The House has written into its corporate reform bill a provision stating that attempting to break a federal law is a crime. In order to give you a sense of how crazy this is, it’s an attempt to generalize all laws so that they work like drug laws. That can’t be good. The real bonus here is that violating the new “attempting” laws would carry the same penalties as successfully violating the laws. It sure seems to me that the creation of “attempting” laws should occur on a case by case (or rather, statute by statute) basis. (Via the estimable Bashman.)