June 18 roundup

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  • Boston: “Mumbles” Menino strikes again.

    Sometimes I think the Mass. government suffers from “the secret fear that someone, somewhere may be enjoying themselves.”

  • $90K fine for rabbit breeding?

    Do you know you can be arrested for pimping and only face a $500 fine?

    That’s then entire penalty for a TSA AGENT (!) who was caught running a prostitution ring!

    Amazing that a family breeding rabbits illegally isn’t just told to “knock it off”, but a sworn federal agent who runs a prostitution ring does.

    http://www.gazette.net/article/20120611/NEWS/706119952/1007/former-tsa-employee-fined-500-for-running-prostitution-ring&template=gazette

  • Let’s give credit where credit is due: the Ohio woman suing for $500 billion for her vehicle being towed is at least not asking for disproportionate punitive damages.

  • I’m trying to find the basis for federal authority over the sale of rabbits by a Missouri farm to a local Missouri pet shop. Another instance of the butterflies-in-Brazil interpretation of the Commerce Clause?

  • The idea that Bush v Gore may not be a precedent that can be cited is discussed at length in this 35 page student note from Yale Law School:
    http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=student_papers

  • A P Herbert wrote humorous fictional law cases for Punch Magazine in the 1920s. He wrote about the jaywalking vs. motor car conflict in the case Haddock v Thwaile, where a pedestrian sues a motorist. If someone brings on to a public road a wild beast that escapes, Haddock contends, they must answer for all the damage “which is the natural consequence of its escape”.

    The judge takes Haddock’s side. A motor car should in law, he pronounces, be regarded as a wild beast – a comparison made all the more apt by the size of the offending engine (45 horsepower).

    What pedestrian could cope with 45 horses tethered together, galloping at full speed past a frequented crossroads? “The ordinary walking citizen cannot be expected to calculate to a nicety the speed, direction and future conduct of such monsters, for not even their own drivers can do that.”