I don’t really have any good context for posting these three videos other than that I find them neat and it’s my blog. So there.
First up is a 1000fps video of a slinky being dropped:
I love this next one. A Montana man was caught with about enough weed on him to roll a joint. For whatever reason he was going to be put on trial instead of given a pat on the butt and a reminder to buckle up. However, it was not possible to proceed with any due process because the judge was unable to find a jury willing to convict. And I don’t mean there was a hung jury or something like that. No, no, no, it’s even greater. When asked if they would be willing to convict someone of such a crime, potential jurors simply said “no”.
This last one is great, even if I did find it by clicking a link with that odious word “patriarchy” in it. I suspect this little girl will go far:
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Feminism, Marijuana, montana, Riley, Slinky |
For the Sake of Science 
As much as I think that drugs should be legal, and that the federal government has no business passing a law like DOMA, these jurors were all in the wrong.
Like DOMA, the law is the law and unless it is unconstitutional, the place it needs to be changed is in the legislative branch, not in the courts.
So like the Obama Administration should have defended the law right up to the supreme court, the jury should have been willing to uphold the letter of the law when asked to decide if a person is guilty of a certain crime.
Thats important, juries are not asked to decide whether they like a law or not, they are asked to determine whether a person has violated the law as it reads. The legislature has given discretion to prosecutors to decided who gets charged and who doesn’t.
If juries get to make the law and determine who gets charged, than it undermines the system we have, where responsibility and authority are spread out, not concentrated.
Fortunately juries aren’t so blindly ideological. If a law has no good reason behind it, and as much is discernible – or worse, if it is clear that the reason behind it is bad – then no one should be enforcing it. “The letter of the law” should only ever benefit the person, not the state.
I’m sorry Mr. Hawkins, if you put this up before Christmas, I would have tried to get you the pink doll you wanted.
*action figure
Jury nullification; if a law is deemed unjust, a jury can find the defendant not guilty even if they agree that he broke it.
Lawyers and judges hate it, and some judges have even successfully fought for the right to not mention it, but it IS a Constitutional power of juries.
Nate, you should listen to Copyleft on this one. Thomas Woods Jr. wrote in favor of it in his 33 Questions about American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask, and he said Jefferson supported it as a check on the government.