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from the how-your-food-really-gets-made dept.
A federal judge in Idaho has ruled that an "ag-gag" law is unconstitutional. For those unfamilar, an ag-gag law, as defined by the article is "[a law that] outlawed undercover investigations of farming operations, is no more. A judge in the federal District Court for Idaho decided Monday that it was unconstitutional, citing First Amendment protections for free speech". As reported:
Laws in Montana, Utah, North Dakota, Missouri, Kansas and Iowa have also made it illegal for activists to smuggle cameras into industrial animal operations. But now those laws' days could be numbered, according to the lead attorney for the coalition of animal welfare groups that sued the state of Idaho.
"This is a total victory on our two central constitutional claims," says University of Denver law professor Justin Marceau, who represented the plaintiff, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, in the case. "Ag-gag laws violate the First Amendment and Equal Protection Clause. This means that these laws all over the country are in real danger."
"Ag-gag" refers to a variety of laws meant to curb undercover investigations of agricultural operations, often large dairy, poultry and pork farms. The Idaho law criminalized video or audio recording of a farm without the owner's consent, and lying to a farm owner to gain employment there to do an undercover investigation.
Previously: Dairy Lobbyist Crafted Idaho's "Ag-Gag" Legislation.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:39PM
I'm no tree hugger. I'm not big into animal rights. Mostly, I don't care about food animals very much. They are raised to be eaten, someone is going to knock them in the head with a hammer, or slit their throats, or whatever. I can't be terribly concerned about food - I'm going to EAT IT after all.
But, there are some shockingly sick individuals - even groups of individuals - in the animal husbandry industry. Anyone who gets off making an animal suffer needs to be made to suffer. Our laws won't permit that, so it's got to be "good enough" that we can take them to court, and deprive them of their ill-gotten wages. Maybe deprive them of their freedom, as well. And, they damn sure need to be kept away from vulnerable women, children, infants, and elderly. The individual who can poke a cattle prod up an animal's anus and listen the the beast scream, is quite likely capable of doing the same to a human being.
This is one group of people who, upon conviction, should most definitely be prevented from ever owning a weapon. Guns, knives, clubs - you name it. No weapons, ever.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:04PM
That's obviously impractical, because there is absolutely nothing you can do to prevent sickos like that from picking up a large rock, unless we're thinking of introducing hand amputation as a form of punishment.
Part of the problem is that from the point of view of the more extreme animal rights activists, all methods used by the animal husbandry industry are unnecessarily cruel.
But like you, I take a middle ground. That might have to do with my admittedly limited experience doing hippie organic farming: When the animals ate what they were evolved to eat (e.g. cattle should eat grass), and were kept clean and attentively cared for, they were healthy and (as far as us humans could tell) happy, and both human and animal benefited from this arrangement. Even those animals destined to be eaten. The problem is that modern farming takes a lot of shortcuts and feeds animals what is plentiful rather than what they evolved to eat, pump them full of drugs to keep them from dying because of that, and minimize the amount of attention each animal gets.
Sure, the hippie methods are more expensive, but the results also taste better.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:31PM
This is one group of people who, upon conviction, should most definitely be prevented from ever owning a weapon. Guns, knives, clubs - you name it. No weapons, ever.
Sounds like a second amendment violation to me.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:44PM
Sounds like, or is?
No court has ever ruled that a convict should have the right to own weapons. Not that I have ever heard of, anyway. Nor has any court ruled the the dangerously insane should be supplied with weapons. And, that is my position - people who abuse animals are dangerously insane.
While it is true that not all animal abusers move on to abuse people - virtually all people abusers started out by abusing animals. The correlations have been shown often enough.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:50PM
Sounds like, or is?
Is. Read the second amendment if you don't believe me; it doesn't list a single exception. The courts are irrelevant, as the courts use a fake version of the constitution of their own making rather than the real one (or rather, they just ignore the constitution). I don't expect anything from them. Neither convicts nor the "dangerously insane" can be prohibited from owning weapons in a constitutional way.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:15PM
That would be alright with me. Let them get weapons. If I have to shoot a convict or a nut, the defense should be a hell of a lot easier. "Your honer, the bastard was talkng crazy, and waving a gun around, and pointing it at me. So, I shot him before I got shot!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:17PM
Except for that whole "well-regulated militia" part. You know, literally half the amendment. Per the constitution, only members of a well-regulated militia should have access to firearms.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:33PM
Totally Fucking Wrong
I'm fully aware of the "well regulated militia" bit. I AM THE MILITIA! Well, I was for a few decades - now I'm exempt. Every able bodied male between the ages of 18 and 45 is the militia. Sorry, women's libbers - you ain't the militia. You CAN BE, but you ain't, by definition.
Before you pull up that "well regulated militia", I suggest that you LEARN TO FUCKING READ! Reading comprehension requires that you understand the definitions of the words you read. It also requires that you understand the definitions intended by the author(s). In this case, all able bodied males were subject to call-up by the militia. All of them. A lot of not-so-able-bodied people answered the call anyway, because they thought it un-manly to sit out a war.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:14PM
If you believe that the second amendment guarantees individuals the right to keep and bear arms, then you're not really a supporter of the second amendment if you also believe in random arbitrary limits, because the second amendment lists no limits.
If you do not believe that the second amendment guarantees individuals the right to keep and bear arms, you might be more consistent than the fake second amendment supporters. But given that it mentions "the people", and given what a militia was at the time, it's more accurate to consider it an individual right. So the courts have been somewhat correct so far. Regardless, even absent the second amendment, the constitution does not explicitly grant the federal government the power to forbid individuals from owning weapons, so it doesn't have such a power. Some people who want gun control actually realize that you have to amend the constitution to fix the situation, rather than just ignore it. Much like the foolish prohibitionists realized they would have to amend the constitution. Now various drugs are declared illegal on a whim, in violation of the constitution. Where will this nonsense end?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:45PM
This is one group of people who, upon conviction
Conviction for what? There has to be a crime first.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:21PM
The group he's referring to is these people:
Animal cruelty is, in fact, a crime. Torture certainly classifies as cruelty.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:45PM
Anyone who gets off making an animal suffer needs to be made to suffer.
Animal cruelty is, in fact, a crime. Torture certainly classifies as cruelty.
He didn't say animal cruelty, he said people with certain psychological defects. Just because someone "gets off" on animal suffering doesn't mean that they choose to act on that impulse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:15PM
Well that's shocking. I never thought you, of all people, would be in favor of gun control laws.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:37PM
I am not in favor of gun control laws. If you look a little closer at what I wrote, I'm more in favor of PEOPLE CONTROL LAWS. There are people who should never be permitted to breed. There are people who should never be permitted to own a weapon. There are other people who should never be allowed to walk free. Some people belong to all three classes of people - and should just be eliminated. That is people control, not gun control.
Go get yourself a gun, Junior. The gun won't make you a man, but it can help you to grow up some.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @05:10PM
> I am not in favor of gun control laws. If you look a little closer at what I wrote, I'm more in favor of PEOPLE CONTROL LAWS.
Lol. By that definition, there is no such thing as a gun control law. All laws are people control laws.
Your display of cognitive dissonance is entertaining though.