- Behind a YouTube anti-fracking video labeled “Hydraulic Fracturing turns gardenhose to flamethrower,” there’s quite a story [Star-Telegram]
- BPA-endocrine alarms: “Why Nick Kristof’s Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Us All” [Trevor Butterworth, Forbes]
- Incy wincy spider shuts down $15 million construction project [Fox]
- Regulatory Balkanization of gasoline market worsens price volatility [Morriss/Boudreaux via David Henderson; more, WSJ] Will CAFE sink GM? [Holman Jenkins via same]
- “After a fire at a massive oil plant in California, residents want compensation. But it’s not that easy” [Above the Law]
- “Dispatches from the Duke Conference on ‘Conservative Visions of Our Environmental Future'” [Jonathan Adler]
- Broadway, dark? “The high cost of closing Indian Point” [Lesser & Bryce, NYP]
Archive for September, 2012
Americans cling bitterly to free speech rights
University of Chicago lawprof Eric Posner was just kidding in this Slate piece, trying to make us see how craven and unworthy some of his colleagues in the legal academy are for seeking to temper our First Amendment liberties in deference to opinion abroad. Right? Right? [David Frum, Julian Sanchez on Twitter, Andrew Stuttaford, Robert Shibley] Related: Matt Welch.
The school lunch program flop
One of the Obama administration’s signature federal initiatives has been the First Lady’s campaign for a redesigned federal school lunch program, with more centralized prescription from Washington aimed at healthier and more natural fare. Now the results are beginning to come in, and they aren’t pretty, as Baylen Linnekin documents: skimpy calorie counts that leave energy-burning athletes desperately hungry, food wastage as unpalatable fruit gets tossed into garbage bins, contraband chocolate syrup aimed at making skim milk palatable, and in Wisconsin mass student boycotts of food that’s “worse tasting, smaller sized and higher priced.” More: Patrick Richardson/PJ Media, Althouse. Earlier here (new rules discourage scratch-cooking), here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, etc. More: “This year, we’ll be hungry by 2:00…. We would eat our pencils.” [Caroline May, Daily Caller]
Elizabeth Warren law license flap
John Steele at Legal Ethics Forum and Mark Thompson at League of Ordinary Gentlemen don’t see much substantiation to back up the allegation lodged by some critics that the Harvard professor and Senate candidate, who doesn’t have a Massachusetts law license, overstepped the rules on unauthorized practice of law in her consulting work.
Update: Thompson is now taking the allegations more seriously based on new information unearthed by William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection about Warren’s representation of a Massachusetts client on issues arising from Massachusetts law. But John Steele at Legal Ethics Forum does not find the representation as described (in a federal bankruptcy court) to raise UPL flags. For one state’s view on whether admission to practice before a federal bankruptcy court is a valid defense to charges of UPL concerning state-law issues ancillary to that practice, see also In the Matter of the Reinstatement of Mooreland-Rucker, Oklahoma Supreme Court, 2010 (thanks to a reader for the tip). More: Bader.
September 26 roundup
- I suppose it will be said to “politicize” the Florida Supreme Court races to point out that Justices Quince and Pariente joined awful, politicized rulings on everything from liability suits to Bush v. Gore [Florida Current]
- Courtesy of the taxpayers: “TV sitcoms to incorporate Obamacare pitches?” [Jazz Shaw, HotAir]
- “Bringing out-of-state cases to Philadelphia simply for … filing fees is a wrong-headed policy.” [WSJ Law Blog]
- GM and Chrysler bailout: Steve Chapman corrects Jumpin’ Jenny Granholm and other myth-spinners [Chicago Tribune/ABJ, earlier]
- “Transit agencies may get reprieve from patent troll” [Greater Greater Washington, earlier here, etc.]
- Another view of the beef producers vs. ABC (“pink slime”) case [Steven Brill, Reuters, earlier]
- “A Fine for Doing Good: The Justice Department sues a bank for prudent lending” [WSJ editorial]
“Boogaard’s Parents File Lawsuit Against the N.H.L. Players’ Association”
“The parents of Derek Boogaard, the N.H.L. enforcer who died in May 2011 of an accidental overdose of prescription painkillers and alcohol, have sued the N.H.L. Players’ Association. … The suit seeks the $4.8 million in salary he was scheduled to make and $5 million in punitive damages.” [NY Times, Andrew Buzin]
Labor and employment roundup
- “Wisconsin Judge To Voters: Drop Dead” [Matt Patterson, CEI; Adam Freedman, PoL; J.D. Tuccille, Reason]
- “How much of Occupy rally shrinkage is due to unions moving on and focusing their energy elsewhere?” [@daveweigel]
- Should babysitters be legally entitled to work rules and meal breaks? California Senate approves “Domestic Workers Bill of Rights” pushed by celebs, AFL-CIO [Politico, earlier]
- Good luck in getting that “don’t disparage or defame” employment policy past the NLRB [Molly DiBianca, Delaware Employment Law Blog]
- “Hospital unionization harms the sick” [David Bier and Iain Murray, Capital Research Center]
- Penn, Columbia: we’ll use this big cash pot to discriminate in faculty hiring [Minding the Campus: KC Johnson, John Rosenberg, Roger Clegg]
- More on NLRB’s new curbs on confidentiality in internal employee investigations [WSJ Law Blog, earlier]
Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) challenge at the Supreme Court
Following numerous lower court decisions striking down the federal marriage definition provisions of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, the U.S. Supreme Court is very likely to take up the question this year. In Monday’s Cato podcast, I discuss the long road that brought DOMA to the Court and explain a few of the complications, including a potential second case arising from the Ninth Circuit’s invalidation of California’s Proposition 8. The separate DOMA provision establishing that states aren’t obliged to recognize same-sex marriages from other states isn’t under challenge.
Medical liability and health care quality
New research by Michael Frakes of Cornell: “I estimate a small and statistically insignificant relationship between malpractice forces and two metrics of healthcare quality emphasized by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality: avoidable hospitalization rates (reflective of outpatient quality) and inpatient mortality rates for selected medical conditions.” [SSRN]
Groupon customer “remedy”
It may be worse than before class action lawyers got involved, argues Ted Frank [Point of Law]