Miscellaneous

February 6 roundup

By Walter Olson, Ted Frank, and David Nieporent

• Calling it "oppressive", committee chair in Mississippi legislature vows to defeat proposal to ban restaurants from serving obese patrons [AP/Picayune-Item; earlier]
• Latest in whales vs. sub sonar: judge deep-sixes Bush's attempt to exempt Navy from rules against bothering marine mammals [CNN; earlier]
• Much-criticized opener of ABC's new series Eli Stone aired last Thursday, and Orac takes a scalpel to the vaccine-scare script [Respectful Insolence, which also covers new autism studies]
• Scary proposal approved by California assembly would strong-arm larger private foundations -- and businesses that deal with them -- into "diversity" numbers game [Lehrer/Hicks @ L.A. Times]
• New Dutch study finds thin people and nonsmokers cost health system more in long run than obese and smokers -- theories behind Medicaid-recoupment litigation are looking more fraudulent every day, aren't they? [AP]
• Late, but worth noting: blogger nails John Edwards's demagoguery on Nataline Sarkisyan case [Matthew Holt @ Spot-On, via KevinMD; more here and here]
• Puff piece on food-poisoning lawyer William Marler [AP/KOMO]
• Ready, set, all take offense: Sen. McCain likes to tell lawyer jokes [WSJ law blog]
• In suit charging UFCW with "racketeering", Smithfield cites as an underlying offense union's having lobbied city councils to pass resolutions condemning the meatpacker; company has hired Prof. G. Robert Blakey, who denies the RICO law he drafted is a menace to liberty [Liptak, NYT; some earlier parallels in federal tobacco suit]
• Golden age of comic books was 1930s-1950s, but golden age of comic book litigation is now [NLJ]
• New at Point of Law: Hillary's "disastrous" mortgage scheme; Qualcomm sanctions ruling could curb discovery abuse; if Mel Weiss has been kind to you, why drop him down memory hole?; new academic theory on uniformity of contingency fees; the trouble with patenting tax avoidance strategies; and much more [visit][bumped Wed. a.m.]

Full post as published by Overlawyered on February 06, 2008 (boomark / email).