1) This amusing entry from James Lileks regarding the social aspects of the various lawsuits urging that church-state separation means no “Christ” in Christmas.

2) Merry Christmas, Joy of the Season, All the Best and Happy New Year.

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Problem 1 = Federal law prohibits revealing pharmacy records in running firearm background checks.

Problem 2 = Texas law prohibits the publication of mental health records without the patient’s approval.

Problem 3 = How does an attack on a third party result in any evidence that someone is suicidal?

Details are here.

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And this ingenuity is being exported from US courts to international tribunals. As James Pinkerton’s column notes, “the trial lawyers, entrepreneurial as always, have found new courts – world courts – to play in. And they have found allies among activists and fortune-hunters who dismiss traditional democracy and diplomacy in pursuit of their goals.”

Yipes.

UPDATE: for more on the Inuit lawsuit noted in Pinkerton’s column, check out Point of Law’s item noted by this site’s editor here. For those of you just tuning in, Point of Law is Overlawyered’s companion site that (as its own description states) “is a web magazine sponsored by the Manhattan Institute that brings together information and opinion on the U.S. litigation system.”

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Here is what is most worrisome — the notion that free speech must give way to the (violent) protests of the community (and the concurrent lack of protection by peace officers). The attitude is nicely encapsulated by these two reactions:

“Free speech can go so far,” [Mohan Singh, a Sikh religious leader] said. “Maybe 5,000 people would have seen this play over the run. Are you going to upset 600,000 Sikhs in Britain and maybe 20 million outside the United Kingdom for that? Religion is a very sensitive issue and you should be extremely careful.”

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham, the Most Rev. Vincent Nichols, who had said the play would insult people of all faiths, said that calling it off was the “right decision” given the genuine worries about public safety. His spokesman, Peter Jenkins, said: “In the weeks leading up the play we felt very strongly that a play set in a temple would deeply offend the Sikh community. We did not ask for it to be cancelled but for the setting to be changed to, say, a Sikh community centre. With freedom of speech and artistic licence must come responsibility and the responsible thing to do is to change the setting.”

There you have it: free speech that may have some political, religious or artistic point of view fettered by the community’s entitlement not to be insulted.

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The ruling is especially notable because the Ninth Circuit is generally considered the most liberal (and volatile) of the 12 regional circuit courts — it sits primarily in San Francisco and presides over appeals from US district courts in the far west and some mountain states; the Fourth Circuit is considered one of the two most conservative federal appeals courts and presides over appeals from district courts in the Carolinas, the Virginias and Maryland.

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John Fund writes about a real threat to voting rights in Washington state — efforts to “find” votes for the gubernatorial candidates in what had been a close election, which became closer every time King County looked at its in-box.

UPDATE: And for more fun with voter intent and attempts to obtain executive office through fraud, check out the coverage of San Diego’s controversial mayoral election here.

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The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (home website here is a private organization funded by auto insurers that tests new and redesigned vehicles for crashworthiness. The IIHS tests are different than the ones that the National Highway Transportation Safety Authority (the agency within the US Department of Transportation) performs and have different rating systems primarily derived from the theoretical injury that the crash test dummy sustains in the IIHS test. IIHS ratings are Good, Acceptable, Marginal (in other words, barely meeting the test to keep the occupant safe) and Poor (read: car occupant will sustain injury in crash).

The most well-known IIHS test is the frontal offset crash test — which examines how the occupants fare in a frontal collision when the car is at an angle to the obstacle it crashes against. It is regarded as better than the NHTSA frontal crash test because when a car crashes frontally, it won’t usually be a nose-to-nose collision, instead the drivers will swerve right (somewhat) into their proper lane of traffic. The IIHS test is also conducted at a higher speed than the NHTSA test.

The Kia Spectra failed. For the first time in three years, a small car received a Poor rating on the frontal offset crash test. What makes the failure shocking is that car manufacturers know how the IIHS tests and should be able to build the cars to ensure minimal damage to the dummy.

Kia currently stands by its product, according to the story above, but the IIHS test is usually regarded as a gold standard. If Kia does not go back to the drawing board and remediate the Spectra’s problems, it should know that a litigation flood will follow, and its settlement costs will skyrocket.

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The complaint questioned how the actual results could show Bush winning when exit-poll interview findings on election night indicated that Kerry would win 52 percent of Ohio’s presidential vote.

Without listing specific evidence, the complaint alleges that 130,656 votes for Kerry and John Edwards in 36 counties were somehow switched to count for the Bush-Cheney ticket.

The Ohio chief justice ruled that

the request improperly challenged two separate election results. Ohio law only allows one race to be challenged in a single complaint

because it compared the presidential race results to a judicial race.

The Monk’s political affiliations are clear, just see my website (free plug!). But it is frightful to think that elections in the future will not end when the balloting is completed and counted due to spurious and UNsupported claims (as distinct from rampant fraud in the Ukraine) of voting problems by the losing candidate’s supporters.

The plaintiffs can refile their lawsuit, but by the time that happens, the Ohio vote will be certified and the electoral college results will be final.

Democracy by litigation is not democracy at all.

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Storey’s claimed national origin: Confederate Southern-American. His religion? The same. His lawyer’s rather inapt comparison, according to this article in the Legal Intelligencer, is that

Confederate Southern-Americans “endured a persecution similar to that suffered by the Highland Scots under English rule after the Jacobite uprising of 1745, or the Acadians of Canada.”

The district judge who heard this claim tossed it out. The Third Circuit agreed, upheld the dismissal but had a split vote.

The majority ruled that because Storey could have removed his Confederate symbols and kept his job, he didn’t suffer an adverse employment action because of his Southern-American “origin.”

Concurring judge John Scirica would have put the whole “national origin” issue to rest. In his concurring opinion, he said “[w]here one cannot trace ancestry to a nation outside of the United States, a former regional or political group within the United States, such as the Confederacy, does not constitute a basis for a valid national origin classification.”

Sounds logical.

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Here is an excerpt from the judge’s ruling against pastors Daniel Nalliah and Daniel Scot:

[The sermon in question] was presented in a way which is essentially hostile, demeaning and derogatory of all Muslim people, their god, Allah, the prophet Mohammed and in general Muslim religious beliefs and practices.

Australia has no equivalent to the First Amendment, just the UK common law tradition of freedom of speech. Now Victoria has taken, and a judge upheld, a law defining the boundaries of political or religious speech. Not a good day for free speech advocates down under.

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