Police and prosecution roundup

  • Judge chides Montgomery County, Md. police for “unlawful invasion” of family’s home [my new Free State Notes post]
  • As more offenses get redefined as “trafficking,” state extends its powers of surveillance and punishment [Alison Somin on pioneering Gail Heriot dissent in U.S. Commission for Civil Rights report; Elizabeth Nolan Brown/Reason on legislative proposals from Sens. Portman and Feinstein] Proposal in Washington legislature would empower police to seize/forfeit cars of those arrested for soliciting prostitutes, whether or not ever convicted [Seattle Times]
  • Progressives and the prison state: “most of the intellectual and legal scaffolding of the contemporary American carceral system was erected by Democrats.” [Thaddeus Russell reviewing new Naomi Murakawa book The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America]
  • Here comes the next verbal conflation with negative implications for defendants’ rights, “traffic violence” [Scott Greenfield]
  • Please don’t pay attention to what goes on inside Florida prisons, it would only spoil your day [Fred Grimm, Miami Herald via Radley Balko]
  • Trouble in California: “U.S. judges see ‘epidemic’ of prosecutorial misconduct in state” [L.A. Times, Ronald Collins/Concurring Opinions, video from Baca v. Adams with Judges Kozinski, Wardlaw, W. Fletcher, earlier on California Attorney General Kamala Harris and Moonlight Fire case] But will Ninth Circuit’s strong words change anything? [Scott Greenfield including updates]
  • “Plea Bargaining and the Innocent: It’s up to judges to restore balance” [U.S. District Judge John Kane]

Kamala Harris and the Moonlight Fire case

The burgeoning Moonlight Fire litigation scandal, which has already tarnished government agencies that include the California fire and forestry agency, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Forest Service, could also raise questions for California Attorney General and Senate hopeful Kamala Harris. John Fund:

“The misconduct in this case is so pervasive,” [California Superior Court judge Leslie] Nichols wrote, “that it would serve no purpose to attempt to recite it all here.”

Nichols also didn’t spare the office of California Attorney General Kamala Harris, now a candidate for Barbara Boxer’s U.S. Senate seat and a national Democratic star. Nichols wrote that he can recall “no instance in experience over 47 years as an advocate and a judge, in which the conduct of the Attorney General so thoroughly departed from the high standard it represents, and, in every other instance has exemplified.” Judge Nichols then ordered the state to pay Sierra Pacific a whopping $32 million in damages and expenses. Cal Fire denies any wrongdoing, while the offices of Harris and Governor Jerry Brown aren’t talking.

Big plans foiled in New Mexico

County in New Mexico purports to ban oil/gas extraction, assign legal rights to rivers, wetlands and other natural features, declare all water a public trust, create an enforceable legal right to a “sustainable energy future,” strip corporations of various current constitutional rights, and make the whole thing self-executing against private parties. Federal court: uh, no, guys [Eugene Volokh on decision in Swepi, LP v. Mora County, striking down ordinance on various grounds including Supremacy Clause, First and Fifth Amendments.]

Schools roundup

  • “Teacher keeps job despite ‘unsatisfactory’ rating 6 years in a row” [New York Post; and one reaction that speaks volumes about attitudes at Media Matters for America]
  • Cathy Young interviewed the accused (cleared by university and police) in Columbia “mattress” case and reports on the message traffic between him and accuser [The Daily Beast; Daniel Garisto, Columbia Daily Spectator (“we, the members of the campus media, failed specifically with Sulkowicz’s story by not being thorough and impartial” in part because of social pressure against pro-due-process viewpoints)]
  • Redouble whippings till morale improves: Obama seeks big hike in Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) budget [Robby Soave, Chronicle of Higher Education, Hans Bader] Theory assigns big role to OCR: “the resurgence of P.C. has actually been orchestrated from the top down.” [Jason Willick, Stanford Political Journal]
  • Faculties have resigned governance questions to “University Life” bureaus, which often place less value on academic freedom [Todd Zywicki, Pope Center] “Graduate school eliminates use of titles like ‘Mr.’ and ‘Ms.’ in salutations and correspondence” [Alexandra Zimmern, The College Fix on CUNY Graduate Center]
  • NLRB ropes religious institutions’ faculty into federal labor law regime [Joseph Knippenberg, Law and Liberty, parts one, two]
  • “Students of ‘predatory’ school to get loan forgiveness” [Miami Herald, Everest U.]
  • When researchers interview jihadis, should they get a “project funded by the U.S. Department of Defense” disclaimer/warning under human-subjects-protection rules? [IRB Blog]

TCPA logic fail — and an ironic target

Lawyers continue to craft class actions (here, here, etc.) demanding hundreds of millions or billions of dollars from businesses over what are often inadvertent or gray-area violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which bans unsolicited phone communication. Consumerist Ellen Taverna of NACA, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, finds talk of abuse “ridiculous” since at the same time phone users continue to report a large volume of (often patently unlawful and TCPA-flouting) call activity. Because how could there simultaneously be the one and the other? [Alison Frankel, Reuters] Unrelatedly, class actions over TCPA have found an especially ironic target: “The American Association of Justice, the national trade association that lobbies on behalf of plaintiffs’ lawyers seeking new ways to sue, itself got sued under the TCPA – by some of its own members. The AAJ was named in a class action lawsuit related to a blast fax sent to its members by a third-party vendor.” [Bryan Quigley, U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform]