Category: reason

Equity, statutes, and AMG Capital Management

This morning in the orders list from the Supreme Court a decision from the 9th Circuit was vacated and there was a remand for the court to apply AMG Capital Management. That is the Court’s decision from a week and a half ago about the equitable remedies available to the Federal Trade Commission. Miscellaneous thoughts:

  1. AMG Capital Management holds that the statutory authorization for the FTC to get an “injunction” is not an authorization to get equitable monetary relief, such as equitable restitution. That is the right decision. The Court had to sweep aside some uncautious language in a couple mid-twentieth-century cases. But the Court’s reading of the statute has to be right, because allowing “injunction” to mean “any equitable relief” would make a mishmash of the statute’s structure.
  2. This decision is focused more on statutory interpretation, and less on traditional equitable principles (cf. Liu v. SEC). But it doesn’t pull back from the other decisions, and the citation to Mertens v. Hewitt Associates suggests a kind of development and maturation of the Court’s jurisprudence on statutory references to equitable remedies.
  3. It’s a classic Breyer opinion with several different considerations being presented, without specifying how they relate to each other (cf. e.g. Comstock on the Necessary and Proper Clause). That approach has the advantage of candor, and it also might have prevented a splintering of concurring opinions (because other justices might relate those considerations to each other differently). But the result is a bit lumpy, not whisked smooth.
  4. Although the Court concludes that the statutory authorization of an injunction does not extend to “equitable monetary relief,” it does not mention civil compensatory contempt. Lower courts should read “equitable monetary relief” as referring to remedies like the equitable restitutionary ones (e.g., accounting for profits, constructive trust), not to civil compensatory contempt (which should be available after an injunction is violated).
  5. For readers who are interested in statutory interpretation and “the mischief rule,” there’s an interesting parenthetical on p. 10 of the slip opinion: “See FitzGerald 1 (arguing that, in the mid-1970s, “no one imagined that Section 13(b) of the [FTC] Act would become an important part of the Commission’s consumer protection program.”) In other words, because no one thought the “injunction” section of the statute was going to be the central enforcement mechanism, the Court should be wary about interpreting it in a way that makes it the central enforcement mechanism. That isn’t technically an application of the mischief rule, but it expresses a similar concern for context and for interpretive approaches that reduce legislative surprise. As I say in “The Mischief Rule”:

Although the optimal amount of surprise for the enacting legislature and the reasonable contemporaneous reader is not zero, it is probably not massive.41 And the mischief rule might keep the subsequent surprises smaller than they otherwise would be.

And the footnote in The Mischief Rule cites Caleb Nelson, who previously made a similar point:

Cf. Caleb Nelson, A Response to Professor Manning, 91 VA. L. REV. 451, 454 (2005) (“Other things being equal, then, interpretive methods that identify legal directives consistent with the ones legislators thought they were establishing should be preferred to interpretive methods that systematically produce legal directives contrary to the ones legislators thought they were establishing.”).

6. Finally, this case is yet another one in which Judge O’Scannlain calls for the Supreme Court’s attention–in AMG Capital, it was by writing both the panel opinion below and a separate opinion–and the Court takes the case and sides with Judge O’Scannlain.

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SCOTUS Denies Cert in Maryland Shall Issue v. Hogan

Today the Court denied cert in Maryland Shall Issue v. Hogan. Here, Maryland prohibited the possession of so-called bump stock devices. The Plaintiffs argued that this law violated the Takings Clause. The Fourth Circuit ruled against the Plaintiffs. The cert petition presented this question:

Whether the Fourth Circuit erred in ruling that this Court’s holding in Horne that appropriations of personal property and real property must be treated “alike” under the Takings Clause applies only where the statute requires that the owner “turn over” the personal property to the government or a third party.

The Court denied cert, without even relisting it. There are several cases floating involving the federal prohibition on bump stocks. And these cases also present takings claims. I do not think there is much appetite for the takings argument. The federal bump stock cases may have more legs on principles of administrative law.

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SCOTUS Appoints Gail A. Curly as Marshall of the Court

Today’s order list announced the appointment of Gail A. Curley as the Marshal of the Court. Here is the Court’s press release.

Colonel Gail A. Curley has been appointed the new Marshal of the Supreme Court of the United States. She will be the eleventh Marshal of the Court and the second woman to hold the position. She succeeds Pamela Talkin, who retired on July 31, 2020 after 19 years as Marshal. Col. Curley is expected to assume her new duties on June 21, 2021. As Marshal, Col. Curley will serve as the Court’s chief security officer, facilities administrator, and contracting executive, managing approximately 260 employees, including the Supreme Court Police Force, which provides security for the Justices, Court staff, visitors, the building, and surrounding grounds. Col. Curley will call the Supreme Court to order in argument sessions, maintaining order and decorum during Court proceedings.

Col. Curley comes to the Court from the U.S. Army where she was the chief of the National Security Law Division in the Office of The Judge Advocate General. She supervised a team of judge advocates, led the strategic engagements program for the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, and provided legal advice and support on national security law to senior Army leadership. From 2016 to 2019, Col. Curley was the staff judge advocate for Headquarters, U.S. Army Europe in Wiesbaden, Germany, where she served as the senior U.S. Army attorney for an area consisting of 50 nations and supervised over 300 legal professionals. She has held a wide variety of leadership and legal positions over her military career at many locations including Germany, Afghanistan, and the continental United States.

Col. Curley earned her Bachelor’s degree in political science in 1991 from the United States Military Academy and received a J.D. in 1999 from the University of Illinois College of Law. She received a Master of Laws degree in 2004 from The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School and a Master of Science in 2014 from the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy.

Curley will replace Pamela Talkin, who served a Marshal from 2001 through July 2020. Palkin previously served as Clarence Thomas’s Chief of Staff at the EEOC. And she testified on his behalf following Anita Hill’s allegations.

Be sure not to confuse the Marshal of the Court with the (John) Marshall of the Court. Funny story. During the Burr trial, Chief Justice John Marshall presided. And his brother, James Marshall, served as the Marshall for the federal courts. So he was Marshal Marshall. Imagine if Marshal Marshall marshaled the court martial!? (Marsha, Marsha, Marsha).

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Poetry Monday!: “anyone lived in a pretty how town” by e.e. cummings

Here’s “anyone lived in a pretty how town” (1940) by e.e. cummings (1894-1962). (This is on my YouTube channel, which mostly consists of my Sasha Reads playlist, plus a smattering of law-related songs.)

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did….

For the rest of my “Sasha Reads” playlist, click here. Past poems are:

  1. “Ulysses” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  2. “The Pulley” by George Herbert
  3. “Harmonie du soir” (“Evening Harmony”) by Charles Baudelaire (French)
  4. “Dirge Without Music” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
  5. “Clancy of the Overflow” by A.B. “Banjo” Paterson
  6. “Лотова жена” (“Lotova zhena”, “Lot’s wife”) by Anna Akhmatova (Russian)
  7. “The Jumblies” by Edward Lear
  8. “The Conqueror Worm” by Edgar Allan Poe
  9. “Les Djinns” (“The Jinns”) by Victor Hugo (French)
  10. “I Have a Rendezvous with Death” by Alan Seeger
  11. “When I Was One-and-Twenty” by A.E. Housman
  12. “Узник” (“Uznik”, “The Prisoner” or “The Captive”) by Aleksandr Pushkin (Russian)
  13. “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
  14. “The Song of Wandering Aengus” by William Butler Yeats
  15. “Je crains pas ça tellment” (“I’m not that scard about”) by Raymond Queneau (French)
  16. “The Naming of Cats” by T.S. Eliot
  17. “The reticent volcano keeps…” by Emily Dickinson
  18. “Она” (“Ona”, “She”) by Zinaida Gippius (Russian)
  19. “Would I Be Shrived?” by John D. Swain
  20. “Evolution” by Langdon Smith
  21. “Chanson d’automne” (“Autumn Song”) by Oscar Milosz (French)
  22. “love is more thicker than forget” by e.e. cummings
  23. “My Three Loves” by Henry S. Leigh
  24. “Я мечтою ловил уходящие тени” (“Ia mechtoiu lovil ukhodiashchie teni”, “With my dreams I caught the departing shadows”) by Konstantin Balmont (Russian)
  25. “Dane-geld” by Rudyard Kipling
  26. “Rules and Regulations” by Lewis Carroll
  27. “Vers dorés” (“Golden Lines”) by Gérard de Nerval (French)
  28. “So That’s Who I Remind Me Of” by Ogden Nash
  29. “The Epic” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  30. “La chambre double” (“The Double Room”) by Charles Baudelaire (French)
  31. “Медный всадник” (“The Bronze Horseman”) by Aleksandr Pushkin (Russian)
  32. “Herbst” (“Autumn”) by Rainer Maria Rilke (German)
  33. “Romance de la luna, luna” (“Ballad of the Moon Moon”) by Federico García Lorca (Spanish)
  34. “The Four Friends” by A.A. Milne

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Equity, statutes, and AMG Capital Management

This morning in the orders list from the Supreme Court a decision from the 9th Circuit was vacated and there was a remand for the court to apply AMG Capital Management. That is the Court’s decision from a week and a half ago about the equitable remedies available to the Federal Trade Commission. Miscellaneous thoughts:

  1. AMG Capital Management holds that the statutory authorization for the FTC to get an “injunction” is not an authorization to get equitable monetary relief, such as equitable restitution. That is the right decision. The Court had to sweep aside some uncautious language in a couple mid-twentieth-century cases. But the Court’s reading of the statute has to be right, because allowing “injunction” to mean “any equitable relief” would make a mishmash of the statute’s structure.
  2. This decision is focused more on statutory interpretation, and less on traditional equitable principles (cf. Liu v. SEC). But it doesn’t pull back from the other decisions, and the citation to Mertens v. Hewitt Associates suggests a kind of development and maturation of the Court’s jurisprudence on statutory references to equitable remedies.
  3. It’s a classic Breyer opinion with several different considerations being presented, without specifying how they relate to each other (cf. e.g. Comstock on the Necessary and Proper Clause). That approach has the advantage of candor, and it also might have prevented a splintering of concurring opinions (because other justices might relate those considerations to each other differently). But the result is a bit lumpy, not whisked smooth.
  4. Although the Court concludes that the statutory authorization of an injunction does not extend to “equitable monetary relief,” it does not mention civil compensatory contempt. Lower courts should read “equitable monetary relief” as referring to remedies like the equitable restitutionary ones (e.g., accounting for profits, constructive trust), not to civil compensatory contempt (which should be available after an injunction is violated).
  5. For readers who are interested in statutory interpretation and “the mischief rule,” there’s an interesting parenthetical on p. 10 of the slip opinion: “See FitzGerald 1 (arguing that, in the mid-1970s, “no one imagined that Section 13(b) of the [FTC] Act would become an important part of the Commission’s consumer protection program.”) In other words, because no one thought the “injunction” section of the statute was going to be the central enforcement mechanism, the Court should be wary about interpreting it in a way that makes it the central enforcement mechanism. That isn’t technically an application of the mischief rule, but it expresses a similar concern for context and for interpretive approaches that reduce legislative surprise. As I say in “The Mischief Rule”:

Although the optimal amount of surprise for the enacting legislature and the reasonable contemporaneous reader is not zero, it is probably not massive.41 And the mischief rule might keep the subsequent surprises smaller than they otherwise would be.

And the footnote in The Mischief Rule cites Caleb Nelson, who previously made a similar point:

Cf. Caleb Nelson, A Response to Professor Manning, 91 VA. L. REV. 451, 454 (2005) (“Other things being equal, then, interpretive methods that identify legal directives consistent with the ones legislators thought they were establishing should be preferred to interpretive methods that systematically produce legal directives contrary to the ones legislators thought they were establishing.”).

6. Finally, this case is yet another one in which Judge O’Scannlain calls for the Supreme Court’s attention–in AMG Capital, it was by writing both the panel opinion below and a separate opinion–and the Court takes the case and sides with Judge O’Scannlain.

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SCOTUS Denies Cert in Maryland Shall Issue v. Hogan

Today the Court denied cert in Maryland Shall Issue v. Hogan. Here, Maryland prohibited the possession of so-called bump stock devices. The Plaintiffs argued that this law violated the Takings Clause. The Fourth Circuit ruled against the Plaintiffs. The cert petition presented this question:

Whether the Fourth Circuit erred in ruling that this Court’s holding in Horne that appropriations of personal property and real property must be treated “alike” under the Takings Clause applies only where the statute requires that the owner “turn over” the personal property to the government or a third party.

The Court denied cert, without even relisting it. There are several cases floating involving the federal prohibition on bump stocks. And these cases also present takings claims. I do not think there is much appetite for the takings argument. The federal bump stock cases may have more legs on principles of administrative law.

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Freedom Becomes a Long-Haul COVID Victim


zumaamericastwentynine281150

We call it “long-haul COVID” when patients recover from a COVID-19 infection but still experience symptoms weeks and months later. But the world at large could suffer lingering effects from the pandemic for years, as “emergency” measures adopted to (supposedly) fight the virus become part of the permanent landscape. Well after health concerns have been forgotten, the ultimate victim of long-haul COVID may turn out to be our freedom.

“The COVID-19 pandemic seriously risks further erosion of constraints on government powers, as leaders with an authoritarian bent amass new powers through emergency measures, and courts, legislatures, and other institutional and citizen checks are hampered in carrying out their constitutional duties and rights,” the Brookings Institution’s Ted Piccone noted last month in a column that warned of deteriorating conditions under authoritarian regimes and democracies alike. “In sum, the COVID-19 crisis has eroded the rule of law environment around the world,” he added.

The erosion of constraints on government power is nothing new to Americans, who have seen governors assume near-monarchical power to close businesses, limit gatherings, curtail the right to travel, and limit personal freedom.

“There may not be a pandemic exception to the bill of rights, but judges are generally willing to give state officials a great deal of deference in these situations,” Wake Forest University’s Professor John Dinan, an expert on federalism, observed last May.

The federal government, too, has assumed vast power over everyday activity, and politicians have seized the opportunity to spend trillions of dollars to “stimulate” the economy—but mostly to buy public favor and enact wish-lists of policies in the guise of addressing the crisis.

President Joe Biden is “turning COVID-era emergency measures into permanent expansions of federal power, using the virus as an excuse,” Reason‘s Peter Suderman warned last week. “For Biden, the pandemic has become a catchall justification for a wide array of big-government programs that he and the Democratic Party already wanted to pursue.”

As Piccone points out, this is a world-wide phenomenon that’s accelerating a global erosion of restraints on government power. He’s not the only one to notice that officials everywhere have taken advantage of the moment to accelerate troubling pre-pandemic trends.

“As recorded in the Democracy Index in recent years, democracy has not been in robust health for some time,” The Economist‘s Democracy Index 2020 observed earlier this year. “In 2020 its strength was further tested by the outbreak of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic… Across the world in 2020, citizens experienced the biggest rollback of individual freedoms ever undertaken by governments during peacetime (and perhaps even in wartime). The willing surrender of fundamental freedoms by millions of people was perhaps one of the most remarkable occurrences in an extraordinary year “

“As COVID-19 spread during the year, governments across the democratic spectrum repeatedly resorted to excessive surveillance, discriminatory restrictions on freedoms like movement and assembly, and arbitrary or violent enforcement of such restrictions by police and nonstate actors,” agrees Freedom House.

“While the world is still more democratic than it was in the 1970s and 1980s, the global decline of liberal democracy continues in 2020,” chimes in the annual report from the University of Gothenburg’s V-Dem Institute, based in Sweden. “The direct impact on democracy has been limited so far, but the final toll may turn out to be much higher unless restrictions are eliminated immediately after the pandemic is over,” the report adds.

That’s a big “unless” and one that can’t be assumed after the crisis of the moment has passed. Expanded powers assumed to deal with emergencies have a nasty way of becoming permanent fixtures long after their justifications are consigned to historical footnotes.

“After each major crisis the size of government, though smaller than during the crisis, remained larger than it would have been had the precrisis rate of growth persisted during the interval occupied by the crisis,” wrote economic historian Robert Higgs in his 1987 book Crisis and Leviathan. Separately, he has written that the driving force behind permanent “ratchet effect” expansions of power is the public’s fear—and politicians’ skill at exploiting it.

“All animals experience fear—human beings, perhaps, most of all. Any animal incapable of fear would have been hard pressed to survive,” Higgs observed in 2005. “The people who have the effrontery to rule us, who call themselves our government, understand this basic fact of human nature. They exploit it, and they cultivate it.”

Some people not only admit their interest in exploiting the crisis—they celebrate it.

“Crises have always granted reformist policymakers powers to bypass legislative gridlock and entrenched interests,” exulted Cornell University historian Nicholas Mulder last March. “The coronavirus crisis is already allowing the implementation of ideas that would have been considered very radical just months ago.”

Mulder did his happy dance before governments further tightened lockdowns, extended their control, and restricted the speech of those who disagree. Once-radical ideas are, in fact, becoming the norm in even nominally free countries.

The ratchet effect doesn’t explain why limits on government, rule of law, and protections for liberty were eroding even before COVID-19 arrived on the scene. The ongoing, years-long decay of liberal democracies is a puzzle with which experts grappled before the pandemic and, no doubt, will debate after it has passed. But the environment in which they continue their discussions is likely to be less free and open as a result of the symptoms of long-haul “emergency” measures that the world just can’t shake.

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Freedom Becomes a Long-Haul COVID Victim


zumaamericastwentynine281150

We call it “long-haul COVID” when patients recover from a COVID-19 infection but still experience symptoms weeks and months later. But the world at large could suffer lingering effects from the pandemic for years, as “emergency” measures adopted to (supposedly) fight the virus become part of the permanent landscape. Well after health concerns have been forgotten, the ultimate victim of long-haul COVID may turn out to be our freedom.

“The COVID-19 pandemic seriously risks further erosion of constraints on government powers, as leaders with an authoritarian bent amass new powers through emergency measures, and courts, legislatures, and other institutional and citizen checks are hampered in carrying out their constitutional duties and rights,” the Brookings Institution’s Ted Piccone noted last month in a column that warned of deteriorating conditions under authoritarian regimes and democracies alike. “In sum, the COVID-19 crisis has eroded the rule of law environment around the world,” he added.

The erosion of constraints on government power is nothing new to Americans, who have seen governors assume near-monarchical power to close businesses, limit gatherings, curtail the right to travel, and limit personal freedom.

“There may not be a pandemic exception to the bill of rights, but judges are generally willing to give state officials a great deal of deference in these situations,” Wake Forest University’s Professor John Dinan, an expert on federalism, observed last May.

The federal government, too, has assumed vast power over everyday activity, and politicians have seized the opportunity to spend trillions of dollars to “stimulate” the economy—but mostly to buy public favor and enact wish-lists of policies in the guise of addressing the crisis.

President Joe Biden is “turning COVID-era emergency measures into permanent expansions of federal power, using the virus as an excuse,” Reason‘s Peter Suderman warned last week. “For Biden, the pandemic has become a catchall justification for a wide array of big-government programs that he and the Democratic Party already wanted to pursue.”

As Piccone points out, this is a world-wide phenomenon that’s accelerating a global erosion of restraints on government power. He’s not the only one to notice that officials everywhere have taken advantage of the moment to accelerate troubling pre-pandemic trends.

“As recorded in the Democracy Index in recent years, democracy has not been in robust health for some time,” The Economist‘s Democracy Index 2020 observed earlier this year. “In 2020 its strength was further tested by the outbreak of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic… Across the world in 2020, citizens experienced the biggest rollback of individual freedoms ever undertaken by governments during peacetime (and perhaps even in wartime). The willing surrender of fundamental freedoms by millions of people was perhaps one of the most remarkable occurrences in an extraordinary year “

“As COVID-19 spread during the year, governments across the democratic spectrum repeatedly resorted to excessive surveillance, discriminatory restrictions on freedoms like movement and assembly, and arbitrary or violent enforcement of such restrictions by police and nonstate actors,” agrees Freedom House.

“While the world is still more democratic than it was in the 1970s and 1980s, the global decline of liberal democracy continues in 2020,” chimes in the annual report from the University of Gothenburg’s V-Dem Institute, based in Sweden. “The direct impact on democracy has been limited so far, but the final toll may turn out to be much higher unless restrictions are eliminated immediately after the pandemic is over,” the report adds.

That’s a big “unless” and one that can’t be assumed after the crisis of the moment has passed. Expanded powers assumed to deal with emergencies have a nasty way of becoming permanent fixtures long after their justifications are consigned to historical footnotes.

“After each major crisis the size of government, though smaller than during the crisis, remained larger than it would have been had the precrisis rate of growth persisted during the interval occupied by the crisis,” wrote economic historian Robert Higgs in his 1987 book Crisis and Leviathan. Separately, he has written that the driving force behind permanent “ratchet effect” expansions of power is the public’s fear—and politicians’ skill at exploiting it.

“All animals experience fear—human beings, perhaps, most of all. Any animal incapable of fear would have been hard pressed to survive,” Higgs observed in 2005. “The people who have the effrontery to rule us, who call themselves our government, understand this basic fact of human nature. They exploit it, and they cultivate it.”

Some people not only admit their interest in exploiting the crisis—they celebrate it.

“Crises have always granted reformist policymakers powers to bypass legislative gridlock and entrenched interests,” exulted Cornell University historian Nicholas Mulder last March. “The coronavirus crisis is already allowing the implementation of ideas that would have been considered very radical just months ago.”

Mulder did his happy dance before governments further tightened lockdowns, extended their control, and restricted the speech of those who disagree. Once-radical ideas are, in fact, becoming the norm in even nominally free countries.

The ratchet effect doesn’t explain why limits on government, rule of law, and protections for liberty were eroding even before COVID-19 arrived on the scene. The ongoing, years-long decay of liberal democracies is a puzzle with which experts grappled before the pandemic and, no doubt, will debate after it has passed. But the environment in which they continue their discussions is likely to be less free and open as a result of the symptoms of long-haul “emergency” measures that the world just can’t shake.

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D.C. Weddings Only Permitted if No One Stands or Dances


mitchell-orr—LyFIjXoFY-unsplash

Continued coronavirus restrictions aren’t commensurate to risk. With the COVID-19 vaccine now widely available in the U.S., nearly any adult who wants to protect himself can, while anyone who doesn’t get vaccinated is making a choice to face heightened risk. And despite slowing vaccination rates, we’re still seeing encouraging signs. For instance, “Los Angeles County public health authorities on Sunday reported no new deaths related to COVID-19,” the Los Angeles Times notes, and the single-day infection rate in New York state dropped below 1.5 percent on Saturday. Overall, “42 states and D.C. report[ed] lower caseloads for the past two weeks,” The Washington Post reported last Friday.

Yet some authorities continue to impose strict rules on not just public spaces but private events, too.

Take Washington, D.C., which announced last week that “with the increased vaccination of DC residents and essential workers, and continued cooperation with the District’s public health measures and guidance, several restrictions may be further loosened this spring.” Yet the District’s rules remain weird and seemingly arbitrary.

In D.C., up to 250 people may attend weddings “and special non-recurring events” if venues are not at more than 25 percent capacity.

However, wedding guests must remain seated at all times. It doesn’t matter if events are indoors or outdoors, if people are vaccinated, if they’re wearing masks, or what other individual circumstances pertain—”standing and dancing receptions are not allowed” and “attendees and guests must remain seated and socially distanced from each other or other household groups.”

This is just one of many D.C. restrictions that seems to be based on superstition more than science and makes little sense from a public health perspective.

In general, the city forbids private indoor gatherings of more than 10 people and private outdoor gatherings of more than 50 people. Yet it will also allow up to 25 people at a time on guided indoor tours of museums. So, gathering inside a home with a dozen close friends or family members whose vaccination status you know is not OK, but being in close proximity to more than two dozen strangers on a museum tour is?

Meanwhile, up to 250 people (not including staff) are permitted at “regional business meetings and conventions” and up to 500 people at concert and entertainment venues, so long as these spaces are not over 25 percent capacity.

D.C. and other U.S. cities pale in comparison to Canadian craziness right now, however. In Canada, scientists and doctors are preaching that vaccinations are not enough, nor are provinces’ partial lockdowns and business restrictions.

“A maximum infection suppression strategy implemented early in the epidemic to reduce COVID cases to as low a level as possible, and then stamp out outbreaks as they arise, would have saved tens of thousands of Canadian lives. This approach, with some modifications, remains the best strategy right now,” they write in an open letter published in Maclean’s.

FREE MINDS

The CIA is banking on trendy progressive rhetoric to recruit a new generation of spies and snoops: 

FREE MARKETS

Real estate listing site Zillow could face extermination at the hands of an antitrust lawsuit. Politico explains:

Real estate startup REX has asked a federal court to force Zillow and its subsidiary Trulia to stop separating homes for sale into two groups — those listed by brokers who belong to the National Association of Realtors and those listed by others. But contractual restrictions require Zillow to segregate the listings, the company said.

“REX’s proposed injunction creates a substantial risk that Zillow’s online platforms would lose access to listings data in markets across the country,” Zillow said in court documents, adding that that “runs the risk that Zillow could lose access to the data entirely, irreparably damaging its business.”

QUICK HITS

• America’s forgotten history of supervised opioid injection sites.

• NBC News looks at how new census numbers will affect political representation:

Texas added two seats to bring its number of members to 38 and its electoral vote tally to 40. And five states — Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon — saw smaller gains, all adding one seat each.

And what the census giveth, it also taketh away. On the other side of the ledger seven states each lost one seat and one electoral vote.

• Politicians in the Texas city of Lubbock “voted Saturday to ban abortions within city limits and allow residents to sue abortion providers and anyone else who assists a person obtain abortion services.”

• “Despite their professed goals, Democrats’ pandemic policies have widened disparities between races, classes, and genders,” writes Reason‘s Matt Welch.

• CVS and Walgreens have let a lot of vaccine doses go to waste:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 182,874 wasted doses as of late March, three months into the country’s effort to vaccinate the masses against the coronavirus. CVS was responsible for nearly half, and Walgreens was responsible for 21 percent, or nearly 128,500 wasted shots combined.

  • Columbus, Ohio, police get a rebuke from a federal judge, whose new order commands them “to stop using force including tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets against nonviolent protesters,” NPR reports. “Judge Algenon Marbley of the Southern District of Ohio described the actions of the Columbus police as ‘the sad tale of officers, clothed with the awesome power of the state, run amok.'”

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D.C. Weddings Only Permitted if No One Stands or Dances


mitchell-orr—LyFIjXoFY-unsplash

Continued coronavirus restrictions aren’t commensurate to risk. With the COVID-19 vaccine now widely available in the U.S., nearly any adult who wants to protect himself can, while anyone who doesn’t get vaccinated is making a choice to face heightened risk. And despite slowing vaccination rates, we’re still seeing encouraging signs. For instance, “Los Angeles County public health authorities on Sunday reported no new deaths related to COVID-19,” the Los Angeles Times notes, and the single-day infection rate in New York state dropped below 1.5 percent on Saturday. Overall, “42 states and D.C. report[ed] lower caseloads for the past two weeks,” The Washington Post reported last Friday.

Yet some authorities continue to impose strict rules on not just public spaces but private events, too.

Take Washington, D.C., which announced last week that “with the increased vaccination of DC residents and essential workers, and continued cooperation with the District’s public health measures and guidance, several restrictions may be further loosened this spring.” Yet the District’s rules remain weird and seemingly arbitrary.

In D.C., up to 250 people may attend weddings “and special non-recurring events” if venues are not at more than 25 percent capacity.

However, wedding guests must remain seated at all times. It doesn’t matter if events are indoors or outdoors, if people are vaccinated, if they’re wearing masks, or what other individual circumstances pertain—”standing and dancing receptions are not allowed” and “attendees and guests must remain seated and socially distanced from each other or other household groups.”

This is just one of many D.C. restrictions that seems to be based on superstition more than science and makes little sense from a public health perspective.

In general, the city forbids private indoor gatherings of more than 10 people and private outdoor gatherings of more than 50 people. Yet it will also allow up to 25 people at a time on guided indoor tours of museums. So, gathering inside a home with a dozen close friends or family members whose vaccination status you know is not OK, but being in close proximity to more than two dozen strangers on a museum tour is?

Meanwhile, up to 250 people (not including staff) are permitted at “regional business meetings and conventions” and up to 500 people at concert and entertainment venues, so long as these spaces are not over 25 percent capacity.

D.C. and other U.S. cities pale in comparison to Canadian craziness right now, however. In Canada, scientists and doctors are preaching that vaccinations are not enough, nor are provinces’ partial lockdowns and business restrictions.

“A maximum infection suppression strategy implemented early in the epidemic to reduce COVID cases to as low a level as possible, and then stamp out outbreaks as they arise, would have saved tens of thousands of Canadian lives. This approach, with some modifications, remains the best strategy right now,” they write in an open letter published in Maclean’s.

FREE MINDS

The CIA is banking on trendy progressive rhetoric to recruit a new generation of spies and snoops: 

FREE MARKETS

Real estate listing site Zillow could face extermination at the hands of an antitrust lawsuit. Politico explains:

Real estate startup REX has asked a federal court to force Zillow and its subsidiary Trulia to stop separating homes for sale into two groups — those listed by brokers who belong to the National Association of Realtors and those listed by others. But contractual restrictions require Zillow to segregate the listings, the company said.

“REX’s proposed injunction creates a substantial risk that Zillow’s online platforms would lose access to listings data in markets across the country,” Zillow said in court documents, adding that that “runs the risk that Zillow could lose access to the data entirely, irreparably damaging its business.”

QUICK HITS

• America’s forgotten history of supervised opioid injection sites.

• NBC News looks at how new census numbers will affect political representation:

Texas added two seats to bring its number of members to 38 and its electoral vote tally to 40. And five states — Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon — saw smaller gains, all adding one seat each.

And what the census giveth, it also taketh away. On the other side of the ledger seven states each lost one seat and one electoral vote.

• Politicians in the Texas city of Lubbock “voted Saturday to ban abortions within city limits and allow residents to sue abortion providers and anyone else who assists a person obtain abortion services.”

• “Despite their professed goals, Democrats’ pandemic policies have widened disparities between races, classes, and genders,” writes Reason‘s Matt Welch.

• CVS and Walgreens have let a lot of vaccine doses go to waste:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 182,874 wasted doses as of late March, three months into the country’s effort to vaccinate the masses against the coronavirus. CVS was responsible for nearly half, and Walgreens was responsible for 21 percent, or nearly 128,500 wasted shots combined.

  • Columbus, Ohio, police get a rebuke from a federal judge, whose new order commands them “to stop using force including tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets against nonviolent protesters,” NPR reports. “Judge Algenon Marbley of the Southern District of Ohio described the actions of the Columbus police as ‘the sad tale of officers, clothed with the awesome power of the state, run amok.'”

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