Two of Bush’s free passes rub me the wrong way
Bush has just issued a bunch of additional presidential pardons. Keep in mind that the constitution does not limit the power of the President to grant pardons in any way. Nor can they be overruled.
Leslie Owen Collier killed wildlife with dangerous and prohibited poisons on his farm. Among the animals killed by Collier’s poisoned bait were three bald eagles, a red-tailed hawk, and a great horned owl.
When was the last time you saw a great horned owl? I wonder how many of these magnificent creatures are left. I also remember a friend who had a beloved family pet killed by poison bait.
(Source: Volume 10, Number 2, “Federal Wildlife Officer”)
Milton Kirk Cordes violated the Lacey Act which generally prohibits trading in wildlife, fish, and plants that have been illegally taken, possessed, transported or sold. Cordes suffered “loss of hunting privileges for one year, performance of 100 hours of community service and fined $2,000.” We can’t have the horrible penalty of losing your hunting priviledges for a whole year just for the little detail of raping the wilderness for profit.
Why this rises to the level of the President of the US baffles me in the first place.
I’d like to know more about why these people deserve any consideration.
Thanks to a reader who sent me an email about it, I now know more about the pardon for the Bald Eagle and great horned owl killer, Leslie Owen Collier. The New York Times did an article about it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/washington/30pardon.html
The article explains that Collier has pursued a ten year, grass roots effort to clear his name of this conviction. He did the crime initially because he noticed wild turkeys on his farm and he wanted to kill out coyotes that might be hunting them. (One wonders how the wild turkeys “started to come back” in the first place without his poison to help them.)
There seemed to be one main reason Collier wanted to clear his name: He wanted to be able to use a “real gun” to go hunting again. In fact, he killed the coyotes in the first place to preserve a hunting experience: the wild turkeys.
None of this generates much sympathy with me. In fact, it validates my attitudes about hunters in general. The blood lust of killing things seems to be one of the most important parts of life for them and the collateral damage … loss of magnificent creatures like bald eagles and great horned owls … just doesn’t measure up to the thrill of blowing something away with a gun.
That Bush selected Collier from the thousands of petitions he received validates my attitude about Bush too.