Re: Wine Politics Again!

[Jim Ray <jmr@shopmiami.com>]

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At 06:53 PM 5/13/97 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:

>At 09:26 PM 5/9/97 -0800, Tim May wrote:
>>I am shipping a few bottles of California's finest merlot (much nicer than
>>the trendy cabernets) to my sister and her husband in Hollywood, FL.
>
>You're a bit late - merlots have been getting more trendy :-)
>But Chiles hasn't signed the Florida law quite yet, so you're also early.

And he may not. Taxin' Lawton is, if nothing else, a wind-direction
indicator, and this law isn't too popular among the rabble.

>Do they even _grow_ wine in Florida?  

Barely, and it's not as good as Tim's merlot. The orange wine for
tourists is truly horrible.

>You'd think it would be the 
>cocaine industry trying to get their product regulated to keep prices high.

[Comment about credulous media reprints of San Jose Merc/CIA denials
of contra cokesmuggling reluctantly suppressed. Tongue bleeding.]

>>There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
>
>It's especially ridiculous that shipping wine should be a *felony*.
>Mike Froomkin points out that the Constitutional Amendment ending
>Prohibition lets states make their own stupid decisions like this,
>and it probably overrides Commerce Clause controls.

Yeah, and for stupidity, Tallahassee is hard to beat.

>You'd expect that a law that's made primarily to protect business
>interests would have business-oriented penalties - like fines for
>conducting wine-shipping without a wine-shipping license,
>or triple fines for not filling out paperwork in triplicate.

I've met some of these guys -- hell I've run against one of them.
We aren't talking Einstein-level here, or even Forest Gump.

>Does anyone know if either state's laws also penalize the 
>recipient of the Demon Grape, or only the sender?  
...

I don't know, but I'm willing to risk getting some Merlot and
finding out as a public service to the cypherpunks list. Y'all
could even try to mail me a bottle anonymously. ;-)
JMR


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Regards, Jim Ray <jmr@shopmiami.com>
DNRC Minister of Encryption Advocacy

One of the "legitimate concerns of law enforcement" seems to be
that I was born innocent until proven guilty and not the other
way around. -- me

http://shopmiami.com/prs/jimray/    
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