I quote Samuel Johnson’s famous definition of excise in my new Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed on the city’s recently enacted soda levy. More: Peter Van Doren, Cato; Jacob Sullum and Elizabeth Nolan Brown on claims of a food deserts problem, both at Reason. And see July 5 update (openings for merchant illegality and public corruption).
Feds now second-guess preschool suspensions. How’d that happen?
How exactly did the Obama administration come to have the power to ban suspensions of preschoolers? [Hans Bader, CEI]
“I think the best thing to do is stay small and not hire anybody”
How the surge of new labor legislation and regulation is affecting some New England farmers [Mary Pols, Portland Press Herald via Ira Stoll, Future of Capitalism]
Explaining misprision
There has been speculation about whether the wife of the Orlando shooter, who according to reports may have accompanied him on visits to at least one gun store and known that he was meditating violence, might be charged with an offense. According to Jack Chin at PrawfsBlawg, the offense of misprision (as distinct from aiding/abetting) as currently defined requires that the subject have taken affirmative steps to conceal another’s crime, not just failed to speak up on knowing.
“Not to Be Used as a Battle Device”
Found on a Star Wars light saber toy, “For Accessory Use Only. Not to Be Used as a Battle Device,” and more finalists from the latest Wacky Warning Labels contest. [Bob Dorigo Jones, John Stossel]
Fog in Channel, Continent cut off
Britain has voted Leave in its European Union referendum. The Euro cause, though strong in London and environs, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and university towns, failed to carry substantial cities like Birmingham and Sheffield and was shellacked in the industrial north and across many other parts of England. Remain — a position backed by the large majority of educated commentators, by business and cultural notables, and by the leadership of the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Scottish Nationalist parties — has been reduced to what the funeral industry calls cremains.
The successful vote will begin an undefined dance of negotiation with Brussels, which has a hundred ways of stalling and complicating that process. Following earlier anti-EU votes in member countries, in fact, Brussels simply ignored the voters and came back a while later to ask again for the answer it wanted. Should the British political leadership want the negotiations to lead nowhere, it has many ways to connive at that. However, both Conservative and Labour parties must now confront a crisis of revolt from their members. The issue is particularly acute for the Tories because Prime Minister David Cameron led the Remain cause, and rival Boris Johnson, the former London mayor, made a compelling alternative leadership figure for Leave.
One theme on Twitter last night was curious: a number of commenters chided Wales for voting Leave even though it receives substantial regional subsidies from the European Union. (See here, here, and here.) In short, subsidies don’t always buy love. On balance, though, isn’t it probably a good thing if such programs fail to purchase local political sentiment?
Follow-up: Alberto Nardelli, BuzzFeed on the mechanics of separation and re-negotiation of trade relations; Mark Elliott on public law questions.
Supreme Court roundup
- High court should review Washington coastal exaction as a taking without just compensation [Ilya Shapiro and Jayme Weber, Cato, on Common Sense Alliance v. San Juan County]
- Redistricting: unanimous Court declines to strike down population variance that may have assisted Arizona plan in VRA compliance [ABA Journal]
- “Supreme Court Should Protect Workers Against Government-Union Collusion” [Ilya Shapiro and Jayme Weber, Cato on D’Agostino v. Baker, challenge to Massachusetts law designating day-care providers as state employees for purposes of unionization]
- Followup on CRST Van Expedited v. EEOC: “An open love letter to Justice Clarence Thomas” [Marcia McShane, earlier]
- “Supreme Court declines to reconsider deference to agency interpretations of agency regulations” [Jonathan Adler on cert denial in United Student Aid Funds, earlier here and here]
- “Supreme Court Kills Minimum Wage Lawsuit Against Seattle” [Connor Wolf/Daily Caller, earlier]
“Oil as the new tobacco” — and what that might mean
Promoters of the “Exxon Knew” climate denial subpoena campaign have made a point of saying they intend to repeat the playbook of the 1990s multi-state and federal tobacco litigation, this time with the energy industry and its various trade associations, allies, and non-profit/university well-wishers as targets. But what does it mean to repeat the tobacco playbook? As one who has written at length about that episode (along with various other authors including Cato’s Robert Levy, the late Martha Derthick, and Margaret Little) I can help spell out what that means. The public-sector tobacco litigation fell out of favor as a policy model because it was the scene of vast corruption fueled by the availability of billions in fees to politically favored private lawyers; because of its grotesque violations of elemental legal fairness, such as the enactment of statutes retroactively knocking out legal defenses for the state’s opponents; because of its quick-change remake of purported initial idealism into cash on the barrelhead as the primary driver of settlement; and because of its grave civil liberties violations such as the federal government’s assertion of a right to close down industry trade associations and seize their files. Are advocates of the new climate-denial litigation hoping for it to follow the same path? [Valerie Richardson, Washington Times, thanks for quoting me]
Thanks a lot but no thanks: Citigroup v. AT&T
Financial institution Citigroup says it has trademarked “ThankYou” as a marketing term in connection with customer loyalty and reward programs and is suing AT&T for using the term in its own new marketing campaign. [David Kravets, ArsTechnica]
Rauch: Bring back the political Establishment
When roving bandits appear on the scene, you begin to miss the old stationary bandits: Jonathan Rauch wants to bring back the political Establishment of days past, by revisiting primary and campaign-finance laws that were meant to curb the role of party regulars. [The Atlantic]
Bonus, Terry Teachout: “In a totally polarized political environment, persuasion is no longer possible: we believe what we believe, and nothing matters but class and power. We are well on the way … the gap that separates the two Americas has grown so deep and wide that I find it increasingly difficult to imagine their caring to function as a single nation for very much longer. …The main obstacle that stands in the way of the soft disunion of America is that Red and Blue America are not geographically disjunct, as were the North and South in the Civil War.”