For Daniel Taylor to be convicted of a murder committed while he was actually behind bars, at least three things had to happen: 1) a supposed confession extracted by Chicago police; 2) a conveniently corroborative sighting of Taylor at the scene by another cop; 3) improper withholding of exonerating evidence by the Illinois prosecutor. A Center on Wrongful Convictions video (via Balko)(& welcome Above the Law readers).
Behind the Gibson Guitar raid, cont’d
They wouldn’t show him the warrant because it was sealed [Bill Frezza, Forbes]:
While 30 men in SWAT attire dispatched from Homeland Security and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cart away about half a million dollars of wood and guitars, seven armed agents interrogate an employee without benefit of a lawyer. The next day [Gibson Guitar CEO Henry] Juszkiewicz receives a letter warning that he cannot touch any guitar left in the plant, under threat of being charged with a separate federal offense for each “violation,” punishable by a jail term.
Up until that point Gibson had not received so much as a postcard telling the company it might be doing something wrong….
Juszkiewicz alleges [federal prosecutors] were operating at the behest of lumber unions and environmental pressure groups seeking to kill the market for lumber imports. “This case was not about conservation,” he says. “It was basically protectionism.”
Earlier on the extraordinary Gibson case here.
Public employment roundup
- What is pay? What is wealth? And who (if anyone) should be envying whom? [David Henderson]
- LIRR disability scammer gets probation, will repay lost $294K at rate of $25/month [Lane Filler, Newsday]
- Costly license plate frame can help buy your way into California speeders’ nomenklatura [Priceonomics]
- Ohio school superintendent who illegally used public moneys to promote school tax hike won’t face discipline [Ohio Watchdog]
- Last-in, first-out teacher dismissal sacrosanct in California [Larry Sand]
- “Los Angeles Inspector Convicted of Bribery Keeps $72,000 Pension” [Scott Shackford]
- Heart and lung presumption is an artificial construct that drives municipal budgets for uniformed services [Tampa Bay Times]
Last of the SCOTUS term
The concluding-frenzy stage of the Supreme Court term is upon us; my colleague Ilya Shapiro handicaps the remaining big cases including Bond (treaty power), Hobby Lobby, Harris v. Quinn, SBA List, Canning and others.
Reparations: more reactions
The Ta-Nehisi Coates essay in the Atlantic arguing the case for racial reparations stirred quite a bit of discussion and here are three more reactions:
* John McWhorter, “The Case Against Racial Reparations” [The Daily Beast]
* Jonathan Blanks, “Why Aren’t There More Black Libertarians?” [Libertarianism.org]
* Richard Epstein on Coates’ “acute tunnel vision” and misreadings of individual rights [Hoover “Defining Ideas”]
Plus: not a reaction but an older piece, “How Far Back Should We Go? Why Restitution Should Be Small” [Tyler Cowen, 2002, PDF]
Strangling bank access for lawful businesses
Report from Rep. Darrell Issa’s oversight committee blasts Operation Choke Point [The Hill, earlier here, here]
P.S.: More from Todd Zywicki at Volokh and Glenn Reynolds at USA Today; and earlier from American Banker and from the Washington Times (gun dealers say Operation Choke Point, FDIC guidelines squeezing their access to banks)]
New Delaware law allows alcoholic ice cream
Works for me: “Started by Kathleen Belfont, Blotto Gelato is a small ice cream business that includes alcohol in all of its products. Belfont reached out to Sen. Ernie Lopez, R-Lewes, when she realized she could not get a liquor license.” [WBOC via Laura Collier]
If you want to understand the logic of an inquisition…
…study this comment on our thread about activists’ FOIA-ing of University of Virginia professor Douglas Laycock:
Scott Rose 05.30.14 at 9:40 am
That Laycock and/or the university would refuse to show the requestors the material they are requesting suggests that Laycock has something to hide, and that what he is hiding shows that he has been behaving unethically.
The story has broken out into widespread discussion this week; check out contributions by Will Creeley at FIRE, Dahlia Lithwick at Slate, and Megan McArdle at Bloomberg View.
Lunch Lady 1, First Lady 0
A House panel has voted to allow school districts to opt out temporarily from much-protested nutrition standards [Washington Post, earlier] While the Obama administration and its allies have chosen to blame Big Food for the reverse, the capital has not been short on firsthand testimony from school lunch directors about thrown-away offerings, declining student participation and other woes. [Washington Post, School Nutrition Association]
More: Nick Gillespie/Time (“if we can’t trust our schools to figure out how best to fill their students’ stomachs, why the hell are we forcing our children to attend such institutions in the first place?”), Baylen Linnekin (“She’s right. The House GOP is playing politics. They’re just not doing it as pervasively—or as deftly—as she and her colleagues are.”)
May 30 roundup
- Gabriel Kolko: “A historian who understood why big business wanted regulation” [Tim Carney, Washington Examiner, earlier]
- Thumbing nose at Hill, Interior Dept. moves to tribalize native Hawaiians by decree [Ilya Shapiro, NACRP, related PDF, Hawaii Free Press, also, background]
- Cellphone 911: “Safety Mandates That May Reduce Safety” [Coyote]
- Liability-expanding California decision: knowing breach of a material contractual provision may trigger state False Claims Act [Sidley] Plus Chamber’s ILR on state False Claims Acts and more;
- Feds to GM: write smoking-gun memos for trial lawyers’ benefit, or else [Daniel Fisher; more on $35 million NHTSA fine at WSJ, National Law Journal, background on Toyota]
- Child-grabbing in safety’s name: “CPS and Free-Range Parents” [David Pimentel 2012 via Free-Range Kids]
- Maryland Court of Appeals affirms denial of class certification over $29.64 wage garnishment [decision in Marshall v. Safeway, PDF via Michael Schearer]