Stand the Patriot act in the U.S.A. a the Enabling act in Nazi Germany on equal footing? We all know that after 9/11 the Patriot Act (and new law) was constructed to give the U.S.A. more power in combating Islamic terrorists (the war on terror). After the fire in the Reichstag in Nazi Germany, the Enabling act (a new law) ensued which was meant to give Hitler absolute power (thereby abolishing the Reichstag) to fight (arrest, torture, kill) the communists who were seen as terrorists. In the U.S.A. too, people could be arrested more easily (Bush didn't take absolute power though), tortured (Guantanamo Bay), and killed in faraway lands (think of Afghanistan). I know a question comparing the U.S.A. and Nazi Germany lies very sensitive but I really can't see any difference in changing the law and using the change for political reasons. Many people though believe the Nazis put the building themselves on fire, as many people nowadays believe that the 9/11 terrorist attack was a U.S.A. government conspiracy. The F.B.I. knew already four days before the attack what was going to happen. And what to think about W.T.C. number seven? Etc. Can we say these two acts stand on equal footing?
No The Enabling Act was a law by which the Reichstag effectively abolished itself - adding legislative power to the government (Article 1, sentence 1). Government laws would be prepared by the Chancellor (Adolf Hitler) and published in the Reichsgesetzblatt (Artical 3, sentence 1). The law expires on the 1st of April 1937 or after the forming of a new government (Artical 5, sentence 2). Given the suppression and intimidation of members of that body it is likely that the law itself was unconstitutional. With this legal facade, the Nazis proceeded to institute a militaristic, undemocratic and illegal regime. The Patriot Act did not amend the constitution and is subject to all the constitutional constraints on legislative and executive power. It delegated powers to the President that were within the constitutional power of the congress to so delegate. In particular, it did not in any way transfer legislative power to the executive; that would be unconstitutional. Further, it did not purport to put the powers of either branch beyond judicial review.
Congress has always had the power to conduct an investigation and to issue subpoenas, although that power has just been assumed. It was first invoked in 1795, in the case of Robert Randall and Charles Whitney, in regards to an attempt to bribe members of Congress. This power ultimately follows from Congress's constitutional power to legislate augmented by the Necessary and Proper Clause, and (Barenblatt v. United States 360 U.S. 109) which implies powers to do things "in pursuance of its legislative concerns". It was there held that Congress's "legislative authority and that of the Subcommittee to conduct the inquiry under consideration here is unassailable". Anderson v. Dunn 19 US 204 earlier recognized the power of Congress to issue warrants and hold people to answer for charges – to conduct trials (in this case for torts against the Sergeant at Arms of the House), and notes that the Speaker is "duly authorized and required to attest and subscribe with his proper hand, all such writs, warrants, and subpoenas issued by order of the said house", which presupposed that the House has the power to give such orders. McGrain v. Daugherty 273 U.S. 135 held that "Deputies, with authority to execute warrants, may be appointed by the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate". Since Anderson, the courts have also recognized the power to hold a person in contempt for not obeying an order to testify: But what is the alternative? The argument obviously leads to the total annihilation of the power of the House of Representatives to guard itself from contempts, and leaves it exposed to every indignity and interruption that rudeness, caprice, or even conspiracy, may meditate against it. This result is fraught with too much absurdity not to bring into doubt the soundness of any argument from which it is derived. There are two kinds of sanctions for not testifying: the "inherent contempt" power, and statutory power. The former is a common-law sort of power officially recognized since Anderson. Statutory power is encoded in 2 USC 192, which says Every person who having been summoned as a witness by the authority of either House of Congress to give testimony or to produce papers upon any matter under inquiry before either House, or any joint committee established by a joint or concurrent resolution of the two Houses of Congress, or any committee of either House of Congress, willfully makes default, or who, having appeared, refuses to answer any question pertinent to the question under inquiry, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of not more than $1,000 nor less than $100 and imprisonment in a common jail for not less than one month nor more than twelve months This article provides a detailed analysis of the history and legal foundation of congressional comtempt power. Whether or not in the present case there is "contempt of Congress" can't really be answered yet. Congress does not have an absolute power to compel answers, e.g. the 5th Amendment protects witnesses in some ways, and Congress cannot compel a person to testify if doing so is against the law. There is a uniform refusal by governments to refuse to comment on any on-going investigation, which is often invoked in Congressional hearings. I don't know what the legal foundation of that position is, and there doesn't seem to be any case low on point. Once someone is punished for such refusal and appeals to SCOTUS, the picture should become clearer.
The First Amendment does indeed guarantee the freedom to express any idea or viewpoint, the limitation being incitement to immediate lawless action, recently reaffirmed in Snyder v. Phelps (many free speech cases have been about criminal restrictions on speech, this applied even to a suit for intentional infliction of emotional distress). There isn't a clear line that distinguishes "advocating violation of the law" and "inciting to immediate lawlessness". Saying "(You should) shoot The Man whenever you see him" would be protected expression, but "There's a cop, somebody kill him" would be incitement. It also has to be a "credible" incitement, so saying "Kill him now!" to a room full of pacifist nuns would not constitute incitement. Things said to an angry mob would be more along the lines of incitement.
Part answer to Q1: Is my conceptualization correct? No, insofar that your Points 1 to 4 are all &quot;completely illegal&quot; regardless of how the authorities deal with them, and the rest are not, on the face of it, crimes but presumably civil wrongs (which can be dealt with by, for example, fines or restraint / good behaviour / banning orders etc without one having a &quot;criminal conviction&quot;). Also: if the authorities, for whatever reason, decide against dealing with crime then it hasn't been &quot;decriminalised&quot; - that is the remit of the law makers, not the law enforcers. It's still a crime but with a lower political/ operational etc priority.
Murder is one of the few cases where the intention and not just the act is relevant. The act – killing a person – is the same for Mord and Totschlag, whereas fahrlässige Tötung covers acts that have caused the death of a person. The language of the Stgb labels the perpetrator who killed someone as a murderer or manslaughterer depending on their intention. That a person and not an act is punished is often criticized, but it has no practical consequence. Clearly, the intention isn't that the second one is free. Courts are able to interpret the law reasonably. However, the distinction between two kinds of killings seems to have no basis in reality and robs courts from flexibility to find a just sentence. There are occasional attempts at reform, but none will be successful while CDU/CSU is part of the government.
The main question is whether the US has jurisdiction outside the US, which means either "in another country" or "in no country" (viz. the high seas or outer space). It has generally been felt (legally) that the US has no jurisdiction over foreign countries, see especially Banana v. Fruit, 213 U.S. 347 "the general rule is that the character of an act as lawful or unlawful must be determined wholly by the law of the country where it is done". This is known as the "presumption against extraterritoriality": it is a presumption, not a rigid absolute rule. However, there are exceptions. The Alien Tort Statute (one of the first laws of the US) says "The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States". An application of that law is Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, where defendant tortured and murdered plaintiff's daughter, all parties being in Paraguay at the time: the court held that the US did have jurisdiction, under the ATS. Nevertheless, in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692 which involves an extraterritorial kidnapping, SCOTUS seems to have said that this law is primarily about granting jurisdiction, and not about creating new torts, and they indicate that the wrongful acts within the scope of the ATS are, specifically, "offenses against ambassadors, violation of safe conducts, and piracy" (at any rate, it's clear that damage arising from pollution would not be within the class of bad acts referred to by ATS). Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. reaffirms the limit on what torts can be pursued under ATS. In this case, the issue is whether RDP might be corporately liable for acts that could be illegal under US law, and the court says "[w]hen a statute gives no clear indication of an extraterritorial application, it has none" (citing Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd.). Accordingly, Taylor Jr. was held liable for his role in torture in Liberia, since the Torture Victim Protection Act does specifically allow for actions against individuals acting in their official capacity, outside the US, for torture and extrajudicial killing. "Sanctions against" is kind of open-ended. The US government can (under some circumstances) prevent US persons from doing things with respect to some other country, such as the restrictions against doing business with or visiting Cuba, Albania, North Korea etc. as have existed withing the past quarter century. Were I interested in sending money to a person in Iran vs. a person in Canada, I would have more problems in the former case owing to "sanctions". I think we can safely conclude that the US cannot (in terms of US law) declare that "whatever acts of a foreign entity overseas offend the federal government shall be litigated as though the acts were committed within the proper jurisdiction of the US" (or, more simply, "the proper jurisdiction of the US government is the universe"). Congress has not yet passed such a law about extraterritorial pollution, so until it does, it cannot sanction overseas polluters. When/if it does, it presumably can, though enforcement is another (political) matter.
Maybe, but we'll probably never know for sure. Officially, of course, he was not punished for his speech. He was punished for selling explosives without a license, which he admitted to. (He was also charged with illegally storing explosives and illegally mailing 'injurious material," but those charges were dropped in exchange for his guilty plea on the first count.) Whether those charges were a pretext to retaliate is probably unknowable. While it's a well-known fact that law enforcement frequently retaliates against people for exercising their right to free speech, this guy's story doesn't sound very credible. There is precedent for a prosecution for distributing Pest Control Report 2000, including the prosecution of white supremacist Leo Felton, a sad-sack loser who used the same material to build a bomb around to incite a "racial holy war" the same time. And just about a month after Ver's conviction, the man who owned the company that manufactured the product was convicted of violating federal explosives and transportation laws. Several months after that, he and his company entered into a consent decree with the Consumer Product Safety Commission ordering them to stop manufacturing Pest Control Report 2000.
The Constitution does not define any crimes (except for an explicit limit on what can be considered 'treason.') It places limits on what penalties the government may apply for crimes and how crimes are tried in court, but it does not itself actually create any criminal offenses. Rather, state and federal law do that. Having said that, if a state government creates a crime of murder (which, obviously, they all do,) the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment does require that that law protect all people within the jurisdiction of that state. That is, a state cannot make a law criminalizing the murder of a white person, but not of a black person, for example. States can't just pick and choose who is protected by their laws. It would not violate the U.S. Constitution if a state completely decriminalized murder, though. It's exceptionally unlikely to happen, but it would not be a violation of the Constitution. Depending on exactly what you mean by 'murder,' it could be argued that murder by the government is unconstitutional, though. The 14th Amendment bans states from depriving anyone of life without due process of law: No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Similarly, the 5th Amendment provides an equivalent protection from the federal government: No person... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law