- Biggest gaps between views of scientists and those of general public come on topics of animal research, GMO foods [Pew/AAAS]
- New study challenges prevailing assumptions: controlling for such factors as poverty and race, “no differences [found] in asthma risk between children living in urban areas and their suburban and rural counterparts” [Science Daily; Knappenberger and Michaels, Cato]
- Interview with NYU’s urbanist Alain Bertaud, formerly of the World Bank [Market Urbanism]
- Little free libraries on the wrong side of zoning law [Conor Friedersdorf, Sarah Skwire/Freeman, L.A. Times]
- “Who knew following the trail of ‘clean energy’ money could make you feel so dirty?” [Oregonian editorial on scandal that led to resignation of Gov. John Kitzhaber, more, Watchdog] Actually, the correct answer is “plenty of us”: green-barrel projects rife with cronyism in other states too [Mark Newgent, Red Maryland; Michael Dresser, Baltimore Sun]
- “EPA’s Wood-Burning Stove Ban Has Chilling Consequences For Many Rural People” [Larry Bell, Forbes]
- “The digital poker magnate who financed an epic pollution lawsuit against Chevron has disavowed the case and accused the lead plaintiffs’ lawyer of misleading him about the underlying facts.” [Paul Barrett, Roger Parloff]
Taxicabs vs. Uber in Chicago
Faced with competition from Uber, Chicago cabs resolve to improve service, lower fares. (Just kidding! They strike.)
More: “I try to equate this illegal operation of UberX as a terroristic act like ISIS invading the Middle East,” said Pennsylvania Taxi Association president Alex Friedman. “It is exactly the same menace.” [Philadelphia magazine]
The FDA versus cigars
As one door (Cuban trade) opens, another (hostile Washington regulation) closes. [Jim Bovard]
Great moments in brutality claims
“A California man, who claimed detectives assaulted him during an interview in a holding cell in the Lane County Courthouse last month, has been found guilty of attempted coercion and initiating a false report after surveillance video in the holding cell showed the man punching himself in the face numerous times. … When Tomaszewski was told the self-beating incident had been captured on camera, he allegedly confessed to making up the story with hopes of winning early release from jail, deputies said.” [Eugene, Ore. Register-Guard]
Hilary Kramer, TV stock picker, and her class action suits
A Reuters investigation: “No one has filed more challenges to M&A deals since 2011 than Hilary Kramer. She says she’s acting in the interest of shareholders, but they haven’t received a penny. Lawyers, though, have made millions.” The frequent media guest says her more than 40 class action lawsuits are one way she sticks up for investors, but hasn’t always been so ready to take credit: “Kramer doesn’t appear to have divulged her class actions to her subscribers, a Reuters review of her newsletters found.”
“Today we take another step away from Mississippi’s tortured past”
As I recount at Cato at Liberty, a new report from the Equal Justice Initiative on the long history of lynching in the South, combined with a federal judge’s widely noted speech upon sentencing three men in a racially oriented Mississippi killing, can bring us to think about how far America has fallen short of the ideal of the rule of law in some periods, and how far it has come since. [& Rod Dreher]
Powhatan’s zingers in FERC case
We’ve noted (here and here) the battle between Powhatan Energy Fund and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over a FERC investigation of Powhatan for vaguely defined “market manipulation.” A filing earlier this month by Powhatan in FERC proceedings (represented by Drinker Biddle) has some subheads taking a not-exactly-respectful tone seldom met with in high-stakes administrative proceedings (Response in Opposition To Order To Show Cause and Notice of Proposed Penalty, PDF):
- “Dr. Chen’s ‘Home Run’ Trading Strategy Is Not A ‘Post Hoc Invention’ Because, Among Other Things, 35 Is Less Than 50”
- “Dr. Chen’s Trades Were Not ‘Wash-like’ Or ‘Wash-type’ – Whatever The Heck That Means”
- “The Staff’s Stubborn Reliance On The Unpublished, NonPrecedential Amanat Case Is Just Lame”
- “Uttering the Phrase ‘Enron’ Or ‘Death Star’ Does Not Magically Transform The Staff’s Investigation”
The full document is here.
“In a perfect world, of course, all risks could be avoided…”
While in a perfect world all risks could be avoided, in the actual world we live in, life comes with risks that may be unavoidable, obvious, or both, Ontario’s highest court has unanimously ruled. It declined to assign liability to the town of Cayuga over a 2001 incident in which a teenager climbed a popular climbing tree in a public park, fell off, and was rendered a paraplegic. He sued, saying the town should have taken measures such as prohibiting climbing or warning of danger.
“Trees, being by their very nature things which can be climbed and therefore fallen from, are potentially harmful,” the court said. “Any danger posed by this tree was an obvious one. If you chose to climb it, you could fall and be injured.”
A lower court judge dismissing the suit in 2013 declined to create a municipal duty to prevent injuries by developing and enforcing a ban on tree climbing in the park. “There has to be a reasonable limit to such prohibitions on human activity,” he said. [Toronto Star; note the pioneering 2003 English case Tomlinson v. Congleton Borough Council discussed here and here]
Labor and employment roundup
- Loosen constraints on local and state deviation from the NLRA labor law model? Idea gathering force on right also draws some interest from left [Ben Sachs, On Labor, on James Sherk/Andrew Kloster proposal for right to work laws at city/county level]
- Justice Alito dissents from Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari in Kalamazoo “employee buyer’s regret” case where asked-for transfer was later construed as retaliation [Jon Hyman]
- NLRB’s franchise power grab could prove costly to small business [Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Connor Wolf]
- A very different country: Supreme Court of Canada constitutionalizes a right of public employees to strike [On Labor]
- Average full-time California municipal employee got 2013 compensation package of nearly $121,000 [Steven Greenhut]
- Perfect, now let’s mandate sick day banking nationwide: “Montgomery [County] fire department has history of sick-day abuse among workers due to retire” [Washington Post]
- Yet more unilateralism: Obama administration tightens regs on federal contractor sex discrimination [Roger Clegg]
Cato brief: the value of speech that may offend
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument March 23 in the case of Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, which on its face raises a relatively specialized issue — having offered to print specialty license plates for motorists, may the state of Texas then, as its statutes direct, “refuse to create a new specialty license plate if the design might be offensive to any member of the public”? (emphasis added).
The lawfulness of government cooperation in speech, however, should not turn on whether the speech “might be offensive to any member of the public,” a new Cato brief argues. One reason is the potential for subjectivity and inconsistency — Texas currently approves many license plates that would offend some people, but declined to approve one including a tiny version of the Confederate battle flag. But a more fundamental reason is that offensive speech itself can be a valuable part of the marketplace of ideas and should not lose First Amendment protection simply because someone takes offense at it. (The brief takes no position on whether specialty license plates count as a “quasi-public forum” or something else, a question that might keep the Court from needing to reach the offense issue; it also notes that the case at hand does not include any of the exceptions the Court has recognized to speech freedom, such as obscenity, incitement, or “true threat.”)
Like Cato’s brief last year in the “truthiness” Ohio campaign speech case, this one falls into the new category of “funny” brief — including references to jokes and comedy sequences, dropping cites to Full House and America’s Funniest Home Videos, and including among its signers Cato fellow P.J. O’Rourke as well as the Comic Book Defense Fund and noted First Amendment advocates Nat Hentoff, Nadine Strossen, and Martin Garbus. (It also includes a number of words often considered offensive, and which seldom find a place in Supreme Court briefs.)
Ilya Shapiro, counsel of record (joined by co-counsel, and noted First Amendment lawyer, Robert Corn-Revere) writes at the Cato blog:
Not only does the right to be offensive secure the livelihood of our favorite comedians, it protects scientific and medical researchers in their quest to push the limits of human knowledge into fields once considered taboo and enables one religion’s heretic to become another’s prophet. And should a member of a third faith, or no faith at all, wish to define himself as an iconoclast by mocking, degrading, or insulting that heretic cum prophet—be it Muhammad, L. Ron Hubbard, or Mark Steyn — that too, is protected by the First Amendment.
There’s no “offensiveness” exception to the First Amendment and it would be insulting for the Supreme Court to allow Texas to tell us what’s offensive. Those who are offended shouldn’t have a veto over free expression and putative offenders should be judged in the court of public opinion.
Another summary: Ronald Collins, Concurring Opinions.