ABC News: Crime Blotter: In Search of the Unintentional Turd Burglar: On March 30, Athena Mosxona was sentenced to 10 days probation after pleading guilty to misdemeanor mail destruction. Mosxona, 61, had supervised the Blackfoot Indian Reservation’s Heart Butte post office for 19 years until she was indicted on charges that she tossed away advertising fliers instead of putting them in post office boxes.
The woman should get a medal, not probation! She saved her customers the time of throwing the stuff away themselves. The big row of mailboxes at my apartment complex has two 55-gallon garbage cans that fill every day as we residents toss the junk. Just yesterday I was speaking with my mail carrier as she delivered the mail. When she got around to filling my mailbox, I told her she could just toss the fliers. She said, “no, I can’t, I legally have to hand them to you or put them in your mailbox. I can’t throw them away.”
Why is it that I can put a sign on my door that reads “No Solicitation”, but I can’t do the same for my mailbox? Yes, I know you can opt out of junk mail lists, but that puts the burden on me to find all the lists and submit my info. I don’t have to call every door-to-door salesman and Jehovah’s Witness to tell them not to knock on my door. I feel the same way about telemarketers and spam e-mail. My phone, my mailbox, and my e-mail account are like my doorstep.
I’m a huge supporter of the First Amendment when it comes to personal speech, but I’d like some different regulation of commercial speech.
UPDATE: The title of the ABC News link refers to the first story in their Crime Blotter about the purse snatcher who stole a woman’s baggie filled with dog poop as she walked her dog, not the postal worker. I wonder if anyone at ABC is aware that “turd burglar” is a coarse epithet for buggering?
