“The Indianapolis Star reports that the Indiana Department of Natural Resources wants to prosecute Jeff and Jennifer Counceller for taking care of an injured deer that showed up on their doorstep.” [CBS Cleveland via Amy Alkon, Dan Mitchell] A while back I wrote about the case in which a Virginia family got in trouble with the feds after their 11-year-old rescued a baby woodpecker in their back yard and cared for it for a day or two before releasing it.
Archive for 2013
Medical roundup
- “On Average, Physicians Spend Nearly 11 Percent Of Their 40-Year Careers With An Open, Unresolved Malpractice Claim” [Health Affairs via Pauline Chen, NY Times]
- SCOTUS lets stand Feds’ “accept Medicare or lose your Social Security” edict [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
- Robot surgery: from the Google ads, you might think lawyers are circling [Climateer via Tyler Cowen]
- New York mandates more aggressive anti-sepsis measures in hospitals, and White Coat thinks it won’t end well [EP Monthly]
- Shortages of generic FDA-regulated sterile injectables begin to take deadly toll [AP/Worcester Telegram, earlier]
- Continuing the discussion of electronic medical records from a few days back: as medico-legal documents, EMRs are under pressure to be something other than candid and spontaneous [Kaus] While other patients wait for critical care, ER docs and nurses enter mandatory data fields for whether the infant is a smoker or the flu victim is a fall risk [White Coat]
- Obamacare part-time-work fiasco “only starting to become news when it hits university professors” [Coyote, David Henderson, earlier]
AP/WaPo on Chevron maneuvering
Via an AP dispatch, the Washington Post covers another round, from Argentina, in the long squabbling over whether American-led lawyers can get foreign courts to enforce a $19 billion environmental judgment from the Ecuadorian courts. You’d think this would have made a good occasion for AP or the Post to mention, at least, the sensational developments of three days ago, in which Chevron filed with a court a sworn affidavit in which a former Ecuadorian judge said that he and a second judge had allowed plaintiff’s lawyers to ghostwrite their judgment in exchange for a promised bribe of $500,000. Those allegations were dramatic enough to generate prompt, substantial coverage in places like Fortune, Reuters, Bloomberg, and Forbes, yet the Post still hasn’t mentioned them, unless you count a vague reference in the AP item to longstanding charges of fraud on both sides.
Paul Krugman on expanding disability rolls
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman believes you’re living in a right-wing “intellectual bubble” if you think rising disability claims in the Social Security program reflect anything other than “the real health problems of an aging work force.” Thing is, no less a personage than former Obama budget director Peter Orszag wrote in the New York Times that the “spike in disability insurance applications (and awards) does not reflect a less healthy population,” and Orszag’s view on this matter is commonplace among many other analysts whose views are hardly conservative. [Ira Stoll, who has just relaunched his wonderful SmarterTimes.com, one of the best media-criticism sites since they invented the Internet; everyone should start reading it]
Jeffrey Toobin on recess appointments
Don’t the New Yorker’s readers deserve a better law analyst than Jeffrey Toobin? In his rant against the Canning decision, notes Ed Whelan, “Toobin asserts that there has never before been a ‘legal challenge’ to the scope of a president’s authority to make recess appointments. Somehow he missed the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling in 2004 — highlighted prominently in the D.C. Circuit opinion — in which liberal law professor Laurence Tribe and others challenged one of President Bush’s recess appointments.” [“Bench Memos“]
P.S. Mike Rappaport on another datum omitted by Toobin amid his fevered charges of judicial partisanship: “Prior to Judge Sentelle’s decision, the only judicial opinion to adopt the same position was written by liberal 11th Circuit Judge Rosemary Barkett, following a brief filed for Ted Kennedy by liberal Marty Lederman.”
Banking and finance roundup
- David Henderson reviews Roger Donway book on Greg Reyes backdated-options prosecution [Econlog]
- Francis Menton on Argentina vs. creditors [Manhattan Contrarian via FedSoc Blog]
- New book, with co-author Lawrence Cunningham, gives Hank Greenberg’s side of the story on AIG [Concur Op, NY Post]
- Are Wall Street’s expert networks a violation of insider trading laws? [David Zaring, Conglomerate via Bainbridge]
- “A Brief Explanation Of The Economics Of Securities Lawsuits” [Daniel Fisher, Forbes] Related: Alison Frankel, Reuters [history of attempts at reform]
- What, a new bank? Yes, the proposed Bank of Bird-in-Hand [Kevin Funnell]
- Rules-based, low-discretion enforcement of Dodd-Frank? If only [Louise Bennetts (Cato), Jurist]
“Canada tried registering long guns — and gave up”
Maybe it’s not just as simple as passing a new law. [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
Someone hitchhikes on grandma’s unencrypted wi-fi…
…and the next thing you know the SWAT team has shown up with their flash grenades [Evansville, Ind. Courier and Press]
Plastic bag bans: $87,000 per seagull saved?
Media coverage of a new Jonathan Klick-Joshua Wright study has focused mostly on the evidence that reusable grocery bags are high-bacteria environments and likely vectors for foodborne illness, but Robert Anderson notices another striking conclusion: “The authors estimate that the additional deaths from the plastic bag ban value each saved animal at $87,500.” That estimate includes only actual deaths from foodborne illness, and not the cost of nonfatal illnesses. [Witnesseth]
Schools roundup
- Disabled kids and their parents among chief losers in NYC school bus strike [Richard Epstein]
- “School District to Spend $2.4 MILLION on Guards? A Mom Protests” [Free-Range Kids, N.C.] “Our Schools Are Safe Enough: A Movement to Stop Overreacting to Sandy Hook” [same] Shame that NRA would decide to push big government mandate at taxpayer expense [Brian Doherty]
- LSAC challenges new California law banning flagging applicants’ extra time on LSAT [Karen Sloan, NLJ]
- One year on job, 13 years in rubber room for NYC teacher accused of sexually harassing students [NY Post]
- Missouri lawmaker introduces bill criminalizing failure to report gun ownership to child’s school [Caroline May, Daily Caller]
- Suing for edu-bucks: “Court says Kansas must increase school funding, slams tax cuts” [Reuters, Severino/NRO]
- “Yay for Recess: Pediatricians Say It’s as Important as Math or Reading” [Bonnie Rochman, Time]