No Runny Eggs

Never let it be said that I don’t keep my promises. It may have taken a couple months from the BBA get-together, but I indeed got on this side of things.

Revisions/extensions – I really need a new keyboard :-)

Actually, all you eBayers beware. ABC News is relaying an AP story on a North Dakota attempt to require North Dakotans that use eBay to sell third-party goods to obtain am auctioneer’s license.

To get a North Dakota auctioneer’s license, applicants must pay a $35 fee, obtain a $5,000 surety bond and undergo training at one of eight approved auction schools, where the curriculum includes talking really fast….

The (Public Service Commission) already licenses auctioneers and is asking North Dakota’s attorney general for a legal opinion about whether the definition of an auctioneer covers eBay sellers.

Commissioner Kevin Cramer said he does not believe the law applies to people who sell their own goods over eBay, but it could cover those who sell property consigned by others for a fee.

“Our laws probably didn’t contemplate this type of commerce,” Cramer said. “It’s probably time to take a look at them.”

Somehow, I doubt that this is about the $35 license or even the $5,000 bond. Rather, it’s all about the sales taxes. It’s a lot easier to force a state-licensed business to collect them. Indeed, if I were more cynical than I already am, I’d say they’ll use the physical presence of these eBay-using licensed auctioneers to claim that eBay itself has a physical presence in North Dakota and thus compel them to collect sales taxes on everything sold to North Dakota residents via eBay.

If they’re successful on either front, look for this to spread nationwide, “moratorium” on Internet taxes be damned.

I know the week has only begun, but I don’t know if I can find a more-ridiculous suit than this one from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel –

A widow alleges in a lawsuit against a helicopter manufacturer that an aircraft it created, occupied by her husband and daughter in a fatal crash, was defective and unreasonably dangerous.

Cheryl Berg seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages from the California-based Robinson Helicopter Co. in the suit filed recently in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee.

Cheryl Berg’s husband, Thomas, a Mukwonago businessman, and their daughter, Chelsey, died in the June 25, 2003, crash. Thomas Berg’s employee, Michael Siegler of Lake Geneva, was a passenger in the helicopter and also was killed.

The helicopter, a Robinson R44 II, was headed to Kansas City, Mo., where Berg, the helicopter’s pilot, had business. The aircraft took off from Mukwonago and crashed nose first about 90 minutes later in northwestern Illinois.

The National Transportation Safety Board later ruled that pilot error, with amphetamine use as a contributing factor, was the probable cause of the accident. The board also said Thomas Berg should not have been flying with passengers because he had only a student pilot certificate.

The suit alleges the helicopter’s main rotor control system was defective and dangerous. Another part of the helicopter, a main rotor servo actuator, failed, causing a loss of control of the main rotor control, the suit alleges.

The NTSB accident report is here (there are also 3 other incidents involving this type, with the two where investigations are completed not reporting any failure of the rotor control system). The findings from this incident are:

Occurrence #1: LOSS OF CONTROL – IN FLIGHT
Phase of Operation: CRUISE
Findings
1. (C) ROTOR RPM – NOT MAINTAINED – PILOT IN COMMAND
2. (F) USE OF INAPPROPRIATE MEDICATION/DRUG – PILOT IN COMMAND
3. (F) PROCEDURES/DIRECTIVES – NOT FOLLOWED – PILOT IN COMMAND
4. (F) IMPAIRMENT(DRUGS) – PILOT IN COMMAND
———-
Occurrence #2: IN FLIGHT COLLISION WITH TERRAIN/WATER
Phase of Operation: DESCENT – UNCONTROLLED
Findings
5. TERRAIN CONDITION – GROUND
Findings Legend: (C) = Cause, (F) = Factor

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident as follows.
The pilot not maintaining main rotor RPM during cruise flight. The factor in the two passenger’s fatal injuries was the pilot not following directives concerning the prohibition of carrying passengers while a student pilot. Other factors were the pilot’s use of inappropriate medication/drugs, and the impairment of the pilot by amphetamine.

Yep; sure looks like a design flaw instead of an inexperienced, drugged-up pilot to me. </sarcasm> More likely, the money is starting to run out, and the widow is grasping at the “no-fee-unless-we-win” straw for more. Where is tort reform when we need it?

(HT: tee bee at Guide to Midwestern Culture)

Two days without commenting on the Miers nomination is just too much. With Jib also falling off the M.A. bandwagon, I guess the Wisconsin chapter of Miers’ Anonymous is now closed.

The Washington Post reports on Senate Judiciary Char Arlen Specter’s appearance on ABC’s “This Week”. While in one breath, he condemns the “stampede to judgement”, on the other, he sure seems to be echoing some of the complaints lodged against her:

Specter said he would press Miers “very hard” on her approach to legal issues such as whether the Roe v. Wade abortion decision is settled law, and on whether she has privately given anyone assurances on how she would vote on the bench. He will even ask to see her law school transcript from Southern Methodist University because “academic standing is relevant,” he said.

Specter and Vermont Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said they intend to follow up on a comment by Focus on the Family founder and chairman James C. Dobson that, based on conversations with White House adviser Karl Rove, he believes she opposes abortion and would be a good justice.

“This is a lifetime appointment,” Specter said. “If there are backroom assurances and there are backroom deals, and if there is something which bears upon a precondition as to how a nominee is going to vote, I think that’s a matter that ought to be known by the Judiciary Committee and the American people.”

And I suppose asking her whether Roe is settled law isn’t asking for a precondition as to how she’ll vote. </sarcasm> I guess old Scottish Law’s laundry list of questions can be summed up thusly – “Ms. Miers, will you ever rule to the right of where Justice O’Connor ruled?”

Along those lines, I hope that President Bush is regretting jettisoning history by helping old Scottish Law in his 2004 Pennsylvania primary.

• OpinionJournal’s political pundit John Fund retracts his earlier call to mute the criticism of Miers, relaying this quote from an unnamed “close colleague” from her law firm, “She is unrevealing to the point that it’s an obsession.”
• Beldar comes up with impressive list of cases that Miers worked on in private practice. While he puts a serious dent in the “just a third-rate trial lawyer” arguments against her (something I never bought into; no American law school gives away JDs and you don’t get to the head of the Dallas Bar Association and State Bar of Texas by being a “third-rate” or even “second-rate” lawyer), that he only cites the results from these cases and not the briefs does nothing for my main argument that her likely judicial temperment is still a complete unknown.
• The Hedgehog asks a series of “what now” questions. While he blames the anti-Miers camp for the necessity of the “what now” questions, Jib asks why the pro-Miers camp continues to belittle those who have serious doubts of Miers.
• WTMJ’s Charlie Sykes is now hoping on-the-air that there can be some “face-saving” way for the Miers nomination to be withdrawn in favor of, say, Janice Rogers Brown. Somehow, I don’t see that happening, much less a Brown-for-Miers replacement