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From AP (see also ABC and CBC):

A Canadian woman on long-term sick leave for depression says she lost her benefits because her insurance agent found photos of her on Facebook in which she appeared to be having fun.  Nathalie Blanchard has been on leave from her job at IBM in Bromont, Quebec, for the last year.

She said her insurance agent described several pictures Blanchard posted on Facebook, including ones showing her having a good time at a Chippendales bar show, at her birthday party and on a sun holiday.

Blanchard said Manulife told her it’s evidence she is no longer depressed. She’s fighting to get her benefits reinstated and says her lawyer is exploring what the next step should be. Blanchard told the CBC that on her doctor’s advice, she tried to have fun, including nights out at her local bar with friends and short getaways to sun destinations, as a way to forget her problems.

According to her attorney:

Blanchard and her lawyer Thomas Lavin are taking legal action against Manulife and IBM, arguing that it was Blanchard’s doctor who recommended that she socialize with family and friends.
“What they have done amounts to constructive dismissal because they’ve said to her if you don’t come back by the 30th of October you’ve got nothing,” he said.

Lavin said he’s observed similar cases in which information on social networks raised red flags for insurance companies. But, he added that in those cases the information didn’t lead to the payments being immediately terminated. Instead it served as a trigger and prompted further medical reviews or examinations, he said.

“They never even notified her,” he said. “They just stopped paying.”

I know nothing about Canadian Employment law, but I could definitely see a similar claim popping up in an American employment environment.

Check out this video from ABC for more details.

In a little over two weeks, FantasySCOTUS.net has gained over 1,700 Members, there are over 120 Leagues, and we have sign-ups across the globe.  The first opinions of the term should be handed down sometime in December, so join, make your picks, and play FTW (for the win)!

Bizarre Story from Newsday (see also Gizmodo and All Things Digital ).

Justin Bieber, some teen sensation (never heard of him) was slated to sign albums at Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island, NY. The event was canceled after a crowd of 3,000 young girls pushed and shoved and got rowdy, and the police shut it down.

But what is really odd, is they arrested the VP from Bieber’s label for failing to tweet:

Police arrested a senior vice president from Bieber’s label, Island Def Jam Records, James A. Roppo, 44, of Hoboken, N.J., saying he hindered their crowd-control efforts by not cooperating.

He was in custody Friday night, pending charges that could include criminal nuisance, endangering the welfare of a minor and obstructing government administration, Smith said.

“We asked for his help in getting the crowd to go away by sending out a Twitter message,” Smith said. “By not cooperating with us we feel he put lives in danger and the public at risk.”

But according to All Things Digital, Beiber’s did Tweet his fans to leave:

@justinbieber: they are not allowing me to come into the mall. if you dont leave I and my fans will be arrested as the police just told us.

Update: Thanks for the link Professor Volokh.

In a fascinating article in Esquire (H/T Freakanomics Blog), economist Daron Acemoglu poses and attempts to answer the question why some Nations are richer than others, and what society can do about poverty.

From the article:

The question social scientists have unsuccessfully wrestled with for centuries is, Why? But the question they should have been asking is, How? Because inequality is not predetermined. Nations are not like children — they are not born rich or poor. Their governments make them that way.

People need incentives to invest and prosper; they need to know that if they work hard, they can make money and actually keep that money. And the key to ensuring those incentives is sound institutions — the rule of law and security and a governing system that offers opportunities to achieve and innovate. That’s what determines the haves from the have-nots — not geography or weather or technology or disease or ethnicity.

Put simply: Fix incentives and you will fix poverty. And if you wish to fix institutions, you have to fix governments.

Start in Nogales, a city cut in half by the Mexican-American border fence. There is no difference in geography between the two halves of Nogales. The weather is the same. The winds are the same, as are the soils. The types of diseases prevalent in the area given its geography and climate are the same, as is the ethnic, cultural, and linguistic background of the residents. By logic, both sides of the city should be identical economically.And yet they are far from the same.

The key difference is that those on the north side of the border enjoy law and order and dependable government services — they can go about their daily activities and jobs without fear for their life or safety or property rights. On the other side, the inhabitants have institutions that perpetuate crime, graft, and insecurity.

Take Singapore, a once-impoverished tropical island that became the richest nation in Asia after British colonialists enshrined property rights and encouraged trade. Or China, where decades of stagnation and famine were reversed only after Deng Xiaoping began introducing private-property rights in agriculture, and later in industry. Or Botswana, whose economy has flourished over the past forty years while the rest of Africa has withered, thanks to strong tribal institutions and farsighted nation building by its early elected leaders.

Now look at the economic and political failures. You can begin in Sierra Leone, where a lack of functioning institutions and an overabundance of diamonds have fueled decades of civil war and strife and corruption that continue unchecked today. Or take communist North Korea, a geographical, ethnic, and cultural mirror of its capitalist neighbor to the south, yet ten times poorer. Or Egypt, cradle of one of the world’s great civilizations yet stagnant economically ever since its colonization by the Ottomans and then the Europeans, only made worse by its post-independence governments, which have restricted all economic activities and markets. In fact, the theory can be used to shed light on the patterns of inequality for much of the world.

There’s no doubt that erasing global inequality, which has been with us for millennia and has expanded to unprecedented levels over the past century and a half, won’t be easy. But by accepting the role of failed governments and institutions in causing poverty, we have a fighting chance of reversing it.

The key difference is that those on the north side of the border enjoy law and order and dependable government services — they can go about their daily activities and jobs without fear for their life or safety or property rights. On the other side, the inhabitants have institutions that perpetuate crime, graft, and insecurity.

Last week, I blogged about federal crimes, and queried what exactly was a federal crime at the time of the founding (See Thread Here). In short, most federal crimes today are premised on the Commerce Clause. But what about crimes in our early Republic?

Professor Orin Kerr helpfully suggested I look at  1 Stat. 112, enacted April 30, 1790 and Chief Justice Marshall’s opinion United States v. Wiltberger (1820).

But these statues and case law dealt solely with matters clearly in the province of the federal government, and not traditional common law crimes.

Troll_DC2, a frequent commenter, asked:

I do not know the answer to your question, but it might be interesting to see a list of federal crimes from, say, the 1820s or so to see whether the statutory law had moved beyond the bare minimums reflecting a strict reading of the Constitution. If not, how about the 1870s or some other pre-New Deal period? It would be interesting to see when the expansion process began, what caused it to happen, and whether anyone complained about its questionable constitutionality. At some point, I would think, the Supreme Court would have necessarily had to issue some sort of ruling on the issue. Perhaps a criminal-law professor who reads this blog could be useful here.

In reply to Troll, Orin Kerr recommended two pre-New Deal Commerce Clause cases:

1)  Hoke v. United States (1913), which upheld the White Slave Traffic Act of 1910: http://supreme.justia.com/us/227/308/case.html
2) Westfall v. United States, 274 U.S. 256, 259 (1927), which upheld a 1917 federal criminal law punishing fraud on a state bank that had joined the federal reserve system, even if the fraud had nothing to do with federal funds. http://supreme.justia.com/us/274/256/case.htmlI recommend reading two pre-New Deal Commerce Clause cases:

But, do these cases really answer my question?

With respect to Hoke, it still dealt with white slaves crossing state lines. I don’t know if moving people is commerce, but at least its intrastate. Westfall was issued in 1927. Although this is Pre-New Deal, the Court had already advanced its commerce clause jurisprudence significantly. Furthermore, it still had something to do with the federal reserve, a federal entity.

So, here is my final question. And I will find an answer: When did congress starting criminalizing acts that were wholly in intrastate (think McCullough, not Wickard)  that had nothing to do with any discernible federal interest? If a state line was crossed, or used an instrumentality of commerce (roads, rivers, etc), or it dealt with something arising from the Federal Government, I’m not interested.

The time period I need to look at is the 19th Century. My Co-Author, Corey Carpenter, found two interesting cases.

More after the jump.

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