A
plaintiff’s lawyer is suing a medical journal and two doctors
because they published a case report that makes it harder to win
birth-injury lawsuits. A Boston lawyer who claims to have debunked
the case study has sued its two authors and the journal’s publisher
for publishing and refusing to retract the article. A trial court
dismissed the case, writes Walter Olson, but it’s now on appeal,
with defense lawyers arguing that if there are weaknesses in the
article the remedy for plaintiffs is to introduce evidence to that
effect to counter it in trials. To instead penalize the paper’s
publisher and author, they note, would violate the First
Amendment.
In September 1939, six days after the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, Charlie Chaplin began filming one of his most epic films ever… and the first “talkie” for the silent film star.
It was a courageous project– the ‘Great Dictator’ directly poked fun at Adolf Hitler.
At the end of the movie, Chaplin looked into the camera and gave a stirring speech about timeless principles– peace, mutual respect, freedom from evil men who aspire to lead nations.
This did not win Chaplin any friends in Washington who were keen to maintain official neutrality.
And he paid dearly for it; the Great Dictator was the beginning of an entire decade of turbulent trouble between Chaplin and the US government.
FBI director J Edgar Hoover opened a file on Chaplin and launched a smear campaign to tarnish his public image. The mainstream media quickly jumped on board, accusing Chaplin of being a communist sympathizer.
Eventually they found an obscure law on the books as an excuse to haul him into court and put him in prison.
Chaplin won the trial… barely… but was then roped into the anti-communist witch hunts of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
In his autobiography, Chaplin sums up his troubles with the US government as follows:
“My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a nonconformist. Although I am not a Communist, I refused to fall in line by hating them. . . Secondly I was opposed to the Committee on Un-American Activities– a dishonest phrase to begin with, elastic enough to wrap around the throat and strangle the voice of any American citizen whose honest opinion is a minority one.”
Chaplin reached his breaking point when, as a British citizen, he realized that he would be effectively kicked out of the Land of the Free. As he wrote,
“Whether I re-entered that unhappy country or not was of little consequence to me. I would like to have told them that the sooner I was rid of that hate-beleaguered atmosphere the better, that I was fed up with America’s insults and moral poposity, and that the whole subject was damned boring.”
He moved his family to Switzerland and lived out the rest of his days in an idyllic setting near Geneva.
There was just one problem. The entirety of Chaplin’s substantial wealth was in the US. And he waited far too long– until he had been exiled from the country– to even think about moving some funds abroad.
His rousing speech at the end of the Great Dictator calls for a world free of violence, intimidation, and government control. Unfortunately, we don’t get to live in that world.
We live in a world where ambitious men are willing to do anything to seize absolute power… where they can regulate every aspect of our lives, from what we put in our bodies to whether we can collect rainwater.
They confiscate our hard earned wages at gunpoint. They devalue our savings. They spy, brazenly and relentlessly, on absolutely everyone. They wage senseless wars in foreign lands. They waste. They frustrate. They destroy.
This our reality. The world is beautiful. Life is beautiful. But the leaders of humankind surely make it all damned hard to appreciate sometimes.
That’s why it makes so much sense for everyone to have a little bit of insurance– to make sure that we don’t make the same mistake as Chaplin and hold the entirety of our savings and livelihood in the same country in which we live… and one that is clearly on a downward trend.
This is our consumate focus at Sovereign Man. And with each passing day, the reasons become even more obvious. We’re going to be in for a hell of a 2014.
And now, without further ado, please enjoy Mr. Chaplin’s final speech from the Great Dictator:
from SOVErEIGN MAN http://www.sovereignman.com/trends/video-a-holiday-message-from-the-great-dictator-13334/
via IFTTT
During a
routine trip from San Diego to Phoenix in 2009, Pastor Steven
Anderson was stopped at an internal immigration checkpoint about 70
miles from the Mexican border. A stern-looking Border Patrol agent
asked Anderson to provide proof of citizenship and requested
permission to search his car. The persistent pastor declined both,
citing his Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable
searches and his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Ultimately, a Border Patrol agent and a state police officer
simultaneously broke both windows of his car and shot the pastor
with Tasers from each side, delivering lengthy and repeated shocks
while Anderson repeatedly screamed in agony. The brutality was
captured on video. Anderson is a hero to the members of a growing
national cause, writes Wes Kimbell. A decentralized movement of
refuseniks is increasingly fighting back against the Border
Patrol’s shocking internal checkpoint system.
During a
routine trip from San Diego to Phoenix in 2009, Pastor Steven
Anderson was stopped at an internal immigration checkpoint about 70
miles from the Mexican border. A stern-looking Border Patrol agent
asked Anderson to provide proof of citizenship and requested
permission to search his car. The persistent pastor declined both,
citing his Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable
searches and his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Ultimately, a Border Patrol agent and a state police officer
simultaneously broke both windows of his car and shot the pastor
with Tasers from each side, delivering lengthy and repeated shocks
while Anderson repeatedly screamed in agony. The brutality was
captured on video. Anderson is a hero to the members of a growing
national cause, writes Wes Kimbell. A decentralized movement of
refuseniks is increasingly fighting back against the Border
Patrol’s shocking internal checkpoint system.
Michigan legislators have introduced a pair of bills that would
reform the state’s asset forfeiture laws, which currently enable
law enforcement agencies to seize property from innocent people
easily and profitably. Michigan police departments and district
attorneys have padded their budgets to the tune of $70 million in
the last three years via forfeiture, according to Lee McGrath of
the Institute for Justice,* a law firm that litigates asset
forfeiture.
HB 5213 would require a criminal conviction before the
police and prosecutors can forfeit property. Such a change is
desirable because Michigan police and prosecutors have an
unfortunate habit of taking peoples’ stuff even when the criminal
charges that supposedly justify the forfeiture are dropped,
dismissed, or otherwise jettisoned.
HB 5081, meanwhile, would require seizing agencies to compile
detailed reports on their forfeiture activities. Such a change is
desirable because, apart from aggregates and anecdotes, information
(on what is being seized, from whom, and why) is hard to come by.
Also, transparency may encourage police to use funds more
judiciously.
“Asset forfeiture was sold as a needed tool for law enforcement
to attack drug kingpins and gang leaders,” says Rep. Jeff Irwin
(D-Ann Arbor), sponsor of HB 5213. “[But] too often, law
enforcement uses the current asset forfeiture law to take tens of
millions of dollars every year, mostly from low-level users and
small-time dealers.”
Of course, the law routinely
ensnares
innocent people. We find out about them when they go to court.
But some not-inconsequential number of forfeitures involve innocent
owners who opt against a legal fight to recover items worth less
than the cost of a lawyer.
Still, Irwin’s statement is probably an accurate description of
many forfeitures. Law enforcement was given the power to forfeit
property sans criminal conviction in order to target notorious
underworld characters and their conspicuous displays of wealth (for
the children! lest they grow up idolizing drug lords). Instead,
police use civil forfeiture to bust low-level offenders—at the
expense of other duties.
Unfortunately, while both the bills would make for improved
policy, neither would put forfeiture abuse to bed. Stephen Dunn, a
Troy, Michigan-based attorney suggests to the Michigan Capitol
Confidential that more complete reform:
requires notification to the property owner within a certain
amount of time, criminal proceedings within a timeframe, the
release of seized funds if they are required to pay for legal
defense, a way for property to be returned and litigation costs
paid if a defendant is not successfully prosecuted by the
state.
Additionally, neither bill addresses federal equitable sharing,
a program that allows local police to turn their cases over to the
feds. Police do so in order to sidestep state forfeiture laws that
contain stronger protections for property owners than federal law.
As the federal government is behind some of the
most officious abuses of forfeiture in Michigan, this is not a
small oversight.
But the perfect need not be the enemy of the good. Either or
both bills will improve prospects for property owners unfairly
separated from their belongings.
*I work part-time for the Institute for Justice on a project
unrelated to forfeiture.
from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/28/michigan-legislators-consider-making-it
via IFTTT
With the end of the year upon us, Baylen Linnekin
uses his last column of 2013 to look back at the year in food
policy. And, writes Linnekin, 2013 appears largely to be a story
not of the good news that happened but of the bad news that didn’t.
Five examples in particular demonstrate the 2013 trend.
Duck
Dynasty reruns have been getting a lot of play on A&E, and
given the backlash to its suspension of the show’s star, perhaps it
shouldn’t come as a surprise the network’s
reversed itself.
From USA Today:
A&E has ducked away from a controversy surrounding
the stars of its hugely popular reality series Duck
Dynasty…
In a statement, the network cited its “core values” of “inclusion
and mutual respect” to explain why “we reacted so quickly and
strongly.” “While Phil’s comments made in the interview reflect his
personal views based on his own beliefs, and his own personal
journey, he and his family have publicly stated they regret the
‘coarse language’ he used and the misinterpretation of his core
beliefs based only on the article. He also made it clear he would
‘never incite or encourage hate.’ We at A+E Networks expressed
our disappointment with his statements in the article, and
reiterate that they are not views we hold.”
More Reason on the Duck Dynasty brouhaha
here,
here, and
here.
Follow these stories and more at Reason 24/7 and don’t forget you
can e-mail stories to us at 24_7@reason.com and tweet us
at @reason247.
from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/27/ae-reverses-phil-robertsons-duck-dynasty
via IFTTT
Duck
Dynasty reruns have been getting a lot of play on A&E, and
given the backlash to its suspension of the show’s star, perhaps it
shouldn’t come as a surprise the network’s
reversed itself.
From USA Today:
A&E has ducked away from a controversy surrounding
the stars of its hugely popular reality series Duck
Dynasty…
In a statement, the network cited its “core values” of “inclusion
and mutual respect” to explain why “we reacted so quickly and
strongly.” “While Phil’s comments made in the interview reflect his
personal views based on his own beliefs, and his own personal
journey, he and his family have publicly stated they regret the
‘coarse language’ he used and the misinterpretation of his core
beliefs based only on the article. He also made it clear he would
‘never incite or encourage hate.’ We at A+E Networks expressed
our disappointment with his statements in the article, and
reiterate that they are not views we hold.”
More Reason on the Duck Dynasty brouhaha
here,
here, and
here.
Follow these stories and more at Reason 24/7 and don’t forget you
can e-mail stories to us at 24_7@reason.com and tweet us
at @reason247.
from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/27/ae-reverses-phil-robertsons-duck-dynasty
via IFTTT
A
During a
With the end of the year upon us, Baylen Linnekin
8 
