Posted on 08/01/2015 3:38:47 PM PDT by dead
Sen. Bob Menendez has introduced legislation to curb trophy hunting of endangered and threatened species after the demise of Cecil, an African lion whose death at the hands of an American hunter touched off a social media firestorm.
The Conserving Ecosystems by Ceasing the Importation of Large Animal Trophies Act would extend restrictions on the import and export of animals that are being considered for inclusion under the Endangered Species Act. Currently, the restrictions apply only to animals already on the list.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had suggested the African lion be listed as “threatened” in October, but has yet to confirm the listing.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/bob-menendez-cecil-lion-act-legislation-curb-hunting-africa-species-120857.html#ixzz3hbcI4VXL
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
The guy who “allegedly” molested young girls?
...wait...wait....wasn’t he indicted just recently????
How can he put a bill on the floor when he’s not there????
While he’s at it, why doesn’t he introduce a law to make poaching illegal. That will surely put an end to it.
restrict big game hunting leads to banning big game hunting.
banning big game hunting leads to restricting all hunting.
restricting all hunting leads to banning all hunting
banning all hunting leads to restricting gun ownership which leads to banning gun ownership.
my prediction several days ago.
- don’t let a crisis go to waste
Aren’t black children are risk due to PP Big $ hunting?
I wonder how tight Menendez is with PETA activists.
Sen. Bob Menendez needs to be removed from office.
Democrats don’t get kicked out of congress for breaking the law! They get reelected.
I am pretty sure I have received several e-mails that PP is NOT receiving cash for baby parts.....and al the sources, like the HuffPo, CNN, MSNBC, etc, are totally trustworthy! /s
Sen. Bob Menendez indicted on corruption charges
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Bob Menendez, the son of Cuban immigrants who rose to become one of the highest-ranking Hispanic members of Congress, was charged Wednesday with accepting nearly $1 million in gifts and campaign contributions from a longtime friend in exchange for a stream of political favors.
click here!
Menendez predicted he would be “vindicated” and, in a defiant statement before reporters and cheering supporters Wednesday evening, said, “This is not how my career is going to end.”
“I am not going anywhere. I’m angry and ready to fight because today contradicts my public service and my entire life,” he said.
A federal grand jury indictment accuses the New Jersey Democrat of using the power of his Senate seat to benefit Dr. Salomon Melgen, a wealthy Florida eye doctor who prosecutors say provided the senator with luxury vacations, airline travel, golf trips and tens of thousands of dollars in contributions to a legal defense fund.
The indictment from a grand jury in Newark contains 14 counts — including bribery, conspiracy and false statements — against Menendez and also charges Melgen, a political donor to Menendez and other Democrats.
Menendez is scheduled to appear Thursday in federal court in Newark. Melgen’s attorney did not immediately return a call seeking comment Wednesday.
The criminal charges cloud the political future of the top Democrat — and former chairman — of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has played a leading role on Capitol Hill on matters involving Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. efforts to improve ties with Cuba. Menendez said Wednesday he would temporarily step aside from his role as top Democrat on the committee.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., thanked Menendez for stepping down and said he “should not be judged until he has his day in court.”
The indictment will almost certainly lead to a drawn-out legal fight between Menendez and a team of Justice Department prosecutors who have spent years investigating his ties to Melgen. It will require prosecutors to prove that a close and longtime friendship between the men was used for criminal purposes and is likely to revive the legal debate about the constitutional protections afforded to members of Congress for acts they take in office, which Menendez has already signaled as a possible line of defense.
The indictment marks the latest development in a federal investigation that came into public view when federal authorities raided Melgen’s medical offices in 2013.
Menendez had already acknowledged that he had taken several round-trip flights to the Dominican Republic on Melgen’s luxury jet that, initially, were not properly reimbursed. But the 68-page document spells out many additional gifts, such as a Paris hotel stay and access to a Dominican resort, that prosecutors say were never reported on financial disclosure forms.
In exchange for those and other gifts, prosecutors allege, Menendez sought to smooth approval of the visa application process for several of Melgen’s foreign girlfriends, worked to protect a lucrative contract Melgen held to provide cargo screening services to the Dominican Republic and intervened in a Medicare billing dispute on the doctor’s behalf worth millions of dollars.
In 2013, in an email exchange one day after Melgen and Menendez had golfed together in Florida, Menendez told his chief counsel to contact U.S. Customs and Border Protection to ask the agency to stop donating shipping container monitoring and surveillance equipment to the Dominican Republic, according to the indictment. Melgen had a contract to provide exclusive cargo screening in Dominican ports, and the CBP plan would have hurt his financial interests, prosecutors say.
In advocating for Melgen’s business interests, prosecutors say, Menendez pursued meetings with the heads of executive agencies and tried to solicit the help of other U.S. senators.
Menendez has acknowledged taking actions that could benefit Melgen, among them contacting U.S. health agencies to ask about billing practices and policies. But the lawmaker has said he did nothing wrong and that the interactions he had with the doctor were reflections of a close friendship dating two decades.
“We celebrated holidays together,” he told reporters last month amid news reports of a looming indictment. “We have been there for family weddings and sad times like funerals and have given each other birthday, holiday and wedding presents, just as friends do.”
Melgen himself came under renewed scrutiny when government data last year showed he had received more in Medicare reimbursements in 2012 than any other doctor in the country.
According to the Senate Historical Office, Menendez is the 12th senator to be indicted and the first since the late Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, was indicted in 2008 on charges of not reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of home renovations. Stevens was found guilty but the Justice Department later dismissed the case and said prosecutors withheld evidence that would have been favorable to the defense.
Menendez is also the second New Jersey senator to be indicted. Harrison Williams Jr., a Democrat, was indicted in 1980 on corruption charges and convicted of bribery and other counts the following year. Williams resigned before the Senate could vote on whether to expel him.
Menendez, 61, joined the Senate in 2006 after serving more than a decade in the House of Representatives.
If he wants to help the poor poor animals, why not restrict Robert Mugabe instead?
http://time.com/3976344/cecil-lion-zimbabwe-walter-palmer/#3976344/cecil-lion-zimbabwe-walter-palmer
Zimbabwe was once celebrated as the “breadbasket of Africa,” whose fertile earth supplied the world with abundant tobacco, corn and wheat. Today, 76% of its rural population lives in abject poverty, dependent on foreign food aid and desperate measures — like the poaching of the wildlife that inhabits its otherwise barren lands, or rendering assistance to those who want to hunt or poach.
In 2000, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe enacted a disastrous land-reform policy. Farms were divided up and nationalized and many plots were handed out to generals and ministers. Thousands of white landowners were violently evicted from their farms, which were then parceled into smallholdings and given to black Zimbabweans. The destruction of property rights led to a disintegrating economy and widespread poverty. Poaching — to feed the insatiable demand for rhino horn and ivory in China and other parts of Asia — became rife and much of the wildlife in Zimbabwe was simply wiped out.
Until 2000 Zimbabwe had a successful wildlife-management program, with many big-game animals flourishing. But by 2003, a staggering 80% of the animals that had lived on Zimbabwean safari camps (which employed firm quotas to regulate animal population sizes) had died. By 2007, there were only 14 private game farms in the country, compared with 620 prior to the land seizures of 2000, according to a National Geographic report. With the protection of private game reserves nearly nonexistent, once abundant wildlife began dying off, hunted by desperate farmers with no other options for sustenance.
Despite the passing of harsher laws for poachers in 2011 illegal hunting in Zimbabwe is still big business. Poaching syndicates earn hundreds of thousands of dollars exporting ivory and animal skins. Many conservationists believe allowing the community to reap the benefits of wildlife management — by, ironically, running the sorts of safaris on which Palmer shot his lion — will help curb illegal poaching. But it is impossible to have that debate while the world brays for the ruin of a lone Minnesotan dentist, and fails to criticize a regime whose policies were responsible for the almost complete extinction of Zimbabwean wildlife in the first place.
Paying $50K to $300K to hunt big game controls the animal populations - to keep them from all starving. It funds anti-poacher security, fuels local economies and shows the locals that protecting the animals is a good thing.
Guess what happens without it??
That is all these LIB idiots want to do is restrict anything...except for the ,murdering of babies, selling their body parts and molesting children.
Big game Hunts are to Africa what drugs and guns are to mexico.
you are so correct.
remember how the elephants were overrunning everything in Zimbabwe a few years ago?
Says volumes that Democrats are outraged that a lion was shot but are indifferent to the systematic slaughter of human life and profiting from the remains.
“Paying $50K to $300K to hunt big game controls the animal populations - to keep them from all starving. It funds anti-poacher security, fuels local economies and shows the locals that protecting the animals is a good thing.
Guess what happens without it??”
Also, how can it be made illegal by the US if it is legal in that country?
What happened to the multicultural idea that all cultures are equal?
bump
Mugabe loves eating baby elephant
Lions on a preserve are not at risk of starving.
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