Posts Tagged ‘Baltimore’

Police misconduct roundup

December 18 roundup

  • Examples ranging from eminent domain and free speech to racial and religious discrimination contradict Attorney General’s suggestion that it’s unusual for modern courts to scrutinize motives behind government action [Milad Emam, Institute for Justice; Ilya Somin]
  • Article deems it “unusual” that lawyer trying to get money out of Facebook on lurid sex-trafficking theories is a personal-injury specialist who’s pursued car-crash and insurance claims. Doesn’t take much to surprise the New York Times, does it? [Jack Nicas, New York Times]
  • “We learned very quickly that it was a numbers game — the more people you come in contact with, the greater your chances of getting a gun.” How Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force went “hunting” among city residents [Justin Fenton, Baltimore Sun this summer, earlier]
  • “Politically Incorrect Paper of the Day: The United Fruit Company was Good!” [Alex Tabarrok on Esteban Mendez-Chacon and Diana Van Patten paper]
  • “I’ve often noted to people that [lawyers who] are unethical at the start of representation are not likely to be ethical later as their interests are directed to the self and not the client” [Eric Turkewitz on NYPD 911-call-injury-referral scandal, earlier]
  • “The Color Magenta, Or How T-Mobile Thinks It Owns A General Color” [Timothy Geigner, TechDirt]

Section 8 Landlording Should Be Voluntary

It’s the strings: landlords should have a right to decide for themselves whether to shoulder the Section 8 program’s only-too-real regulatory burdens, I argue in my new Cato piece, reacting to a Baltimore Sun opinion piece. Baltimore County is the scene of a long-running controversy over whether to force landlords to participate in the federal housing voucher program. Earlier here.

Sidelight: A new San Diego ordinance that took effect August 1 “orders violators to pay three times the advertised monthly rent to eligible plaintiffs who saw the ad, plus punitive damages, as well as a plaintiff’s attorney fees and costs if a judge so orders. Even after the offending ad is taken down or changed, exposure to liability from anyone who saw the illegal ad lasts for a year.” Soon thereafter enterprising attorney Christian Curry filed more than 50 lawsuits under the ordinance and has obtained many settlements, although critics suspect his clients weren’t always intent on living in properties with challenged ads; they also say some ads were targeted that were written before the law changed and not intentionally left online afterward. A spokeswoman for a property group “likened the new Section 8 cases to ‘drive-by’ lawsuits over violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.” [Ashly McGlone and Jack Molmud, Voice of San Diego]

September 25 roundup

  • “Small claims court for copyright” idea, now moving rapidly through Congress, could create a new business model for troll claimants [Mike Masnick, TechDirt; EFF on CASE Act] A contrasting view: Robert VerBruggen, NR;
  • “If Boston is weirdly NOT full of good restaurant/bar/cafes for its size, and if people don’t want to stay after they hit 26 or so, these throttled [liquor] licenses are one of the real structural reasons why.” [Amanda Katz Twitter thread]
  • Push in California underway to join a trend I warned of five years ago, namely states’ enacting laws to encourage tax informants with a share of the loot [McDermott Will and Emery, National Law Review]
  • Baltimore food truck rule challenge, single-member districts, sexting prosecution, and more in my new Free State Notes roundup;
  • “For years the Westchester County DA, Jeanine Pirro, now a Fox News host who opines on justice, rejected Deskovic’s requests to compare the DNA evidence against a criminal database. Deskovic was not exonerated until 2006, after he had served 16 years” [Jacob Sullum, Reason]
  • Come again? “Louisville judge rules Kentucky speed limit laws unconstitutional” [Marcus Green, WDRB]

Feds: Maryland county improperly screened cops for logic, reading ability

Sentences worth pondering, from coverage of the U.S. Department of Justice’s employment-practices suit against Baltimore County: “The exams tested reading, grammar, logic and other skills that the suit alleges are not related to the job of being a police officer or police cadet.” Critics take heart, however: “County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. issued a statement saying the police department has discontinued the test.” [Pamela Wood and Wilborn P. Nobles III, Baltimore Sun]

August 29 roundup

Medical roundup

Land use and property roundup

  • When does a taking of land occur? The wrong answer would let the government push around owners in disputes over rails-to-trails projects [Trevor Burrus on Cato Institute amicus brief on Federal Circuit case of Caquelin v. U.S.]
  • Though the federal government can’t successfully manage the Western lands it already has, it will soon extend its grip over more. This time Republicans are responsible [Chris Edwards, Cato]
  • “Sydney’s rental prices are declining because it’s seeing a building boom. The size of Sydney’s apartment market has doubled in two years, and landlords have had to drop rents in order to get tenants.” [Scott Shackford, Reason]
  • To make NYC’s public housing towers a better place to live, throw Le Corbusier off the balcony [Howard Husock, New York Post]
  • Economist Robert H. Nelson, R.I.P. [Jane Shaw, Cato Regulation Magazine]
  • Update: Baltimore eminent domain case against owner of Preakness Stakes race and Pimlico track dropped for now, but remains as bludgeon in closet [Ilya Somin, earlier here, etc.]

May 29 roundup

  • Lawyer don’ts: Don’t steal your client’s book advance [Rebecca R. Ruiz, New York Times on Michael Avenatti indictment]
  • “This isn’t science, it’s witchcraft”: latest verdict against Bayer/Monsanto in Roundup weedkiller/non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma case rests on ultra-loose standards of causation [David Bernstein, related video, earlier]
  • Blazing sunset: Idaho legislature fails to reauthorize state’s code of more than 8,000 regulations, which expire. Between now and July 1, Gov. Brad Little “gets to pick and choose which ones to reinstate as emergency regs until legislature meets again.” [James Broughel, Mercatus]
  • News blackout on STEM Charter School shooting (Highlands Ranch, Colorado) has judicial origins: entire court file in murder case against older of the two shooters “is ‘suppressed’ from public inspection. This even over the express request of the prosecutor” to have the judge unseal most records [Eugene Volokh]
  • Baltimore corruption and development, red flag law, Montgomery Countyites for private toll lanes, Yuripzy Morgan show and more in my latest Maryland policy roundup;
  • A point I’ve been making for years about the Electoral College: one of its underrated benefits is in bolstering election integrity by much shortening the list of jurisdictions in which a material chance of fraud might throw overall result into doubt with consequences for legitimacy [Stephen Sachs and followup]