- Michigan’s Oakland County seizes rental property owned by elderly man over $8.41 unpaid tax bill plus $277 in fees and interest, sells property for $24,500, keeps all the surplus cash for itself. Constitutional? [Joe Barnett, Detroit News]
- Pruning obsolete laws: “Teaneck Council repeals more than a dozen old laws, including ban on cursing” [Megan Burrow, North Jersey Record, quoting Councilman and longtime friend of this site Keith Kaplan]
- “What does the Constitution have to say about national emergencies, both real and imagined?” [Cato Daily Podcast with Gene Healy and Caleb Brown]
- Lawyer in drunk-driving case: my client’s chewing on her coat could’ve thrown off breath test [AP/WSBT (Berwick, Pa.)]
- Baltimore police corruption, tax policies that attract people, densifying MoCo and more in my latest Maryland policy roundup [Free State Notes]
- Busybodies in Bismarck: “North Dakota’s Excellent Food Freedom Act Is Under Attack Yet Again” [Baylen Linnekin]
Posts Tagged ‘Maryland’
Court: Maryland law regulating newspapers and social media flunks First Amendment
Last year following the Russian Facebook scandal the Maryland legislature passed a bill regulating newspapers (!) and other online ad platforms. Gov. Larry Hogan refused to sign it, citing First Amendment concerns. Now a federal court has agreed and blocked the law’s enforcement as an unconstitutional infringement on the freedom of the press.
I write about the case at Cato. “Social media trickery is bad. Chipping away at First Amendment liberties to stop it is worse.”
January 16 roundup
- The two new heads of the judiciary committees in the Pennsylvania legislature are nonlawyers, and the legal community appears to be fine with that [Max Mitchell, Legal Intelligencer]
- Long after his downfall in one of the worst U.S. legal scandals in years, Stan Chesley was still listed as holding an honored position at a major charity until a reporter started calling [Josh Nathan-Kazis, Forward, I’m quoted; update (Chesley’s name removed)]
- National security restrictions form an important part of regulatory practice these days for international business, discussed at a Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention panel with William J. Haynes II, Timothy Keeler, Randal Milch, Donald Rosenberg, and moderator Eric J. Kadel, Jr.;
- How seeking government intervention backfired on Silicon Valley [Drew Clark, Cato Policy Report]
- Are Baltimore schools underfunded? tales of the gun buyback, local adoption of Daubert, and more in my latest Maryland policy roundup [Free State Notes; plus redistricting updates]
- “Despite Losing Its Copyright Case, The State Of Georgia Still Trying To Stop Carl Malamud From Posting Its Laws” [Mike Masnick, TechDirt, earlier]
December 26 roundup
- “Elephant Habeas Case: Steven Wise’s Forum Shopping Apparently Fails” [Ted Folkman, Letters Blogatory, earlier here and here]
- Right now owners of gas stations in D.C. “need approval from the Gas Station Advisory Board (GSAB) to close. However, there’s one small problem. The GSAB hasn’t had members since 2008, so there’s no one to get approval from.” [Daniel Warwick, Greater Greater Washington]
- “Jones Act Reform Gaining Momentum” [Colin Grabow, Cato, earlier]
- “Serving Two (or More) Masters: Civil Service and Bureaucratic Resistance in our Administrative State” [Adam White working paper and related video as part of Hoover Institution’s Land, Labor, and Rule of Law conference]
- MoCo vs. NoVa in business site relocation, Baltimore policing, charmless climate suit, red flag law and more Maryland policy in my latest Free State Notes;
- New York appears ready to return to the days of confiscatory rent control, a policy that helped ruin wide swaths of the city in the 60s and 70s [Charles Urstadt, City Journal]
Redistricting reform on the air — and a practical Maryland turn
This past weekend I joined West Coast-based libertarian radio host Bob Zadek for an hour-long show on redistricting reform. I discussed the same issue as it applies to my own state of Maryland in a podcast with the Frederick News Post’s Emma Kerr and Colin McGuire, as well as an interview with host Sheilah Kast at WYPR’s “On the Record”.
Separately from my Cato and Overlawyered work, I am honored that on Monday Gov. Larry Hogan appointed me to serve together with Judge Alex Williams as co-chairs of a new emergency commission given the task of redrawing the lines of Maryland’s Sixth Congressional District so as to comply with a federal court order. Coverage of that at WBAL, Maryland Reporter, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun and Capital Gazette, AP/ABC, Frederick News Post, Herald Mail (Hagerstown), WMAR, Maryland Matters, and many others. Maryland citizens are encouraged to apply to serve on the resulting commission; applications close December 10.
November 21 roundup
- “A Decade After Realizing It Can’t Threaten A Critic Online, UCLA Returns To Threaten A Critic Online” [Mike Masnick, TechDirt; Adam Steinbaugh, FIRE]
- “D.C. Bureaucrats Are Trying to Make Parents Get a License to Let Children Play Together” [Kerry McDonald, FEE; Karin Lips, Washington Post; Lenore Skenazy, Reason]
- “If you were ripped off by a couple of companies that enrolled consumers in membership-rewards programs without their consent, congratulations, you’re entitled to a $20 credit to buy more stuff from them. Ninth Circuit: Your class counsel, however, is probably not entitled to $8.7 million in attorney’s fees for winning you a coupon.” [John Kenneth Ross, IJ “Short Circuit” on In Re EasySaver Rewards Litigation]
- Congestion highway pricing and the “Lexus Lanes” epithet, supervised injection facilities, single payer in one state and more in my new Maryland roundup at Free State Notes;
- Chain that touched off public outrage stands to gain by reaction: “Licensing pet groomers won’t help pets. It will hurt low-income groomers.” [Shoshana Weissman and Jesse Kelley, R Street]
- “A Case for an Executive Order to Rein in Guidance Documents and other ‘Regulatory Dark Matter'” [Clyde Wayne Crews, CEI]
Labor roundup
- Great moments in public employee unionism, cont’d: D.C. Metro track inspector charged after derailment with falsifying records wins reinstatement and back pay in arbitration [Max Smith, WTOP, earlier here (similar after fatal smoke incident) and here] Could be permanent? “Bus drivers’ union threatens strike over driverless buses” [Jason Aubry, WCMH (Columbus, Ohio)]
- Letting guests skip housekeeping = grievance: “Union Threatens Strike over Marriott’s Green Initiative” [Darrell VanDeusen, Kollman & Saucier]
- Stephen Bainbridge series on what’s wrong with Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposals [earlier, etc.] continues with a post on labor co-determination and employee involvement in corporate governance;
- “Public Sector Unions Win Big at the California Supreme Court: California citizens must now meet and confer with union bosses before qualifying any compensation-related initiatives for the ballot.” [Steven Greenhut, Reason]
- My Frederick News Post letter to the editor opposing Question D (mandatory binding arbitration and collective bargaining for career firefighters). More on mandatory binding arbitration in the public sector: Ivan Osorio et al on California, for Cato (see pp. 12 et seq.); Steve Eide, Public Sector Inc., 2013.
- “Waikiki, Hawaii hotel workers decline to join union; the union demands they pay full dues anyway, starts process to garnish their wages. Does the union’s conduct amount to an unfair labor practice? NLRB: No, the union made an honest mistake. D.C. Circuit: That ‘makes no sense.’ The union never apologized or said it made a mistake. Its message to the workers was, ‘We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.'” [John Kenneth Ross, IJ “Short Circuit”]
August 29 roundup
- Astonishing investigation into feds’ “235 school shootings a year” statistic: “NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. …We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents.” [Anya Kamenetz, Alexis Arnold, and Emily Cardinali, NPR]
- Sentences that make you go back and read twice: “Mister Cookie Face lawyer Blake Hannafan also applauds the verdict and says 600 lb Gorillas ‘overreached.’” [AP/WHEC, Metro West Daily News on legal battle between Massachusetts dessert company and ice cream supplier]
- “In-N-Out Burger sends pun-filled letter to beer maker to address ‘brewing’ trademark issue” [ABA Journal]
- In Arkansas, socially conservative Family Council Action Committee enlists in the ranks against liability reform, and some less-than-charitable souls wonder whether $150,000 in donations from a Little Rock law firm might have had anything to do with that [Andrew DeMillo, AP]
- AG Brian Frosh’s embarrassing SALT suit, religious adoption fight, Cardin’s red meat thrown to Left, union influence in Montgomery County, Baltimore water supply, and more Maryland stuff in my new Free State Notes roundup;
- Federal court strikes down North Carolina’s U.S. House map as partisan gerrymandering, which could (or might not) lead to lively doings at the Supreme Court between now and Election Day [my new post at Cato]
Police and prosecution roundup
- After parking lot shooting Pinellas County, Florida sheriff “claim[ed] his hands were tied by Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. But that is not true” [Jacob Sullum, Reason, more; David French, NRO]
- Major USA Today story on origins of Baltimore’s devastating crime and murder wave [Brad Heath; Jonathan Blanks, Cato]
- Related: in Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force police scandal, plea bargains punished the innocent [Capital News Service investigation by Angela Roberts, Lindsay Huth, Alex Mann, Tom Hart and James Whitlow: first, second, third parts]
- California Senate votes 26 to 11 to abolish felony murder rule, under which participants in some serious crimes face murder rap if others’ actions result in death [ABA Journal, bill]
- New Jersey’s reforms curtailing cash bail, unlike Maryland’s, seem to be working reasonably well [Scott Shackford; longer Shackford article on bail in Reason; earlier here, here, etc.]
- “Miami Police Union Says Head-Kicking Cop ‘Used Great Restraint,’ Shouldn’t Be Charged” [Jerry Iannelli, Miami New Times]
July 11 roundup
- “Expensive new licensing requirements and the bureaucratic headache of implementing” new regulations are expected to reduce further the number of agencies offering international adoption to U.S. families [Liz Wolfe, Reason] And don’t forget to mark your calendar and, if you can attend in person, register for next week’s July 19 Cato conference on adoption policy, at which international adoption will be one focus;
- Report confirms again what I wrote nearly a year ago: many persons are being held in jail longer under Maryland’s ill-thought-out venture in restricting cash bail [Lynh Bui, Washington Post, my WSJ piece last September, more]
- Online data protection episode is just latest instance of how California initiative process can put disturbing leverage in private hands [Cathy Gellis, TechDirt]
- “The cans now read ‘NON-TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT ALMA MATER IPA’ with no other Pitt-related images.” [Grant Burgman, Pitt News on campus beer trademark controversy]
- “Pregnancy discrimination? Don’t rely on government for additional protection” [Vanessa Brown Calder, Cato]
- If you’re looking to dodge voir dire scrutiny: “How To Get On a Jury” [Mark Bennett, Reason]