Tim's Bits and Pieces

A comment over on David Thompson's blog got me thinking about escalating punishments for repeat offenders, and I thought I'd share my [slightly-expanded] thoughts here as well.

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As I mentioned earlier I've recently read through Rousseau's The Social Contract (not that translation though, mine was by Lowell Blair in the 1970's), and I'll expand on my initial review ("Wrong, but in interesting ways") here.

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Solariums ignoring new laws:

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The High Court of Australia has decided that the blame for stupid things drunks do is on the drunks themselves:

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Child rapist to be beheaded. Sounds about right for rape and attempted murder of children as young as three. I'm not a big fan of most Middle Eastern justice systems, but at least they understand the correct punishment for rapists and murderers.

The Northern Territory [Labour] government is proposing raising the fines for begging to $6500. (They're also raising the fine for not keeping a yard clean) I find myself wondering why there is even a fine for begging, and I definitely wonder why they think it needs to be so high? Sure beggars are kind of well ugly and annoying, but still why should we introduce laws to punish the poorest members of a society for something that doesn't cause any harm to anyone else?

A murdering Japanese mobster is spared the gallows. Yay, this is good news for people everywhere; it's about time Japan caught up with the rest of the world, and it's not like people who've been spared hanging ever re-offend. Killer who escaped gallows convicted again. Oh; well that sucks then.

... and his lawyer claims he should be released because he "... obviously poses no danger to society and [his] artistic and personal reputation are clearly established". Yeah he's a wonderful man, except for that one time (that we know of) where he raped a 13 year old girl:

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Man arrested after kissing his daughter. I hope there's something the that we're not being told here, some sort of reason this is happening other than just insanity, but somehow I suspect not.

Apparently this jerk caught HepC in prison and is now "incapacitated for employments to which he is suited", so he's suing the prison operators. I guess you should have thought of that before beating a three year old to death.

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