Headline of the day:
The story is true: Gov. Ted Strickland had signed an executive order restricting animal ownership to people without certain blemishes on their records. Gov. John Kasich, the Republican who beat him, judged this to be an overreach, so he scrapped it. The Columbus Dispatch finds that the issue, once ignored, stayed ignored.
Bill Damschroder, chief legal counsel for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources… said legislation was not in place that empowered the agency to do the things required by Strickland’s order. In addition, it allocated no resources to do the statewide enforcement job.Yes, absolutely, the legislature should have dealt with the problem – it shouldn’t be up to a governor to call these plays. But would the interest even have been there for a law like this? Described out of context, some “no animals for nuts” law sounds like the pettiest of petty legislation. Get the government out of my doghouse! It’s all fun until a bizarre human interest story breaks out and it becomes instant national news.
