Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

For me but not for thee: Montgomery County lawn pesticide ban

I’ve got a new post at Cato at Liberty about a proposed countywide ban on common lawn and turf pesticides in Washington, D.C.’s suburban Montgomery County. The best part is that county officials are frantically maneuvering to get the county’s own playing fields exempted from the ban. The piece concludes:

Libertarians often note that the state freely bans private conduct in which it’s happy to indulge itself — federal investigators can lie to you but it’s a crime if you lie to them, adopting federal accounting practices in your own business is a good way to get sent to prison, and so forth. But the double standard asked for here could wind up being — well, to coin a phrase, as bald as a Rockville lawn.

More: From the Washington Post’s piece, quoting a retired minister who lives in Silver Spring: “My lawn is such a little fragment of American Freedom. Please respect it.” [cross-posted at Free State Notes]

More: Kojo Nnamdi Show, Euvoluntary Exchange (more on provisions of bill, including enumeration of “non-essential” pesticides to be restricted, a list that incorporates by reference lists in use in other jurisdictions like Ontario and the European Commission and grants the county executive authority to name others; links back to this county document); Gazette in October; Brad Matthews, Watchdog.

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Forgotten but not gone: filial responsibility laws

“An elderly Pennsylvania husband and wife are being asked to pay their deceased adult son’s medical bills under a law making family members responsible for a loved one’s unpaid bills. The case is a reminder that such ‘filial responsibility’ laws may go both ways – requiring parents to pay the debts of adult children as well as the children to pay for their parents’.” 28 states have laws obliging adult children to pay the nursing home and medical bills of their parents or more rarely, as in this story, vice versa. The filial-responsibility laws have not been much enforced, “but lately states and health care providers have started taking a second look at them to recover medical expenses.” [Elder Law Answers; Paul Muschick, Allentown Morning Call]

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“Study Confirms That E-Cigarettes Generate Virtually No Toxins”

Maybe I’m too cynical, but it always struck me that in proposals to ban vaping the supposed risks to bystanders were just a pretext anyway. “A new study of leading American and British brands, reported in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, confirms [earlier reports of low sidestream exposures], finding that the levels of potentially problematic substances in e-cigarette aerosol [reaching nearby persons] are about the same as those detected in ambient air.” [Jacob Sullum; recent ban in Montgomery County, Maryland]

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Police and community roundup

  • Noting statistical disparities, DoJ blames evils of Ferguson, Mo. policing on racism, conservatives push back [Dara Lind/Vox, Peter Kirsanow, IBD] Many of same trends in policing and incarceration found in cities where voters, elected officials and police forces are black-majority [Reihan Salam]
  • “Resisting arrest” when there are no other charges against you: an odd crime may soon get odder if New York lawmakers yield to demands that it be made a felony [Scott Greenfield]
  • Interview with former Virginia Attorney General and corrections reformer Mark Earley [Chase Madar, American Conservative]
  • “How to Address Anger Over Shootings By Police? Hide Cops’ Names, Of Course!” [J.D. Tuccille; New York Times (“In many jurisdictions, including New York State, simply determining the names of officers involved in fatal shootings can be a struggle.”), earlier Virginia]
  • Did Detroit really do itself a favor with its massive crackdown on noncompliant businesses? [Scott Beyer, Governing]
  • “Governors Highlight Criminal Justice Reform in State of State Addresses” [ALEC “American Legislator”]
  • Minnesota bill would bar police agencies from investigating own officer-involved shootings [KMSP via Radley Balko]

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The trouble with “cultural patrimony”

One of the problems with shipping all great antiquities and works of historical significance back to their lands of origin, as some demand, is becoming clearer in the Middle East, as Islamic State authorities destroy the Assyrian heritage site at Nimrud along with thousands of rare texts from the Mosul library and seemingly whatever other remains of pre-Solomonic and religiously disapproved civilizations their bulldozers and torches can reach. [New York Times]

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