← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · skemper
Thread ID: 12048 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2004-01-27
2004-01-27 17:15 | User Profile
To the illegals and other immigrants, if what you want to do is illegal here, then go back to your own country.
About cockfighting, wasn't it a popular pastime of white culture in the past, particularly in the South? In SC, where I live, cockfighting is illegal but there are many people ( all are white) who openingly raise gamecocks in single cages and I see cocks in these cages year after year as I drive by their homes, so it must be a big pastime to the local people but I am not privy to the cockfighting network. The University of SC's mascot is a fighting Gamecock. I don't see cockfighting as such a big deal because that is what roosters naturally do when they meet each other on the chicken lot.
[url]http://www.sfnewmexican.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=8&ArticleID=39405[/url]
Court: Cockfighting Laws Don't Discriminate Against Minorities
Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS -- The federal government says Cajuns and Hispanics are not discriminated against by new laws that tighten the noose on the $1 billion cockfighting industry.
U.S. attorneys filed a brief on Friday in federal court in Lafayette, La., defending laws that allow authorities to punish people who ship fighting birds across state lines or out of the country.
The United Gamefowl Breeders Association, a national cockfighting group, sued the government last May. The group is arguing the laws trample on the rights of New Mexico and Louisiana -- the last two states where cockfighting is legal -- and discriminate against people from cultures that accept cockfighting.
U.S. District Judge Rebecca F. Doherty has not heard arguments in the case, which is considered a serious legal challenge by animal-rights advocates.
The lawsuit takes issue with amendments Congress attached in 2002 to the Animal Welfare Act that make it a crime punishable by up to $15,000 in fines and one year in jail to ship any fighting rooster from one state to another or to a foreign country. The laws went into effect last May.
The lawsuit asks Doherty to throw out the laws, saying they are unconstitutional.
The plaintiffs contend that Louisiana stands to lose $206 million in business since out-of-state cockfighters will not be allowed to bring their birds to the state to fight.
The plaintiffs also allege the new laws discriminate against people from cultures where cockfighting is an integral part of life -- such as Cajuns, Hispanics, Filipinos and Japanese.
Lawmakers passed the laws to close a loophole, not discriminate, the government argues.
The old laws, the government's brief states, allowed cockfighters to "elude prosecution in states where the practice is illegal by claiming that they are raising fighting birds for shipment to states where it is legal."
"This loophole, Congress found, undermined and compromised the ability of the federal government ... (to enforce) laws against cockfighting," the brief states.
John Kramer, a Tulane University law professor arguing the case for the cockfighters, did not return a telephone call.
The new laws do not trample on states' rights because the shipment of birds is a commercial practice that can be regulated by Congress, the government's brief contends.
"We say the federal law doesn't stop cockfighting in Louisiana," said Wayne Pacelle, senior vice president of the Humane Society.
"All that this federal law does is ban shipping your bird to another state or another country, and it bars people from bringing their fighting birds into Louisiana," Pacelle said.
Cockfighters also charge that the laws should be thrown out because lawmakers did not hold hearings on them, which deprived the defendants of the benefit of "legislative due process."
The government's brief says Congress is not obligated to give people "legislative due process."
It adds that even if Congress were obligated to do so, lawmakers have scrutinized cockfighting since 1974, generating about 200 pages of findings and testimony from more than three dozen witnesses.
"Congress discussed and deliberated on this issue for three years before passing it. It was a hot issue for what is generally considered a small issue on the national stage," Pacelle said about the new laws.
The cockfighting industry, already pummeled by a move to make the blood sport a felony in some states, could see its profits seriously damaged by the new laws.
Cockfighters estimate there are about 100,000 people who breed fighting birds in the United States.
2004-01-27 22:31 | User Profile
Don't know about white cockfighting, Just Messican and/or other Hispanic. I know that in NYC, whenever they bust up rings it's an all-brown affair. They gamble on it, too. And, the chickens run around loose in Queens. Great.
2004-01-27 22:53 | User Profile
The group is arguing the laws trample on the rights of New Mexico and Louisiana -- the last two states where cockfighting is legal -- and discriminate against people from cultures that accept cockfighting.
[size=4]World to End Tomorrow[/size] Minorities hardest hit
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2004-01-28 03:27 | User Profile
[QUOTE]The group is arguing the laws trample on the rights of New Mexico and Louisiana -- the last two states where cockfighting is legal.... [/QUOTE] Apparently there's a statute outlawing the staging of animal fights in Louisiana. Cockfighting is "legal" in Louisiana because the courts have decided that chickens aren't animals.
2004-01-28 06:34 | User Profile
[QUOTE=mwdallas]Apparently there's a statute outlawing the staging of animal fights in Louisiana. Cockfighting is "legal" in Louisiana because the courts have decided that chickens aren't animals.[/QUOTE]
:lol: Sounds just like the Louisiana I know and love.