- 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]
Posts Tagged ‘Minnesota’
“Minnesota ‘unsession’ dumps 1,175 obsolete, silly laws”
Wow, more of this please [St. Paul Pioneer Press]:
It’s no longer a crime in Minnesota to carry fruit in an illegally sized container. The state’s telegraph regulations are gone. And it’s now legal to drive a car in neutral — if you can figure out how to do it.
Those were among the 1,175 obsolete, unnecessary and incomprehensible laws that Gov. Mark Dayton and the Legislature repealed this year as part of the governor’s “unsession” initiative. His goal was to make state government work better, faster and smarter….
In addition to getting rid of outdated laws, the project made taxes simpler, cut bureaucratic red tape, speeded up business permits and required state agencies to communicate in plain language.
If lawmakers in Minnesota could identify 1,175 worthless or outdated laws that could be rooted out with little real political resistance, imagine how many other worthless or outdated laws there are that are not so easy to uproot because they work to the benefit of one group or other (cross-posted from Cato at Liberty).
More: list of laws.
Labor and employment roundup
- “House Report criticizes EEOC for litigation before conciliation” [HRM America, attention-stirring Merrily Archer survey and more]
- Do you gripe about upward spiral of executive salaries? Do you want to force employers into fuller pay disclosure? Be aware of the tension between those two positions [Gary Shapiro of CEI, Daily Caller]
- Because the union is all about respect: Laborers/LIUNA brings giant inflatable rat to St. Louis funeral home [KTVI]
- Reality-based: “during five of last six federal minimum wage increases, nation fell into recession” [Thomas Firey, Cato via @scottlincicome] Minimum wage and automation [Ira Stoll, earlier]
- Minnesota legislature expands employer regulation under apple-pie heading of “Women’s Economic Security Act” [Courtney Ward-Reichard guest-posting at Daniel Schwartz’s] How well are state-mandated employee leaves working in California? [Coyote]
- “EEOC continues fight against severance agreements, while employers fight back” [Jon Hyman, earlier on CVS case]
- OSHA targets auto suppliers in South for enforcement crackdown, rationale to be supplied later [Sean Higgins, DC Examiner via Instapundit (“Well, he can’t come right out and say it’s about hurting non-union shops”)]
Costs of criticizing a physician
The defendant in the Duluth doctor-rating defamation case that we recounted here and here “told the Star Tribune he spent the equivalent of two years’ income, some of which he had to borrow from relatives who supplied the money by raiding their retirement funds.” The Minnesota Supreme Court eventually ruled that his comments were protected opinion. The doctor/plaintiff, for his part, spent $60,000 pursuing the suit. [Twin Cities Business]
The same article, a “Lawsuits of the Year 2013” feature, also recounts how a couple under the influence of “sovereign citizen” teachings “filed more than $250 billion in liens, and other claims, against those they considered the cause of their problems, including [Hennepin County Sheriff Rich] Stanek, county attorneys and other court officials. The liens were filed against vehicles, houses and even mineral rights.” When Stanek went to refinance his property, he discovered he had been hit with $25 million in liens which took “several years” to remove entirely. The husband of the couple was sent to prison.
The arbitrariness of campaign finance law
George Will on why you may be out of luck if you’re the thirteenth donor in Minnesota. [syndicated/Owatonna, Minn., People’s Press] In a different sense, however, campaign finance law can be seen as quite calculated as opposed to arbitrary:
Eugene McCarthy, a Democrat who represented Minnesota in the U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1971, said that in Washington anything said three times is deemed a fact. It is constantly said that today’s campaign regulations are “post-Watergate” reforms. Many were indeed written after the Nixon-era scandals. But the push for more government regulation of political speech began because Democrats were dismayed by what McCarthy accomplished [in challenging incumbent President Lyndon Johnson] in 1968.
An editorial voice on forfeiture
Would that other newspapers were as forthright as calling for an end to “policing for profit” as the Grand Forks Herald. North Dakota is already considered to be one of the states that does best at curbing the abuse of civil forfeiture; adjoining Minnesota does less well.
“Elimination of bias” for Minnesota lawyers
Scott Johnson at Power Line has a lookback-with-updates on the controversy over Minnesota CLE (continuing legal education) requirements precariously balanced between indoctrination and vacuity. “What bias does the Court seek to eliminate? If the elimination-of-bias requirement can be satisfied by courses such as ‘Understanding Problem Gambling,’ as it can, the requirement has become just one more way of making a statement while making the practice of law slightly more unpleasant than it already was or is.” We covered the issue back in 2003 (“compulsory chapel”).
Medical roundup
- Pressure from HHS leads day cares to ban practice of baby-swaddling, and not everyone’s pleased about that [Abby Schachter, Reason]
- “If Big Pharma likes your healthcare plan, you can keep it” [Tim Carney]
- For “those of us with polycystic kidney disease… stringent FDA regulation seems to be taking away hope” [Bill Brazell, Atlantic] And: speaking of the FDA, “Dallas Buyers Club Is a Terrific Libertarian Movie” [David Boaz, Cato] Also: New Peter Huber book, “The Cure in the Code: How 20th Century Law Is Undermining 21st Century Medicine” [Basic/Manhattan Institute, Wired]
- $7,440 annual expected loss per hospital bed in Florida vs. $810 in Minnesota, and other med-mal loss statistics [Becker’s Hospital Review via TortsProf]
- Charge: black lung defense firm finds ways to conceal medical expert reports from adversaries [Center for Public Integrity via Joe Patrice, Above the Law]
- Prescribing drugs for off-label uses is perfectly legal, but Johnson & Johnson will pay $2.2 billion for promoting the practice [Ann Althouse]
- Jury awards $4 million legal malpractice verdict against prominent D.C.-based plaintiff’s firm [Richmond Times-Dispatch via White Coat]
- “Can You Secretly Record the Medical-Legal Exam?” [Eric Turkewitz]
Richard Epstein on Carnegie Hall’s $419,000 stagehands
Yes, the New York City arts scene has a lot of money sloshing around in it, that of Minneapolis-St. Paul much less, but in neither instance are performing-arts labor unions doing well at reaching a livable accommodation with the needs of high culture. [Hoover “Defining Ideas”]
In New Jersey, an “epic” business partnership lawsuit
“There is no reason in the world for a case to be tried 20 years after it was filed,” said Judge Deanne Wilson, who said she knew of nothing matching the case in the New Jersey courts. The judge was highly critical of the conduct of the defendants, a real estate family led by Minnesota Vikings owner Zygmunt “Zygi” Wilf, which she found had misappropriated funds owed to longtime business partners. [Ben Horowitz, Newark Star-Ledger, Minneapolis Star-Tribune and more, Field of Schemes]