A. G. Sulzberger quotes me in yesterday’s New York Times on the wave of court challenges that has met legislation in state capitals on immigration, abortion, financing for Planned Parenthood, and other hot topics. Federal judges have recently issued injunctions blocking part or all of controversial state enactments on all these topics.
Tagged as:
immigration law,
New York Times
- Texas legalizes sale of home-baked goods; “Mom can come out of hiding” [KLTV; @JohnWaggoner] New York regulators order Greenmarket cheese vendors to stop custom-slicing wedges for customers [Baylen Linnekin]
- Children who take school lunch more likely to be obese than those who brown bag it [Freddoso] And is there still time to save chocolate milk? [Boston Herald on proposed Massachusetts school ban]
- “Obesity policy” in theory: “High-calorie food is too cheap” argument of NYT’s Leonhardt is open to doubt [Josh Wright] “Is obesity really contagious?” [Zoë Pollock, The Dish] Knives out among scientists debating food causes of obesity [Trevor Butterworth, Forbes] Feds look to regulate food similarly to tobacco in hope of saving money on health care [Munro, Daily Caller]
- …and practice: “Calorie counts don’t change most people’s dining-out habits, experts say” [WaPo, Richer/WLF] Obama nutrition campaign: eat as we say, not as we do [The Hill] Of recent USDA “recipes for healthy kids,” 12 of 15 would not have met proposed FTC ad standards [WSJ] Nanny’s comeuppance? “States rein in anti-obesity laws” [WSJ Law Blog]
- “Food safety chief defends raw milk raids” [Carolyn Lochhead, SF Chronicle, earlier]
- “It’s Time to End the War on Salt: The zealous drive by politicians to limit our salt intake has little basis in science” [Melinda Wenner Moyer, Scientific American]
- After talking with experts, NYT’s Mark Bittman walks back some assertions about the European e. coli outbreak, now blamed on Egyptian fenugreek seeds [Science Mag; related, Kolata/NYT]
- “If anything, China’s food scandals are becoming increasingly frequent and bizarre.” [LATimes]
- Public criticism of activist food policy often calls forth a barrage of letters defending government role in diet. Ever wonder why? [Prevention Institute "rapid response" talking point campaign; how taxpayers help]
Tagged as:
agriculture and farming,
China,
eat drink and be merry,
FDA,
food safety,
New York Times,
obesity,
salt
Campbell Robertson and John Schwartz of the New York Times find that many Vietnamese-Americans who are listed as law firm clients in the BP Transocean spill proceedings would rather not be law firm clients. “Like [Tim] Nguyen, some maintain that they never signed up with lawyers, but found that claims had been filed on their behalf (about 50 people have made formal complaints to the claims facility along these lines).” Nguyen found himself a client of lawyer Mikal Watts, “and to his further surprise, as a Louisiana shrimper rather than a Mississippi shipyard worker.” Watts, a big-league Texas tort lawyer, has reported having 43,000 spill clients, many mass-recruited from minority and poorer communities; he says he has a “signed contingency-fee contract with every client,” and that he has released clients who changed their mind about representation. “People familiar with the claims process [of one 26,000-claimant subgroup] said nearly every submission was listed as a deckhand with identical earnings.” Watts says the claims fund, administered by Kenneth Feinberg, has kept changing the documentation it asks for.
Tagged as:
BP Transocean oil spill,
Mikal Watts,
New York Times
- “Cleveland Browns lawyer letter is apparently real” [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
- “Headlines of the Apocalypse: ‘Lady Gaga eyes legal action over breast milk ice cream.’” [@vsalus re: Breitbart via @EdDriscoll]
- Chesley discipline prospects in Kentucky fen-phen scandal: “King of Torts Dethroned” [Laura Simons, Abnormal Use]
- Busy construction-defect lawyers vex Fresno builders [Bee, Business Journal]
- “NHTSA Postpones Back-Up Camera Requirement Rule” [The Truth About Cars, earlier]
- Lawyers in Italy call strike to protest law requiring mediation of commercial disputes [WSJ Law Blog]
- NYT’s Mark Bittman has a magical touch with food (alas) [Patrick at Popehat]
- Beasley Allen lawyers sluiced $850K to Alabama GOP judicial contender [Birmingham News via PoL]
Tagged as:
Alabama,
construction defect,
Italy,
New York Times,
NHTSA,
Stan Chesley,
wayward Republicans
A novel lawsuit theory that obtained more-than-respectful coverage in the New York Times did not succeed in convincing the Oklahoma courts, notes Russell Jackson. “The Court of Civil Appeals’ decision in Doyle is a strong demonstration that trying to use civil legal duties to make the US a Nanny State is simply wrongheaded.”
Tagged as:
cellphones,
New York Times,
Oklahoma
The New York Times editorial page continues to dismiss criticism of the testing burdens of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 on small manufacturers and retailers as “part of a standard antiregulation litany.” But on October 30, 2009 the paper itself ran a sadly belated but otherwise decently executed article 
by reporter Leslie Wayne from which a fair-minded reader would conclude that the small makers’ complaints about the law are only too well-grounded (”Burden of Safety Law Imperils Small Toymakers.”)
If one were to take a charitable view, one might commend the Times editorialists for at last deigning to concede that the law might usefully be “tweaked,” at least within a very narrow latitude. They finally acknowledge that there “might be a way to exempt products from testing if they very clearly do not pose a lead-related hazard,” without acknowledging that the great majority of products swept under the law’s coverage fall into exactly such a category. But they continue to insist that even older kids be denied access to products that could not pass 
CPSIA’s lead testing, including whole categories of products like kids’ bicycles and ballpoint pens whose designs still cannot dispense with the (entirely harmless) use of brass and suchlike alloys. Only the repeated staying or postponed enforcement of many of the law’s requirements has spared the country a long list of similar absurdities — while the legal absurdities that the CPSC has not stayed or postponed have already wiped out makers and vendors of harmless products from coast to coast.
Even under the best of circumstances, the Times’s editorialists would find it hard to live down their cruel, ideologically blinkered track record on the CPSIA issue. But couldn’t they at least pretend to be following the coverage in their own paper? More: Handmade Toy Alliance. And Rick Woldenberg offers a critique of the the Times’s new, and anything but improved, news-side reporting.
Tagged as:
CPSIA,
New York Times
I’ve got a food policy roundup at Cato that tries to answer such questions as:
* Has FDA’s regulatory zeal finally met its match in the foodie zeal of cheese-makers and -fanciers who are beginning to insist on their right to make and enjoy cheeses similar to those in France, even if they pose a nonzero though tiny bacterial risk?
* How annoying is it that Mark Bittman would stop writing a great food column in the NYT in order to start writing an inevitably wrongheaded politics-of-food column?
* Is Wal-Mart secretly smiling after First Lady Michelle Obama publicly twisted its arm to do various things it was probably considering anyway, along with some things it definitely wanted to do, such as opening more stores in poor urban neighborhoods?
Related: Led by past Overlawyered guest-blogger Baylen Linnekin, Keep Food Legal bills itself as “The first and only nationwide membership organization devoted to culinary freedom.” 11 Points has compiled a list of “11 Foods and Drinks Banned in the United States.” And GetReligion.org has more on the “shadowy community of outlaw Amish and Mennonite dairy farmers” portrayed in several recent press reports.
Tagged as:
FDA,
food safety,
France,
New York Times,
obesity,
small business,
Wal-Mart
Through its uncritical coverage of the purported radiation hazards of cellphones — taken up by noted toxics alarmist Devra Lee Davis as her latest crusade — the New York Times is taking chances with its credibility. Author Randall Stross seems unfamiliar with the tendency of companies to warn (on lawyers’ advice) against supposed risks they have good reason to consider non-existent, as in pharmaceutical package inserts and many other contexts [David Oliver, earlier, more]
Tagged as:
cellphones,
New York Times
The paper’s pretty good, really, when it comes to arguing for First Amendment protection of violent videogames and depictions of animal cruelty. So let’s be thankful for that. Now if we could only get it to take political speech seriously! [Stoll]
Tagged as:
free speech,
New York Times
