Posted on 01/16/2009 1:23:32 PM PST by raybbr
Barack Obama’s pick for “regulatory czar,” Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein, may be the incoming president’s most popular appointment so far. Judging from his resume -- best-selling author, “pre-eminent legal scholar of our time,” and an endorsement from The Wall Street Journal -- we can almost understand why. Almost. Because as we’re telling the media today, there’s one troubling portion of the new Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator’s C.V. that has seems to have flown under everyone’s radar: Cass Sunstein is a radical animal rights activist.
Don’t believe us? Sunstein has made no secret of his devotion to the cause of establishing legal “rights” for livestock, wildlife, and pets. “[T]here should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, scientific experiments, and agriculture,” Sunstein wrote in a 2002 working paper while at the University of Chicago Law school.
“Extensive regulation of the use of animals.” That's PETA-speak for using government to get everything PETA and the Humane Society of the United States can't get through gentle pressure or not-so-gentle coercion. Not exactly the kind of thing American ranchers, restaurateurs, hunters, and biomedical researchers (to say nothing of ordinary consumers) would like to hear from their next “regulatory czar.”
A version of the same paper also appeared as the introduction to Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, a 2004 book that Sunstein co-edited with then-girlfriend Martha Nussbaum. In that book, Sunstein set out an ambitious plan to give animals the legal “right” to file lawsuits. We're not joking:
“[A]nimals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law … Any animals that are entitled to bring suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who would owe guardian like obligations and make decisions, subject to those obligations, on their clients’ behalf.”
It doesn't end there. Sunstein delivered a keynote speech at Harvard University’s 2007 “Facing Animals” conference. (Click here to watch the video; his speech starts around 39:00.) Keep in mind that as OIRA Administrator, Sunstein will have the political authority to implement a massive federal government overhaul. Consider this tidbit:
“We ought to ban hunting, I suggest, if there isn’t a purpose other than sport and fun. That should be against the law. It’s time now.”
Sunstein also argued in favor of “eliminating current practices such as greyhound racing, cosmetic testing, and meat eating, most controversially.”
He concluded his Harvard speech by expressing his “more ambitious animating concern” that the current treatment of livestock and other animals should be considered “a form of unconscionable barbarity not the same as, but in many ways morally akin to, slavery and mass extermination of human beings.” Sound familiar?
As the individual about to assume “the most important position that Americans know nothing about,” Sunstein owes the public an honest appraisal of his animal rights goals before taking office. Will the next four years be a dream-come-true for anti-meat, anti-hunting, and anti-everything-else radicals? Time will tell. For now, meat lovers might want to stock their freezers.
This article reads as though this Sunstein character was raised in the den watching a steady diet of Disney cartoons, and cannot accept reality.
Citizens should be permitted to tar and feather assclowns ..
We are so screwed....
T^he loonies are in control now...
Why do we need another level of bureaucracy at this point in time. I hope the so called confirmation hearings bring this to light for the general public. Yeah right....like the so called MSM will cover this.
Leia: "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
Instead, our animals are going to be permitted to tar and feather us, legally anyway. I can’t wait till the lab mice I helped injure for experimentation start suing me! Not only am I screwed, but more importantly, the soldiers who would have benefited from new drugs for TBI are screwed by this prick as well. Screw the humans, save the animals, what a whackjob.
I had to laugh - this article was posted just after "Tiger to speak at Lincoln Memorial" and appears above it. At first glance I wondered if the two were related. :-)
Save the Water-Kitties! (fish, the new PETA approved name, not kidding)!
I was employed in the meat industry (I’ll spare the details)in management for 20 years. These PETA people and other groups like them are nuts. I am afraid with the new administration they will only become more aggressive and radical(if thats possible).
INTREP
I believe that the term was actually "Sea Kittens"
But you're right, they are a bunch of whack-job, a$$-hats!
"If G-d didn't want us to eat animals, He wouldn't have made them out of meat!"
Mark
I think hunters should eat everything they kill. Or use the carcass in some other funtional way, such as using the skin or fur. Killing an animal just for sport is so wasteful.
Somehow, I don't think Mr. Sunstein is interested in extending that same 'right' to unborn human beings.
Cass Sunstein wrote the book "Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right Wing Courts are Wrong for America". Something tells me he wouldn't feel the same way about an Extreme LEFT Wing Court.
Amendments: Florida will restore felons' voting rights, ban greyhound racing · by ConservativeStatement · 15 replies WESH 2 ^ | Nov. 6, 2018 TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Most Florida felons who have finished their sentences will be able to vote again in future elections. Voters on Tuesday approved Amendment 4, which says that most felons will automatically have their voting rights restored when they complete their sentences or go on probation. The amendment exempts those convicted of sex offenses and murder.
From the perspective of a vulture or an scavenger for that matter, specially one with chicks or cubs to raise, it’s not wasteful at all, it is like winning the lottery, or being blessed with manna from heaven. While I have the same aversion to “wasting” a kill, taught to me in childhood by my elders, I have to admit from my observations of turkey and black vultures here in Florida that no carcass or gutpile ever goes to waste and the very idea of it being wasteful to lave a carcass is just an emotional and cultural judgment, and not based in truth.
We can truthfully say it is unethical to kill an animal and leave the carcass, but we cannot truthfully describe it as wasteful.
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