- After parking lot shooting Pinellas County, Florida sheriff “claim[ed] his hands were tied by Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. But that is not true” [Jacob Sullum, Reason, more; David French, NRO]
- Major USA Today story on origins of Baltimore’s devastating crime and murder wave [Brad Heath; Jonathan Blanks, Cato]
- Related: in Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force police scandal, plea bargains punished the innocent [Capital News Service investigation by Angela Roberts, Lindsay Huth, Alex Mann, Tom Hart and James Whitlow: first, second, third parts]
- California Senate votes 26 to 11 to abolish felony murder rule, under which participants in some serious crimes face murder rap if others’ actions result in death [ABA Journal, bill]
- New Jersey’s reforms curtailing cash bail, unlike Maryland’s, seem to be working reasonably well [Scott Shackford; longer Shackford article on bail in Reason; earlier here, here, etc.]
- “Miami Police Union Says Head-Kicking Cop ‘Used Great Restraint,’ Shouldn’t Be Charged” [Jerry Iannelli, Miami New Times]
“Sheldon Silver sentenced to 7 years in prison for corruption”
“Sheldon Silver, the disgraced ex-speaker of the New York state Assembly, was sentenced to seven years in prison — less than the 12 years he was sentenced to previously” before an appeals court ordered retrial [Kaja Whitehouse, New York Post, more (wanted to keep some of the money); Adam Klasfeld/Courthouse News; our coverage over the years]
Environment roundup
- “San Francisco Bans Straws, Cocktail Swords” [Christian Britschgi; more (funny memes proliferate)]
- Sharper distinction between legal treatment of “threatened” and “endangered” species would help species recovery efforts and line up with Congress’s intent [Jonathan Wood, PERC Reports]
- “It’s really interesting to me that the conversation around vegetarianism and the environment is so strongly centered on an assumption that every place in the world is on the limited land/surplus water plan.” [Sarah Taber Twitter thread]
- New podcast from Cato’s Libertarianism.org on eminent domain and civil forfeiture, with Tess Terrible and Trevor Burrus. More/background at Cato Daily Podcast;
- “OMG cellphone cancer coverup” piece in Guardian’s Observer “strewn with rudimentary errors and dubious inferences” [David Robert Grimes; David Gorski, Science-Based Medicine corrects piece by same authors, Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie, that ran in The Nation]
- Oh, that pro bono: despite talk of donated time, trial lawyers stand to gain 20% of proceeds should Boulder climate suit reach payday [John O’Brien, Legal NewsLine, earlier]
Claim: doctors should be obliged to ask patients about guns
Right on schedule, here come claims that doctors may have an actual generalized legal duty (not just a right) to ask about guns in the home [Elisabeth J. Ryan, Petrie-Flom Center “Bill of Health”]
Infant formula is not a health crime
About the recent “U.S. opposes breast feeding at the World Health Organization” flap [Joan B. Wolf, New York Daily News; Susan Yoshihara, The Hill; Hanna Rosin’s 2009 Atlantic piece]
Good riddance, Persuader Rule
“The U.S. Labor Department on Tuesday officially rescinded the Obama administration’s ‘persuader rule’ that would have required lawyers and consultants to report on advice given to employers about persuading employees on union issues.” Among its numerous other problems, the rule drew fire from the American Bar Association and other groups as an infringement on lawyer-client confidentiality. [ABA Journal, earlier]
Caught in their own wringer
“American firms cheering for protectionism in the form of tariffs on their foreign competitors should be careful what they wish for. As they say, ‘What goes around comes around.’ Case in point: The American washer and dryer manufacturer Whirlpool Corp.,” which applauded tariffs on imports of washing machines and then found its own costs of production soaring when steel and aluminum imports also came under tariffs. [Veronique de Rugy, syndicated; @SoberLook on Twitter]
Appalling: “Supervisors move to ban workplace cafeterias”
“Two city legislators on Tuesday are expected to announce legislation banning on-site workplace cafeterias in an effort to promote and support local restaurants.” The Golden Gate Restaurant Association, embracing the role of villains in an Ayn Rand novel, are backing the measure, sponsored by San Francisco supervisors Ahsha Safai and Aaron Peskin. The bill would be prospective only, so that while the famed in-house dining options at tech headquarters like Twitter’s could continue, new corporate arrivals would not be allowed to start anything similar. [Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, San Francisco Examiner]
University of Minnesota’s pronoun prescription
Not using someone’s preferred pronoun — “whether it’s he, she, ‘ze’ or something else” — could become a disciplinary offense, escalating up to firing and expulsion, at the University of Minnesota under a proposed policy [Maura Lerner, Minneapolis Star-Tribune] I’m quoted as saying that although protecting transgender members of its community from purposeful insult or breach of privacy is a legitimate purpose, the university is likely to fare poorly in court if it presumes to punish community members for not using new-coined gender pronouns on demand [Sarah George, The College Fix]:
“As a public institution with an educational mission to uphold, Minnesota can appropriately make some demands of its members, such as respecting norms of collegiality, refraining from insult, observing consistent standards in filling out paperwork, and so forth,” Olson told The Fix via email.
“But this does not constitute a blank check to police and punish language use generally, especially not in politically charged areas of speech, and most especially when the policy departs from viewpoint neutrality to side with some controversial views over others.”…
“Before presuming to force university members to mouth or endorse politically controversial language as a condition of keeping their jobs or remaining enrolled, the university must show that such coerced expression is essential to its functioning as an educational institution. It has not, and I suspect cannot, made such a showing,” he said.
Earlier on pronoun prescription: Canada, New York City, Oregon, more.
Everything you know about Flint water is wrong
“Reference levels” aren’t poisoning, Flint at the height of the episode had lower blood-lead incidence in children than many other communities large and small, the number of cases with lead exposure calling for therapeutic measures appears to have been zero, and so forth. “It is not possible, statistically speaking, to distinguish the increase that occurred at the height of the contamination crisis from other random variations over the previous decade.” In short, everything you know about the Flint water episode is wrong. [Hernán Gómez and Kim Dietrich, New York Times; earlier here, here, and here]