January 28 roundup

Annals of overcriminalization: whale watching biologist

The 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act bans feeding protected dolphins, seals and whales. A grand jury has now indicted licensed marine biologist Nancy Black, who sought to record the behavior of killer whales by rigging attachments to some killed prey that the predators were in the process of eating. Black’s attorney says she also faces a charge of lying to federal investigators because when asked to turn over evidence she gave them footage of the incident that she had already edited for reasons unrelated to the investigation. [The Economist]

Sending a remittance to Zimbabwe

The U.S. government really doesn’t believe in making it easy, which is why you might think of using a financial institution in Singapore, where they will be happy to do business. “The whole affair was just another friendly reminder of why I try to avoid doing anything in the US at all. Regulations, financial tracking, consumer protection… it’s just too damn difficult to get anything done.” [Simon Black, Sovereign Man]

Food law roundup

  • NYC health officials, in yet another federally funded food-denunciation ad campaign, Photoshop leg off obese guy to turn him into supposed diabetic amputee [my new Cato post, Radley Balko; more Caroline May/Daily Caller] Still at it update: “First 5” government program ad campaign Photoshops pic of little girl to make her look more obese [Jezebel, Jun. 2013]
  • Are White House advisors reading my posts? Probably not, but deregulation of dairy-farm “oil” spills still gave President an applause line in State of the Union speech [also at Cato]
  • More on L.A. schools’ healthy-lunch debacle [WSJ edit, earlier] It’s an illustration of how promising pilot projects often don’t scale [Megan McArdle] New Penn State study finds no connection between child obesity and availability of “bad” foods at school [NYT, Philly Mag, study via Wajert]
  • “Obesity plateau” of American population should offer chance for calm policy reflection, but probably won’t [Jacob Sullum] “Food Lawsuits Claiming ‘Addiction’ Coming To a Courtroom Near You?” [Lammi, Forbes]
  • Despite lip service to “letting consumers make their own food choices,” Obama won’t legalize raw milk [Obama Foodarama]
  • Coming in April from Tyler Cowen, “An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies” [Amazon, Freakonomics, Food and Drink category of MR, and you can follow Twitter account @AnEconomistGets;
  • “2011 Brought Lots of Good News for Salt Lovers” [Greg Conko, Open Market]

Cruise ship impostors: “They’re called ‘jump-ons'”

“A New York lawyer busted a trio of Hungarian scammers trying to fake the death of a 5-year-old girl and her mom aboard the Costa Concordia cruise ship. … ‘Even after they were busted, they said “we would have gotten away with it” if the neighbor [posing as a grandmother] hadn’t embellished the story and said the girl was missing too,’ [attorney Peter] Ronai said.” [NY Daily News] “‘They’re called “jump-ons.” It’s normal, this is just on a grander scale,’ Ronai said. ‘People will do horrible things for money.'” [UPI]

Ponnuru on Gingrich and the courts

Nicely put:

Consider, finally, Gingrich’s much-discussed desire to weaken the federal courts. The view that the courts have much more power than they used to have, and that this change is mostly unfortunate, is a respectable one. The view that Congress and the president should respond on occasion by limiting the courts’ jurisdiction, as Gingrich wants, ought to be respectable, too.

But Gingrich cannot, of course, stop there. He also has to call for Congress to summon judges to explain their decisions, which would be both pointless (they already write opinions), and wrong (congressmen have no constitutional power to hector judges). And he wants to abolish liberal circuit courts and replace them with conservative ones, which is an obvious attempt to ignore the Constitution’s grant of life tenure to judges.

Anyone who proposes that judicial power should be checked arouses the suspicion that what he really wants is freedom from the constraints of the law. Gingrich’s solution to this problem is to confirm the charge instantaneously.