Daily Archives: January 23, 2007

Horse sense at the Fifth Circuit

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cowboy%20on%20a%20horse.jpgThe Texas justice system may leave a lot to be desired in the area of capital punishment, but you can’t say that the Lone Star State doesn’t protect its horses.
A couple of Texas slaughterhouses recently learned that lesson when they began processing and selling horse meat for human consumption in several emerging foreign markets. The Attorney General’s office promptly informed the slaughterhouses that they were violating a 1949 law that bans processing of horse meat for human consumption and the slaughterhouses protested that the 1949 law had been repealed or was at least pre-empted by federal law. The AG’s office refused to back down, so the slaughterhouses sued to enjoin the AG from enforcing the law and the district court granted the injunction.
On appeal, a Fifth Circuit panel led by Judge Benvanides had some fun. In Empacadora de Carnes v. Curry, 05-11499 (5th Cir., Jan. 19, 2007), the Court held that “[t]he lone cowboy riding his horse on a Texas trail is a cinematic icon. Not once in memory did the cowboy eat his horse, but film is an imperfect mirror for reality.” The panel goes on to concede that horse thieves occasionally would eat horse meat, but holds that the Texas horse meat ban has not been repealed and is neither pre-empted by the Federal Meat Inspection Act nor violative of the Dormant Commerce Clause. As a result, the Fifth Circuit shut down the slaughterhouses’ horse meat processing operations, leaving those heartless folks in Illinois as the only current US exporters of horse meat for human consumption.
Woodrow Call and Gus McRae and the other members of the Hat Creek Cattle Company would be right proud of the Fifth Circuit. HT to Robert Loblaw.

A Wie bit of a problem

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Butch-Harmon.jpgSuffice it to say that former Houstonian and prominent professional golf instructor Butch Harmon won’t be receiving any holiday greeting cards from the family of female golfer, Michelle Wie after the following public remarks from over the weekend:

“The whole thing is absolutely ridiculous,” he says. “Michelle has regressed. She is worse now at 17 than she was at 14. To continue telling us that she is getting better by playing with the men is an insult. She says it’s a learning experience. What is she learning by finishing last? It’s hurting her mentally.”
“She should go play with the women and dominate that competition first. But the whole Michelle Wie camp is about money. The biggest difference between Earl [Woods, the father of Tiger] and BJ [Wie, Michelle’s dad] is that Earl didn’t worry about money. He knew it was more important for Tiger to learn to win and then the money would take care of itself. But Michelle Wie wins nothing.”
“You should invite her to the next member-guest competition at your home club and she might actually win something because what’s going on now is ridiculous. And it’s not good for the game of golf.”

Next time, Butch, tell us what you really think and don’t beat around the bush. HT Geoff Shackelford.

More on the new Prohibition

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internet-gambling.GIFOn the heels of this post from last week, the Justice Department is now turning on Wall Street in connection with the federal government’s jihad on internet gambling. We can now rest easier that the scoundrels who have been helped finance this threat to the public will now be brought to justice.
Meanwhile, as noted earlier here, the Justice Department’s campaign against legitimate businesses from other countries who run afoul of an anchronistic US law is not winning the US any friends. The broad latitude that federal prosecutors are being given to criminalize business interests is generating a wave of prosecutorial abuse and waste that is far more troubling than the problem that the prosecutors are attacking. Along those lines, Christine Hurt over at the Conglomerate blog is asking all the right questions about the ominous direction that this criminalization policy is taking us.