humbly acknowledging that even councilors aren't above the law
keeping the streets of Sioux City safe for jogging
recognizing that the Constitution does not permit ex post facto laws
Oh wait, no he's not. Yes he is. No he's not. WTF? Hey jagoff, you gonna kill your dog or not?
Oh hell, I don't know. And apparently, neither does the newspaper reporter who covered the latest Council meeting:
Rochester continues to say he will not appeal to Woodbury County District Court, but he said last week he wanted changes to the city's one-strike vicious-animal law, which says an animal that bites someone and is ruled vicious must be put down.
So instead of suing the government of which he is a part over a law that he may in fact have written, he's going to try to rewrite the law to issue his vicious biter a get-out-of-jail-free card?
Rochester seems, incredibly, to argue that he should be able to write an ex post facto law that will majickally render his unprovoked biter not vicious because the council previously extended the deadline for
Rochester said he will wait out the 30-day appeal window before having his dog put down.
The logic appears to be that, since we didn't kill everyone's harmless pets, only some people's harmless pets, I get to legislate my vicious biter back onto the front porch. Only killing some people's harmless pets is precedent, see.
Can someone who is more fluent than me in Jenyoowine Frontier Gibberish make some sense of what the mayor, Mike Hobart, is reported to have said?
Hobart seemed sympathetic to Rochester's plight when he said, "The Supreme Court often has set aside judgements (sic) on capital punishment -- on cruel and unusual punishment."Sioux City Council. I wouldn't kick a dog in the ass with them.
However, he said, "I agree with Jim. I think the perception would be out there if we do something for a councilman" that the council members were giving special treatment to one of their own.
"What I'm most uncomfortable with is my own stupidity in not understanding the law -- that it was a one-bite issue," Hobart said. "I thought we would weed out a good dog who does something stupid."
Dick Williams said the animal ordinance is flawed. His comments prompted Hobart to say, "I have represented murderers and those who have done heinous crimes. They are docile. Anybody, including a dog, can act docile."
Those statements aren't SUPPOSED to make sense -- they are supposed to make your head hurt so that you move on and the lawmakers can do what they want to do without interference from the meddling public (and/or journalists, although there are a lot fewer of them in small towns theses day).
ReplyDeleteThe appropriate response is to challenge the forked tongues to MAKE SENSE already and hold them to it. This is why I'm such a favorite at local public meetings! ;-P
It is sad, sad, sad thing that I am an expert in these matters.
Dorene
Don't you understand?
ReplyDeleteIt should be obvious to anyone that it makes more sense to kill perfectly innocent dogs that look scary and aggressive than to kill sweet-looking dogs who actually perpetrate nasty, unprovoked bites on people.
Winston Smith
The solution is simple. I say ban Labradors and all other retrievers. Indeed, why not stop there?
ReplyDeleteThe only dogs we need are those that have no teeth! Of course, we'd have only a few hairless Chinese crested dogs about.
That's my modest proposal.
Paranoia about pit bulls is an illness. It really is.
Now being concerned with man-eating dogs regardless of breed, that's a useful place to start.
We all know that the breed that this member of the city council owns is the most popular breed in America. It's somewhat overbred, though not as much as the golden retrievers are. Some of these dogs are so aggressive that they could eat a metal bucket.
But nobody will even propose a breed ban on any breed of retriever. It doesn't matter how many of them bite. They are seen in our public perceptions as nice dogs that don't bite people. If such a ban were proposed, someone would say, "Well, most of them aren't like that at all."
Well, I could say the same about pit bulls.
And that tells you why breed bans are stupid.
I was going to say that "good lord, people elected these asshats!" But the truth is more accurately represented by "People allowed these asshats to be elected."
ReplyDeleteBy and large, the relatively moderate majority have stopped paying attention to the record and character of the people they vote for, or they simply do not bother to vote.
And these fine examples of reason and justice and common sense are what you get people, time to pay some attention or live with these as your decision makers.
Another peachy example. Lake County California,
MSN and please just shoot he rest so we don't have to deal with them OK?
http://lakeconews.com/content/view/9257/764/
JenniferJ