- Bloomberg’s petty tyranny: NYC plans ban on soft drink sizes bigger than 16 oz. at most eateries, though free refills and sales of multiple cups will still be legal [NBC New York]
- Will Michigan suppress a heritage-breed pig farm? [PLF] NW bakers cautiously optimistic as state of Washington enacts Cottage Food Act [Seattle Times]
- Hide your plates: here comes the feds’ mandatory recipe for school lunch [NH Register] School fined $15K for accidental soda [Katherine Mangu-Ward] Opt out of school lunch! [Baylen Linnekin]
- Losing his breakfast: court tosses New Yorker’s suit claiming that promised free food spread at club fell short [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
- Amid parent revolt, Massachusetts lawmakers intervene with intent to block school bake-sale ban [Springfield Republican, Boston Herald, Ronald Bailey]
- Interview on farm and food issues with Joel Salatin [Baylen Linnekin, Reason]
- “Nutella class action settlement far worse than being reported” [Ted Frank]
- Under political pressure, candy bar makers phase out some consumer choices [Greg Beato] Hans Bader on dismissal of Happy Meal lawsuit [CEI, earlier]
Author Archive
Hey, EEOC….
… can we have a heart-to-heart talk about some of what’s wrong with your new guidelines restricting employers from asking about job applicants’ criminal records? [Robin Shea] More: Diane Katz/Heritage, Ted Frank, Federalist Society podcast with Maurice Emsellem, Dominique Ludvikson and Dean Reuter, Brian Wolfman/Public Citizen (favorable to rules). Amy Alkon rounds up several more links, regarding which it should be noted that the EEOC has traditionally conceded an employer’s right to consider an embezzler’s rap sheet when filling a bookkeeping job — but not necessarily an axe-murderer’s rap sheet, since that’s not demonstrably “job-relevant.” Don’t you feel reassured now?
In related news, Roger Clegg reports that the House has passed a provision blocking EEOC enforcement of the guidance, which is encouraging as a preliminary matter; the Senate, however, is very likely to take a different position, and the rider will have no effect if the Senate view prevails. [NRO]
“A trap for small business”: Welcome Baltimore Sun readers
I’m in the paper with an opinion piece on federal prosecutors’ assault on small business for bank deposit “structuring.” My posts on the South Mountain Creamery case, in which federal authorities seized the bank account of a Middletown, Maryland dairy which had allegedly been depositing farmers’ market proceeds in installments of less than $10,000, are here and here. Van Smith of the Baltimore City Paper deserves particular credit for breaking the structuring story with reports here and here. Update: South Mountain case settles.
Environment roundup
- “A loose coalition of eco-anarchist groups is increasingly launching violent attacks on scientists.” [Nature]
- “Jury Blames ‘Erin Brockovich’ Doc For His Patient’s Illness, Not Defendants” [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
- “Judge declines to toss Chevron RICO case against lawyer over $18bln award” [Reuters, Folkman/Letters Blogatory] Videos tell Chevron side of story in hotly disputed Ecuador Lago Agrio dispute [“Amazon Post“]
- NGOs’ bag of tricks: Greenpeace helped pack International Whaling Commission thirty years ago by paying dues for small states to join [Skodvin/Andresen via Spiro/OJ]
- Distinguishing the areas of clear vision from the blind spots in Chicago Tribune’s flameproofing series [Coyote, earlier]
- Wilderness regs prevent town of Tombstone, Ariz. from rebuilding water pipes destroyed in fire [Daily Caller]
- Look! Over that factory! It’s a plume of (shudder) … water vapor! [Coyote]
- National Science Foundation grantee: “Tort actions may impel industry to … redesign chemical molecules … to be less toxic.” [David Oliver, Ted Frank]
ADA: pool open a while longer
Averting a Memorial Day shutdown of many public and hotel/motel pools, the Obama Department of Justice has again delayed its pending ADA lift rules. I explain at a new post at Cato.
Apple: a company with little use for Washington, D.C….
…and so Washington, D.C. watches with some satisfaction as government agencies and congressional panels begin to take bites at the super-successful company on antitrust, tax and other grounds. [David Boaz, Cato-at-Liberty and New York Daily News]. More on the affluent culture of Washington D.C. from Andrew Ferguson [via MR]
Employee “loses track of time” due to disability
Trying to let the mentally disabled employee go from its store in Woodland, Calif., though, proved costly to retailer Target Corp., which has agreed to pay $275,000 to extricate itself from her wrongful termination claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act. [Sacramento Bee] The worker had found employment at Target with the assistance of a nonprofit organization that works with mentally disabled workers, and which had supplied her with a “job coach.” It remains to be seen whether employers like Target will continue to accept such placements with enthusiasm as the perceived legal risks of doing so keep rising.
P.S. Thanks to commenters for drawing out this point: yes, Target’s ultra-stringent employee discipline policy for failure to take timely lunch breaks does look like a lawyer-driven adaptation to its high legal exposure (especially in California) to class action suits claiming that employers permitted work during designated breaks. See, for example, this post and this one. Note that in each case the company feels constrained to fire the workers because they are putting in too much work, not too little.
“McMahon’s wrestling company threatens JI with libel lawsuit”
World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon is again running for a Connecticut seat in the U.S. Senate, two years after she won the Republican nomination for the state’s other Senate seat but then lost badly to Democrat Richard Blumenthal. Chris Powell of the Manchester Journal-Inquirer, a prominent commentator on Connecticut politics, expressed scathing opinions on the type of entertainment purveyed by WWE under McMahon’s leadership, deeming it a “business of violence, pornography, and general raunch.” On Friday a WWE vice president, in a letter sent to news media throughout the state, “threatened the Journal Inquirer with a libel lawsuit.” In response, the newspaper contends that “The programs were issues in the Senate election two years ago and, by distributing its libel lawsuit threat throughout Connecticut’s news media, the McMahon campaign aims to prevent them from being mentioned this year.” [via Jared Eberle](& Rick Green, Hartford Courant)
May 29 roundup
- Congress again debates bad idea of race-based government for native Hawaiians [Ramesh Ponnuru, Ilya Shapiro/Cato; earlier here, etc.]
- “I could have been killed for blogging.” [Patterico, Scott Greenfield] Latest blogger “swatting” (bogus police call) hits RedState’s Erick Erickson [same] Incivility is a hazard for bloggers, but fear for families’ physical safety shouldn’t be [Jonathan Adler, Amy Alkon] Dear authorities in Montgomery County, Md. and elsewhere: you should know it’s not every day Radley Balko calls for tougher law enforcement. Earlier here and here.
- More dying from guns than from car crashes? Eugene Volokh skewers some misleading arguments from the Detroit Free Press;
- Mississippi: Judge dismisses Dickie Scruggs’s motion to vacate bribery conviction [AP; Tom Freeland and more]
- Washington Times kindly cites coverage in this space on Maryland “structuring” prosecutions [editorial]. Maryland delayed foreclosures and is now paying the price in slower housing recovery [Hayley Peterson, Examiner]
- Andrew Pincus defends arbitration and SCOTUS decision in Concepcion [NYTimes “DealBook”; NLJ] Effort in Florida to ease use of arbitration in med-mal disputes [Miami Herald]
- Michigan Supreme Court judge Diane Hathaway, elected via 2008’s most unfair attack ad, is now in a spot of ethical bother [Ted Frank]
Never use electric razor while sleeping
The Wacky Warning Label contest has chosen its annual finalists. Among them: “Caution: griddle surface may be hot during and after cooking.”