Freedom Means Shooting Bear Cubs While They're Hibernating [View all]

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http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a57196/republicans-hunting-federal-lands/



BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
AUG 25, 2017

Remember all those wonderful photographs of the young princeling Trumplings, posing with the corpses of the handsome animals they'd plugged while on limo safaris around the world? Remember Junior with the elephant's tail? Well, if the administration run by their father has anything to say about it, wealthy spalpeens like the two of them are not going to have to go to all the fuss and bother of leaving the country to kill animals more handsome than themselves. It appears that the U.S. Department of the Interior has decided to turn the National Parks into free fire zones, the equivalent of taxpayer funded game ranches similar to the one at which Dick Cheney once ventilated his friend's face. McClatchy has all the details.

National Park Service Acting Director Michael Reynolds prepared a June 30 memo detailing his agency's objections to the draft legislation, the "Sportsmen's Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act." Under the bill, the National Park Service would be prevented from regulating the hunting of bears and wolves in Alaska wildlife preserves, including the practice of killing bear cubs in their dens. It also would be prevented from regulating commercial and recreational fishing within park boundaries and from commenting on development projects outside park boundaries that could affect the parks. Reynolds objected to these and other parts of the bill in a memo sent to the U.S. Department of Interior's Legislative Counsel. The park service later received a response from Interior, with sections of Reynolds' concerns crossed out, next to the initials "C.H." Agency officials were told they could not repeat their concerns to Congress, according to Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, who obtained the memo and provided a copy to McClatchy. "It appears the national parks are no longer allowed to give Congress their honest views about the impacts of pending legislation," said Ruch, whose organization serves as a support network for environmental agency employees and whistle blowers.

"The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter." —S. Spade, San Francisco.

Introduced this year by U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., the SHARE act includes a controversial standalone bill, the Hearing Protection Act, which would make it easier and cheaper for gun owners to purchase silencers. The House Natural Resources Committee was slated to hear the legislation on June 14, but the hearing was postponed following the congressional shooting in Virginia that day.
And, of course, what would an NRA-backed animal-killing program be without a good healthy dollop of old-fashioned nullification?

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