It seems Colorado lawmakers are given special license plates that don’t get speed-camera tickets or parking ticket collections. [CBS Denver] Five years ago the Orange County Register reported that hundreds of thousands of state and local employees, spouses and children in California were covered by programs allowing them to exclude their addresses from the system, supposedly to safeguard them against criminal threat — though a great many of the jobs were exceedingly low-risk — with the incidental benefit that toll and red-light-ticket collectors could not reach them, and many parking tickets were left unenforced as well. “This has happened despite warnings from state officials that the safeguard is no longer needed because updated laws have made all DMV information confidential to the public.”
Posts Tagged ‘traffic laws’
“Maryland considering mandatory helmets for drivers”
Given the bossiness of the legislature in Annapolis these days, I had to check the calendar on this one. [Anita Park, Greater Greater Washington, April 1]
P.S. And from The Onion, where every day is April 1: “Mississippi Bans Soft Drinks Smaller Than 20 Ounces.”
Yet more: Didn’t Ilya Shapiro predict this? “Supreme Court upholds same-sex marriage as a tax” [Tax Foundation]
To be jailed in Arizona for driving under the influence…
…you don’t actually need to have driven under the influence. If it’s an illegal substance, metabolites in your blood may suffice whether or not you were impaired at the time you actually did the driving. At least that’s the ruling of a state court of appeals; the Arizona Supreme Court could still reverse it. [John Ross/Reason, Scott Greenfield]
Better stay home with your parents, kid
Watch out for this soon to be up-and-coming Safety First proposal, as outlined by Vivian Hamilton of William and Mary Law: raising the driving age from 16 to 18. [Concurring Opinions]
February 26 roundup
- Tel Aviv: “City Workers Paint Handicap Space Around Car, Then Tow It” [Lowering the Bar]
- Editorial writer has some generous comments about my work on excessive litigation. Thanks! [Investors Business Daily]
- Nuisance payment: Toyota will throw $29 million at state attorneys general who chased bogus sudden acceleration theory [Amanda Bronstad, NLJ]
- “Iowa Woman Who Didn’t Break Allergy Pill Limit Law Charged with Crime Anyway” [Shackford]
- Cutting outlays on the nonexistent census, and other bogus D.C. spending cuts: in the business world, they’d call it fraud [Coyote, Boaz] Skepticism please on the supposed national crumbling-infrastructure crisis [Jack Shafer]
- Tassel therapy: “Lawsuit Claims Dancing in a Topless Bar “Improves the Self Esteem” of the Stripper” [KEGL]
- Was there ever an economics textbook to beat Alchian and Allen? R.I.P. extraordinary economist Armen Alchian, whose microeconomics introductory course for grad students I was fortunate to take long ago [Cafe Hayek, David Henderson, more, more, more, Bainbridge]
Police and prosecution roundup
- Why you should discount many “minor offender faces eleventy-billion-year sentence” stories [Popehat] One day of smurfing made her a “career offender” [Sullivan]
- “In Dog We Trust”: Scott Greenfield and Radley Balko dissent from unanimous SCOTUS verdict on police canines [Simple Justice, Huffington Post]
- Arizona lawmaker would make it felony to impersonate someone on social media [Citizen Media Law]
- “Can juries tame prosecutors gone wild?” [Leon Neyfakh, Boston Globe “Ideas”]
- “Cop exposes D.C. speed camera racket” [Radley Balko] How Rockville, Md. squeezes drivers who stop in front of the white line or do rolling right turns [WTOP]
- After scandal: “Pennsylvania Senate Passes Legislation to Eliminate Philadelphia Traffic Court” [Legal Intelligencer, earlier]
- Bloomberg precursor? When Mayor LaGuardia got NYC to ban pinball [Sullivan]
February 17 roundup
- Federal taxpayers via National Cancer Institute grant dished out more than a million dollars to pay for laughable conspiracy-theory report smearing Tea Party [Hans Bader, more, Jacob Sullum on report from Stanton Glantz, whom we’ve often met before] “Rather than [being] a spontaneous popular phenomenon, opposition to the tea parties was nurtured by the government.” [@RameshPonnuru]
- Ken on why the relentless overuse of the epithet “bullying” gets on his (and my) nerves [Popehat; Clark at Popehat on New York police chiefs who feel bullied because someone won’t sell them guns]
- On immigration, advocates of liberty can’t afford to ignore the future-polity angle [Eugene Volokh; Ilya Somin with a response]
- More on that wretched State of the Union retread, the Paycheck Fairness Act [Hans Bader, Ted Frank, 2009 DoL study, earlier here, here, here, here, here, etc.] Other dud SOTU ideas: federally paid universal preschool [Andrew Coulson, related, more, related on minority kids’ results, yet more, Neal McCluskey on public infant care, Tyler Cowen] minimum wage hike [Chris Edwards, Veronique de Rugy]
- Woman sues fitness club over “sexually suggestive” exercises [CBS Dallas]
- Silent witness: undeveloped state of law, police, insurance contribute to widespread Russian use of dashboard cams [WaPo]
- Would-be assassin came dressed as postman: Danish free-speech advocate Lars Hedegaard interviewed [Spectator]
February 7 roundup
- You mean Philadelphia traffic court wasn’t on the up-and-up? [ABA Journal] DUI prosecution in Lafayette Parish, La. had become quite the tidy business [Scott Greenfield]
- Match.com sued after date assault [FindLaw]
- Sweden is at cutting edge of free-market policy innovation [Adrian Wooldridge, The Economist]
- Big victory for Institute for Justice as federal court strikes down new IRS tax preparer rules [Katherine Mangu-Ward] 97% of Chicago tax preparers out of compliance with local licensing regs? [TaxProf]
- A sentiment open to doubt: Heritage claims “there is no ban on same-sex marriage” in any state [Ryan Anderson] Support from PM Cameron, other senior Conservatives instrumental in British passage of same-sex marriage [Peter Jukes, Daily Beast] New beyond-the-culture-wars initiative on marriage from David Blankenhorn and colleagues at Institute for American Values [Mark Oppenheimer, NYT]
- “Why not a waiting period for laws?” [Glenn Reynolds, NY Post]
- As he steps aside, recalling some of the accomplishments of longtime Cato Institute chairman Ed Crane [Cato Policy Report, PDF]
- R.I.P. Maureen Martin, legal affairs fellow at Heartland Institute whose work touched many [Jim Lakely]
One in ten California drivers has disabled placard
But how many actually deserve one? [CBS Los Angeles via Alkon]
Goodbye to Transportation Secretary LaHood
My Cato post is here. I’d wish him bon voyage, but somehow it’s hard to associate him with happy travels.
Update: I’ve now expanded my thoughts into a Daily Caller op-ed.