- Put off by constant urine tests, eighth grader skips honor society [Duncannon, Pa.; my Cato post, PennLive]
- Wouldn’t you know when Mike Bloomberg does come out and say something excellent — about intellectual freedom in the university, as part of a Harvard commencement address — New York Times ignores him [John Leo/Minding the Campus, Dennis Saffran/City Journal]
- “Verbal or Written Permission Could be Required For College Sex” [L. A. Weekly]
- Hope for Camden students has come not from New Jersey’s massive Abbott school funding litigation, but from charters [Jim Epstein, Reason]
- “Schools have been getting less violent over the last 20 years,” much less violent in fact [Timothy Lee, Vox, Jesse Walker, Reason, Josh Blackman and Shelby Baird, SSRN, on the “shooting cycle”]
- Arnold Kling writes a commencement speech: “I am going to talk about community service … and why I am against it.”
- “Walking to School? Yeah, There’s a Federal Program for That” [David Boaz, Cato]
Posts Tagged ‘illegal drugs’
Police and prosecution roundup
- As condition of bail, federal magistrate orders arrestee to recant charge of government misconduct [Eugene Volokh]
- Possible life sentence for pot brownies shows “utterly irrational consequences of pretending drugs weigh more than they do” [Jacob Sullum, Radley Balko] Life sentence for guy who sold LSD: “the prosecutor was high-fiving [the] other attorneys” [Sullum]
- Do low-crime small towns across America really need MRAP (mine-resistant ambush-protected) armored vehicles and other military gear, thanks to federal programs? [Balko]
- Minnesota reforms its use of asset forfeiture [Nick Sibilla, FIRE] Rhode Island, Texas could stand to follow [Balko]
- If not for video, would anyone believe a story about Santa Clara deputies “spiking” premises with meth after finding no illegal drugs? [Scott Greenfield]
- Falsely accused of abuse: “He Lost 3 Years and a Child, but Got No Apology” [Michael Powell, NY Times “Gotham”; Amine Baba-Ali case]
- Two federal judges denounce feds’ “let’s knock over a stash house” entrapment techniques as unconstitutional [Brad Heath, USA Today]
May 23 roundup
- Worst article of the week? Cheering on tort lawsuits as a way to trip up legalized pot [John Walters and Tom Riley, Weekly Standard]
- Remember not long ago when they used to tout VA health care as a success story and model to be imposed on other health providers? [James Taranto, recalling Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein and many others; more thoughts from Coyote and Roger Pilon]
- Muscle and intimidation: union + allies surge onto Oak Brook, Ill. McDonald’s headquarters property, closing key management building [Bloomberg; related earlier here, here, here, etc.] Yesterday I got into a Twitter conversation with Tim Noah (defending the protesters’ action) and William Freeland (siding with my own view), culminating in this rather startling comment from a Center for American Progress/ThinkProgress reporter: “This entire convo backs up the point the private property law itself functions as gov’t cronyism for the wealthy.” Wow!
- Long, impassioned Ta-Nehisi Coates case for reparations [Atlantic, sidebar, Jonathan Blanks, my 2008 thoughts which eventually grew into a chapter in Schools for Misrule]
- “Insurers Demand $2 Million for Negligent Squirrel-Torching” [Holland Twp., Mich.; Lowering the Bar]
- R.I.P. left-wing historian Gabriel Kolko, whose project of de-mythologizing the Progressive Era won him a large libertarian fan base; initially contemptuous of that fan base, he came eventually to mellow with age and discern elements of common ground [Jesse Walker]
- Hard lesson for Congress to learn: “Hawaiians simply aren’t American Indians in the constitutional sense” [Ilya Shapiro, Cato, background]
Police and corrections roundup
- “Cops or soldiers? America’s police have become too militarized” [The Economist survey and related editorial] Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) introduces bill to rein in police militarization [Radley Balko]
- “Connecticut City Will Have to Re-Hire Cop Fired for Premature Decision to Use Deadly Force” [Ed Krayewski, Reason]
- “No, legalizing medical marijuana doesn’t lead to crime, according to actual crime stats” [Emily Badger, WaPo] New Marijuana Law Policy and Reform blog from Doug Berman of Ohio State;
- “While their agency minders weren’t looking, the Border Patrol has developed a substantial excessive force problem.” [Dara Lind, Vox]
- “Los Angeles Cops Argue All Cars in L.A. Are Under Investigation” [Jennifer Lynch, EFF/Gizmodo]
- Kansas family spent $25K establishing that loose tea leaves, hydroponic gear were reasons for SWAT raid on their home [KSHB, Radley Balko]
- “Kids Doing Time For What’s Not a Crime: The Over-Incarceration of Status Offenders” [Marc Levin and Derek Cohen, Texas Public Policy Foundation, PDF] More: Balko.
Maryland roundup
- Truly awful proposal: “2014 HB 366 proposes to prohibit landlords from refusing housing vouchers” [Maryland Legislative Watch, earlier from other states]
- SB 409/HB1197 (Raskin/Hixson) would require restaurants to have at least one staffer on premises at all times with state-accredited training available to discuss food allergies with customers [MdLegWatch]
- House of Delegates panel passes O’Malley’s steep minimum wage hike, though with some amendments [AP, WaPo]
- Sunlight on one of the most dangerous law enforcement practices: SB 468 (Shank) would require state and local agencies to report on asset seizures/forfeitures [Maryland Legislative Watch, Baltimore Sun]
- HB 1253 would empower existing hospice operators to block new competitors through tightened certificate-of-need (CON) regulation [Legiscan, Del. Michael Smigiel, Marc Kilmer/Maryland Public Policy Institute].
- Steep hike in cigarette tax: thank heavens no one’s figured out how to smuggle contraband along I-95, I-70 or we might have trouble [J.D. Tuccille, Reason]
- I spoke Thursday in College Park at a panel on marijuana legalization sponsored by Students for Sensible Drug Policy with panelists Neill Franklin of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Toni Holness of the ACLU of Maryland, and Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, moderated by Rachelle Yeung of the Marijuana Policy Project. I discussed Cato’s 2010 study by Jeffrey Miron and Katherine Waldock, “The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition“.
Argument: plaintiff should have used marijuana after crash
A court in British Columbia, Canada, has declined to reduce a plaintiff’s damages on the theory she could have alleviated symptoms after a collision by using medical marijuana but didn’t. [Erik Magraken] More: Ron Miller.
Police and prosecution roundup
- New insight into Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) casts doubt on criminal convictions [Radley Balko, earlier here, etc.]
- “The Shadow Lengthens: The Continuing Threat of Regulation by Prosecution” [James Copland and Isaac Gorodetski, Manhattan Institute]
- Police busts of “johns” thrill NYT’s Kristof [Jacob Sullum, earlier on the columnist]
- Sasha Volokh series on private vs. public prisons [Volokh]
- “Police agencies have a strong financial incentive to keep the drug war churning.” [Balko on Minnesota reporting]
- Forfeiture: NYPD seizes innocent man’s cash, uses it to pad their pensions [Institute for Justice, Gothamist] “Utah lawmakers quietly roll back asset forfeiture reforms” [Balko] “The Top 6 Craziest Things Cops Spent Forfeiture Money On” [IJ video, YouTube]
- After Florida trooper nabbed Miami cop for driving 120 mph+, 80 officers accessed her private info [AP]
Supreme Court and constitutional law roundup
- SCOTUS to hear case of Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, First Amendment challenge to state laws regulating truth of political speech [IJ/Cato amicus cert brief]
- Groups of law professors file amicus briefs in Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc. arguing that retreat from “fraud on the market” theory is consistent with modern scholarship on capital market efficiency [John Elwood] and sound statutory construction [Elwood, Bainbridge]
- Behind the Michigan affirmative action plan in Schuette, including colorful background of litigant BAMN (“By Any Means Necessary”) [Gail Heriot, Federalist Society “Engage”]
- Court dismisses Mulhall v. UNITE HERE (challenge to employer cooperation agreement with union as “thing of value”) as improvidently granted [Jack Goldsmith, On Labor, earlier]
- Affordable Care Act saga has taken toll on rule of law [Timothy and Christina Sandefur, Regulation]
- Lol-worthy new Twitter account, @clickbaitSCOTUS, with content like “The nine words no appellate advocate wants to read” [re: Madigan v. Levin]
- Drug War vs. Constitution at Supreme Court, 1928: Drug War won by only one vote and you might not predict who wrote the most impassioned dissent [my Cato post]
A constitutional showdown for the Drug War — in 1928
Presumptions of guilt without actual evidence? It squeaked by at the Supreme Court by only one vote, in a case that should be better known [my new Cato post]
December 23 roundup
- Metro-North train crash spurs calls for mandatory crash-prevention devices. Think twice [Steve Chapman]
- BP sues attorney Mikal Watts [Insurance Journal] Exaggerated Gulf-spill claims as a business ethics issue [Legal NewsLine]
- Pot-war fan: “Freedom also means the right not to be subjected to a product I consider immoral” [one of several Baltimore Sun letters to the editor in reaction to my piece on marijuana legalization, and Gregory Kline’s response]
- Aaron Powell, The Humble Case for Liberty [Libertarianism.org]
- Allegation: lawprof borrowed a lot of his expert witness report from Wikipedia [Above the Law]
- Frivolous “sovereign citizen” lawsuits on rise in southern Jersey [New Jersey Law Journal, earlier]
- Star of Hitchcock avian thriller had filed legal malpractice action: “Tippi Hedren wins $1.5 million in bird-related law suit” [Telegraph]