- List of times IRS officials misled public [FactCheck.org] Ongoing link roundups by Paul Caron at TaxProf;
- Four agencies piled onto Texas tea partier’s business. Happenstance? [Jillian Kay Melchior] Some Tea Party groups seeking (c)4 status pursued electioneering; unnamed former IRS officials defend agency’s practice [Confessore, NYT] IRS denial of non-profit status to Free State Project [Atlas]
- “Maybe one side of an issue is considered more political than the other.” [Tim Carney] “To me, the real story is the low status of the Tea Party.” [Arnold Kling]
- “Too Hard to Fire Misbehaving Bureaucrats?” [Conor Friedersdorf, Chris Edwards, Hans Bader]
- President is lucky he’s not CEO of big company, or he’d need to seek legal advice re: “Responsible Corporate Officer Doctrine.” [Daniel Dew, Heritage]
- IRS also drawing fire for flagging high share of families taking adoption tax credit; abuse rate proved low [USA Today]
- Do federal agencies treat FOIA requests even-handedly? [Examiner/CEI on EPA, Daily Caller on FCC]
Apple on the skewer
“Apple doesn’t have a political action committee to fund incumbents’ re-elections. Apple doesn’t hire many congressional staff or any former congressmen as lobbyists. Apple mostly minds its own business — and how does that help the political class?” [Tim Carney, Washington Examiner]
ADA vs. school choice programs, cont’d
Patrick Wolf at Education Next and my Cato colleague Jason Bedrick have more on the Department of Justice’s aggressive interpretation of federal disabled-rights law to go after the successful Milwaukee school-choice program (earlier). Private schools that accept vouchers, Bedrick writes, do not become government contractors “any more than grocery stores become ‘government contractors’ when citizens use their EBT cards to purchase food there.”
Trademark asserted over nines, sixes in beer labeling
An international brewing company that uses a red-and-orange “#9” mark on one of its brands is suing Lexington, Ky. craft brewer West Sixth Brewing Co., which uses a black-and-green “6.” “If it was on a coaster, and the person across the table was colorblind and fairly stupid, I suppose there might be some initial confusion. … there might be a problem if somebody is holding their beer upside down.” [Lowering the Bar; Kentucky.com]
Feds’ curbside bus shutdown
How solid were the safety numbers underpinning the Department of Transportation’s high-profile crackdown on so-called Chinatown buses and other low-cost intercity bus services? [Marc Scribner, CEI; Jim Epstein, Reason]
May 26 roundup
- “New Study: U.S. Legal System Is World’s Most Costly” [Daniel Fisher, Ted Frank on Chamber/NERA study]
- “Madoff lawyers collect $700 million in fees” [CNN Money]
- “How insurance substitutes for regulation” [Omri Ben-Shahar and Kyle Logue, Regulation, PDF]
- On the Founders’ concept of rights as embodied in Declaration of Independence [Ray Hartwell, American Spectator; and thanks for reference to my book Schools for Misrule]
- “A Glass Half Full Look at the Changes in the American Legal Market” [Benjamin Barton, SSRN]
- Oooh, a whole WordPress site devoted to ripe-for-rediscovery social scientist Edward Banfield [Kevin Kosar: Edward C. Banfield, An Online Resource]
- “Q. How does one go from editing an adult magazine to practicing law?” [Susannah Breslin interviews Dan Kapelovitz]
Waiver for attending Justin Bieber house party
If you Instagram, Tweet or otherwise disclose anything that goes on there, it’d better be good, because you could be on the hook for $5 million in liquidated damages. [TMZ]
A solution to the jobless-lawyer problem?
The immigration bill would give many deportees free attorneys [Slate]
Driverless cars: a privacy/surveillance threat?
Randal O’Toole doesn’t share the concerns of Greg Beato and others.
“Why Can’t We Get Rid of Bad Teachers?”
Los Angeles: “As LAUSD agrees to pay out 30 million dollars to the families victimized by the Miramonte Elementary School teacher molestation scandal, FOX 11 investigates why school districts seem to have such a difficult time firing teachers who’ve committed lewd acts.” Even the teacher charged with committing mass sex crimes in the Miramonte case managed to get a $40,000 payout from his district to quit. The powerful California Teachers Association (CTA) managed to scuttle a modest bill by Sen. Alex Padilla to streamline dismissals in extreme cases. Instead, it’s backing an alternative measure that reformer and former Sen. Gloria Romero describes as a joke that “wouldn’t really do anything.” [KTTV; CTA’s side]