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Showing posts from January, 2013

A shark jumping ham sandwich?

Glenn Reynolds has now published his promised (see previous post) article on due process in a time of over-regulation. He has called it Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime . You should read the whole thing. It's short. He encourages readers to offer their own suggestions for improvement. Do. It has already generated some traction. At the Atlantic Conor Friedersdorf has a put out a piece entitled 8 Ways to Stop Overzealous Prosecutors from Destroying Lives  and at The Volokh Conspiracy   Randy Barnett has a long blog post on it . I was entertained also by Glenn  drawing attention the other day at Instapundit to this passage in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged : “ Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against – then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fell

Have we "jumped the shark" with over-regulation?

 "Rule of Law" now imperilled by too much law Glenn Reynolds has recently linked to an article by David French entitled " David Gregory and the Decline of the Rule of Law ".  In it French asks: "Can we even speak of the rule of law as a meaningful concept when we combine an explosive regulatory state with near-absolute prosecutorial discretion?” This link appears as part of seemingly growing series of cross linkages that Reynolds is apparently accumulating for an imminent scholarly piece he says he is putting together on the theme " Due Process When Everything is a Crime ". In the western world we are now not just drowning in a sea of over-regulation from our over-zealous legislatures and bureaucracies. It seems that as well our law making institutions are bizarrely indifferent to the fate that its citizens labour under in the vast byzantine morass of freedom depleting strictures and criminalised triviality we now live with. But society ma

Mankind's reckless endangerment of other species

More evidence has recently come to light of Mankind's pitiless destruction of other species in its relentless self-interested march to complete planetary domination and, hubristically it is hoped, to its own inevitable demise. The pubic louse is now an endangered species , apparently due to the viral new fashion preference in urban society for bikini waxes. There is now so little viable habitat for the poor pubic louse that it has been unable to breed in sufficient numbers to maintain its population. We surely now need a public campaign to preserve the pubic louse and its habitat. It could have a slogan like: "Keep Bush. Save the Louse". That might generate enough itch for the luvvies to have a good old fashioned scratch.