Are you a guitar owner? More important, do you own a guitar made by Gibson, one of the most well-known American guitar manufacturers? If so, listen up; you may be in Uncle Sam’s cross hairs – as a criminal.

"The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India."

The evidence is shocking when viewed from the Salt Lake Valley’s canyons: A brown stew of stagnant air swallowing clean air and stealing views like a suffocating shroud. That gunky blanket, seen especially during steamy summer months and winter inversions, is nearly as visible from the valley floor. And it has persuaded Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker to fight back. He wants to outlaw vehicle idling (beyond two minutes) as a means to cleanse the air.

For decades, the task of counting the total number of federal criminal laws has bedeviled lawyers, academics and government officials.

"You will have died and resurrected three times," and still be trying to figure out the answer, said Ronald Gainer, a retired Justice Department official.

When three girls in Midway, Georgia set up their lemonade stand, they intended to raise enough money to go to the water park. But the ever-vigilant local police quickly identified the girls’ effort as criminal enterprise and shut them down.