Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

nypost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 369 posts

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#251

Post by DangitBobby »

heavyset_go wrote: post #243
sir0010010 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally would be okay with having it legal if smoking could still be banned in multifamily complexes. I don't care if my neighbors are using edibles, but since I know that legalized weed means more smoke coming from my neighbors' balconies, I will always vote "No" when marijuana legalization is on the ballot in my location.

Voting to put people in prison because of smells is certainly a take.

I get that fucking smell everywhere now even while it's still illegal.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#252

Post by DangitBobby »

throwaway173738 wrote: post #217
asadotzler wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until we start throwing cigar, pipe, and cigarette smokers in prison for smoking where I can smell it, I'm totally okay smelling some pot. The playing field needs to be leveled.

I don’t want my toddler exposed to secondhand pot smoke. Unfortunately it’s more common than secondhand cigarette smoke in my experience. I wouldn’t get upset on my own behalf but he’s too young to choose and it’s my responsibility to act in his behalf as much as I can.

Yep it's more distinctive, more intrusive, spreads further, smells worse.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#253

Post by DangitBobby »

gowld wrote: post #176
bsimpson wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's arguing around the point. If the law is broken, fix the law. Don't pervert logic to pretend that the existing law dictates what you want is correct. If Roe v Wade is based on faulty logic, cool - overturn it. But it then becomes Congress's responsibility to replace it with the correct version. The federal government isn't supposed to police people's personal behavior. "Federal" comes from "federation" as in, t…

> If the law is broken, fix the law If you follow that argument to its conclusion, you end up at: fixing the law requires amending the Constitution, and if the law for amending the constitution is broken, the remedy is revolution. Most participants prefer the current practice instead.

Maybe we could get enough support behind an amendment to amend the amendment process.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#254

Post by wahern »

laughing_man wrote: post #177
wahern wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Gonzales, O'Connor dissented and Scalia, who was too afraid of pulling the rug out from under the administrative state, issued a concurrence. So, surprises do happen.

Drugs were always a weird exception to what was otherwise pretty consistent jurisprudence on Scalia's part.

I was prepared to excuse his vote as an exceptional situation until Sebelius, when rather than revisit and fix his mistake in Gonzales he chose to embrace the affirmative mandate vs passive prohibition distinction nonsense, a deux ex machina fit for one purpose and one purpose only. Fool me once....

There's a good argument to be made that it was just good luck for Scalia's intellectual legacy that he died before the conservative supermajority on the court got rolling, because he was already well on his way to replacing principles with expediency: https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/03/justice-scalias-uncertain... Like the old saying goes, it's easy to criticize, much more difficult to offer constructive, durable solutions.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#255

Post by sir0010010 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #243
sir0010010 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally would be okay with having it legal if smoking could still be banned in multifamily complexes. I don't care if my neighbors are using edibles, but since I know that legalized weed means more smoke coming from my neighbors' balconies, I will always vote "No" when marijuana legalization is on the ballot in my location.

Voting to put people in prison because of smells is certainly a take.

It's not about the smell. Secondhand marijuana smoke carries many of the same harmful compounds as cigarette smoke [1]. The issue is involuntary exposure in shared living spaces. And ballot measures are typically all-or-nothing: you can't vote yes on edibles but no on smoking in your apartment complex.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/cannabis/health-effects/secondhand-smoke...

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#256

Post by ribosometronome »

cogman10 wrote: post #170
limagnolia wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mormons voted strongly to legalize MJ in Utah. Maybe your politician is just an odd man out? edit: Well, I should note the Utah vote was only for "medical" MJ.

It got through via a ballot initiative. It wouldn't have been passed by the legislators in UT without that. That's why the guy in my state, C. Scott Grow, has also been fighting to make ballot initiatives harder. He's terrified that an MJ initiative would make it's way in that way.

> isn't seen by politicians as a motivating vote driver ... It got through via a ballot initiative

Those two seem a little at odds. People are going to vote against it, but not when it's specifically on the ballot?

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#257

Post by hansvm »

wiredfool wrote: post #178
beedeebeedee wrote: post #158

The best liquor I ever had was by a state police detective who had been home distilling since he was 12. It was made from rye and corn, but tasted like peaches. I think it is kind of magical to witness the process. I only experimented a few times, and never aged it, so every was very sharp. The best was a sharp brandy made from a bottle of wine I bought. The worst was using a leftover keg of beer, which bittered the…

The best I’ve ever done was a double distilled Spanish box wine we picked up for 1eur/l. The wine was undrinkable, but the brandy was sooooo smooth. Next best was cheap tokaij furmint, distilled once and then mixed back into some of the undistilled wine. Basically the same thing as pineau de charante, but Hungarian and on the kitchen table.

I'm not sure if it extends to box wines or Spanish wines, but my main complaint of bottom-shelf wines in the US is that they're pure sugar/acid/alcohol with almost no extra flavors and pretty bad distributions of the main components (especially being far too sweet). A small pattern I'm noticing in your description is the presence of sugar in the distillation inputs. Assume I know nothing about distillation; is that relevant?

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#258

Post by chii »

lokar wrote: post #187
cogman10 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is this isn't seen by politicians as a motivating vote driver. It is, however, a motivation for someone to go out and vote against a politician. That's ultimately what keeps things like MJ illegal. There are just far too many people that will get upset about it if it were made federally legal. My state, Idaho, has one such politician that is constantly bringing up and trying to find ways to keep the…

This gets at something I think a lot of people don't really understand. They see polls that show strong support for policy X, and then complain that politicians don't enact it. What they fail to consider is that while a strong majority may be in favor of the policy, it's not the top (or top 3) priority, and they will support candidates that have the opposite position on X, if they support their top priority. This is…

> They see polls that show strong support for policy X

i would imagine those polls are full of selection bias - even if the poller is trying to be as neutral as possible. People who would agree to participate in polls tend to have strong(er) feelings than those who don't.

> referendum process

instead of referendums, there should be a representative vote by the elected politician, but with an option for the voter to submit their own vote (provided they pass a cursory examination that certifies they have read and understood the bill they're voting for).

E.g., a senator or an elected politician has N number of votes for a bill, where N is the number of people he/she represents. If those people don't want to participate in a bill voting process, the politician will vote on behalf of them (like they do now, supposedly).

However, an individual voter who wishes to, can certify their understanding of said bill, and rescind the representative vote for his electorate and vote himself directly on the bill. The politician will now have N-1 votes on that same bill.

This means for issues of importance, the individual can choose to participate. For issues that they don't care about, but have a vague sense of direction, they have their votes delegated to the politician that they elected once every X years.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#259

Post by stale2002 »

dfdsjsdklfjs wrote: post #231
stale2002 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to be criminally illegal. Instead it could simply be civil. The apartment complex, which you do not own, would be the ones setting the rules here. And you, of your own free choice, would have the choice to either follow the rules or go live somewhere else. The person you are responding to doesn't have an issue with you smoking in your own purchased home. Instead this was about apartment complexes. And…

[flagged]

> When it's forced by government decree

You aren't being forced to do anything that you didn't agree to. You aren't the apartment owner, you instead just signed the contract and have to follow the apartment rules.

I don't see why you get to complain about what someone else is doing with their own property. Its their property. What laws apply to them are none of your business as you simply signed the contract.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#260

Post by hansvm »

rtkwe wrote: post #195
rdbl27 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nationwide injunctions are a very recent legal innovation -- as in, extremely rare until the 2000s, and uncommon until the 2010s. They were not how this situation was handled for nearly all of the existence of the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_injunction

Seems like a perfectly valid one. If the government is violating the constitution or a persons rights why should there be suits all across the country to get that recognized? Especially when the question isn't on something with a lot of particularized tests that's sensitive to the exact case, eg 4th amendment law? Why should rights be so dependent on someone in my particular part of the country having sued?

On the other side, why should one crazed/corrupt judge in some state which has nothing to do with me be able to infringe on my freedoms and make my life worse? Worse, why is it possible to jurisdiction shop for the single bad actor and impose your will on the entire country?

You're not wrong, but (like most issues in a 350M-person country) it's complicated. The system is tailored to some expected level/type of corruption and bad actors. If you expect that the government is basically fine and that out of 50M people per region surely somebody will file suit if the issue is important then the current system makes a lot of sense. You get judges with more knowledge and awareness of your local issues, anything important still gets addressed, and you're resilient to some degree of random bad judges and bad actors. If those expectations are out of whack then you get worse outcomes.

In reality, the world is complicated enough that even boiling down the lists of judges and whatnot to that simple of a description is misleading at best. Neither solution is anywhere near optimal by itself. So...what next?

Post reply on HN