April 5th, 2011
Flying Dog Brewery sues the Michigan’s state Liquor Control Commission for banning the sale of its Raging Bitch beer:
The 20th Anniversary India Pale Ale label urges customers, “Remember, enjoying a Raging Bitch, unleashed, untamed, unbridled — and in heat — is pure GONZO.” Ralph Steadman, an illustrator best-known for collaborations with author Hunter S. Thompson, penned the disputed phrase.
The case began in September 2009 when Flying Dog applied to sell “Raging Bitch” beer. The commission denied the request and affirmed its decision on appeal. The commission based its decision on its power to regulate language on the bottle that is “detrimental to the health, safety or welfare of the general public”, the filing said.
I’ve had it — decent enough beer, quite drinkable and certainly not deserving of a ban, especially not a ban because some Mrs. Grundys get offended by a bloody label. And actually, it was the Ralph Steadman labels that first made me notice these beers. Amidst the usually much more staid beer labels of other breweries they stood out. But they stood out because they were interesting, not because they were offensive.
(Via Tom Spurgeon.)
Categories: Autoritarianism, Law in action
December 15th, 2010
If you look at the criticism leveled at Wikileaks in the wake of “Cablegate” as well as the earlier leaks of the Iraq and Afghan warlogs, it usually boils down to two points, often made at the same time: the leaks don’t tell us anything we didn’t know before and at the same time, they endanger (American) lives. Both are of course fairly opportunistic claims, usually made in bad faith but effective enough they’ve been repeated over and over again with each new round of leaks. So it’s good to learn about a counterexample that disproves both, as it turns out the revelations in the leaked Afghan warlords have made several Dutch judges decided to disallow the expulsion of Afghan asylum seekers.
Normally when judges decided whether or not a given country is safe enough to send asylum seekers back there, they depend on statements given by the ministry of foreign affairs. In the case of Afghanistan however no less than five judges found that Wikileaks’ Afghan warlogs proved that the country was not secure enough to force people to return there. When this became known, it lead to questions in parliament today, as government party CDA found it “remarkable” that judges would sooner trust Wikileaks than their own government, while opposition party PvdA wanted the ministry to start using the Wikileaks revelations in their statements, something the minister said was already going to happen…
So there you have it: positive proof Wikileaks is important.
Categories: Law in action, Oh Those Crazy Cloggies, War on Afghanistan
Tags: Wikileaks
September 10th, 2010
So two years ago a lawyer greets a client and friend of his with the usual awkward three kisses on the cheeks. An assistant D.A. is offended, gods know why and complains to the tribunal. Wheels of justice grinding incredibly slow, this important case only reached the tribunals on the 25th of august. The verdict: cheek kissing is a no-no. The guy in question did not act according to the standards of the profession and he should’ve kept his distance even if he was friends with this client.
I’m not sure who has the biggest stick up their arses: the tribunal for reaching this verdict or the numptie who complained in the first place. What the hell is wrong with you you start a complaint because somebody kisses a friend on the cheeks?
Categories: Law in action, Oh Those Crazy Cloggies
August 11th, 2010
The owners of the extreme right clothing brand Thor Steinar have lost their court battle against anti-fascist parody brand Storch Heinar:
Media Tex had alleged that the brand had been damaged by the humorous label. But Judge Horst Rottmann said there was no danger that the two could be confused.
Furthermore, Storch Heinar creator Mathias Brodkorb, an MP for the centre-left Social Democrats in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, was protected under the country’s freedom of speech laws, the court said.
Sehr gut.
Categories: Fascists, Law in action
July 8th, 2010
Drive your rightwing friends even more batty: Nixon was worried about climate change:
Adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan, notable as a Democrat in the administration, urged the administration to initiate a worldwide system of monitoring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, decades before the issue of global warming came to the public’s attention.
And again: Reagan was kind of a wuss compared to the wingnut fantasy version of him:
In fact, Reagan was terrified of war. He took office eager to vanquish Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and its rebel allies in El Salvador, both of which were backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union. But at an early meeting, when Secretary of State Alexander Haig suggested that achieving this goal might require bombing Cuba, the suggestion “scared the shit out of Ronald Reagan,” according to White House aide Michael Deaver. Haig was marginalized, then resigned, and Reagan never seriously considered sending U.S. troops south of the border, despite demands from conservative intellectuals like Norman Podhoretz and William F. Buckley. “Those sons of bitches won’t be happy until we have 25,000 troops in Managua,” Reagan told chief of staff Kenneth Duberstein near the end of his presidency, “and I’m not going to do it.”
Continuing our theme, the epic tale of when Terry Savage met a free lemonade stand shows that when it comes to political correctness even the most uptight liberal leftwinger has nothing on the wingnut right:
“No!” I exclaimed from the back seat. “That’s not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They’re giving away their parents’ things — the lemonade, cups, candy. It’s not theirs to give.”
I pushed the button to roll down the window and stuck my head out to set them straight.
“You must charge something for the lemonade,” I explained. “That’s the whole point of a lemonade stand. You figure out your costs — how much the lemonade costs, and the cups — and then you charge a little more than what it costs you, so you can make money. Then you can buy more stuff, and make more lemonade, and sell it and make more money.”
Imagine having to live this way, of having to determine of anything you do whether or not it’s properly capitalist or backsliding deviantism and worse, having to do this not just for yourself, but for anybody you meet?
Some quick links to end the day:
Categories: Law in action, Natural World, Science, UK politics, US politics, wingnuts
July 5th, 2010
Suarez’s Hand of God lite has once again put the refereing and rules of football in the spotlight. This time the referee made the correct decision to send off Suarez for his handball but was it Asamoah Gyan who twatted the penalty, which meant Ghana didn’t win the regular game but lost in penalties. Our sense of fair play is outraged by this, that somebody can blatantly cheat and get punished for it yet still get his team in the semi-finals. Together with several other high profile incidents like England’s disallowed equaliser against Germany which sent them out of the Worldcup there’s been somewhat of a clamour for changes in the rules, you may have noticed.
First there was the call on FIFA to finally introduce proper goal line technology and television replays, after that disallowed England goal and an Argentine goal against Mexico that was blatantly offside but not spotted by the refs, both on the same day. In both cases the goals were turning points in the game and if not for the decision they could’ve taken a different turn. Had there been goalline detectors to show the ball had crossed the line in the first case, or had video replays been officially available to the refs in the second, these injustices would’ve been prevented.
With Suarez, the outrage is focused not on the decision, but on the sanctions. Somehow after Uruguay went on to win their game on penalties, having Suarez sent off and a penalty awarded just did not seem enough. Various pundits, fans and interested bystanders instead would’ve liked to have seen not a penalty, but a goal awarded in situations like this. That way we would be certain cheaters aren’t rewarded.
These calls are understandable, but misguided. Lawyers have a saying: hard cases make bad law and that goes for football as well. Handballs are a dime a dozen, but situations like we saw in Uruguay-Ghana game are incredibly rare. In more normal situations, where a handball might have prevented a goal but the game is far from over anyway, to punish a team with a goal and a sending off is too harsh — a penalty will suffice and is usually succesful anyway. Guaranteed goals also go against the spirit of football in which only actually scored goals count and which doesn’t deal with goals that should have been scored. That’s part of the charm and frustration of football.
The need for more technology I sort of share, but I can also understand why people other than Sepp Blatter disagree with that. Again, the two examples above are so rare and so blatant it’s not that likely they will be repeated often. In fact, technology wasn’t actually needed in either of them, just referees which weren’t halfblind and looking the other way.. For more ordinary, less obvious situations the question is how to integrate this sort of technology in the flow of the game. It’s easy to use video playback to retroactively disallow a goal, but if a referee has disallowed a goal and the game goes on, how do you go from there? Would we really want to make football into a more static game, ala rugby or American football, where coaches can challenge decisions on the field?
Categories: Football, Law in action
Tags: Luis Suarez cheating cheater cheatingpants
