July 5 roundup

  • Court order (arising from federal demand for information on three accounts) forbids Facebook “from communicating the existence of the warrants to its users” [Paul Alan Levy]
  • “The great intellectual property trade-off”: brief guide to IP by economist Tim Harford [BBC]
  • Eye-opening if dogmatic history of how federal government and other institutions connived at residential segregation [David Oshinsky in N.Y. Times reviewing Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law]
  • About those “do not remove under penalty of law” mattress tags [Now I Know]
  • What comes after a Congressional Review Act (CRA) repeal of a regulation? [Sam Batkins and Adam White, Cato Regulation magazine]
  • Estate tax, DC Metro, bogus search-engine takedown suits, and kudos for a Democrat in my latest Maryland policy roundup [Free State Notes]

One Comment

  • Re: Facebook–I don’t see why an entity that has not agreed to keep things quiet has any obligation, in a free society, not to disclose truthful information about the workings of government. I understand that there is a law enforcement motive, but I don’t see how that passes the “so what?” test.