Business Rights Watch

In the old days, circa 1900, American businessmen had to twist their minds into pretzels in order to pretend that some desired governmental intervention criminalizing rival companies was compatible with free enterprise. In the middle of the twentieth century, it was easier: Businessmen could portray governmental interventions criminalizing rivals as undoubted exceptions to free enterprise but as actions demanded by national security—and as actions targeting less patriotic rivals.

Conrad Black’s book on his legal ordeal, A Matter of Principle, has now been published (it can be ordered from Amazon here) and The New Criterion’s February issue has a review of it, “The persection of Lord Black,” by Andrew C. McCarthy.

In his State of the Union address, on January 24, President Obama said: "I’m asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorney general [sic] to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.”

Leftists often insist—and quite rightly—that it is foolish for America to try to impose its political system on countries with fundamentally different cultures. But will they speak out against the American government’s increasing attempts to impose our legal system on countries with fundamentally different cultures? Michael Volkov (background here) points out at his blog “Corruption, Crime & Compliance” just how far the U.S. invasion has gone.

Preet Bharara, U.S.

 “The law’s delay” is proverbial; there are snails sculpted on the flagpoles at the Supreme Court. But how long should a person sit in prison waiting for the court that convicted him to decide whether what he was convicted of doing was actually a crime? Bradley J. Stinn’s lawyers think he’s been waiting too long—and they’ve asked an appellate court to order Judge Nina Gershon to make a decision.

You got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

On Tuesday, November 22, Merck announced that it had reached a half-billion-dollar agreement with numerous state governments and with the federal government to settle civil charges that the company had illegally promoted Vioxx for off-label uses and that it had misrepresented the drug's risks.