May 27 roundup

  • Prospects dicey at best for CPSIA reform as Waxman, Dems toe consumer-group line [Woldenberg, more, Nord, Northup] If AAP is going to posit 49,000 poisonings from lead in recalled jewelry, shouldn’t it try to document a couple of them? [Woldenberg] Credit at least to House Commerce Committee majority for trying to tackle mess with this law [Mangu-Ward, ShopFloor, AtC]
  • “Lawsuit claims Jay-Z’s ‘Big Pimpin’ violates Egyptian ‘moral rights'” [DBR]
  • My Cato Institute colleague Gene Healy reviews new Eric Posner/Adrian Vermeule book on executive power [AmCon]
  • Subpoena filed by class-action lawyer Stephen Tillery demands contributor list of Chicago-based think tank critical of litigation [Madison County Record] Judge quashes subpoena as chilling of First Amendment liberties [same]
  • Suits filed by its own officers, often those accused of misconduct, have cost LAPD $18 million since 2005 [L.A. Times via Dave Krueger, Agitator]
  • “Do Menthol Cigarettes Taste Too Good to Be Legal?” [Sullum, earlier]
  • “Motion Claims Buxom Woman with Opposing Counsel Is Intended as Jury Distraction” [ABA Journal] More: Ken at Popehat, Lowering The Bar, Above the Law.

Feds seek $90,000 fine for illegal bunny-selling

They say John Dollarhite of Nixa, Missouri “sold rabbits and guinea pigs without a license from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.” Dollarhite says he can’t afford the fine and says the business was started by his son, then a child; it “made about $200 in profit from April 2008 to December 2009 from selling rabbits for $10 or $12 apiece.” [Springfield News-Leader]

Blogger forced off school committee after teacher’s union threatens suit

Massachusetts: “Robert C. Cirba, a member of the Spencer-East Brookfield Regional School Committee and former candidate for state representative, has resigned from the committee after the state Department of Labor Relations found that comments he made on his blog interfered with teacher negotiations.” Cirba had written disrespectfully on his blog about the Spencer-East Brookfield Teachers Association and says the teacher’s union had threatened to sue him personally as well as pursue a legal complaint against the board over the writings. [Worcester Telegram]

California prison crowding injunction, cont’d

More reactions to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Brown v. Plata decision (earlier) from Scott Greenfield, Heather Mac Donald, and Eli Lehrer. Steven Greenhut explains how compensation for California prison guards came to take priority over facilities improvement; unionized prison employees’ role in lobbying for more draconian incarceration laws has also occasioned much outrage, from, among others, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote this week’s opinion. And (h/t Tyler Cowen) here is a 1995 paper by economist Steven Levitt finding (using numbers from that era) that “For each one-prisoner reduction induced by prison overcrowding litigation, the total number of crimes committed increases by approximately 15 per year. The social benefit from eliminating those 15 crimes is approximately $45,000; the annual per prisoner costs of incarceration are roughly $30,000.”

Law schools roundup

  • Refuting a law review’s vaccine-autism claims [Orac, Respectful Insolence, more, Fair Warning]
  • Should sue-the-cops fliers have used Suffolk U. law school logo? [Boston Herald via Wood, Chronicle]
  • “There’s a saying that ‘the law you learned in law school is the law'” [Bill Araiza, Prawfs]
  • Annals of legal scholarship: law review article on “planetarian identity formation” [SSRN] Larry Ribstein on the trouble with law reviews [TotM, earlier]
  • Enough with the “balance” talk, says organizer of Hastings Law conference on Palestine rights [SFGate]
  • “The entire law school industry … a significant profit center for universities — is a giant bubble” [The New Republic] “Mind-boggling” tuition increases hard to explain other than as product of market distortions [Hans Bader]
  • Liberty Law exam question on notorious kidnapping case raises eyebrows [Sarah Posner, Religion Dispatches; background]
  • “It’s Deja Vu for Louisiana Economy as Law School Clinic, Activists Challenge Air Permit” [WLF]

Behind a Yale fraternity’s suspension

Federal regulators and private complainants step up pressure for tougher university disciplinary action against offensive males — and speech-related offenses will be very much under scrutiny. [Greg Lukianoff/Daily Caller, Harvey Silverglate and Kyle Smeallie/Minding the Campus, Caroline May/Daily Caller]

More: The Yale Alumni Magazine notes that DKE (Delta Kappa Epsilon) brought the University “bad publicity.” And Dave Zincavage has been blogging critically about the affair. Further: Scott Greenfield.

Want to open a store? We choose your locations

“D.C. Mayor Vincent D. Gray delivered an ultimatum in a face-to-face meeting with Wal-Mart officials at a real estate convention Monday: If the chain wants to enter the District at all, it had better commit to opening at Skyland Shopping Center, the long-delayed redevelopment project in Gray’s home ward…. Gray indicated he would be willing to go so far as to nix the company’s requests for building permits on privately owned sites, even for neighborhoods where residents favored Wal-Mart’s opening.” [Washington Post, earlier]

Sanctimonious posse pursuing Ronald McDonald

Columnist Steve Chapman has their number:

People don’t like cheap, tasty, high-calorie fare because McDonald’s offers it. McDonald’s offers it because people like it. … We live in an age of inexpensive, abundant food carefully designed to please the mass palate. Most of us, recalling the scarcity, dietary monotony and starvation that afflicted our ancestors for hundreds of millennia, count that as progress. But those determined to save human beings from their own alleged folly see it as catastrophic.

[Examiner]