by C.J. Ciaramella, Motive, 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 legislation enforcement is exploiting a serious FedEx delivery hub in Indianapolis to grab tens of millions of {dollars} in money from harmless house owners.
The Institute for Justice (I.J.), a public curiosity legislation 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 package deal en path to them from a consumer in Virginia. County prosecutors then filed a lawsuit to forfeit their cash by means of a course of known as civil asset forfeiture, claiming the Chengs’ cash was related to a violation of a legal statute. Nonetheless, the grievance by no means acknowledged which statute.
And:
“I’m ecstatic on the prospect of getting my a refund,” Henry Cheng stated 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 conserving it.”
DRH feedback:
First, it isn’t true that the prosecutors stated, “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 attainable for Biden to be each corrupt and an honest man. My response is that I choose somebody’s character largely 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 similar offense as stealing from a good friend or a colleague nevertheless it doesn’t really feel the identical and it results in a unique 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 in all probability not the opposite approach 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 properly chosen medical charity however he has given higher proof of being a great particular person, somebody pals can depend on. A good man.
And:
I noticed it not as a query of what Joe ought to have performed however of what the factor he did do tells us about what kind of man he’s. A Joe Biden who cared sufficient about conserving his guarantees and preserving belief within the authorized system, about his responsibility to the American folks, to let the son he beloved go to jail, could be a greater man than the Joe Biden who pardoned his son — however that Joe Biden wouldn’t have taken tens of millions of {dollars} of bribes funneled by means of 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, could be a worse man than the Joe Biden who pardoned the son he beloved. He wouldn’t be an honest man — and this one is likely to be.
Or may not. The pardon not solely coated the crimes Hunter had been convicted of but in addition 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 not able to guard him. The much less harmless one is that Joe feared authorized motion in opposition to Hunter for offenses during which his father was a co-conspirator, resulting in authorized motion in opposition to Joe.
DRH remark: That is essentially 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’d 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, Motive, December 5, 2024.
Excerpt:
What “crimes” did Patel take into consideration? Mendacity about folks may, relying upon the circumstances, quantity to defamation, however it isn’t against the law, and any civil treatment for it will depend upon 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, Motive, December 6, 2024
Excerpt:
The massive information from final week is the Justice Division stated 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 just about all search entry factors route customers’ invaluable queries and interplay information to Google,” the federal government argued.
I don’t discover it significantly stunning that profitable firms dominate some elements of the web market. Different firms are free to develop their very own search engines like google and yahoo. I relied on Chrome for the analysis for this column as a result of it’s the only option out there. 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 put up, the DOJ’s submitting represents “unprecedented authorities overreach” because the feds search to, for example, require “two separate alternative screens earlier than you could possibly entry Google Search on a Pixel cellphone you acquire.” Authorities bureaucrats, attorneys, and the courts shouldn’t be dictating particular software designs, however to populists that’s advantageous as a result of, properly, they’re sticking it to Large Tech.
DRH remark: The Google swimsuit jogs my memory of the swimsuit in opposition to Microsoft within the late Nineties, which I wrote about right here. It additionally reminded of the swimsuit in opposition to Alcoa within the Nineteen Forties. I quoted from the Alcoa choose’s feedback in my article on Microsoft.
CNBC, December 5, 2024.
