Let’s Call It Overkill

A new law at the federal level makes it illegal to even pick up a feather shed by a bird. Never mind hunting season, which is legal, you can be busted, per this law and its interpretation by one Judge Caproni, for hunting turkey, pheasant and quail even if you’re on your own property.

This broad – er, judge – judge is certainly worth the scathing remarks she’s getting. And unless I misunderstand the law itself, the bill is a law that is unconstitutional in its attempt to criminalize someone for merely touching a bird feather. That part about ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ applies here. She makes it clear that she is a control freak personified. Her “opinion” piece includes Atticus Finch. Yes, that Atticus Finch.

In addition, her bill makes it clear that she has no understanding of birds, period. She may have a thick thesaurus on her desk, but I doubt that she knows anything at all about them.

The article showed up at WattsUpWithThat. The link is below. Excerpts are from the WUWT article.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/30/you-are-probably-a-criminal-hands-up-drop-the-feather/#comment-3073165

This link is to a pdf of the “opinion” which uses both fiction and non-fiction as a means of resolution.  https://www.sdnyblog.com/files/2020/08/18-Civ.-04596-2020.08.11-NRDC-v.-Dept-of-the-Interior-SJ-Ruling.pdf

This is the crux of Judge Caproni’s legal “opinion” as contained in the pdf:   It shall be unlawful at any time, by any means or in any manner, to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill, attempt to take, capture, or kill, possess, offer for sale, sell, offer to barter, barter, offer to purchase, purchase, deliver for shipment, ship, export, import, cause to be shipped, exported, or imported, deliver for transportation, transport or cause to be transported, carry or cause to be carried, or receive for shipment, transportation, carriage, or export, any migratory bird, any part, nest, or egg of any such bird, or any product, whether or not manufactured, which consists, or is composed in whole or part, of any such bird or any part, nest, or egg thereof, included in the terms of the conventions….

N.B.: By “any migratory bird”, this means that ducks and geese will no longer be available for fall hunting. Period. She does have a tendency to rattle on, too.  The term “any part” includes such mundane things as molted feathers, which are naturally occurring deposits made by growing offspring of birds, as well as adult birds, of all species. Her failure to understand and/or acknowledge the simple and natural act of molting, which occurs in all species of birds, does not impair the bird’s health or welfare. Picking up a dropped feather from the ground can hardly be interpreted as a crime, but she has made it so in the language of her proposed bill. This is, indeed, “overkill”. And because she’s making a criminal act out of picking up an unneeded object, because it once sat on a bird, it is unconstitutional in that part about “cruel and unusual punishment” phrase.

The original intent of the 1918 Migratory Bird Act was to stop what was then commercial hunting, which gave hunters an incentive to take as many birds as they could shoot down for sale to stores.  The fact that commercial hunting was decimating other species at the same time made no difference to those people. They were after cash, and nothing else, and took their hunting to excess. As you know, there are landowners who raise pheasants and quail, and release them in the fall when the chicks are grown. That is not normally done with wild geese and ducks. You might have a pair of mallards in your fishing pond in the back yard, but it’s because they decided to set up housekeeping there.

Where am I going with this?  As it turns out, Judge Caproni’s record of decisions is questionable in itself. It is published at the Guardian article:  (Click on the “I’ll do it later” Guardian’s request that you register for a free read).  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/06/fbi-lawyer-surveillance-judge-valerie-caproni#:

From the Guardian article: Even before the Guardian’s phone records revelations, provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, lawmakers found Caproni to be complicit in surveillance abuses. (Read that again: complicit in surveillance abuses.)

A 2010 report by the Department of Justice’s internal watchdog found that the FBI misused a type of non-judicial subpoena known as an “exigent letter” to improperly obtain more than 5,500 phone numbers of Americans.

“The FBI broke the law on telephone records privacy and the general counsel’s office, headed by Valerie Caproni, sanctioned it and must face consequences,” said John Conyers, then the chairman of the House judiciary committee, in April 2010, who called for then-FBI director Robert Mueller to fire her.

Conyers said he was “outraged” that the FBI invented “exigent letters” to more easily obtain phone records, and intimated Caproni was responsible for it. “It’s not in the Patriot Act. It never has been. And its use, perhaps coincidentally, began in the same month that Ms Valerie Caproni began her work as general counsel,” Conyers said in a hearing that month. The FBI stopped using exigent letters in 2006.

Lawmakers’ dissatisfaction with Caproni over surveillance has a long pedigree. – article

And just for more gits and shiggles, here’s a 533 page treatise on communications issues which you can read provided by the New York University School of Law re: Privacy and Security in The Cloud (re: the post-Snowden era)

https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Opinion/Communications/RubinsteinAndVanHoboken.pdf

That’s if you have nothing to do in your spare time, other than reminding yourselves that Snowden’s brain fart and fleeing the scene created some serious legal issues in his wake. In addition, you may remember the tear-stained confession of someone who lands here and squawks repeatedly, which same confession was inserted by that person into comments when I posted an article on Snowden’s debacle.

This article addresses the original 1918 Migratory Birds Act, which was aimed at protecting native migratory bird species from commercial hunters.  https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/02/04/killing-birds/

Since turkeys, quail and pheasants do not migrate, they aren’t covered by it. Under Caproni’s interpretation of the law, you may not even be able to hunt those birds in the fall and winter, never mind pick up pheasant feathers that were dropped on the ground by molting birds.

In some states, you can be arrested and fined for “illegal taking” if a deer or a bear or whatever crashes through your windshield. New York is and for some time has been one of those states. If you’re going hunting this fall, be sure that you do check state rules on such things, just as a precaution. And should a bear throw itself into your windshield, make sure you call the state cops about it. Don’t try to extricate the bear. You might piss him off.

Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", "Your Tax Dollars At Work"