- “Bryon Farmer of the Blackfeet Tribe Jailed For Talking About Corruption In Tribal Government” [Ken at Popehat] “Popehat Signal: Vengeful AIDS Denialist Sues Critic In Texas” [same]
- Persons with federal government contracts can’t give to federal candidates or parties. Too broad? [Ilya Shapiro and Trevor Burrus, Cato]
- “Together at last! ‘Some US conservatives laud Russia’s anti-gay bill.'” [@jon_rauch on Associated Press re: “propaganda” measure]
- More on Second Circuit decision ruling scientific conclusions akin to protected opinion for defamation purposes [Digital Media Law Project, earlier]
- San Antonio bars appointment to its city boards and commissions of anyone who has ever said anything demonstrating bias “against any person, group or organization on the basis of race” or various other protected categories [Eugene Volokh]
- Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader wins defamation suit holding gossip site operator liable for user comments [Sporting News] Michigan: “Ionia newspaper editor files defamation suit against critics” [MLive, Popehat with a critical view, update at Popehat following dismissal]
- “Hate speech” at issue: “Twitter releases users’ identities to French authorities after tough legal battles.” [JOLT]
Posts Tagged ‘wrong right’
Free speech roundup
- Already firebombed once: “Satirical French Magazine Publishes Caricatures Of Mohammed, White House Rebukes.” [Mediaite] More calls for punishing makers of anti-Muslim YouTube video for supposed incitement [Ann Althouse on Sarah Chayes, earlier here and here; also, the late Christopher Hitchens on “fire in a crowded theater” arguments] “The people who instigate these protests seek a very particular goal: an extension of Egyptian and Pakistani style blasphemy laws into the West.” [David Frum]
- “$60,000 Verdict for Blogging the Truth About A Person Intending to Get Him Fired – Reversed” [Volokh]
- Judge closes probe of opinion-maker influence in Google-Oracle battle [The Recorder, earlier]
- Weight-loss device promoter files, then drops suit against Public Citizen, consumerist website Fair Warning [Paul Alan Levy, Fair Warning]
- “How Ag Gag Laws Suppress Free Speech and the Marketplace of Ideas” [Baylen Linnekin, earlier here, etc.]
- Big government Republicans in charge: “GOP Platform Changed To Now Target All Forms Of Pornography” [Andrew Kirell, Mediaite; Volokh]
- Missouri activist starts website criticizing local cops and soon the department’s halls display what looks very much like a “Wanted” poster of him [Eapen Thampy, Agitator]
New at HuffPo: Bryan Fischer, the Miller-Jenkins case, and kidnap apologetics
The American Family Association’s zany yet high-profile Bryan Fischer is in the news for calling for an “Underground Railroad” by which his fellow believers would “rescue” kids from gay parents. In my new Huffington Post piece, just up, I trace two main threads in his argument — that gay parents are a menace to their kids, and that extralegal steps are called for to put “God’s law over man’s” – and show how the same messages have been emanating lately from some rather more respectable social-conservative quarters, in Princeton, N.J. and elsewhere. The controversy develops in part from the Miller-Jenkins custody and kidnapping case, long a topic of coverage in this space; in the latest development, Mennonite clergyman Kenneth Miller (applauded by Fischer) has just gone on trial for allegedly abetting the spiriting of Isabella Miller-Jenkins (no relation), now 10, out of the country in defiance of court orders.
Fischer now says he wasn’t suggesting that kids of same-sex couples be abducted from their beds by Christians unrelated to those children, but he definitely is encouraging believers to use extralegal force in cases that pit one of theirs against a gay parent in a custody dispute. He hints broadly that the next test case after Miller-Jenkins will be that of a divorced woman he describes who is losing custody to her gay ex-husband, and who just might disappear with the child into the “Underground Railroad” he promotes. Meanwhile, the Liberty University School of Law in Lynchburg, Va., whose faculty has multiple connections with Lisa Miller’s side of the Miller-Jenkins litigation, stirred criticism when related civil-disobedience precepts reportedly emerged as part of the curriculum in a class.
It might be added that this, like so many unsettling developments on the Right, is not without its parallels on the Left. Since the 1980s and the famous Elizabeth Morgan case, some feminists have operated a so-called Underground Railroad to enable mothers to defy court orders and abduct their kids away from fathers with shared custody or visitation orders. Usually some allegation is made of abuse, but the tactic has been used and applauded even where a judge has considered the abuse allegations and declined to accept them. (Law prof Nancy Polikoff discusses her mixed feelings about the Miller-Jenkins case here).
Reacting to the potential for lawlessness in this realm, Congress has passed at least two statutes of relevance: the International Child Abduction Remedies Act, signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988, and the International Parental Kidnapping Crime Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993.
Update Aug. 15: Jury convicts Kenneth Miller.
About that “gay parenting” study
It’s almost entirely off-topic for this site, but some readers may be interested in my new piece for Huffington Post (my first in that venue) poking some additional holes in an already much-criticized study by Mark Regnerus finding bad life outcomes among young adults who report that a parent had a same-sex relationship. Sample:
The Witherspoon Institute, discussing the study’s findings, adds another clue: “48% of the respondents with a GF [gay father], and 43% of the respondents with an LM [lesbian mother] indicated that they were either black or Hispanic.” Those numbers sound awfully high, and they are. They far exceed the roughly 30-percent black-plus-Hispanic share of the U.S. population. Why would young adults with minority backgrounds and a high rate of economic distress report having far more than their share of gay parents? Are they somehow more likely to grow up in homes with actual gay parents? Or are their parents somehow being overclassified as gay?
Putting together that with other anomalies in the study data, I conclude that the study does not come even close to measuring what it claims to be measuring. See also: Amy Davidson, New Yorker, among a whole mini-literature of responses.
April 16 roundup
- Although I’m known as a foe of everything John Edwards stands for, I hope he beats this campaign finance rap [Atlantic Wire]
- Michael Bloomberg launches demagogic new campaign against Stand Your Ground laws, calling to mind the recent critique of the NYC mayor’s paternalist dark side by Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic;
- Jerry Brown frees grandmother dubiously jailed in shaken-baby death [Slate, earlier]
- As Scruggs (Dickey not Earl) still pursues vindication, Alan Lange looks back on Mississippi scandals [YallPolitics]
- Deservedly favorable profile of Fifth Circuit judge Jerry Smith [NOLA]
- In which I tell off Bill Donohue’s Catholic League for its double insult last week to gays and to adoptive parents [IGF]
- “The Ninth Circuit was, believe it or not, correct” [Ilya Shapiro and Trevor Burrus, Cato, on administrative law case arising from NLRB rules change on drug rep overtime]
June 20 roundup
Politics edition:
- Mother ship? White House staffers depart for Harvard Law School [Politico]
- New York: “Lawmakers consider lawyer-friendly med-mal bills,” even as many key legislators moonlight at personal injury firms [Reuters]
- David Brooks on explosive political potential of Fannie Mae scandal [NYTimes] After Kentucky bar panel’s vote to disbar Chesley, Ohio AG pulls him off Fannie Mae suit [Adler, Frank, Beth Musgrave/Lexington Herald-Leader]
- Alabama legislature removes Jim Crow language from state constitution — but black lawmakers oppose the idea [Constitutional Daily]
- AAJ lobbyist Andy Cochran works GOP turf, has convinced trial lawyers to sponsor Christian radio program [Mokhiber, “Seventh Amendment Advocate“]
- Centers for Disease Control funnels grants to allies for political advocacy on favored public-health causes [Jeff Stier, Daily Caller]
- Must have mistaken her for a jury: “John Edwards Sought Millions From Heiress” [ABC News] “One thing [worse than Edwards’s] conduct is the government’s effort to put him in jail for it.” [Steve Chapman]
Birthers’ dubious boast
Some believe the Obama camp has spent a fortune in lawyers’ fees responding to far-fetched “birther” lawsuits, but John Bringardner at Legal Blog Watch is skeptical about that claim. Speaking of which, don’t you wish more conservatives would keep their distance from the site WorldNetDaily? [Jon Henke]
Texas Senate considers asbestos reform rollback
In 2007, the Texas Supreme Court unanimously decided Borg-Warner v. Flores, holding that a defendant in an asbestos case was not liable unless its product was a “substantial factor” in causing injury.
But there are now bills in the Texas House and Senate, SB 1123 (recently reported out of Senate committee) and HB 1811, that seek to undo this by defining “substantial factor” to merely mean that a product “contributed to the [plaintiff’s] cumulative exposure”—whether or not other defendants’ products were far more responsible for a plaintiff’s injury. The effect of this rollback would be to return Texas to the role of asbestos magnet, since it could conceivably create indiscriminate liability for hundreds of innocent businesses in any given case. The effect will be very similar to the infamous Lipke rule in Madison County, Illinois that extracted billions of dollars from the innocent this decade.
Texans for Lawsuit Reform has a fact-sheet, as does the Texas Civil Justice League.
Watch out, motel owners
Social conservative Maggie Gallagher, with whose views we have been known to differ, suggests a tort of “facilitating” adultery that would apply to businesses that “that intentionally and explicitly attempt to profit from acts of adultery”. [NRO “Corner”, first, second posts]
P.S. Eugene Volokh now has a more lengthy and serious treatment: “you can love marriage and hate adultery without thinking that more tort liability will make things better.”
GWB as regulator: new opt-out “conscience” rules for health workers
“The Bush administration, as expected, announced new protections on Thursday for health care providers who oppose abortion and other medical procedures on religious or moral grounds.” (NYT via GruntDoc). I briefly criticized this bad idea in a post last week at Secular Right, and there are hopes that the incoming Obama administration will rescind it. P.S. Longer post now up over there.