It appears that there is a backlash brewing against a major accomplishment in the cause of liberty in recent years. The major accomplishment I have in mind is, of course, the legalization of marijuana use in much of the country at the state level. The accomplishment occurred in the Obama era, and many thought it was in for a reversal when Sessions took the reins as AG in early 2017. But Sessions, though he had been a war-on-drugs hardliner in the Senate, did little on point in the cabinet. Barr -- otherwise occupied to be sure, did even less. So effective legalization remained. Now, under Biden: a backlash? Possibly. It has taken the form of campaigns in several states to limit the THC content of the legalized products. The arguments aren't exactly your grandfather's Cadillac, or Grandpa's Reefer Madness either. But they ARE lame. Something to watch. And worry about.
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As noted yesterday, today we'll discuss Wisconsin Central v. US, the SAS Institute case, and Chavez-Meza v. US. These deal, respectively, with the definition of "compensation" for tax purposes, patent law administrative challenges, and the use of the sentencing guidelines. Coming off of the dispute we discussed yesterday, which placed employees and management in stark opposition, Wisconsin Central may seem refreshing and even wholesome: a private company and its employees working together to oppose a government encroachment on their dealings (successfully, it turns out.) Actually, various subsidiaries of the Canadian National Railway Company sued the United States for a $13 million tax refund. Their attorneys argued on the basis of the language in the Railroad Retirement Tax Act, which says that the compensation to be taxed includes "any form of money remuneration paid to an individual for services rendered as an employee." The US has been tax...
The two contending forces resolved their dispute arising out of the San Bernardino terrorist attack. It turns out the FBI didn't need Apple. The US government can hire hackers who can get into the phone. That was bad news for Apple's brand (unhackability is part of the mystique), but good news for what remains of the fourth amendment. It is an awful business having courts order private companies to help the government open doors to their products, especially when those products have an intimate character for so many of their buyers. Yet the FBI doesn't want that much to remain of the fourth amendment. So it, and the D of J, have re-started the fight, this time over another phone. The Justice Department said on April 8th that it is going to seek a court order to force Apple to help it unlock an iPhone that was seized as part of a New York drug-traffic investigation. This was a front page story in the weekend Wall Street Journal. Still, it faded from public attention q...
"Drug development based on herbal cannabinoids has been slow in the U.S. largely because of the scheduling issue and reluctance of the National Institute on Drug Abuse to approve research studies. A great deal of the current dispensary-based knowledge about the uses and efficacies of various strains has been the product of popular trial and error, a potentially dangerous and irreproducible way to approach science." That's a quote from Anne Wallace, writing in MJ Investor News. I'll let you consider the implications without further ado.
Too easy. Toronto's mayor says, "yes, I have smoked crack cocaine. Am I an addict? No. Have I tried it? Um, probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably approximately a year ago." I'm a laissez-faire kind of guy. I don't have an issue with regard to his drug of choice. But this statement displays the pathology that makes the liberty-eviscerating War on Drugs possible. He tries to mitigate the significance of his use of an illegal substance by referring to his abuse of a legal substance. Further, he did this only after staunchly denying for months that he had smoked the stuff or that there could possibly exist a video showing that he did so. So, essentially, he acknowledges the badness of what he was doing by the denials and the excuses, and fuels the 'War on Drugs,' a brushfire of a war that desperately requires buckets of dousing water, not further fuel. He has made this statement only after the Toronto police announced that they obtained t...