging escapades, Abagnale managed successfully to masquerade as an airline pilot, racking up thousands of miles of free flights, a physician, a lawyer in an attorney general’s office, and even a university professor. What makes the tale so riveting, however, is not the extent of Abagnale’s cons, no matter how interesting and extravagant they may have been. The real draw of this plot, as it even is for Abagnale’s character, is the chase - staying one step ahead of the ones trying to catch him.

While such a plot may bring in the big bucks at the box office, apply it to governing and you have a recipe for disaster. Unfortunately, this strategy has infiltrated and been instituted in government at multiple levels. It began, it seems, with the executive, and it spread from there like a viral contagion. We see elected officials (and many unelected “officials”) at all levels using this approach almost daily. As with Abagnale, the law does eventually catch up, but by then, the damage has been done; however, unlike Abagnale, the government perpetrators rarely (if ever) face consequences.

Consider president Biden’s mandates to OSHA, during the Covid outbreak, to require businesses with more than 100 employees on the payroll to have those employees receive the jab or face fines. Biden knew this executive order was overreach, but he also knew that most businesses would cave to it, even before OSHA finalized their “rule,” and that any legal challenge would take a long time to come to bear. The mindset was, just as in the movie, “catch me if you can.” President Biden has issued many other such executive orders, and while they may eventually be struck down by the courts, until such time as they are, the agencies reporting to the president enforce them. How many people who otherwise would not have accepted the experimental shots were forced to in order to maintain employment? How many were injured? Who is responsible for compensating those who suffered the damages of this tyrannical overreach?

The ATF’s rule 2021R-05F was similar. Under the auspices of implementing the president’s guidance on eliminating so-called “ghost guns,” the ATF in May of 2021 wrote a new rule redefining what constitutes a “firearm” insisting that an item known as an 80% lower receiver (the part of a firearm into which a magazine feeds bullets, or which houses the trigger or firing mechanism, but the manufacture of which is only 80% complete such that it cannot be used without further processing - I’m simplifying here) is in fact a firearm. The Attorney General of the United States signed this rule on April 11, 2022, with the effective date being August 24, 2022. This rule, at the time it went into force, made 80% lower receivers illegal for transfer without going through the same process as purchasing a fully-manufactured firearm - in other words, purchasing and picking the item up at a federally-licensed firearms dealer only after filling out an ATF form 4473 and undergoing a background check. In the ten months this rule was in effect, aside from creating additional burden for the purchaser, this rule effectively caused many businesses to shut down entire production lines and to stop selling what, for many, was their primary product. On June 30, 2023, a federal judge ruled that the ATF overstepped its “statutory authority” and vacated the rule in toto, but not before much damage was done. How much money did businesses lose under this rule? How many employees lost their jobs? How many Americans had their rights infringed before the courts intervened?

You should see a pattern emerging here. With many of the Supreme Court’s rulings over the past several years, states who don’t like SCOTUS’ opinions have passed laws in violation of those rulings, again, essentially thumbing their noses and saying, “catch me if you can.” So many more examples could be provided from the White House, to the alphabet agencies, to state and city government, this appears to be the new long-term modus operandi for our wannabe autocrats.

This is not the America envisioned by our founding fathers. Lawfare, which is what this is - government passes laws or makes rules and then those affected have to go to court to challenge that which is clearly unconstitutional - was never the way. The government is in place to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” not trample it. Behaving this way does not “establish Justice” - it turns it on its head. It’s time we tell our representatives, local, state, and federal, to end the escapade. We live in a representative republic, not under authoritarian rule. It’s time those elected return to the perspective of being public servants and stop behaving like petty tyrants.