And then repeat x10,000 [Jeremy Clarkson, Times Online (U.K.) via Free-Range Kids]
SLAPP bill: advancing free speech at federalism’s expense?
Ken at Popehat: “Let’s get this straight from the start: I’m in favor of anti-SLAPP statutes and vigorous legal protections for free speech. I’m just not convinced that federalizing libel law is the right way to go about it.” Earlier on the Cohen bill here.
On 770 KTTH-Seattle at 4:10 PM Pacific today, talking Toyota
My Toyota op-ed is going viral, with dozens of retweets, and listings on the front pages of Hot Air and reddit—not to mention an Instalink. And Alex Tabarrok tests my numbers at Marginal Revolution.
Update: Don’t miss Megan McArdle’s comprehensive take.
New York bill would ban restaurant use of salt in cooking
Assembly members Felix Ortiz (D-Brooklyn), Margaret Markey (D-Queens) and Nick Perry (D-Brooklyn) have filed a bill that would hit restaurants with $1,000 fines if their chefs use salt as an ingredient in their recipes. Some reactions: Russell Jackson, Metafilter via Althouse, Verdon/Outside the Beltway (“Is salt necessary for some cooking? Yes.”) via Bainbridge, Mangu-Ward (“$1,000 a pinch? $1,000 a grain?”) and more, Alkon, Gothamist. Four years ago we reported on a breathalyzers-for-everyone proposal from Ortiz.
Eastern District of Texas
Explaining the role of the nation’s most famous venue for patent litigation [Brad Feld, Tech Review]
Not for before meals dept.
Legalities aside, there may be a possible lesson here about not buying human food from a pet store [Beck, Drug & Device Law]
U.K.: “The widow who refused to sue”
73-year-old Gillian Chapman has made headlines by saying “she does not want compensation from the NHS [National Health Service] over the death of her husband, a GP who contracted cancer after working in a hospital that was built using asbestos.” Notes Telegraph columnist Jemima Lewis: “The cult of compensation has had no obvious improvement on [NHS] services.”
Finger-in-the-chili lady out of jail
Speaking of national media hoaxes, today’s San Jose Mercury News profiles the post-incarceration life of Anna Ayala. The digital pioneer is divorced from co-conspirator Jaime Plascencia, who is still in prison. Ayala’s greatest trauma from her four years in prison (out of her nine-year sentence) seems to be that everyone called her the Finger Lady. She’s permanently banned from Wendy’s, so she’ll miss out on the Baconator.
Law firm TV ads, cont’d
This one has rap and animation.
“I am not afraid of my Toyota Prius”
I expand on my earlier post in today’s Washington Examiner, including my skepticism of the conventional reporting on the James Sikes incident.
Michael Fumento is also on the case on his blog and in the LA Times; see also Richard Schmidt in the New York Times on the last generation of sudden acceleration.
Update: Fumento goes farther on the James Sikes story than I did. I also found the idea that Sikes reached for the accelerator while driving implausible after trying to repeat the experiment in a (parked!) Prius.