Daily Policy Digest
Government Issues
| Restaurants, Regulation and the Supersizing of America Concerned policymakers are developing new regulations on restaurants in an effort to fight obesity, say Michael L. Anderson, an assistant professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and David A. Matsa, an assistant professor of finance at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management... |
| Federal Workers Should Share Recession Pain Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., proposes to furlough all nonessential federal workers for two weeks next year, say observers... |
| Scanner Vans Allow Drive-By Snooping From a privacy perspective, the "scanner van" is one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable, says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center... |
| Missouri Tells Judges Cost of Sentences When judges in Missouri sentence convicted criminals, a new and unusual variable is available for them to consider: what a given punishment will cost the state, say observers... |
| Electronic Privacy Breach: Mail Order Case law suggests that stored e-mail should enjoy the same Fourth Amendment protections as private papers, says Peter Suderman... |
| Fewer Illegal Immigrants Entering United States The total number of illegal immigrants in the country is down from a peak of 12 million in 2007 to 11.1 million in 2009, according to a new study from the Pew Hispanic Center... |
| The Government Can Use GPS To Track Your Moves You do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway -- and no reasonable expectation that the government is not tracking your movements, says Adam Cohen, a former member of the New York Times editorial board... |
| Public Pension Records Release Denied Information needed to assess Ohio's pension systems and its cost to private citizens is being denied to news organizations, says think tank... |
| Mexican Drug Gangs Diversify Into Human Smuggling Some 28,000 people have died in Mexico's war on organized crime since President Felipe Calderón took power in December 2006 and declared an all-out battle against powerful drug-trafficking gangs that were gaining immense power and challenging the Mexican state... |
| Caribbean Crime-Fighting: Help Wanted Wracked by violence, the islands of the Caribbean are recruiting foreign police chiefs... |
