posted July 24, 2009 01:31 PM         

Obama czar pick: 'Raving animal rights nut'
Nominee advocated hunting ban, giving creatures right to file lawsuits
Posted: July 24, 2009
12:00 am Eastern
By Chelsea Schilling

President Obama's friend and nominee for "regulatory czar" is a "raving animal rights nut" who has a secret agenda, according to one consumer group.

David Martosko, director of the Center for Consumer Freedom, told Fox News' Glenn Beck that Cass Sunstein, the Harvard Law professor nominated by the president to become the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is a "raving animal rights nut" and devout disciple of Peter Singer.

Singer, a bioethics professor at Princeton University, is a leader in the animal rights movement. He has also argued that abortion should be permissible because unborn babies as old as 18 weeks cannot feel pain or satisfaction.

Singer once explained his belief that, "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living."

In 1993, Singer said infants lack "rationality, autonomy and self-consciousness."

"Infants lack these characteristics," he said. "Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings, or any other self-conscious beings."

Martosko told Beck, "When you embrace this whole utilitarian idea, guess what else comes in the back door? Some animals, according to Singer, are worth more than some humans. A smart border collie, he says, is worth more, inherently, than a retarded child. … Cass Sunstein has embraced the whole enchilada. … He believes that animals should have some of the same rights as humans, in fact, greater rights than some people – including the right to follow lawsuits."

Sunstein has also supported outlawing sport hunting, giving animals the legal right to file lawsuits and using government regulations to phase out meat consumption.

The center quotes Sunstein's 2007 speech at Harvard University, where he argued in favor of "eliminating current practices such as … meat eating" and proposed: "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."

He also said, "[Humans'] willingness to subject animals to unjustified suffering will be seen … as a form of unconscionable barbarity… morally akin to slavery and the mass extermination of human beings."

According to the group, Sunstein was editor of the 2004 book "Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions" that said "animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives … 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."

Martosko believes if Sunstein becomes "regulatory czar," he could "spell the end of animal agriculture, retail sales of meat and dairy foods, hunting and fishing, biomedical research, pet ownership, zoos and aquariums, traveling circuses, and countless other things Americans take for granted."

"Cass Sunstein owes Americans an honest appraisal of his animal rights agenda as America's top regulator," Martosko said in a statement. "Americans don't realize that the next four years could be full of bizarre initiatives plucked from the wildest dreams of the animal-rights fringe."

(Story continues below)

As WND reported, Sunstein has also been an outspoken proponent of tough restriction on gun sales and ownership and what has been characterized as a "Fairness Doctrine" for the Internet. Revelations about Cass Sunstein's views on the "Fairness Doctrine" come in a book by Brad O'Leary, " Shut Up, America! The End of Free Speech." Sunstein also has argued in his prolific literary works that the Internet is anti-democratic because of the way users can filter out information of their own choosing.

Several senators have expressed concern about Sunstein's stances, and two "holds" have been placed on his nomination.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., blocked Sunstein's nomination last month.

"Chambliss worries that Sunstein's innovative legal views may someday lead to a farmer having to defend himself in court against a lawsuit filed on behalf of his chickens or pigs," The Hill reported.

Chambliss told The Hill that he blocked Sunstein's nomination because the law professor "has said that animals ought to have the right to sue folks."

However, Chambliss later removed his hold because he said Sunstein had assured him that he "would not take any steps to promote litigation on behalf of animals," and that he believes the "Second Amendment creates an individual right to possess guns for purposes of both hunting and self defense."

But Sunstein is now facing another hold on his Senate confirmation process.

According to Fox News, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas., believes Sunstein could use the position to push a radical animal rights agenda and impose restrictions on agriculture and hunting.

posted July 30, 2009 05:14 PM         

O'Bomber has assembled every raving lunatic in the US to staff his administration.

Gee, why not give legal standing to grass..."don't walk on me".

Why not give legal standing to vegetables..."don't eat me".

Why not give legal standing to fences..."don't lean on me".

Why not give legal standing to benches..."don't sit on me".

Why not give legal standing to the variegated, striped mug-wart..."don't build that dam and destroy my home"...; oh wait, the radicals already tried that and ran up legal bills so high utility companies abandoned their projects...which is one of the reasons electricity rates keep climbing.

In the 70s, Obama's Science Adviser Endorsed Giving Trees Legal Standing to Sue in Court
Thursday, July 30, 2009
By Christopher Neefus

(CNSNews.com) –
Since the 1970s, some radical environmentalists have argued that trees have legal rights and should be allowed to go to court to protect those rights.

The idea has been endorsed by John P. Holdren, the man who now advises President Barack Obama on science and technology issues.

Giving “natural objects” -- like trees -- standing to sue in a court of law would have a “most salubrious” effect on the environment, Holdren wrote the 1970s.

“One change in (legal) notions that would have a most salubrious effect on the quality of the environment has been proposed by law professor Christopher D. Stone in his celebrated monograph, ‘Should Trees Have Standing?’” Holdren said in a 1977 book that he co-wrote with Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich.

“In that tightly reasoned essay, Stone points out the obvious advantages of giving natural objects standing, just as such inanimate objects as corporations, trusts, and ships are now held to have legal rights and duties,” Holdren added.

According to Holdren and the Ehrlichs, the notion of legal standing for inanimate objects would not be as unprecedented as it might sound. “The legal machinery and the basic legal notions needed to control pollution are already in existence,” they wrote.

“Slight changes in the legal notions and diligent application of the legal machinery are all that are necessary to induce a great reduction in pollution in the United States,” Holdren added.

Holdren, who is the new director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and President Obama’s top science advisor, made the comments in the 1977 book “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment.”

Stone’s article -- “Should Trees Have Standing?” -- which Holdren called a “tightly reasoned essay,” was published in the Southern California Law Review in 1972.

In that article, Stone plainly states: “I am quite seriously proposing that we give legal rights to forests, oceans, rivers and other so-called ‘natural objects’ in the environment--indeed, to the natural environment as a whole.”

Stone admits in the article that it may seem improbable to give legal rights to nonhuman objects, but likened it to finally giving rights to black Americans.

“The fact is, that each time there is a movement to confer rights onto some new ‘entity,’ the proposal is bound to sound odd or frightening or laughable,” Stone wrote.

“This is partly because until the rightless (sic) thing receives its rights, we cannot see it as anything but a thing for the use of ‘us’--those who are holding rights at the time . . . Such is the way the slave South looked upon the black.”

The decades-old standing argument has seen a resurgence in recent months in connection with a major piece of global-warming legislation--the cap-and-trade bill--that recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives.

Environmental advocacy groups such as the Center for Earth Jurisprudence have begun citing the argument. Mary Munson, legal director for that organization, says she does not quite subscribe to Stone’s analogy on the slave South, but she does agree with him in principle.

“In our legal system, (Stone is) actually saying that rights are something that (are) little-by-little discovered, and in that sense, I’m agreeing with him in that there are rights that exist and we’re just trying to discover what they are,” she said.

Munson explained animals have already come part of the way toward a set of rights.

“(In) the animal rights movement, there have been successful cases where people have upheld animals’ right not to be tortured. And I think a lot of people would agree that animals do have that kind of a right. So it’s just a matter of finding out what are those inherent rights that nature may have.”

“Courts are there to uphold laws,” she told CNSNews.com, “and you don’t bring a lawsuit unless a law has been violated." In cases where there's "been injury because somebody’s overstepped" an object's legal boundaries, a lawyer could sue on behalf of the injured nonhuman object.

“(I)t will have to be a human lawyer that would bring the lawsuit, but just on behalf of the injured party and the injured party would be an animal or something.”

The White House did not comment on questions from CNSNews.com about Holdren’s stance on legal standing for natural objects--and whether it has changed since the 1970s.

Before joining the Obama administration, Holdren was a professor at Harvard and the director of the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Mass. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and an M.S. from MIT, where he also received his undergraduate degree.

posted July 31, 2009 12:03 AM         

And whom would that "right winger" be?

posted July 31, 2009 09:38 AM         

Of course, this was to be done secretly...so water drinkers...those sterilized wouldn't hunt him and the other conspirators down and hang them.