- “Lying to Doctors for Fitness for Duty Exam Can Still Get You Fired …But Only If You’re a Police Officer” [Connecticut cop smashed into two cars during epileptic seizure; Daniel Schwartz]
- “Emotional labor”: is having to be cheerful to customers a form of capitalist slavery? [Tim Noah v. Andrew Sullivan]
- CalPERS: “The pension fund that ate California” [Steve Malanga, City Journal]
- Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), other “worker centers” on the rise: “Will ‘alt-labor’ replace unions?” [Salon; critical anti-ROC site via Matt Patterson/CEI]
- Without benefit of an act of Congress, EEOC is interpreting the law to prohibit transgender bias [Workplace Prof]
- “The Nation: Government-Mandated Lunch Breaks are Somehow Libertarians’ Fault” [Shackford, Reason]
- Historian challenges received account of Haymarket Affair [Ron Radosh]
Posts Tagged ‘Connecticut’
January 9 roundup
- Pittsburgh firm sued in W.V.: “Law Firm Hit With $429,000 Verdict Over Faked Asbestos Suits” [Daniel Fisher]
- “Mashantucket tribal leaders indicted in theft” [Norwich Bulletin; My 2004 take on Connecticut’s pioneering casino tribe]
- New Mexico: “Booster Club Parents Fed up with Regs” [Saving Sports] No, you can’t blame football for Title IX-driven cuts at Mount St. Mary’s [same; University of Maryland Big Ten angle]
- How about this compromise: Gannett publishes where gun owners live, but agrees to do so using Apple Maps.
- On a more serious note, some thoughts on the efficacy of popular gun-control measures in preventing mass shootings [Steve Chapman, Larry Correia, Cato on gun control] “During our negotiations, it wasn’t the NRA that was opposed to putting the names of people receiving anti-psychotic medication into the Instant Check database…it was advocates for the mentally ill.” [Josh Tzuker quoted by Tom Coale]
- “FBI Arrests 26 People for Immigration Fraud; 21 from Law Firms” [Legal Ethics Forum]
- Would anyone notice if we abolished the Cabinet position of Secretary of Commerce? [Ira Stoll]
December 31 roundup
- Congress acts to squelch bounty-hunting suits over lack of fee stickers on bank ATMs [Kevin Funnell, Alexander Cohen/Atlas Society, earlier here and here]
- Because I would not stop for Tax/He kindly stopped for me [John Carney on Dec. 31 death incentive]
- Having signed up six-year-old client, lawyer files $100 million claim in Sandy Hook massacre [CT News Junkie; another of Mr. Pinsky’s publicity-related endeavors]
- One list (among many) of the craziest US lawsuits of 2012 [Samantha Rollins, The Week]
- “Sue to silence the NRA? Wind up paying its legal fees, more likely.” [@andrewmgrossman on this diary of a (would-be) speech-suppressing litigant] When some politicians aren’t bashing gunmakers, they’re shoveling money at them [Matt Welch on New York; my Reason piece a way back on Connecticut] “Should People Be Forced To Buy Liability Insurance For Their Guns?” [Megan McArdle]
- Also re: Newtown, “Laws made in the shadow of tragedy normally look odd to the healed mind.” [Tom Coale, HoCo Rising] And Radley Balko last year, via @amyalkon, on why “Laws named after crime victims and dead people are usually a bad idea.” [HuffPo]
- Could ubiquity of cellphones help explain plunge in crime rate? [ABA Journal on study by Klick et al]
The Newtown blame chain
Who to blame after a freak atrocity? For many of those who’ve felt obliged to comment, the question seems rather who not to blame:
- Lack of a national gun registry [cited by the New York Times, though the relevant weapon in Newtown was properly registered and posed no tracing difficulties to authorities; Jacob Sullum]
- Non-prosecution of people who lie on gun applications [cited by NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, though there’s no indication that anyone lied on a gun application in the Lanza case; Jacob Sullum again]
- Lack of cops in schools [Eli Lehrer on one of the NRA’s bad ideas]
- Violence in videogames [Jacob Sullum on another of the NRA’s bad ideas; more, Scott Shackford, Andrew Sullivan]
- Advances for secular and socially liberal causes in the recent U.S. elections [Michael Potemra and Peter Wehner on the comments of James Dobson]
- Congress, for its role in blocking an organized campaign to bankrupt gun makers through tort suits [Slate and, earlier, Erwin Chemerinsky, trying to revive this truly bad idea]
- People who want to reform public education and the organization of teaching [Katherine Mangu-Ward, though the union advocates she cites are claiming something closer to “this proves we’re right” than to “school choice causes shootings.”]
- In general, those terrible people who disagree with us [“Reading discussions on the web, you might come to believe that we don’t all share the goal of a society where the moral order is preserved, and where our children can be put on the bus to school without a qualm. But we do. We just disagree about how to make it happen.” — Dave Hoffman, Concur Op]
(& welcome Scott Greenfield, Jack Shafer readers)
Labor and employment roundup
- McDonald’s worker complains she’s not paid $15/hour, but there’s a logical problem with that [David Henderson]
- EEOC Phoenix office signs pact with Mexican consulates to curb discrimination against illegals [EEOC press release]
- “Former Lawmaker (and Ex-Felon) Urges Connecticut To Ban Discrimination Against Felons in 2013” [Daniel Schwartz]
- Connecticut: “NLRB sues to reinstate union saboteurs at nursing homes” [Gehrke, DC Examiner, Schwartz, Jillian Kay Melchior/NRO, earlier on pols that enable the strikers] More: Ivan Osorio.
- OSHA after clerk robbery: “handling money, working alone and standing behind open counters” expose employer to violations [OSHA press release]
- “N.D. Ill.: Under ADAAA, Asthma Triggered by Strong Perfume Might Be Disability” [Bagenstos]
- “Worker centers” allow organizers to dodge the legal responsibilities owed to workers by actual labor unions [Stefan Marculewicz and Jennifer Thomas, Fed Soc]
Public employment roundup
- More intimidation of city councilors by Southern California police unions [Reason, earlier]
- Illinois Gov. Quinn calls for federal bailout of state pension plans [Ted Biondo, Rockford Register-Star, Ivan Osorio/CEI] Illinois Policy Institute launches campaign against idea [Frank Keegan, State Budget Solutions, IllinoisWatchdog.org]
- Former TSA Agent Says Stealing from Passengers’ Bags Is Common [Daniel Politi, Slate]
- “Chicago Teacher’s Strike Illustrates the Need for Choice” [Steve Chapman]
- California’s Potemkin public pension reform [Greenhut, City Journal] Report on political clout of California public service unions [Daniel DiSalvo, MI]
- College example shows how rules that lock in job security for some often leave others insecure [Virginia Postrel]
- Connecticut sweetheart labor deal: “Now, the governor doesn’t exactly report it that way in the press” [Zachary Janowski, City Journal]
Garden tour slip and fall
Through garden tours and charitable dinners, Chrissie D’Esopo has raised some $175,000 over the years at her beautiful home in Avon, Ct., near Hartford. Following a lawsuit over a slip and fall — not to mention the claim filed by the visitor’s uninjured husband — she’s decided to call it quits, but might reconsider on hearing of a recently passed Connecticut recreational-immunity law that extends legal protection to property owners who do not profit from a visitor’s presence. Notes a commenter: “This is why we can’t have nice things.” [Hartford Courant]
Politics roundup
- Romney’s view of government benefits as politically hypnotic mirrors a “gratitude” fallacy advanced by many progressives [Julian Sanchez, Cato]
- Ascendancy of “constituent services” on Hill is a bad sign on many levels [Fred Bernstein, NYT]
- Dems vs. ACLU: platform vows to obliterate Citizens United [Damon Root]
- Union-backed “Protect our Jobs Amendment” (POJA) ballot proposal, constitutionalizing “collective bargaining” concept, would take Michigan down path of Italian labor law [Emilio Rocca, CEI “Open Market”]
- Isn’t it sad there’s a major political party contemptuous of science? Actually there are two [Alex Berezow/Hank Campbell, RCP]
- Yale unions defeat uniformed-worker unions in battle to take over New Haven government [NH Independent] SEIU almost had Connecticut-5 House seat in pocket, till FBI arrested candidate’s finance manager [PSI]
- Checking up on the outcome of a 1995 class action co-repped by attorney Barack Obama [Hans Bader]
The magic of expungement
“Is It Libel to Say Someone Was Arrested When the Arrest Record Has Been Erased?” Last year the New Jersey Supreme Court said no in a case raising the same issue as to convictions, saying the law’s expungement provision
is not intended to create an Orwellian scheme whereby previously public information — long maintained in official records — now becomes beyond the reach of public discourse on penalty of a defamation action. Although our expungement statute generally permits a person whose record has been expunged to misrepresent his past, it does not alter the metaphysical truth of his past, nor does it impose a regime of silence on those who know the truth.
Now, however, a lawsuit filed in Connecticut seeks to assert similar liability as to mention of an erased arrest record. The state erasure statute provides that the person whose record is erased “shall be deemed to have never been arrested within the meaning of the general statutes with respect to the proceedings so erased and may so swear under oath.” Eugene Volokh finds the theory of liability constitutionally defective:
the First Amendment protects other people’s rights to talk about arrests that had — as a matter of historical fact — actually happened. A statute can’t rewrite history, and force others to pretend that something didn’t happen when in fact it did happen.
(& Above the Law)
Because all the more serious civil liberties problems have been fixed
Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), as part of a wider campaign to pursue maximally feminist interpretations of Title IX, successfully litigate to prevent Quinnipiac University from naming competitive cheer as a varsity sport [American Sports Council “Saving Sports“] More: Richard Epstein on Title IX; background.