- Coverage of Cato Constitution Day panel on First Amendment with Nadine Strossen, P.J. O’Rourke, Eric Rassbach, Ilya Shapiro [Concurring Opinions] And First-Amendment-oriented articles in the latest Cato Supreme Court Review: Judge David Sentelle on freedom of speech as liberty for all and not just for the organized press, Allen Dickerson on McCutcheon v. FEC, Ilya Shapiro on SBA List v. Driehaus, and Trevor Burrus on protest buffer zones;
- Eric Holder “the worst Attorney General on press freedom issues in a generation, possibly since Richard Nixon’s John Mitchell” [Trevor Timm]
- “7 Things Cracked Got Wrong About Free Speech” [Greg Lukianoff of FIRE, who has a new short book out entitled “Freedom From Speech“]
- As ACLU recognizes, Arizona law purportedly banning revenge porn would do more than that [Masnick, Popehat, Greenfield, Sullum/Reason]
- Critical overview of “media reform” movement led by wildly misnamed pressure group Free Press [Barbara Joanna Lucas, Capital Research Center]
- In lawsuits against Yelp arising from bad reviews, courts have not been impressed by theory that the service extorts reviewed businesses [Paul Alan Levy; a restaurateur upset at Yelp strikes back in a different way]
- Proposal to make scientific misconduct a crime “would seem to raise serious First Amendment problems” [Howard Wasserman]
Search Results for ‘"eric holder"’
“Justice Department Urges Banks to Implicate Employees”
“The Justice Department has a suggestion for banks hoping to avoid criminal charges: Rat out your employees.” By agreeing to throw individuals under the bus, the company as a whole will qualify for valuable cooperation credits. [Ben Protess, New York Times “DealBook”] On a similar culture-of-informants theme, Eric Holder is proposing to further boost bounties for Wall Street informants into more massive contingency-fee territory: “Mr. Holder will urge Congress to allow bigger whistleblower rewards under the 1989 Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act…. Current law caps any Firrea whistleblower payment at $1.6 million.” [Wall Street Journal, earlier coverage and specifically]
Citigroup to pay $7 billion in mortgage settlement
WSJ editorial this morning: “We hold no brief for Citi, which has been rescued three times by the feds…. [But] good luck finding a justification for [the $7 billion figure] in the settlement agreement. The number seems to have been pulled out of thin air since it’s unrelated to Citi’s mortgage-securities market share or any other metric we can see beyond having media impact.
“This week’s settlement includes $4 billion for the Treasury, roughly $500 million for the states and FDIC, and $2.5 billion for mortgage borrowers. That last category has become a fixture of recent government mortgage settlements, even though the premise of this case involves harm done to bond investors, not mortgage borrowers.” More: Bloomberg. And the settlement directs Citigroup to hire former Eric Holder associate Thomas Perrilli, now at Jenner & Block, for a monitorship that is likely to prove an extremely lucrative plum [Reynolds Holding, Alison Frankel] Also: Ira Stoll.
Schools roundup
- California voters thought they’d reined in don’t-hurry-on-English “bilingual” instruction methods, but legislators have other ideas [Steven Greenhut, San Diego Union-Tribune]
- “Report: Too Much Regulation Is Hurting Scientists” [Inside Higher Ed via Instapundit; two earlier federal surveys “found principal investigators spend 42 percent of their time on administrative tasks”]
- This should end well: Mayor de Blasio hands keys to NYC school system over to teacher’s federation [NY Daily News]
- “How the Media Again Failed on the Duke Lacrosse Story” [KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor, Jr.]
- Chicago: “Teacher Shows Kids Carpentry Tools, Gets Suspended on ‘Weapons’ Charge” [Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids]
- On school discipline and zero tolerance, Eric Holder draws the wrong lessons [Hans Bader, CEI “Open Market”] “Prior problem behavior accounts for the racial gap in school suspensions” [Wright et al., Journal of Criminal Justice, PDF]
- “The little secret of public higher ed: it’s a massive transfer of wealth from lower to upper classes” [Roger Pilon, 2Paragraphs]
Scant state interest in rolling back Stand Your Ground
Although Eric Holder, Barack Obama and a long list of liberal publications and organizations have lately pressed the cause, states recognizing “stand your ground” principles of self-defense show little inclination to overturn them [Annie Yu, Washington Times last week, quoting me; AP] “The substantial majority view among the states, by a 31-19 margin, is no duty to retreat.” [Eugene Volokh] Barack Obama’s voting record on related issues in the Illinois state senate may surprise some readers [Jacob Sullum, who has been giving the issue thorough coverage] “Blacks benefit from Florida ‘Stand Your Ground’ law at disproportionate rate” [Patrick Howley, Daily Caller] Some more thoughts from Mark Bennett at Defending People. Bonus: what it’s like to be mounted in a fistfight (alleging that bare hands and feet have been responsible for 4,028 deaths since 2007, more than rifles and shotguns combined).
Keep prosecuting until they get the result they want?
As I mentioned in my CNN piece on Friday, various voices are calling for the federal prosecution of George Zimmerman following his acquittal on state-court charges [commentary about that: Jonathan Adler, Jacob Sullum, Steve Chapman, Eugene Volokh; see also the update to my Friday post regarding the possibility of “hate crime” charges] In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) takes the view that a federal prosecution would be improper double jeopardy, implicitly rebuking its own executive director, Anthony Romero, who had suggested otherwise in early comments to the press following the verdict [TalkLeft (“the organization came to its senses”), Politico, text of letter from Laura Murphy, director of ACLU Washington Office, PDF; see also David Bernstein]
As I noted in my CNN piece, the exception for “dual sovereignty” prosecutions arose in a 1959 Supreme Court case called Bartkus v. Illinois, decided 5-4, in which the dissenters were the four liberals: Earl Warren, William Douglas, Hugo Black and William Brennan. Here are a few things that Hugo Black had to say in his dissent, joined by Douglas and Warren: “Fear and abhorrence of governmental power to try people twice for the same conduct is one of the oldest ideas found in western civilization,” one that did not disappear “even in the Dark Ages.” And “retrials after acquittal have been considered particularly obnoxious, worse even, in the eyes of many, than retrials after conviction.” In short, “double prosecutions for the same offense” are “contrary to the spirit of our free country.” (& welcome Instapundit, InsiderOnline readers)
March 7 roundup
- Thank you, Sens. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee, for getting Obama’s claim of warrantless domestic killing authority onto the media front burner — finally — through Sen. Paul’s filibuster last night. (More: Nick Gillespie, Conor Friedersdorf and background, Andrew Sullivan, Josh Blackman; Mediaite (Eric Holder sends letter, Rand Paul declares victory).
- Pending SCOTUS case of “Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl” is not the first Indian Child Welfare Act fiasco [Ann Althouse] More on ICWA [NYT Room for Debate]
- Has ABA now enlisted in the crusade against Stand Your Ground self-defense laws? [ABA Journal] Reminder #371 that the Martin-Zimmerman case is not likely to hinge on Florida’s SYG law [Jacob Sullum; Jeralyn Merritt with more detail on latest developments]
- “Transparency in Government: Finding Out How Much the Government’s Mistakes Are Costing Us” [Hans von Spakovsky, Heritage]
- “New York, to Stem Civil-Rights Suits, Is Now Reluctant to Settle” [NY Times]
- CPSC adopts sweeping CPSIA testing and certification rule [Nancy Nord] Should the CPSC be structured as a multi-member commission? [Commissioner Nord at Cato’s Regulation magazine, PDF, and “Conversations with Consumers“]
- Illinois: “Small Town to Lose Its Only Sledding Hill” [Free-Range Kids]
- “Word of the day: Mendicant” [New York Times education blog; I’m quoted in]
We *told* you UN treaties were a problem
“The head of the United Nations’ International Narcotics Control Board is calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to legally challenge marijuana ballot initiatives in Colorado and Washington.” It seems the U.S. is a signatory to a U.N.-drafted 1961 treaty under which nations agree to “adopt such measures as may be necessary to prevent the misuse of, and illicit traffic in, the leaves of the cannabis plant.” [Mike Riggs, Reason; Jacob Sullum]
February 23 roundup
Free speech and press issue:
- Even truthful statements libelous if made with actual malice? Outcry at “dangerous” First Circuit decision [Ambrogi/LegaLine, Bayard/Citizen Media Law, Coleman/Likelihood of Confusion]
- Eric Holder’s open and frank national dialogue on race sure isn’t going to take place in the workplace, thanks to fear of being sued [Goldberg, NRO “Corner”]
- Obama says he opposes revival of talk-radio-squelching Fairness Doctrine, though some in Congress favor it; some worry that under-the-radar FCC rules could accomplish some of the same effects without using the name [Matt Lasar and Julian Sanchez, Ars Technica; Ken @ Popehat] Both FCC and Waxman’s office deny report that Congressman met with staffers to promote new controls [Broadcasting & Cable, Unfair Doctrine]
- Freedom wins a round: Court strikes down California violent-videogame law as unconstitutional [Eugene Volokh] Cockfighting is lawful in Puerto Rico, but U.S. Congress has banned videos of same from the States, raising First Amendment issue [David Post @ Volokh; our posts in 1999 and last year]
- Are they being extraterritorial, or are we? “Congressional Efforts to Stymie ‘Libel Tourism’ Rev Up” [Citizen Media Law]
- Ordinarily there’s no legal penalty for whistling the theme to “The Addams Family” at your neighbors, unless you’re under a court order to refrain from doing so, in which case you might be locked up like one U.K. man [UPI]
- Any First Amendment implications in CPSIA bonfires of old children’s books? [Ted Frank, Valerie Jacobsen and others in comments]
New at Point of Law
Lots of good reading at my other law site:
- Hiring lawyers just to disqualify them from representing opponent? You mean there’s some ethical problem with that?
- Escaping East Texas’s patent-litigation Roach Motel;
- Gov. Crist to leave liberal majority intact on Florida Supreme Court?
- Lefty legal groups, including Center for Constitutional Rights and Alien Tort shops, reel as Madoff nukes foundation endowments;
- Check out new Ars Technica law and policy blog;
- Harvey Silverglate hopes Senators put Attorney General nominee Eric Holder on hot seat about notorious “Holder Memo”;
- Lawsuit-averse? Then avoid linking to Jones Day “like a hound dog avoids taking a bath” (BlockShopper case)
- Too bad NYTimes didn’t fact-check Bob Herbert op-ed on Chicago sit-in strike.