Blasphemy laws vs. free speech: The courageous Italian journalist has been ordered by a judge in Bergamo, Italy, to stand trial on charges of defaming Islam in her book “The Strength of Reason”. (Marta Falconi, “Judge Orders Italian Author to Stand Trial”, AP/San Francisco Chronicle, May 25; Stefan Beck, New Criterion “Armavirumque”, May 25; Jun. 11-12, 2002). For more on European blasphemy and “hate speech” laws, see Aug. 23-25, 2002 (prominent French author tried and acquitted on charges of “insulting Islam”); Mar. 17, 2005. For similar proposals in Great Britain, see “Rushdie fears govt bill will undermine freedom of speech”, ABC (Australian), Jun. 10; Jul. 16, 2004.
Feds’ supposed tobacco turnaround
Jacob Sullum has some comments (see May 22, Feb. 5 and links from there).
Banks and reparations, cont’d
Reader John Steele Gordon writes, concerning the Wachovia announcement: “The WSJ had a story on May 10th about the same thing, only then it was J.P. Morgan Chase’s turn to grovel and donate. I wrote the following, which they had the bad sense not to publish:
Regarding the article about J.P. Morgan Chase spending heaven knows how much money to uncover the fact that some remote corporate ancestor had held a mortgage on slaves:
Laws requiring corporations to do this are a historians’ relief act and, naturally, I’m all in favor of employing historians. But far more perniciously, these laws in effect work “corruption of the blood.” This medieval doctrine visited numerous legal disabilities upon the descendants of those attainted for treason, sometimes for generations. My distant ancestor Lt. Col. Daniel Axtell, for instance, was hanged, drawn, and quartered for the crime of regicide, having commanded the guard at the trial of King Charles I. His son, unable to practice law in England because of his father’s crime, emigrated to South Carolina.
The Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, forbade this grotesque inequity in Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution, and England abolished it in the reign of King William IV, 170 years ago.
Now it’s back, at least for corporations if not, yet, people. But in fact it’s even worse. Daniel Axtell at least committed a crime under the laws of the day and was savagely punished for it. The Citizens Bank of Louisiana, fully four generations ago, did nothing whatever that was illegal and suffered no retribution in its day. But its remote descendants — the stockholders of J. P. Morgan Chase — are being punished, ex post facto.
This is not progress.
More: Michelle Malkin, who was on the issue last week, generously links to our coverage in a post today.
“Is this a $2M scar?”
Or does actor Russell Crowe just have deeper pockets and greater vulnerability to legal process than your everyday telephone-throwing ragehead? (Daily Telegraph (Austr.), Jun. 10).
“The slavery shakedown”
The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in 1865. Wachovia Corp. was founded in 1879. But the corporation found it necessary to issue a public apology for its “role” in slavery: to wit, slaves owned by “the Bank of Charleston and the Georgia Railroad and Banking Co.—two of the approximately 400 financial institutions dating back to 1781 that over the centuries merged with or were acquired by other institutions that eventually became part of the conglomerate known today as Wachovia.” Jeff Jacoby is critical of the decision.
‘Forcing Wachovia to ransack old records for links to slavery is nothing but a prelude to a shakedown,” warns Peter Flaherty, president of the National Legal and Policy Center, which has published a detailed critique of the reparations campaign. ”By trying to appease these hustlers, Wachovia only encourages greater demands.”
(Boston Globe, Jun. 9; NLPC report) (via Volokh). Earlier coverage: Jan. 26, 2004.
Do as we say dept.: the SEC’s accounting
This is really priceless, and was called to our attention by Prof. Bainbridge (May 31): the Securities and Exchange Commission menaces publicly held companies with ruinous legal enforcement actions if their accounting controls fall short, even sometimes when the lapse arises through inadvertence. But according to a General Accounting Office report (GAO-05-244), its own house is in far from perfect order:
In GAO’s opinion, SEC’s fiscal year 2004 financial statements were fairly presented in all material respects. However, because of material internal control weaknesses in the areas of recording and reporting disgorgements and penalties, preparing financial statements and related disclosures, and information security, in GAO’s opinion, SEC did not maintain effective internal control over financial reporting as of September 30, 2004. (emphasis added)
Accounting watchdog, audit thyself!
Calif.: radio host’s ageism not a civil rights violation
Tom Leykis’s highly successful Westwood One radio show is geared to reach men 25-34, an advertiser-coveted demographic. When Marty Ingels, a 67-year-old talent agent and former sitcom actor (1962’s I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster) called in to the show, he was eventually put on the air, but Leykis launched into a series of japes poking fun at his age. Ingels proceeded to sue under California’s super-broad Unruh civil rights act and its equally super-broad s. 17200 unfair competition law, but an appeals court has now agreed with the broadcaster’s request to throw out the suit as violative of the state’s SLAPP statute, which is aimed at restricting some lawsuits that threaten free speech. (Kenneth Ofgang, “C.A. Rejects Age Bias Suit Over Exclusion From Radio Talk Show”, Metropolitan News-Enterprise, May 31; Ingels v. Westwood One, opinion in PDF format courtesy FindLaw; Silicon Valley Media Law Blog, May 26).
Southwest’s zany safety announcements
…probably don’t raise much of a liability problem for the airline, according to commenters at Dissemination.org (Jun. 7). More: although the announcements may not pose a problem safety-wise, they did land Southwest in legal hot water a couple of years back in the famous “Eenie Meenie” brouhaha: see Jan. 22, 2004.
“Secret underground mushroom clubs”
Foreseen if authorities tighten regulation of the wild fungi business. (Kate Pickert, “Intelligencer: Mushrooming Anxiety”, New York, May 9).
Batch of reader letters
Another short stack of correspondence appears on our letters page. Among topics this time: wheelchair access to lifeguards’ towers; more on the arbitrariness of capital punishment; the high error rate of civil litigation; and Johnnie Cochran, Jr.’s most famous case.