Regulation Roundup

The latest happenings in the world of regulation:

• A new Senate bill amending copyright law would make lip-synching to other people’s music a jailable offense. The legislation has bipartisan support.
• Two women were arrested in New York for eating donuts in a park while unaccompanied by minors. Strangely specific!
• A church in Charlotte, North Carolina, was fined $4,000 for violating the city’s tree-pruning regulations. The penalty is $100 per branch incorrectly cut.
• Another bill winding its way through the Senate would allow states to tax companies that have no physical presence inside their borders. I’ve written on similar state-level proposals before. It’s a bad idea.
• A new Mercatus Center study ranks the 50 states by economic freedom and regulatory burden. New York scored the worst. New Hampshire and South Dakota did best. You can read the study here.
• Wayne Crews has a good article in Forbes about why antitrust regulators should back off the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger.
• Los Angeles would like to pass regulations for what colors BB guns can be.