Maryland roundup

  • Legislature won’t pass dram shop liability, lawyers ask Maryland high court to do so instead [Frederick News-Post]
  • In St. Mary’s County, new visitor rules for elementary schools ban hugging or giving homemade food to any but own kid [Southern Maryland News]
  • Progress: Maryland Senate votes to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana [NBC Washington]
  • If it’ll take $1 million for Somerset County (pop. 26,000) to cut stormwater nitrogen runoff by 145 pounds, how’s it going to manage to cut 37,000 pounds? [AP]
  • “Fracking Moratorium Falls One Vote Short of Passing Key Senate Committee” [Chestertown Spy] “Bill was more about preventing fracking than studying it.” [@ToddEberly]
  • Department of Truly Dreadful Ideas: Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez (D-Montgomery) continues to push bill to establish state-owned bank [Baltimore Business Journal]
  • Website attacking Montgomery County’s Valerie Ervin has some union fingerprints [WaPo] Sen. Brinkley blasts union bill to make all Md. teachers pay agency fees [Maryland Reporter]
  • Video interview with Hudson attorney George Ritchie on Waterkeeper v. Hudson Farm case [Center Maryland, earlier]
  • Added: “Md. Senate votes to outlaw smoking in cars with young children as passengers” [WaPo just now]

2 Comments

  • Always depressing to read the comments on stories like the dram shop liability story. Is a dram shop liability law a good thing? Why then, what does it matter how the law gets instituted? If the legislature won’t make a law, the courts should make a law. And if the courts won’t make a law, can the governor make a law? Heck, how about the Girl Scouts make the law? Why let a little thing like the Constitution stand in our way when we are doing Good Things?

  • The courts created the dram shop rule. I don’t think the courts should assume that every law the legislature does not overturn is good law that should not be changed.