Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a bunch of people at the Institute for Justice.
Mandatory, warrantless inspections of rental properties are wildly invasive and ripe for abuse, no matter officials' purported intentions. So writes IJ attorney Rob Peccola in the Chicago Tribune, advising the city's aldermen to vote down a proposed rental inspection law. Indeed, in December, a federal judge signed off on a consent decree in nearby Zion, Ill., that protects renters and landlords from the same kind of regime that is now proposed in Chicago.