The recent "voluntary recall" by Maclaren of a million strollers whose scissoring hinges could chop off kids' fingers is just another example of poor regulation of industry, if court papers cited by the NY Post this morning are true.

The Post dug up a suit showing that the British company knew five years ago that the strollers posed a possible threat. The Consumer Products Safety Commission says companies are required to report "immediately" when they learn of even a "potential hazard."

The Post story, however, puts all the blame on the company and none on the federal government's CPSC.

If there was a 2004 lawsuit in Connecticut accusing the company of a serious defect in the China-made strollers, why couldn't the CPSC have been proactive enough to find out about it and force a recall back then? There was a Web back then. That kind of thing is easy to keep track of, especially if you're a federal agency. And especially if the company is one of the U.K.'s biggest exporters to the U.S. of a product used by millions of Americans.

Depending on companies to report their own misdeeds is the kind of volunteerism that's not going to happen. So-called "voluntary regulation" doesn't work, as the Wall Street meltdown showed. Just one example: The Street's "self-regulatory" Securities Industry Association (actually a lobby) featured Bernie Madoff on its board of directors.

A current law that makes it a crime to sell videos of animals being tortured or killed is just too damn broad and infringes on free speech, a majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices indicated during formal arguments today.

See veteran reporter Lyle Denniston's excellent blow-by-blow analysis on Scotusblog.

Congress had passed the law in 1999, "mainly ... aimed at videos in which women in high-heeled shoes crush small animals as a type of sexual fetish."

But opponents of the law say it's much too broad and could make such things as videos of bullfighting and of the manufacturing of foie gras illegal, not to mention even documentaries and footage of various blood sports.