Obama Regulatory Czar’s Confirmation Held Up by Hunting Rights Proponent
by: Fox News
Cass Sunstein is President Obama’s pick to run the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at OMB. (Harvard.edu)
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s nominee for “regulatory czar” has hit a new snag in his Senate confirmation process — a “hold” by Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who’s says he’s not convinced that Harvard professor Cass Sunstein won’t push a radical animal rights agenda, including new restrictions on agriculture and even hunting.
Senators are permitted “holds” to prevent a vote on a nominee from coming to the floor. They are often secretive and for very specific reasons.
“Sen. Cornyn finds numerous aspects of Mr. Sunstein’s record troubling, specifically the fact that he wants to establish legal ‘rights’ for livestock, wildlife and pets, which would enable animals to file lawsuits in American courts,” the Republican’s spokesman, Kevin McLaughlin, said in a statement to FOXNews.com.
Cornyn’s hold on Sunstein comes just as Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., last week lifted his own hold on the nominee, whom Obama tapped in April to become the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Budget and Management.
Chambliss said he was dropping his hold because Sunstein had convinced 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.”
Both statements were included in a letter Sunstein sent to Chambliss on July 14.
Chambliss added in a Senate floor speech last Wednesday that “Professor Sunstein comes highly recommended by a number of folks from the conservative side of the philosophical divide in this country.”
One of Sunstein’s top jobs would be to review and provide guidance for draft federal regulations at different federal agencies. It is a wide-ranging and largely unrestrained position in the executive branch.
That’s a large part of the reason Sunstein’s positions on animal rights have become worrisome to his critics. Despite his assurances to the contrary, Sunstein has spoken stridently in favor of allowing people the right to bring suit on behalf of animals in animal cruelty cases and to restrict what he calls the more horrific practices associated with industrial breeding and processing of animals for food.
In a 2007 speech at Harvard, Sunstein also advocated restricting animal testing for cosmetics, banning hunting and encouraging the general public to eat less meat.
The Center for Consumer Freedom’s David Martosko, a Sunstein critic, said those positions make the agricultural industry — major stakeholders in the states represented by both Chambliss and Cornyn — nervous.
Martosko said there are plenty of ways to pursue a “stealth campaign” on any one of these fronts — guns or animal rights — by putting pressure on the regulatory heads of the different agencies.
“He is the gatekeeper between the president and the secretaries,” he said, noting that “as a regulatory czar, he won’t be a judge or a legislator, so he cannot make laws. … What he can do is nudge the departments in the direction of his philosophy,” which is very much in line with “hard core animal rights zealots.” [Read the rest of the article]
See the original article at GotHunts.com
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