by CJ Ciaramella, RodeDecember 3, 2024.
Fragments:
Prosecutors in Indiana will return $42,000 in cash they seized from a small California business just months after its owners has filed a class action lawsuit alleging that law enforcement officials are exploiting a major FedEx shipping hub in Indianapolis to seize millions of dollars in cash from innocent owners.
The Institute for Justice (IJ), a public interest law firm, announced last week that prosecutors in Marion County, Indiana, have agreed to return the money to its clients Henry and Minh Cheng, who run a jewelry wholesale business in California . Police seized the money from a FedEx package en route to them from a customer in Virginia. County prosecutors then sued to have their money forfeited through a process called civil asset forfeiture, alleging that the Chengs’ money was related to a violation of a criminal statute. However, the complaint never stated which statute.
And:
“I’m thrilled at the prospect of getting my money back,” Henry Cheng said in an IJ press release, “and this is just the beginning. What happened to my company should not happen to anyone. Indiana must stop trying to steal from law-abiding citizens by seizing property and then figuring out later if there is any basis to keep it.”
DRH notes:
First, it is not true that the prosecutors said, “Badges? We don’t need any stinking badges.”
Secondly, this is another win for the Institute for Justiceone of the charities I donate to every year.
by David Friedman, Substack by David FriedmanDecember 4, 2024.
Fragments:
One commentator asked how it was possible that Biden was both corrupt and a decent man. My answer is that I judge a person’s personality primarily by the way he treats those around him; people with whom we interact directly are more salient and real to us than people at a distance, even people at a distance who are affected by the actions we take. Morally, stealing from Walmart is the same crime as stealing from a friend or co-worker, but it doesn’t feel the same and it leads to a different prediction of future behavior. Someone who steals from a friend will feel free to steal from Walmart if he thinks he can get away with it, but probably not the other way around. Someone who gives up their weekend plans to take a friend to the hospital in a medical emergency and care for their children and pets until the emergency passes might do less good for the world than someone who donates ten thousand dollars to a good cause. chosen medical center. charity, but he has provided better evidence that he is a good person, someone friends can rely on. A decent man.
And:
I didn’t see it as a matter of what Joe should have done, but what he did tells us what kind of man he is. A Joe Biden who cared enough about keeping his promises and maintaining faith in the justice system, about his duty to the American people, about letting the son he loved go to prison, would be a better man than the Joe Biden pardoning his son – but that Joe Biden would not have accepted millions of dollars in bribes funneled to his family through his son, and this one did. A Joe Biden who sent his son to prison to spare himself the shame and loss of status if he pardoned him after repeatedly promising not to do so would be a worse man than the Joe Biden who sent his son to prison whom he loved pardoned. He wouldn’t be a decent man – and this one might be.
Or maybe not. The pardon covered not only the crimes for which Hunter was convicted, but also all crimes he allegedly committed between January 1, 2014 and December 1, 2024. The innocent explanation is that Joe feared further prosecution of his son after he was no longer prosecuted. longer able to protect him. The less innocent one is that Joe feared legal action against Hunter for crimes in which his father was a co-conspirator, which led to legal action against Joe.
Comment from DRH: This is the most interesting thing I’ve read about the Hunter Biden pardon. Yes not means I completely agree. Notice that in the first two sentences of the first quote above, David shifts from talking about morality to talking about personality. I would say more, but I’m still thinking about it. I’m posting this mainly because I think many readers will find it interesting.
by Jacob Sullum, RodeDecember 5, 2024.
Extract:
What ‘crimes’ did Patel have in mind? Lying about people may amount to defamation depending on the circumstances, but it is not a crime, and any civil remedy for this would depend on lawsuits by the people affected, and not by the Department of Justice. Election rigging, when it involves the kind of fraud that Trump claims denied him his rightful victory in 2020, is a crime. But Trump never presented any evidence to support his stolen election fantasy, which certainly did not involve journalists who allegedly dumped fake ballots or manipulated vote counts.
Comment from DRH: Reading Patel’s comments reminded me of the same misunderstanding of press freedom that Tim Walz showed in his debate with JD Vance.
by Steven Greenhut, RodeDecember 6, 2024
Extract:
The big news from last week is the Ministry of Justice said that Google must divest its Chrome browser to comply with a court ruling that the company exercised monopoly power in the search sector. “Google’s exclusionary behavior, among other things, has made Google the near-universal standard for search and ensured that virtually all search entry points direct valuable search queries and user interaction data to Google,” the government said. argued.
I don’t find it particularly shocking that successful companies dominate certain aspects of the Internet market. Other companies are free to develop their own search engines. To research this column, I relied on Chrome because it is the best choice available. It costs me nothing to use it and I had other choices, so it’s unclear how the government protects me. If the court follows DOJ’s lead, the search will likely become more complicated less safe.
As Google’s Chief Legal Officer explained in a blogging post, the DOJ’s filing represents “unprecedented government overreach,” as the FBI, for example, wants to require “two separate choice screens before you can access Google Search on a Pixel phone you purchased.” Government bureaucrats, lawyers, and courts shouldn’t dictate specific application designs, but that’s fine for populists because they limit themselves to Big Tech.
DRH comment: The Google lawsuit reminds me of the lawsuit against Microsoft in the late 1990s, which I wrote about here. It was also reminiscent of the lawsuit against Alcoa in the 1940s. I quoted the Alcoa judge’s comments in my article on Microsoft.
CNBC, December 5, 2024.