-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- 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 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEPAwUBM3t9LzUhsGSn1j2pAQHavAfONFdPqiU76q17liQMYGA+AwEcwnZaipBu AvRqxq7FpeLLM1lR2POCJRBo2rRIXjajwmKacaBG7x08dqsMHug1hul4v2Kge7QV MtSzwTOokPqwP73O2SU2udB+6d3b5S9rgVjbIDps60iKxVSyEfzVM6B33t6gFBNB CXYNQoIEx4bOI2puNM6aFX+zsUvDjoSZ5EbWbjRE6tabMKIMPZgVH+QQ4i+En+8I ug9OaUeFiptHWUzqciqDm70fhhJxsGqH83aj1EDAFj1WCgdo9mBKJjDo2F8fsLCr Mrs+TWYd+lq+T//lpVvc65ENTwMh1pjDCyRoXJIUsTW+Qw== =lheO -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- 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/ PGP id.A7D63DA9 98 1F 39 BA 93 86 B4 F5 57 52 64 0E DA BA 2C 71