by C.J. Ciaramella, Purpose, December 3, 2024.
Excerpts:
Indiana prosecutors will return $42,000 in money they seized from a California small enterprise, a number of months after the house owners filed a category motion lawsuit alleging that regulation enforcement is exploiting a serious FedEx transport hub in Indianapolis to grab thousands and thousands of {dollars} in money from harmless house owners.
The Institute for Justice (I.J.), a public curiosity regulation agency, introduced final week that prosecutors in Marion County, Indiana, have agreed to return the cash to its purchasers Henry and Minh Cheng, who run a California jewellery wholesaler enterprise. Police seized the money from a FedEx bundle en path to them from a shopper in Virginia. County prosecutors then filed a lawsuit to forfeit their cash via a course of known as civil asset forfeiture, claiming the Chengs’ cash was related to a violation of a prison statute. Nevertheless, the grievance by no means said which statute.
And:
“I’m ecstatic on the prospect of getting my a refund,” Henry Cheng mentioned in an I.J. press launch, “and that is only the start. What occurred to my firm shouldn’t occur to anybody. Indiana ought to cease making an attempt to steal from law-abiding residents by seizing property and determining later whether or not there’s any foundation for preserving it.”
DRH feedback:
First, it’s not true that the prosecutors mentioned, “Badges? We don’t want no stinkin’ badges.”
Second, that is one other victory for the Institute for Justice, one of many charities I give to yearly.
by David Friedman, David Friedman’s Substack, December 4, 2024.
Excerpts:
A commenter requested the way it was potential for Biden to be each corrupt and a good man. My response is that I choose somebody’s character principally by how he treats the folks instantly round him; folks we work together with immediately are extra salient, extra actual, to us than distant folks, even distant folks affected by actions we take. Morally talking, stealing from Walmart is identical offense as stealing from a good friend or a colleague nevertheless it doesn’t really feel the identical and it results in a special prediction of future habits. Somebody who steals from a good friend will be happy to steal from Walmart if he thinks he can get away with it, however most likely not the opposite means round. Somebody who offers up his weekend plans to drive a good friend to the hospital in a medical emergency and care for his youngsters and pets till the emergency is over may do much less good for the world than somebody who donates ten thousand {dollars} to a nicely chosen medical charity however he has given higher proof of being a superb particular person, somebody mates can depend on. A good man.
And:
I noticed it not as a query of what Joe ought to have achieved however of what the factor he did do tells us about what kind of man he’s. A Joe Biden who cared sufficient about preserving his guarantees and preserving belief within the authorized system, about his responsibility to the American folks, to let the son he liked go to jail, can be a greater man than the Joe Biden who pardoned his son — however that Joe Biden wouldn’t have taken thousands and thousands of {dollars} of bribes funneled via his son to his household and this one did. A Joe Biden who let his son go to jail to spare himself the embarrassment, the lack of standing, from pardoning him after repeatedly promising to not, can be a worse man than the Joe Biden who pardoned the son he liked. He wouldn’t be a good man — and this one is perhaps.
Or won’t. The pardon not solely coated the crimes Hunter had been convicted of but additionally any crime he might have dedicated from Jan. 1, 2014, to Dec. 1, 2024. The harmless rationalization is that Joe feared additional prosecution of his son after he was now not able to guard him. The much less harmless one is that Joe feared authorized motion towards Hunter for offenses during which his father was a co-conspirator, resulting in authorized motion towards Joe.
DRH remark: That is probably the most attention-grabbing factor I’ve learn on the Hunter Biden pardon. That does not imply that I completely agree with it. Discover within the first 2 sentences of the primary quote above that David shifts from speaking about morality to speaking about character. I might say extra however I’m nonetheless pondering. I put this up primarily as a result of I feel many readers will discover it attention-grabbing.
by Jacob Sullum, Purpose, December 5, 2024.
Excerpt:
What “crimes” did Patel bear in mind? Mendacity about folks may, relying upon the circumstances, quantity to defamation, however it’s not against the law, and any civil treatment for it might rely on lawsuits by the affected people, not the Justice Division. Rigging elections, if it entails the form of fraud that Trump claims denied him his rightful victory in 2020, is against the law. However Trump by no means offered any proof to substantiate his stolen-election fantasy, which in any case didn’t contain journalists who allegedly dumped phony ballots or manipulated vote counts.
DRH remark: Studying about Patel’s feedback jogged my memory of the identical misunderstanding of freedom of the press that Tim Walz confirmed in his debate with J.D. Vance.
by Steven Greenhut, Purpose, December 6, 2024
Excerpt:
The large information from final week is the Justice Division mentioned that Google ought to divest itself of its Chrome browser to adjust to the court docket’s discovering that the corporate exerted monopoly energy within the search enterprise. “Google’s exclusionary conduct has, amongst different issues, made Google the near-universal default for search and ensured that nearly all search entry factors route customers’ useful queries and interplay information to Google,” the federal government argued.
I don’t discover it notably stunning that profitable corporations dominate some elements of the web market. Different corporations are free to develop their very own engines like google. I relied on Chrome for the analysis for this column as a result of it’s your best option accessible. It prices me nothing to make use of it and I had different decisions, so it’s unclear how the federal government is defending me. If the court docket follows DOJ’s lead, it’ll probably make looking out extra convoluted and much less safe.
As Google’s chief authorized officer defined in a weblog publish, the DOJ’s submitting represents “unprecedented authorities overreach” because the feds search to, as an illustration, require “two separate alternative screens earlier than you can entry Google Search on a Pixel telephone you acquire.” Authorities bureaucrats, attorneys, and the courts shouldn’t be dictating particular utility designs, however to populists that’s high-quality as a result of, nicely, they’re sticking it to Large Tech.
DRH remark: The Google swimsuit jogs my memory of the swimsuit towards Microsoft within the late Nineteen Nineties, which I wrote about right here. It additionally reminded of the swimsuit towards Alcoa within the Nineteen Forties. I quoted from the Alcoa choose’s feedback in my article on Microsoft.
CNBC, December 5, 2024.
