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Man jailed over messy yard. Fairly good reporting job from WMUR in NH.

"That's not what we want to see in a front yard," said Oak Park City Planner Kevin Rulkowski.

Why? The city is pointing to a code that says a front yard has to have suitable, live, plant material. The big question is what's "suitable?"

"If you look at the definition of what suitable is in Webster's dictionary, it will say common. So, if you look around and you look in any other community, what's common to a front yard is a nice, grass yard with beautiful trees and bushes and flowers," the city bureaucrat said.

Neatly trimmed lawns and fixed picket fences could soon be the order of the day for not only homeowners in New York, but across America, if they want to avoid hefty fines and even jail time. In January, Linda Ruggles, 53, from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, was sentenced to ten days in jail after failing to pay a $480 fine for a having a messy yard. A month later, a Florida man was reportedly sentenced to a year and one day in jail after he failed to remove litter from the front of his house.

A New Jersey dad who saves his 5 year old son from a embankment was deemed a hero upon the community however the father was giving tickets and was fined by the police .

PHOENIX, Ariz. — The Arizona Supreme Court has denied a petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed by attorneys for The Rutherford Institute on behalf of a Phoenix man who is serving a 60-day jail sentence and was fined more than $12,000 for using his private residential property to host a weekly Bible study, allegedly in violation of the city’s building codes.

A woman put an unwanted air conditioner out on the curb. A man asked her if he could take it. She said ok, and the man put it in his car. For this egregious crime, the man and woman were fined $2000 each and the man had his car impounded. Oh, and ignorance of this law is no excuse, citizen.

The Michigan woman facing 93 days in jail for front yard gardening now faces new charges for having unlicensed dogs.

Pregnant woman jailed for having thought about abortion

This story is almost too hard to believe, but it is indeed true: A pregnant woman in Iowa was jailed for "attempted feticide" because she told hospital staff she once thought about having an abortion.

"Never believe anything until it is officially denied," is a useful saying, advising skepticism towards whatever the government claims to be doing. This is the right mental attitude for any observer of the political scene. But for sniffing out official or journalistic mendacity, evasion and ignorance, a good guide is the use of tired and misleading words or phrases.