The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is chipping away at one of universities’ few defenses by limiting the use of student surveys intended to measure interest in athletic offerings. “This reform rollback by the Obama Administration is a gift to the trial lawyers’ lobby and will mean that more sports teams will be eliminated [as] at Duquesne University where 4 men’s teams were recently terminated, said CSC President, Leo Kocher. ” [College Sports Council; Neal McCluskey, Cato at Liberty; earlier; background; more at CSC’s Saving Sports]
Archive for April, 2010
“Study: Malpractice worries help drive health costs”
“A substantial number of heart doctors — about one in four — say they order medical tests that might not be needed out of fear of getting sued, according to a new study,” reports the Associated Press. The study appeared in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. More: WSJ Health Blog.
High court strikes animal cruelty video ban as overbroad
Discussion: 
Ken at Popehat, Ilya Shapiro at Cato at Liberty, and Eugene Volokh in several posts. Our earlier coverage is here. More: Writing for the Capital Research Center, Neil Maghami finds the Humane Society of the U.S. not so warm and fuzzy, policy-wise.
(For the Gadsden flag as illustration idea, h/t Above the Law.)
On foreign bribery, two-tiered justice?
Several recent investigations of large companies under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) have resulted in large fines as punishment for bribery payouts totaling hundreds of millions. Now a FCPA prosecution of an individual, Charles Paul Edward Jumet, for improperly paying $200,000 to obtain lighthouse and buoy contracts in Panama, has resulted in a 7.25 year prison sentence. While Jumet’s conviction is based on other charges as well (making false statements to federal agents), Mike Koehler at FCPA Professor wonders whether justice is being served equally.
RIAA/MPAA’s wish list for stopping piracy
It’s rather…ambitious. [Esguerra/EFF, BoingBoing, h/t reader Keith D.]
Shaker abstinence: FDA to regulate salt in food
The Food and Drug Administration is planning a crackdown meant to lead to “the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products,” reports the Washington Post. We’ve been warning of such developments for a while, and they come as little surprise given President Obama’s pick of hyper-regulator Margaret Hamburg as FDA commissioner.
P.S. Perhaps we should invite comment from the New York Times journalist who sternly admonished an interview subject recently: “You shouldn’t trivialize issues of health and safety by calling them nanny issues.”
Our socially concerned business leaders
Amid wall-to-wall reporting on the SEC’s action against Goldman Sachs over an aromatic mortgage-securities deal, this bit of NYT coverage of one of the central figures in the investigation, hedge funder John Paulson, should not pass without notice:
Amid criticism of investment strategies that profited from mortgage defaults, home foreclosures and other miseries, Mr. Paulson has also given $15 million to the Center for Responsible Lending for a center devoted to providing foreclosure assistance to troubled borrowers.
At the time of the donation, Mr. Paulson said of the center and its work, “We are pleased to help them provide legal services to distressed homeowners, many of whom have been victimized by predatory lenders.”
More on Paulson and the CRL in a March paper by Sean Higgins for the Capital Research Center. Background: Eric Gerding, The Conglomerate.
P.S. Pattern here? Ira Stoll at Future of Capitalism notes later news developments involving the contributor of a Financial Times op-ed piece that ran under the headline, “Obama Must Act to Curb Executive Greed.”
P.P.S.: And more: At Pajamas Media, Stoll takes a closer look at Paulson’s public policy involvements. And yet more. To summarize the modus operandi: Place huge bets that mortgage portfolios will suffer losses in value. Then plow millions into advocacy efforts whose effect is to worsen those losses. Maybe this is business as usual in some sense, but it’s curious to imagine lauding Paulson for his public-spiritedness.
April 20 roundup
- Tossed: “Zulu coconut lawsuit thrown out on appeal” [NOLA.com; earlier on this Mardi Gras tradition and the law Louisiana passed to protect it]
- Maryland: “Felony Charges for Recording a Plainclothes Officer” [Rittgers, Cato at Liberty]
- More on decline of local slaughterhouses under federal regulation [Zachary Adam Cohen, NYT “Room for Debate”; earlier]
- “Now Brussels has declared that tourism is a human right” [Times Online via Coyote]
- Three taxes that are a more immediate danger than a VAT [David Frum; my take, at National Journal blogger poll]
- “WorldNetDaily Sues White House Correspondents Association Over Dinner Tables” [MediaBistro, more]
- Department of Labor vs. internship programs: one target’s view [Terry Michael, Reason; earlier]
- Allegedly easy way bloggers can comply with FTC endorsement regs [Chris Pirillo]
Update: British chiropractors drop lawsuit against Simon Singh
They’re dropping the case rather than pursuing an appeal, so aside from having dragged him through a miserable and expensive process, it’s a happy ending. [Respectful Insolence, Popehat; earlier here, etc.]
“New York’s most obnoxious lawyer” charged with tax rap
AmLaw Daily has the story. Although we’ve covered Heller before, it’s never been entirely clear why the coveted title should have been conferred on this one guy against so many rivals, at least absent some American Idol-like competition of obnoxious NYC lawyers.