“Thames Valley Police has accepted that the search warrants it used to search Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s homes earlier this year were unlawful, the High Court has heard. The force accepted that the information given to the Old Bailey about warrants relating to their decision to search the former Prince Andrew’s Sandringham home and the Royal Lodge in Windsor was incorrect. Andrew was arrested by Thames Valley Police in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He denies any wrongdoing. The warrants were issued before his arrest and his lawyers are challenging their lawfulness. … His arrest in February arose after the US Department of Justice published documents which suggested he had forwarded confidential information to the convicted sex offender when Mountbatten-Windsor was a UK trade envoy in 2010.” (10/08/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by William L Anderson
“As any follower of Austrian economics knows, lawmakers—in any form—are usually the enemies of free markets and the prosperity that they bring. However, there are times when legislators manage to outdo themselves and pass laws that are absolutely destructive, and the Jones Act is one of them. A number of people have explained that, with most government programs, ‘the benefits are concentrated and the costs are diffused,’ and probably no legislation better reflects that truism than the Jones Act, which benefits a small number of people but lays costs upon the vast number of Americans that must pay for this legislation.” (10/08/26)
‘Congress rejected constitutional alternatives in favor of remaking a nation. Abroad, as at home, lawmakers cannot manufacture preferred social outcomes simply by spending more money.” (10/08/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Legal rules affect behavior on many margins. They affect incentives to commit offenses, incentives to prosecute them, incentives to prevent them. For some offenses tort law may provide better incentives than criminal law on one of those margins and worse on another. If so, the question of what ought to be a tort and what ought to be a crime will be ambiguous, at least until we develop a theory good enough to predict not only the sign but also the size of such effects. In this post I will argue that, judged by the incentive for potential victims to prevent offenses, our rules are backwards. Things we treat as crimes, such as burglary, ought to be torts; things we treat as torts, such as auto accidents, ought to be crimes.” (10/08/26)
“A judge ruled that the state must preserve all evidence in the botched [killing] of Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike. Pike’s attorneys argued for the order saying the evidence would be relevant in case the state tries to [kill] her again. … Judge I’Ashea Myles ordered the evidence be preserved, and gave a long list of specific items to be saved.” (10/07/26)
“Researchers argue that a profound generational shift by millennials and Gen Zers away from criminal behavior is ending mass incarceration and will ultimately reduce the prison population by 50 percent over the next two decades, with or without accompanying policy reforms. … As older generations such as baby boomers and Gen Xers have aged out of criminal behavior, which typically peaks between the late teens and mid-twenties, far fewer millennial and Gen Z offenders have arrived to replace them.” (10/07/26)
“For years, social media platforms expanded with few meaningful protections for child safety, transparency, age-appropriate design, parental visibility or independent oversight. Only after mounting evidence of harm did policymakers begin responding in earnest. By then, millions of children had already been shaped by systems designed to maximize engagement. Artificial intelligence (AI) gives us a rare chance to do better.” (10/08/26)
“Vice President JD Vance and Labor Department officials announced Thursday that the Trump administration is suspending Microsoft, Adobe and others from a key employment-based, green-card program, accusing major tech firms and outsourcing companies of abusing the visa system at the expense of American workers. … Vance said Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers last year while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards, calling it a ‘scandalous system.'” (10/08/26)
