“Calais, France to sue Britain for being a magnet for migrants that are destroying Calais before they cross channel.” [Associated Press]
Archive for August, 2015
Free speech roundup
- “Denver DA charges man with tampering for handing out jury nullification flyers” [Denver Post, earlier New York case covered here, here, here, etc.] More: Tim Lynch, Cato.
- Occupational licensure vs. the First Amendment: Texas regulators seek to shutter doc’s veterinary advice website [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
- Fired for waving rebel flag? Unlikely to raise a First Amendment issue unless you work for the government, or it twisted your employer’s arm [Huntsville (Ala.) Times, Daniel Schwartz]
- “Twitter joke thieves are getting DMCA takedowns” [BoingBoing]
- A reminder of Gawker’s jaw-droppingly bad stuff on freedom of speech (“Arrest Climate Change Deniers”) [Coyote, related]
- Canadian lawyer/journalist Ezra Levant facing discipline proceeding “for being disrespectful towards a government agency” [Financial Post, earlier]
- “‘Shouting fire in a theater’: The life and times of constitutional law’s most enduring analogy” [Carlton Larson via Eugene Volokh, also Christopher Hitchens on the analogy]
“Fox Sports trample[d] my religious liberty” by withholding TV gig
Football analyst Craig James, who is filing a federal lawsuit in Dallas, claims that “Fox Sports trample[d] my religious liberty” by not giving him further work as a TV commentator after a single appearance — he “had yet to sign a contract” — after it became aware that he had said controversial things while running for the U.S. Senate seat from Texas ultimately won by Ted Cruz. [Washington Post, Feb. 2014 Dallas News] James is now affiliated with the Family Research Council, where his biography notes: “Craig is known for his ability to see an opportunity and for his relentless pursuit of uncovering every rock to make sure he knows the deal before he buys it.”
“The Lion Sleeps Tonight” as intellectual property study
“In the courtroom, the quiet courtroom, the lawsuit slept for decades.” Mark Steyn on “the biggest hit ever to come out of Africa – and why its author never reaped the benefits,” with attention to the cultural appropriations of Pete Seeger et al. Earlier on unrelated litigation over one American cover of “Lion,” which figured in Ted Frank’s popular post, “The Overlawyered IMix.”
August 5 roundup
- Makes perfect sense: to make transportation more accessible to its residents, Montgomery County, Maryland orders 20 taxi companies to close down [Washington Post]
- “New ‘Gainful Employment’ Rule Spells Trouble For For-Profit Law Schools (And Would For 50 Non-Profit Law Schools)” [Caron, TaxProf]
- “To comply with a twisted interpretation of TCPA, Twitter would have to stop providing certain services altogether.” [Harold Furchtgott-Roth] “New FCC Rules Could Make Polling More Expensive, Less Accurate” [HuffPost Pollster]
- To draft the unpassable bill: Scott Shackford on the politics and bad policy behind the omnibus LGBT Equality Act [Reason] “So How Can Anyone Be Opposed to Non-Discrimination Laws?” [Coyote] More: Establishment liberalism reluctant to admit it’s changed its thinking on religious accommodation, but that’s what’s happened [Ramesh Ponnuru/Bloomberg View]
- Update: “Court rejects claim over goat goring in Olympic National Park” [AP, earlier here and here]
- “I would receive 100 other identical stories [from asylum seekers] with only the names changed.” [The Australian, 2013]
- “Some protested that DNA testing amounted to a violation of canine privacy because dogs were not capable of consent.” [New York Times on Brooklyn condo dispute via @orinkerr]
Thousands fewer community banks under Dodd-Frank
At last night’s Republican debate in New Hampshire, Carly Fiorina criticized how the Dodd-Frank law is strangling community banks, as well as its encouragement of yet bigger Wall Street firms and Congress’s failure to reform mortgage entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. More on community banks here, from Scott Beyer, and in several past posts. [And: Hans Bader, CEI.]
P.S. We’ve previously noted this WSJ account from March on one of the most dramatic aspects of the trend, the throttling of de novo bank formation:
Based in a rural village in the heart of Amish country, Bank of Bird-in-Hand is the only new bank to open in the U.S. since 2010, when the Dodd-Frank law was passed and enacted. An average of more than 100 new banks a year opened in the three decades before Dodd-Frank.
“The chickens have taught our kids a lot of life lessons”
Don’t talk to us of permits, those are our therapy chickens [Maplewood, Minn.; KMSP]
Medical roundup
- Scorecards on complication rates and outcomes may reveal little about who’s a bad doctor since best docs sometimes take hardest cases [Saurabh Jha, KevinMD] “Anatomy of error: a surgeon remembers his mistakes” [The New Yorker]
- When parents and doctors don’t agree, are allegations of “medical child abuse” levied too liberally? [Maxine Eichner, New York Times; Lenore Skenazy, see also “medical kidnapping” links]
- ABA’s Standing Committee on Medical Professional Liability derailed in bid for House of Delegates resolution endorsing unlimited punitive damages in product liability [Drug & Device Law first, second, third posts]
- Wisconsin repeals medical whistleblower law [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]
- “Politically Driven Unionization Threatens In-Home Care” [David Osborne, IBD]
- Ninth Circuit upholds Washington state regulations forcing family pharmacy to dispense morning-after pills [The Becket Fund]
- Pathologist who frequently diagnosed shaken baby syndrome loses Montana role [Missoulian]
Live-tweeting debate tonight, #Cato2016
I’ll be joining Cato Institute colleagues tonight (Monday) from 7 p.m. Eastern live-tweeting the first Republican presidential candidate debate of the election cycle at hashtag #Cato2016. Details here. Follow along! And please follow my own account on Twitter as well as Overlawyered’s.
Update: You can read the results here, including favorable mentions of Rick Perry’s legal reform and Carly Fiorina’s critique of Dodd-Frank, as well as a question I wish they’d asked Lindsey Graham and some cruel nicknames coined by P.J. O’Rourke.
“Mom Throws Dream Party for Personal Injury Lawyer-Obsessed Toddler”
Too much time listening to jingles: a Louisiana toddler so idolized the New Orleans personal injury attorney he saw regularly in TV commercials that his mom agreed to throw him a Morris-Bart-themed second birthday party. [Jacob Gershman/WSJ, The Advocate (Baton Rouge, La.), Ryan Broderick/BuzzFeed]