The Indelible Bonobo Experience

Renaissance Monkey: in-depth expertise in Jack-of-all-trading. I mostly comment on news of interest to me and occasionally engage in debates or troll passive-aggressively. Ask or Submit 2 mah authoritah! ;) !

Quote Post
Radio host Terry David Mulligan’s decision to stroll across the B.C. border to Alberta with a case of wine on May 13 was meant to draw attention to an old, and in his mind, outdated law governing alcohol in this country.
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Canada’s weird liquor laws - Canada - CBC News

  • The B.C. radio host’s beef is with Canada’s Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act, a 1928 law that states “no person shall import, send, take or transport, or cause to be imported, sent, taken or transported, into any province from or out of any place within or outside Canada any intoxicating liquor.”
  • The only way you can legally move a bottle of wine from one province to another — or from another country into Canada — is with the permission of the provincial liquor control board. Mulligan contends that this is an inconvenience to consumers and a hindrance to winemakers hoping to expand their customer base.
The War on Drugs is neo-temperance.
Posted in canada prohibition temperance bootlegging liquor law freedom liberty libertarian history
Quote Post
The dialectic of Law and its transgression does not reside only in the fact that the Law itself solicits its own transgression, that it generates the desire for its own violation; our obedience to the Law itself is not “natural,” spontaneous, but always-already mediated by the (repression of the) desire to transgress it. When we obey the Law, we do it as part of a desperate strategy to fight against our desire to transgress it, so the more rigorously we obey the Law, the more we bear witness to the fact that, deep without ourselves, we feel the pressure of the desire to indulge in “sin”. The superego feeling of guilt is therefore right: the more we obey the Law, the more we are guilty, because this obedience is in effect a defense against our “sinful” desire.
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Slavoj Žižek, The Parallax View (via aidsnegligee)

sin? speak 4 yrself, yo slavoj :)

Posted in slavoj zizek obey law sin superego | 8 notes
Quote Post
While waiting for permission to finish the case from the Third Court of Appeals, Baird put together the document that “orders the exoneration of Cameron Todd Willingham for murdering his three daughters,” because of “overwhelming, credible and reliable evidence” presented during a one-day hearing in Austin in October 2010.
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Cameron Todd Willingham Exoneration Was Written But Never Filed By Texas Judge

  • The 18-page unissued order closely examined the arson evidence presented during the trial, including claims that investigators found patterns on the floor where an accelerant was poured and traces of it on the porch. But Baird said he was persuaded by other experts that the initial investigative techniques were out of date. The judge faulted Gov. Rick Perry and the state Court of Criminal Appeals, because they “ignored” exonerating evidence in 2004.
  • Baird, a Democrat, is now running for district attorney in Travis County, which includes Austin. The Willingham opinion is undated. Baird said he wrote it in the weeks after the Oct. 14, 2010, hearing. District court planner Kasey Hoke and court administrator Debra Hale told HuffPost they remember him preparing it in late 2010.
  • Willingham, maintaining his innocence, turned down a plea deal offering him life behind bars. At his August 1992 trial, the two fire investigators testified for the prosecution that Willingham torched his own home. The prosecution also called a jailhouse snitch, Johnny Webb, to the stand. Webb claimed that Willingham admitted in jail after his arrest that he killed his children. The jury convicted him in about an hour
a sad story, and not the only one..
Posted in willingham baird death penalty judge law criminal plea bargain | 1 note