If you're in a Utah bar this year on New Year's Eve you'll have to drink your champagne before the ball drops.
All sales and consumption of alcohol must be completed before midnight on Sundays. As opposed to 1:00 am other days.
What makes Sundays different than any other day? (That's a rhetorical question, by the way.) Should State law really be influenced by religious holdings? (That question should be more rhetorical than it is.)
Friday, December 22, 2006
Thursday, December 21, 2006
It's Electric!
Did you know this car existed?
The GM EV1.
It doesn’t. Not anymore. I just saw the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car I won’t try to recap the information offered in the film, but I was shocked (no pun intended.) The GM EV1 was first offered to the public in 1996. It was only available for lease and only in California and Arizona. I was 14 in ’96, I knew about cars, but I didn’t know about this one. By 2000 when GM started crushing the EV1s I was 18 and definitely knew about cars. How come I’d never heard of any production-level electric car? I still don’t understand why they had to destroy all the cars, but you know, whatever.
Happily, there’s this one. . . .
It does 0-60 in about 4 seconds, has a top speed of 130 and can go 250 miles on a charge. That and it’s about twice as energy efficient as a Toyota Prius. Daaayum. It’s the Tesla Roadster. They’ve sold out for 2007 but you can get on the list for 2008. The base price is $92,000, and I’d recommend going with the optional hard-top for another $3500. If you live outside of Tesla’s service area it’s another $8000 bucks for your warranted service. (Although the electric motors are far less complex and far less likely to break down.) The best thing about these cars, besides the speed and efficiency, is they look bad-ass! (No offense to any Prius owners.)
I had always heard that you couldn’t get as much torque in an electric because of something to do with the explosivity of gasoline or some . . . hell I dunno. . . anyway turns out that’s all bullshit. You know how when you first accelerate in most cars it’s a little bit slow and then when you get the rpms up you start to get going? Apparently with the Tesla there’s none of that lag. According to their numbers this car is a hell of a lot more than just a pretty golf cart.
They take about three or four hours to charge, so road trips are out of the question. But 250 miles is more than anyone I know drives day to day, so you just have to plug it in at night. Tesla also says the batteries will perform for over 100,000 miles. (500 full charges.) That ain’t bad.
The car itself has zero emissions, it doesn’t even have a tailpipe. Though the power plant probably does pollute, even if you get your power from a coal-burning plant you’ll be polluting about half as much as the best hybrids.
Keep in mind that the Tesla Roadster is not mass-produced the same way a Camry, Civic, or even Porsche 911 is, if it were the price tag could easily go down. Indeed cars like this seem to be the way of the future, and GM and Ford seem to be going the way of the buffalo (check the financial news,) they certainly are determined to take as much money with them as possible though.
Now, if only I could get my hands on a hundred grand. . .
Angelos in America
This is kind of old news I guess, but to me it’s pretty damn pertinent.
With the recent (non)decision of the U.S. Supreme Court refusing to hear Weldon Angelos’ appeal the Utah resident has been damned to serve 55 years and one day in prison for dealing a little dope.
Actually, that’s not quite accurate, Angelos got about six for dealing the weed, and about 50 for possession. Of handguns.
Flashback to Paul Cassell’s courtroom November 2004.
It is Angelos’ first offense, the prosecution and defense both agree that Angelos should serve six and a half years for his crimes. Congress disagrees.
So “the court reluctantly concludes that it has no choice but to impose the 55 year sentence. While the sentence appears to be cruel, unjust, and irrational, in our system of separated powers Congress makes the final decisions as to appropriate criminal penalties.” *
Here is U.S. District Court Judge Paul Cassell in a statement given to the Judiciary Committee in the House of Representatives in March 2006.
“In United States v. Angelos, I had to sentence a twenty-four-year-old first offender who was a successful music executive with two young children. Because he was convicted of dealing marijuana and related offenses, both the government and the defense agreed that Mr. Angelos should serve about six-and-a-half years in prison. But there were three additional firearms offenses for which I also had to impose sentence. Two of those offenses occurred when Mr. Angelos carried a handgun to two $350 marijuana deals; the third when police found several additional handguns at his home when they executed a search warrant. For these three acts of possessing (not using or even displaying) these guns, the government insisted that Mr. Angelos should essentially spend the rest of his life in prison. Specifically, the government urged me to sentence Mr. Angelos to a prison term of no less than 61½ years – six years-and-a-half years for drug dealing followed by 55 years for three counts of possessing a firearm in connection with a drug offense. In support of its position, the government relied on a statute – 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) – which requires courts to impose a sentence of five years in prison the first time a drug dealer carries a gun and twenty-five years for each subsequent time. Under § 924(c), the three counts produced 55 years of additional punishment for carrying a firearm.”
Let me see if I can break this down. Congress says that if a dealer carries a gun in connection with a drug crime he (or she) gets five years tacked on to his sentence. Okay. If he does it again he gets 25 years tacked on. Whoa.
But wait, Angelos hadn’t been charged before. So on his first charge he’s getting the penalty for “subsequent offenses?” That’s like parking by in a red zone a couple times, not getting a ticket and then you go out to your car only to find it seized by the city. See they have evidence of those other times, they just waited to tell you. And how are the guns found at his house with the search warrant related to the drug crime? Sorry, I don't mean to rant.
So, 55 years because Congress doesn’t want to let “activist judges” judge. A Congress so hungry for power they forgot about separating it.
Weldon Angelos doesn’t get to see his kids play soccer, get married, have his grandkids. . . . I know I know, you do the crime you pay the time, but in a civil society the time and crime match up.
Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised. This is the same Congress that just made it okay for the President to call anyone he wants an “enemy combatant” hold them without a charge, torture them, make fun of the music in their i-pod, pretty much anything.
At least Angelos has been told why he’s imprisoned, but it still doesn't make any sense. Not after the first six years anyway.
With the recent (non)decision of the U.S. Supreme Court refusing to hear Weldon Angelos’ appeal the Utah resident has been damned to serve 55 years and one day in prison for dealing a little dope.
Actually, that’s not quite accurate, Angelos got about six for dealing the weed, and about 50 for possession. Of handguns.
Flashback to Paul Cassell’s courtroom November 2004.
It is Angelos’ first offense, the prosecution and defense both agree that Angelos should serve six and a half years for his crimes. Congress disagrees.
So “the court reluctantly concludes that it has no choice but to impose the 55 year sentence. While the sentence appears to be cruel, unjust, and irrational, in our system of separated powers Congress makes the final decisions as to appropriate criminal penalties.” *
Here is U.S. District Court Judge Paul Cassell in a statement given to the Judiciary Committee in the House of Representatives in March 2006.
“In United States v. Angelos, I had to sentence a twenty-four-year-old first offender who was a successful music executive with two young children. Because he was convicted of dealing marijuana and related offenses, both the government and the defense agreed that Mr. Angelos should serve about six-and-a-half years in prison. But there were three additional firearms offenses for which I also had to impose sentence. Two of those offenses occurred when Mr. Angelos carried a handgun to two $350 marijuana deals; the third when police found several additional handguns at his home when they executed a search warrant. For these three acts of possessing (not using or even displaying) these guns, the government insisted that Mr. Angelos should essentially spend the rest of his life in prison. Specifically, the government urged me to sentence Mr. Angelos to a prison term of no less than 61½ years – six years-and-a-half years for drug dealing followed by 55 years for three counts of possessing a firearm in connection with a drug offense. In support of its position, the government relied on a statute – 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) – which requires courts to impose a sentence of five years in prison the first time a drug dealer carries a gun and twenty-five years for each subsequent time. Under § 924(c), the three counts produced 55 years of additional punishment for carrying a firearm.”
Let me see if I can break this down. Congress says that if a dealer carries a gun in connection with a drug crime he (or she) gets five years tacked on to his sentence. Okay. If he does it again he gets 25 years tacked on. Whoa.
But wait, Angelos hadn’t been charged before. So on his first charge he’s getting the penalty for “subsequent offenses?” That’s like parking by in a red zone a couple times, not getting a ticket and then you go out to your car only to find it seized by the city. See they have evidence of those other times, they just waited to tell you. And how are the guns found at his house with the search warrant related to the drug crime? Sorry, I don't mean to rant.
So, 55 years because Congress doesn’t want to let “activist judges” judge. A Congress so hungry for power they forgot about separating it.
Weldon Angelos doesn’t get to see his kids play soccer, get married, have his grandkids. . . . I know I know, you do the crime you pay the time, but in a civil society the time and crime match up.
Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised. This is the same Congress that just made it okay for the President to call anyone he wants an “enemy combatant” hold them without a charge, torture them, make fun of the music in their i-pod, pretty much anything.
At least Angelos has been told why he’s imprisoned, but it still doesn't make any sense. Not after the first six years anyway.
Friday, December 8, 2006
Genesis
I decided to create this blog after searching the net for something like it and coming up empty. Which is not to say there aren't other blogs out there, I just couldn't find them. I'm not sure anyone will find this one either, or that I'll even tell anyone about it - okay, I'll probably tell people about it.
Who knows what this will turn into over time, (an empty blog site with three postings each over a month apart?) but for now its purpose will be to give me a place to shoot my somewhat liberal mouth off in a very conservative state. I won't claim to be right all the time, nor do I have any delusions of being the most informed or qualified to discuss the issues I'll raise here. But, it's my damn blog. And what is a blog if not an act of self-indulgence?
Who knows what this will turn into over time, (an empty blog site with three postings each over a month apart?) but for now its purpose will be to give me a place to shoot my somewhat liberal mouth off in a very conservative state. I won't claim to be right all the time, nor do I have any delusions of being the most informed or qualified to discuss the issues I'll raise here. But, it's my damn blog. And what is a blog if not an act of self-indulgence?
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