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By Brooks A. Mick, M.D.
June 26, 2006 Here in my home state of Virginia, there is a law regarding hunting on Sunday. It is forbidden, mostly, but not entirely. The law reads that Sunday is declared a day of rest for all wild species...except raccoons. Raccoons, for some reason not favored by the theologians in the Virginia legislature, are not to have any rest on Sunday until 2AM, at which time they too may rest and recuperate from being hunted the rest of the week. I assume that what this means is that a Saturday night 'coon hunt can continue past midnight. As a practical matter, it might be difficult to call in those coonhounds hot on the trail of a rascally raccoon. In addition, the law does also state that a hunter who is lawfully carrying a weapon in the woods and fields on Sunday may not be automatically presumed to be hunting if there is no other evidence that he is disturbing the day of rest of the wild creatures. Such evidence might be, I suppose, a dead creature or two in the pouch of his hunting vest. PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, must be happy to know that animals DO have rights--at least on Sunday--unless said animal happens to be a raccoon, in which case he only has 22 hours of rest instead of 24. I suspect that, having been apprised of this, PETA and the ACLU will band together to file a class action lawsuit for the raccoons, claiming that it violates equal protection under the law. Which it does, of course. If I were a raccoon and could get a lawyer to take the case, I suspect I could win a huge settlement from the State of Virginia. The point of all this is that there are a great many laws on the books--maybe even MOST of them!--which are just as irrational, which favor one group over another in one manner or another, and which should be struck down if any judges and courts had the gonads to do so. Many laws, and most functions of the federal government itself, have grown outside the constraints of the Constitution. There is nothing in the Constitution which gives the feds the power to regulate intrastate commerce, and yet they do. There is nothing in the Constitution which gives the feds the power to regulate education, and yet there is an entire cabinet position devoted to this. If we had a Supreme Court which stood by the words of the Constitution, the federal government would overnight shrink to about one-fourth its size. Now that would be a budgetary saving! One reason that there are so many laws--and so many stupid, contradictory laws--is that laws make work for lawyers, and lawyers make up much of the government, and lawyers contribute huge amounts to politicians. Approximately half of the time and expense of medical practice, my area of greatest familiarity, is expended upon satisfying legal requirements which, near as I can determine, do not contribute significantly to patient health. These laws create a lot of jobs for clerical workers, for government employees who oversee all these crossings of "T"s and dotting of "I"s, and for lawyers who get called in if a "T" is not crossed exactly as specified. Can you imagine how much more good could be done if these government workers and clerks were put to real, honest, actually productive use? Maybe they could be assigned border guard duty and stop illegals from crossing into this country. Maybe they could check for expired visas and thereby help locate terrorists. Perhaps they could be set to cranking the pedals on generators and supplying energy to decrease our dependence on foreign oil. ------------ About the author Brooks A. Mick: Physician, still practicing medicine but retired from the US Army. Write just for the fun of it, but working on novel in the vein of Tom Clancy's politico-military genre. Email: brooks15@cox.net Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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