Keeping the undesirables out by keeping prices high

As I discoverd in this post at Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog, Hercules, California is using eminent domain to keep Wal-Mart out of their precious city.

"It's the quality of living in Hercules that we're dealing with," said Steve Kirby, a Hercules resident since 1988. "One thing that we don't want is a regional-type business in there that brings in a lot of traffic."

In other words, we don't want anyone that doesn't fit the profile of our ideal citizen. In other words, we only want certain people to shop in our town....we don't want, ahem, those people in our city.

Sounds like Hercules has a Pleasantville complex.

Great libertarian quote

"Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms" should be the name of a store, not a government agency.

[corrected for punctuation and grammar from a post by Chris Marshall here]

Overkill

Some kids pulled off a clever prank and made marijuana-laced muffins for their teachers.

Give 'em the chair!!!!

The FBI was involved? The prosecutor wants to give the kids 20 years in prison because "illegal drugs" were involved? 20 years? The kids aren't criminals now (yes their actions were criminal (because marijuana is currently illegal) and unethical (whether or not drugs should be illegal, tricking someone into taking them is wrong), but they're not *criminals*. But they'll probably become criminals if they go to prison. If nothing else, they won't be productive members of society (which they otherwise would be...I don't think they're going to spend the rest of their life tricking people into eating pot muffins).