The World Quiz League

Minnesota. There is a political party in Minnesota called the DFL or Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party [http://www.dfl.org/]. Thanks to their allegiance with the national Democratic Party, they have a US Senator, Mark Dayton, and Minnesota's Attorney General and State Senate Majority Leader. The question was not a contradiction because the party is both a Labor Party and Democrat at the same time.

Owl

Pongo. The clue was in the title="" text. The father dalmatian in the film "101 Dalmatians" was called Pongo. That led me to the other results: the map is of the distribution of Orangutans -- Genus Pongo
-- on Borneo, the spine is of an orangutan, and the shoes belong to Pongo the clown.

http://www.dalbnb.com/Dog%20Pics/Pongo.jpg
http://www.orangutan.org/gif/otdist2.gif
http://www.nmr.nl/Pongo.jpg
http://www.pongotheclown.com/pix/feet.jpg

Owl

"The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer. The people in the question all have medieval professions as surnames, and someone from each of these professions had a tale to tell in Chaucer's work:

Tale 2: The Miller's Tale
Tale 3: The Reeve's Tale
Tale 4: The Cook's Tale
Tale 10: The Merchant's Tale
Tale 12: The Franklin's Tale

Owl

It sounds like the death of Stanley Kubrick led you to reflect upon his movies Spartacus, A Clockwork Orange, and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Richard09

The references are to films by Stanley Kubrick:

Four years ago = 2001 (A Space Odyssey);
a humane killer = Full Metal Jacket (FMJ ammunition was introduced ostensibly for humanitarian reasons -- the 1899 Hague Convention prohibits the use of expanding or fragmenting bullets in warfare);
and a mechanical citrus fruit = Clockwork Orange
led me to give up my concerns and admire mass-destruction = How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (subtitle of Dr. Strangelove).

awaldock

Slang terms for cigarette(s): bogey, snout, butts, smoke and, er, fag.

awaldock

This question has been driving me mad all week so I give up at last. I'll put them in alphabetical order in case it's a trick question:

DUE FIRE HAT OPT PUMP SET TRY YES.

Alphabetical Order: DUE FIRE HAT OPT PUMP SET TRY YES

(I suspect this isn't what was desired, but the words are in order)

Gavroche

These English-seeming words are also the cardinal numbers from one to eight in various languages:

yes (1,Persian(?))

due (2,Italian)

try (3,Faroese)

fire (4,Danish/Norwegian)

pump (5,Welsh)

hat (6,Hungarian)

set (7,Catalan)

opt (8,Romanian)

awaldock

Between corbel and counter-revolutionary (aka contrarrevolucionario aka contra), you find cordage, cordial, cornelian, corollary, coronach, corral, corrupt, cottaging, cottar, couchant, and coulée.

Military terms include cornet(cy), corporal, corps, corvette, Cossack, council of war, counter-battery, and counter-offensive.

awaldock

Between copestone and counterrevolutionary (English translation of "contra"; it's in my dictionary as one word!) you find copious (a large quantity; not sure about the reference to the hemp plant,
though), cordial (means both "friendly" and a type of drink), cordierite, corollary, coronach, corral, corrupt, cottaging (Mr Panayiotou is better known as George Michael), cottar/cotter, couching
and couloir.

Military terms in here include corporal, corps, corpsman, corvette, counterattack, counteroffensive and counterrevolutionary itself.

Owl

Medieval torturing device = Iron Maiden.
The first set of notes forms a Cmin7 chord, the second a CMaj7. This roughly translates to "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son", an Iron Maiden Album.
Celestial offspring is Moonchild, a track on that album.
The first line of the song is "Seven deadly sins".

awaldock

Five. Eton Fives, high-five, Chanel No. 5

awaldock