The wake of a violent tragedy is an appropriate time for reflection, investigation, prayer, and the promotion of healing. It is a particularly inappropriate time for political opportunism. After last weekend’s tragedy in Arizona, Congress should put the brakes on any desire to ram through gun-control legislation that will neither solve the perceived problems in federal law nor prevent any future assaults on public officials. Observation teaches us that in the wake of crisis, politicians’ instinctive reaction is to check the legislative box and claim that they have solved a …
Although sanity and common sense are frequently lacking in opinions issued by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski offered both those things in a concurrence he recently authored in U.S. v. Goyal. In convicting Probhat Goyal (the former CFO of Network Associates) of securities fraud, submitting false SEC filings, and making material false statements to corporate auditors, a federal jury accepted the government’s theory that Goyal should be imprisoned because Network Associates allegedly did not adhere to nuances of the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Companies …
