UPDATE July 22, 2009: WASHINGTON (Fox News) -- 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.



The American Sporting Dog Alliance contacted Sen. Cornyn earlier this week.
Please write to Sen. Cornyn and thank him for his support:
http://cornyn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm .
Also, please contact your own two U.S., Senators (see below).




WASHINGTON (July 21, 2009) - Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) has lifted his
"hold" blocking the nomination of Harvard Law School scholar and animal
rights legal strategist Cass Sunstein for the post of regulatory czar in the
Administration of his close personal friend, President Barack Obama.



Sen. Chambliss had blocked the nomination based on concerns of farm groups
because of Sunstein's strong animal rights beliefs, including support of
stringent regulation of people who raise animals and a ban on hunting. Last
week, however, Chambliss met with Sunstein and announced on the Senate floor
that he had lifted the hold on the nomination. The Senator added that the
way is now clear for the U.S. Senate to confirm Sunstein before its August
recess.



The American Sporting Dog Alliance is urging all dog owners, hunters,
firearms rights advocates, farmers and civil libertarians to take immediate
action by urging the U.S. Senate to reject the Sunstein nomination to head
the powerful Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the
White House. Taking action now is of the utmost urgency.



Sunstein has the strong support of the Humane Society of the United States,
which is the political arm of the radical animal rights movement, according
to a July 15 statement by HSUS Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
Michael Markarian in The Huffington Post. Referring to the regulations to
implement the federal Animal Welfare Act, and new rules about animal
fighting and importing dogs, Markarian wrote: "These kinds of legal changes
are precisely why Americans need a regulatory czar like Cass Sunstein in
charge of OIRA -- to make sure the federal agencies properly implement
regulations to enforce these new laws."



The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) "reviews and alters
regulations created by federal agencies," according to Congress Daily.



Sunstein, who has published 15 books, would have broad powers to review,
recommend changes and possibly engineer changes in all federal regulations,
including those about dog ownership, farming, hunting on federal lands, and
enforcement of gun control laws.



In his published writings and speeches, Sunstein has advocated:



* Giving animal rights groups the power to file lawsuits on the behalf
of animals against their owners.



* Very strict regulations about animal ownership, farming and hunting.



* The elimination of hunting.



* The elimination of the individual right to keep and bear arms.



* Moving toward a vegan vegetarian society.



* Rewriting the Constitution and Bill of Rights.



* And restrictions on free speech.



Each of those assertions will be documented later in this report by direct
quotations from Sunstein's published books and speeches.



The American Sporting Dog Alliance believes Sunstein would have a severely
negative impact on dog owners, farmers, hunters, gun owners and civil
libertarians - Indeed, to all Americans!



This is underscored by Sunstein's status as a close personal friend and
advisor to President Obama since they met in 1992, when Sunstein taught law
at the University of Chicago. This will give Sunstein unprecedented
influence and access to the President.



It is further underscored by numerous mainstream reports that Sunstein is
slated to be President Obama's next nominee to fill a vacancy on the Supreme
Court. This adds to the urgency of convincing the Senate that Sunstein's
beliefs are un-American and in direct contradiction to the basic principles
outlined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.



Although Sunstein's nomination had been blocked by Sen. Chambliss until last
week, Government Executive reported that he actually has been working at the
job in the White House on a daily basis.

Sunstein's potential use of power - and potential abuse of power - has been
increased because President Obama redefined the role of OIRA shortly after
taking office. The Wall Street Journal reported July 6: "In a significant,
but little noticed, memo written 10 days after taking office, Mr. Obama
ordered up a rewrite of how OIRA goes about its work, the first such
revision since 1993. 'Far more is now known about regulation -- not only
when it is justified, but also what works and what does not,' the president
wrote. A regulatory review would make use of new tools and would 'clarify
the role of the behavioral sciences in formulating regulatory policy.' "



The Wall Street Journal called the OIRA "obscure but powerful."



The American Sporting Dog Alliance believes that Sunstein will use this
position to influence President Obama's directives to all federal agencies
on how to write, interpret and enforce all federal regulations. This
includes regulations about agriculture, raising animals, hunting on public
lands, and gun law enforcement and procedures. This is a dangerous power to
be held by someone of Sunstein's clearly radical and unconstitutional
beliefs.



Thus, we are urging every American to immediately contact both of his or her
U.S, senators, and as many other senators as possible, to urge them to vote
against the Sunstein nomination.



This link will provide a search engine to locate each state's senators, and
an alphabetical list of the senators to link to contact information:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm. Each
state has two U.S. Senators who represent all of the citizens of that state.



We recommend at least two forms of contact: Send an email as a first step,
plus also send a letter or fax, and/or make a phone call. Please do this
immediately, as a Senate confirmation vote could come at any moment.



In addition, please send this report to all of your friends and contacts and
ask them to help, and post it on any message boards that you use. Also,
please write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper and any other
papers you read.



Here are some direct quotes from Sunstein to illustrate our concern:



1. "We ought to ban hunting"

- Cass Sunstein, in a 2007 speech at Harvard University



2. "We should focus attention not only on the enforcement gap, but on the
areas where current law offers little or no protection. In short, the law
should impose further regulation on hunting, scientific experiments,
entertainment, and (above all) farming to ensure against unnecessary animal
suffering. It is easy to imagine a set of initiatives that would do a great
deal here, and indeed European nations have moved in just this direction.
There are many possibilities."

--Cass R. Sunstein, "The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer," John M.
Olin

Law & Economics Working Paper No. 157, The Law School, The University of

Chicago



3. ".(R)epresentatives of animals should be able to bring private suits to
ensure that

anticruelty and related laws are actually enforced. If, for example, a farm
is treating

horses cruelly and in violation of legal requirements, a suit could be
brought, on behalf of those animals, to bring about compliance with the
law."

--Cass R. Sunstein, "The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer," John M.
Olin

Law & Economics Working Paper No. 157, The Law School, The University of
Chicago



4. "But if, as a practical matter, animals used for food are almost
inevitably going to endure terrible suffering, then there is a good argument
that people should not eat meat to the extent that a refusal to eat meat
will reduce that suffering. Of course a legal ban on meat-eating would be
extremely radical, and like prohibition, it would undoubtedly create black
markets and have a set of bad, and huge, side-effects. But the principle
seems clear: People should be much less inclined to eat meat if their
refusal to do so would prevent significant suffering."

--Cass R. Sunstein, "The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer," John M.
Olin

Law & Economics Working Paper No. 157, The Law School, The University of

Chicago



5. "Less modestly, anticruelty laws should be extended to areas that are now
exempt from

them, including scientific experiments and farming. There is no good reason
to permit the

level of suffering that is now being experienced by millions, even billions
of living

creatures."

--Cass R. Sunstein, "The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer," John M.
Olin

Law & Economics Working Paper No. 157, The Law School, The University of

Chicago



6. "Everything depends on whether and to what extent the animal in question
is capable of suffering. If rats are able to suffer, then their interests
are relevant to the question of how, and perhaps even whether, they can be
expelled from houses."

--Cass R. Sunstein, Martha C. Nussbaum. Animal Rights: Current Debates and

New Directions. (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004). P. 12



7. "A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to
communications, is not

necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government."

--Cass Sunstein, arguing for a Fairness Doctrine for the Internet in his
book,

Republic.com 2.0 (Princeton University Press, 2007), p.137



8. "In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully
'ours'? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have
inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without
the support of bank regulators? Could we spend it if there were no public
officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the

community in which we live?... Without taxes there would be no liberty.
Without taxes

there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets
worth

defending. [It is] a dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their
rights without

placing any burden whatsoever on the public . There is no liberty without
dependency. That is why we should celebrate tax day ."

-- Cass R. Sunstein, "Why We Should Celebrate Paying Taxes," The Chicago

Tribune, April 14, 1999



9. "Much of the time, the United States seems to have embraced a confused
and pernicious form of individualism. This approach endorses rights of
private property and freedom of contract, and respects political liberty,
but claims to distrust 'government intervention' and insists that people
must fend for themselves. This form of so-called individualism is
incoherent, a tangle of confusions."

-- Cass R. Sunstein, The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution
and

Why We Need it More Than Ever, Basic Books, New York, 2004, p. 3



10. " lmost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine. And if
the Court is right,

then fundamentalism does not justify the view that the Second Amendment
protects an

individual right to bear arms."

- Cass Sunstein, writing in his book, "Radicals in Robes"



11. ". he Second Amendment seems to specify its own purpose, which is to
protect the"well regulated Militia." If that is the purpose of the Second
Amendment (as Burger

believed), then we might speculate that it safeguards not individual rights
but federalism."

-- Cass R. Sunstein, "The Most Mysterious Right," National Review, November

12, 2007



12. In his 2004 book The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution
and Why We Need It More than Ever, Sunstein claims that "citizens' rights
exist only to the extent that they are granted by the government."

Those views are why the American Sporting Dog Alliance adamantly opposes the
Sunstein nomination. His track record is frighteningly consistent.



Thank you for helping.



The American Sporting Dog Alliance represents owners, breeders and
professionals who work with breeds of dogs that are used for hunting. We
also welcome people who work with other breeds, as legislative issues affect
all of us. We are a grassroots movement working to protect the rights of dog
owners, and to assure that the traditional relationships between dogs and
humans maintains its rightful place in American society and life. The
American Sporting Dog Alliance also needs your help so that we can continue
to work to protect the rights of dog owners. Your membership, participation
and support are truly essential to the success of our mission. We are funded
solely by your donations in order to maintain strict independence.

Please visit us on the web at http://www.americansportingdogalliance.org
. Our email is
asda@csonline.net .



PLEASE CROSS-POST AND FORWARD THIS REPORT TO YOUR FRIENDS

Thank you for posting this Nancy.

Thank you Mr Cornyn. I will have to write that man a note of appreciation. May common sense prevail!

Please take a moment to thank Senator Cornyn (R-Texas) for placing a hold on Cass Sunstein's nomination. It takes courage to stand against the tide and he is no doubt being swamped by angry AR letters and will not get favorable press for opposing Obama. He needs to hear he has acted in the best interest of the citizens of this country.

http://cornyn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm

Yes, I did send a thank you to him as well.

I just took the time to contact Senator Cornyn with my thanks. I hope this hold remains in place.

I also contacted him, as well as my own senators to ask them to do the same.