The Boondocks blog, No. 45 for the week starting November 18, 2007.
Supreme Court and the Second Admendment
Adirondack Council Back To Whining About ATVs
Minden Hunter Shot: Bringing Up the Orange Debate
Bear Season and Hunting Season Started On Saturday
When You Can't Use Illegals: Use Legals?
Old McDonald Had A Farm Until the SWAT Team Showed Up
Hungry? Have a Deer? Try These Recepies
Energy looks at high energy prices and our future.
Enviroman looks at man and the environment.
Hayseeds looks at politics and life in our nation.
Individual looks at myself and how I'm changing
Outblog is all about my outdoor experiences.
Transit looks at the changing ways we get around.
Truck gives you stories and trips in my Ford Ranger.
Robert Levy of the CATO foundation and some other conservative organizations writes in the TU Op-Ed page about the possibility of the Supreme Court looking at the consitutionality of the District of Columbia's exteremly restrictive gun-control laws and the meaning of the second admendment.
...What restrictions on gun possession and use would be permissible? Almost no one argues that Second Amendment rights are absolute. After all, under the First Amendment, the right to free speech does not protect disturbing the peace; religious freedom does not shield human sacrifice.
Similarly, gun regulations can be imposed on some weapons (e.g., missiles), some people (e.g., preteens) and some uses (e.g., murder). Indeed, the appeals court acknowledged that Washington might be able to justify such things as concealed-carry restrictions, registration requirements and proficiency testing.
I first mentioned this case last week, on the boondocks blog, and discussed why the it's important to get clarity on this issue. Too long the courts and the states have ignored the second admendment and not teased it out for all of it's meaning.
They are claiming, like usual, that there are few rouges which are going off the trails and as such all trails should be closed off, because the entire forest is being destroyed.
In other words, people from areas like this are complaining that their forests are being destroyed:
Those by the way aren't ATV trails, but some of the endless suburban sprawl that makes up much of downstate New York, such as this fine neighborhood in Chappaqua, where dignified people like the Clintons live, rather then those with noisy ATVs.
Of course the Supervisor of Old Forge/Eagle Bay has a rather different perspective:
But some local officials involved with promoting ATV recreation say the problems aren’t pronounced.
“You’re probably going to get a little bit of that just because people are going to do what they want to do,” said Bruce Condie, publicity director for the town of Webb.
Condie said he is not aware of any major problems or damage there. Similar problems occur with snowmobilers, he said.
And of course, the Adirondack Council is able to snap up the Spitzer Gestapo to do whatever they want with a few flicks of their fingers.
To combat the Adirondack Council’s concerns, its officials are working with the state Department of Environmental Conservation on ways to reallocate forest rangers so they can better monitor ATV use, Sheehan said.
Great. Make sure to contribute well to the governor's campaign so we can get more beautiful areas like Chappaqua rather then those ugly ATV trails.
They say that deer are color blind and see colors any better then cameo, but certainly some people debate that. And a hunter was shot in cameo without any orange on early on Monday.
It happens every year, and people continue to debate the issue. Hunters know the risk of not wearing orange, but some choose not to do that. They simply are putting their own lives at risk, much like not wearing a seat belt, just to slightly improve their chances of getting that buck or doe.
And yes, for women there is now a series of pink shotguns for female hunters sold at gander mountain. Not orange, but certainly eye-catching. Not sure if that would appeal to women more then cameo shotguns, but apparently people want them.
You probably took the hint from the story about hunting accident in Minden, but what is unique this year is they are starting bear season extra early to try to improve the take of bears, and reduce some of the nuisance that bears are causing as New York City sprawls further northwards.
Of course, if people didn't leave food and trash outside, then it wouldn't be an issue. But people do.
That's what one entrepreneur is trying in Western New York with a program to truck the poor out of the inner-cities to work on farms, in a program that includes health care benefits and humane treatment as keys to it success.
We will have to wait and see. Unfortunately, many of inner-city labor sources are notoriously unreliable and come with a variety of social problems such as drug use. On the other hand, undocumented immigrants tend to be hard working, and respectful when they come to our country, just to send a little bit of money back home.
This story featured on The Nation magazine website shocks the conscience about government strong handed tactics to enforce agricultural regulations.
Yet it's also a bittersweet time, because the scars from his battle with the MDA are still fresh. Last February, he refused to subject his cattle to a mandatory state program to test cattle in his region of Michigan for bovine tuberculosis--a program he argues, among other things, is unnecessary because he distributes his beef privately to people who trust his animal-raising techniques, but which the state insists is essential to ensure the beef isn't tainted.
The state immediately slapped a quarantine on his farm, prohibiting the movement of animals onto or off the property. Then, in August, an MDA inspector arrived, escorted by two Michigan State Police officers, and attempted to convince Niewendorp to have his cattle tested by a vet waiting down the road. Niewendorp angrily ordered the inspector and police off his property, telling them that, without a search warrant, they were trespassers.
Finally, in early October, a team of MDA inspectors and vets arrived again, this time with a search warrant and two sheriff's deputies--and backed up by a half-dozen state trooper SWAT team members and three emergency medical vehicles down the road.
A swat team? Whatever came down to getting a court order, and if they where turned away again, then to go back for arrest warrant for contempt of court. But to get a SWAT team when there aren't guns drawn then this seems like more extremism.
And the article has several other examples of farmers getting in trouble for unconventional farming methods going up and against agricultural regs, like this person who dared slaughter pigs for his own consumption on his farm:
In just the last few weeks, there have been at least a half-dozen notable incidents. In Virginia's Nelson County, ten agriculture agents, aided by state police hauled off 62-year-old custom hog farmer Richard Bean, and his 60-year-old wife, Jean Rinaldi, for slaughtering their own hogs, charging them with a felony and eleven misdemeanors. Bean and Rinaldi were frustrated with the expense of having to haul their hogs more than two hours to the nearest slaughterhouse, and felt they could do it as well or better themselves.
Although, the Courier Press is claiming something else—that he was arrested for claiming his pork was certified organic even though it really wasn't.
As you may have noticed a couple of weeks back Fred LeBrun did an article complaining about NYSSA membership application asking if people wanted to support it's PAC for a nominal 25¢ fee.
LeBrun twists the facts here a little bit in his article. Here are the facts:
To argue that giving people the ability to contribute a quarter to the snowmobilers PAC is feeding back to the gravy trough of politicians is absurd.
Of course that doesn't stop idiots like John Shennan from saying elsewise:
But what deserves a scowl is that, according to John Sheehan of the Adirondack Council, who pointed this out to me, the money collected is then doled back out to the politicians who created the statute that steered applicants to NYSSA in the first place.
Every time you hop on the Thruway, you are paying the lobbyists of the Thruway Authority, too. And you have no choice in that matter. Your paying to have your legislators be lobbied by the Thruway Authority to have tolls raised and have it widened through sensitive environmental areas.
You can learn more about the NYS Snowmobile Association (the organization that oversees local snowmobile clubs) at NYS Snow Assoc.org.
Over at Whitetails.com they have a series of list of recipes of things you can make our of venison this holiday season.
Many of them look quite delicious and would be a great addition to anybody's holiday dinner tomorrow.
For those waiting for the Supreme Court to devolve into the question of the Second Amendment there is good news:
WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 — The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it would decide whether the Constitution grants individuals the right to keep guns in their homes for private use, plunging the justices headlong into a divisive and long-running debate over how to interpret the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the “right of the people to keep and bear arms.”
The court accepted a case on the District of Columbia’s 31-year-old prohibition on the ownership of handguns. In adding the case to its calendar, for argument in March with a decision most likely in June, the court not only raised the temperature of its current term but also inevitably injected the issue of gun control into the presidential campaign.
The stakes are very high:
For that matter, the Supreme Court has never ruled that the Second Amendment even applies to the states, as opposed to the federal government. It has applied nearly all the other provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states, leaving the Second Amendment as the most prominent exception. The justices evidently decided that this case was not the proper vehicle for exploring that issue, because as a nonstate, the District of Columbia is not in a position to argue it one way or another.
Because none of the justices now on the court have ever confronted a Second Amendment case, any prediction about how the court will rule is little more than pure speculation.
This should very interesting to watch—no just for the court decision that could have an impact on our lives, but also how it will change the dynamics of the presidential campaign and how people view the court.
By the way, did you notice a bit of ideological bent in that New York Times article? I certainly did.
