Paul Soglin, Mifflin Street, and Fair Use

Eugene Volokh has a nice post about a recent federal court decision discussing the use of Paul Soglin's image on some T-shirts sold at the 2012 Mifflin Street Block Party:

The photographer who took the image used for the shirts sued for copyright infringement, but the Court dismissed the case on fair use grounds.

The opinion also nicely lays out the ironic backstory. As you may know, the Mifflin Street Block Party started during the student protest era, with a young firebrand named Paul Soglin at the forefront. Well, times change. Paul Soglin has now been Madison's mayor a bunch of different times, and he's pretty much a party-pooper nowadays. So it goes.

As for my own experience with the Mifflin Street Block Party, I can personally attest to the high quality of the brownies.

The uses and abuses of federal power

A nice synopsis:

While federal agents were raiding a medical marijuana dispensary and the nation’s first pot trade school in Oakland, run by one of California’s most prominent legalization advocates, less than a mile a way, a gunman was murdering seven people at a Christian nursing school. The feds couldn’t have predicted the rampage, but it’s hard to imagine a starker illustration of misplaced law enforcement priorities.

"The Obama administration has quietly unleashed a multi­agency crackdown on medical cannabis that goes far beyond anything undertaken by George W. Bush."

A foolish drug war without end, apparently.

When contemplating these matters, it is hard not to remember that President Obama himself has admitted to smoking a lot of pot and doing cocaine (when he could afford it) in his younger days. Is this not staggering hypocrisy, Mr. Gillette?

Marijuana laws take a hit in Montana.

The war on drugs took an interesting turn in Montana this week. According to the Billings Gazette, members of a jury pool in a Missoula County District Court made it clear they would not convict someone for possessing a small amount of marijuana.