United States District Judge James Boasberg covered 120 pages explaining why he completely threw out an antitrust case by 46 states against Facebook and capsized the Federal Trade Commission’s companion case, while tossing it a flimsy life jacket.  But on page one of each dismissal Boasberg prominently referenced the governments’ blockbuster antitrust cases against Microsoft two decades earlier in the same courthouse.  Those first paragraph allusions to Microsoft made it clear “crystal” that he was going to throw both cases out and play heads and tails you lose with precedent and doctrine for the remaining 119 pages.  And that’s what he did. […]

It was said that bosses in Soviet Union industries pretended to pay workers who pretended to work.  Similarly, during this millennium and much of the last century, the roughly 130 NCAA Division I-A schools pretended their major sports athletes were “student-athletes” and most of those players went along with the pretense.  In recent decades, the NCAA, always an accomplice in this fiction, has pushed back some.  In part because of a fit of conscience, but mostly to avoid the Soviet’s fate and protect the major sports money machine.  […]

Extravagant power about to be exercised or smoke and mirrors?  More the latter but some of the former with some real ability to do things, but other than what is hoped for and promised of her: Lina Khan, the new 32-year-old chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Lina Khan Unlike the still unnominated Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, who unilaterally can get stuff done, the FTC chair (“Chairman” by statute) has one of five votes.  Khan may soon have on vote of four, when and if Rohit Chopra departs to direct the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  The fun bunch in the Senate’s Republican caucus may then try to block filling the fifth FTC seat, resulting in 2 [...]

Jack Weinstein one of the greatest American judges in history, and the greatest in “this boy’s life” died on June 15, two months shy of his 100th birthday. [1]  When he retired from the federal bench at 98, after 53 years, he was carrying a full load of cases – and a lucky load it was – for the litigants and their champions.  How was Jack Weinstein great?  Let others count the thousands of ways (and they are) but HL will mention a few personal and idiosyncratic. Thurgood Marshall Weinstein was already a role model when and where HL grew up on THE ISLAND.  Weinstein got there by way of Kansas, then Brooklyn and its Lincoln High School, where HL’s dad taught and [...]

HL readers know our subject selection is idiosyncratic and pursued only when our take is, if not unique, not what you’re getting virtually any other place.  This post like the previous 138 checks the second box, but not the first.  It was commissioned by several fellow tennis nut subscribers. The first self-evident truth in The Matter of Naomi Osaka was that it was predictable bordering on certain, and certainly predicted in our post of September 12, 2018, “A Young Version of Serena Williams Defeats Her in The U.S. Open Final” HL 59.  More about that later. Margrethe Vestager Second truth is that the four major so-called “Grand Slam” tournaments violated U.S., U.K., E.U. and Australian antitrust laws by agreeing not to compete in [...]

The obligatory prefatory recitation.  We don’t like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and considered his March 3, 2015 address to Congress a monumental breach of diplomatic norms, ingratitude incarnate and astoundingly ham-handed (irony intended).  His government’s interference with the sound equipment at Al-Aqsa during Ramadan, that disturbed the call to prayer, is as vile and antithetical to Jewish ethical teaching as anything we’ve witnessed during Israel’s lifetime, which roughly coincides with ours. […]

In reality and previous years a Roland Garros postscript followed the tournament (see HL 116 “Roland Garros 2020, Plus Ca Change, Plus C’est La Meme Chose”).  But this year a “pre” is in order, since as we begin to emerge from the pandemic the “Plus Ca Change” portion of the Parisian platitude for once has equal weight with the “Plus C’est La Meme Chose” part. […]

Unless one has been on the dark side of the moon or further out in space with “Ingenuity” you’ve heard or read Representative Maxine Waters’ exhortation to protestors “to get more confrontational” if the Floyd/Chauvin jury does not render a guilty verdict.  And you also likely know the judge has already stated that her comments may provide sustenance for Chauvin’s certain appeal of conviction.  Certain, without regard to Waters’ inflammatory remarks. […]

The New York Times’ April 13 headline, reading much like one in Rupert’s New York Post, screamed “Bond Girl Talk and Groping: Albany’s Toxic Culture for Women.”  It featured numerous claims of survivorhood by New York State Senator Julia Salazar, the self-anointed “Bond Girl, since her allegations were not accompanied by the name of the alleged sexual assailant.  The column was written by a trio of “alleged” reporters, an homage to Gene Shalit, the wonderful cinema critic of blessed memory, who referred to cinematic stinkers as “alleged movies.”  But the Times’ article was not merely a credulous and poorly researched piece, it was one so badly written that we, and believe you, will read it many times just to experience the superlative negative in Times or perhaps any newspaper’s articles.[1] […]

Last week Amazon workers at the Bessemer, Alabama facility overwhelmingly voted against unionization.  Implicitly, the workers registered more faith in their employer to continue raising wages and improving benefits and Amazon’s much criticized work environment.  The lopsided 70/30 result coincided with ongoing reports about just how well Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, Costco, Target and major supermarket chains have fared during the pandemic.  They have profited enormously because of our dependence on them and the essential workers who staff them.  These companies and many other essential merchandisers and service providers have prospered in explicit profits and even larger increases in market capitalizations. […]