No, it does not and never did authorize limitless federal power to engage in activities imagined to advance the general welfare [Roger Pilon, Cato at Liberty]
Archive for May, 2011
Official nutritional guidance: the track record
Modern American government has been dispensing nutritional advice for quite a while, and enough of it has been misguided, erroneous or even harmful that you’d think there’d be a lesson of humility to be learned. Instead, we get a bossier-than-ever crop of new regulators like Thomas Frieden et al [Steven Malanga, City Journal]
“Wacky warnings” finalists: don’t swallow your ballpoint pen cap
“‘Social justice’ in contracts costs S.F. millions”
San Francisco’s public contracting requirements could drive both taxpayers and vendors batty: “[C]ity purchasing policies, if followed, would mean paying about $240 for getting a copy of a key that actually cost a worker $1.35 to get done at a hardware store on his break,” according to one whistleblowing employee. [SF Chronicle via Matt Welch]
Canada: Drunkenness as defense in sex assault?
Ontario: “A judge has reopened a major legal controversy by ruling that accused people can claim they were too drunk to be found culpable of committing crimes.” [Globe & Mail]
“NLRB’s Boeing attack is a strike against economic reality”
“If the NLRB succeeds, a federal official will command a private corporation it may not produce in one place and must produce in another. Never mind what makes business sense. … And you wonder why Ayn Rand’s novel ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is selling briskly?” [Steve Chapman, D.C. Examiner] A contrasting view: Jeff Hirsch, Workplace Law Prof.
More: George Will, Hans von Spakovsky and James Sherk, related, ShopFloor.
Perennial litigant cuts wide swath among Newark landlords
Well-written article about the lengthy career of one pro se litigant in Newark who has been tying up landlords and others in court for years; it took a fair bit of gumption to publish, given the tendency of many litigious persons to sue those who would expose their litigiousness to public notice. Worth careful study for the light it sheds on the difficulty our legal system so often has in bringing down the curtain on determined perennial litigants [Barry Carter, Newark Star-Ledger]
Sues school over wife’s affair with counselor
The spurned husband is demanding $10 million on behalf of his daughter; the case is attracting some media attention because its target is the Sidwell Friends School, known for educating many in Washington, D.C.’s elite. [ABC News]
Maybe those clunkers were worth keeping around
Soaring prices have lately rocked the used-car market, which — I argue in a new post at Cato at Liberty — should cast even more doubt on the wisdom of some of the federal government’s recent interventions in the auto business.
“Why The Times Is Wrong About the AT&T Class Action Case”
Contractually stipulated arbitration works less poorly than the NYT editorialists seem to think — and lawyer-driven class action litigation not nearly as well [Daniel Fisher, Forbes, more]