I was just old enough to read the blue sign bearing the word “POLICE” – and I thought my parents had gone mad. We were on a family walk, going past the local police station when, to my horror, my parents stopped. They stopped walking and stood outside the police station looking at the posters and casually talking about grown-up things. Didn’t they realise the peril we were in? Didn’t they understand that at any moment the door could be flung open and policemen could come rushing out to arrest us and drag us off to the cells?
Well, time went by and eventually my seven year-old self was able to chuckle at the foolish worries of six and a half. I realised that I had misunderstood what was being depicted in a fragment of Dixon of Dock Green that I had glimpsed despite it being on after my official bedtime. I came to understand that, whatever might have been the case in the time of King Herod or Henry VIII, that sort of thing didn’t happen nowadays. The authorities in modern, civilised countries do not randomly decide to ruin the lives of ordinary people.
The young couple who owned Peanut the squirrel and Fred the raccoon probably assumed the same thing.
Peanut, a squirrel made famous by his large and devoted Instagram following, has been euthanised just days after being seized by New York authorities.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) raided the home of Mark Longo on Wednesday following complaints of potentially unsafe housing for the animal.
Earlier this week, Mr Longo pleaded with authorities for Peanut’s safe return, writing on Instagram that there was a “special place in hell” for the DEC.
Authorities, however, said that they put the animal down after he bit an official involved in his seizure. The DEC also said it had euthanised a raccoon named Fred that they took away during the raid from Mr Longo’s home.
The alternative possibility – that I was right to be fearful standing outside the police station all those years ago – is not pleasant to contemplate. As a twitter user called “Mason” said,
The squirrel isn’t just a squirrel
Peanut is for everyone who has ever feared that someone more powerful than you could walk into your home and take something that you absolutely cherish away from you, for absolutely no good reason, with no recourse
If a “legislature” (let alone officials) is allowed to make its “will” (read – whims) “law” then there will be endless, insane, “laws” and the state will become utterly corrupt (Tacitus – but Aristotle and others knew his long before Tacitus).
Great legal thinkers of the past, such as Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke and Chief Justice Sir John Holt understood this – and understood that true law is preventing people attacking other people or their goods – NOT, for example, officials killing pets who have not attacked anyone.
However, we live in the world of Sir Francis Bacon and his follower Thomas Hobbes – a world without any limits on state power, where any whim of the state is “law” – and that is a terrible world to live in.
As for New York – all the concentration on California makes people forget that New York was Progressive long before California was.
Subsidized by the government backed Wall Street Credit Money financial industry New York has had the highest government spending all my life – but it is no just government spending and taxation.
New York legalised baby killing before any other State, and it first indulged in “Gun Control” as far back as 1911 (the same date as a vast government building was created in New York City for the over sized city created in 1898)- in 1911 Mr Sullivan, Democrat Party politician and Organised Crime boss (the two naturally go together) pushed through “Gun Control” so that people would not be able to, legally, defend themselves against his goons.
Mr Sullivan later died from syphilis picked up from one of his own prostitutes.
An apt symbol of modern government.
It had nothing to do with public safety or the environment or the animals’ well-being. It was about someone was doing something without the King’s Permission and an example had to be made.
Add in someone pissed that a cute squirrel had more followers on Instagram than she did, so that someone dropped a dime to the Authorities.
It was all about the Message being sent. But it seems to have backfired and people are now saying there is obviously too much government with too much overreach.
This story doesn’t add up. If the agency was genuinely concerned about a rabies threat, wouldn’t their staff have been in protective gear? And, why did it take 5 hours and require an armed SWAT team, per the pet owner?
The laws regarding wildlife have been on the books for decades, and for good reasons, so not excusing the Longos. I doubt anyone objects to their enforcement.
That said, the DECs over zealousness sure does expose the government’s upside down priorities. It highlights and raises awareness of bureaucratic overreach, bureaucratic arrogance, and bureaucratic thugishness.
Hillary Clinton come January 20th.
“It’s all that Squirrels fault”.
It amazes me that the bureau responsible for checking that we have proper pets has a heavily-armed enforcement department, able to swarm a private residence SWAT-style, place the homeowners on their lawn in a submissive posture for five hours, and conduct a trashing search of the home with no information other than “they have a wild squirrel.”
Over the last four years, our government branches have undergone a frightening buildup of their armed police-powers staff. The amount of ammunition that our government bodies have purchased has been truly staggering.
There is no better reason for Americans to buy arms and ammunition in bulk.
I think the idea that the squirrel was housed in an “unsafe environment” and so therefore they euthanized him, seems exactly the way government departments work.
@bobby b
There is no better reason for Americans to buy arms and ammunition in bulk.
Although I think you are right about making sure you are well armed, I’m not sure that that has much to do with armed government agents. It is useful against roving bands of thugs and criminals, but using your weapons against any government agent is not at all going to go well for you. The initial ATF raid on the Waco compound was rebuffed by citizens thinking in similar manner and, to say the least, that did not go well for them.
If you want to save your liberty, reform of the US government is a ship that has sailed, no matter how much we might think that Trump/Musk/Ramsawamy/JFKJ(?) will fix things should Trump win on Tuesday. We have two options — go somewhere else where you are appreciated or build a bubble, which is to say avoid interacting with the government as much as possible, and insofar as you must, get in and get out as fast as possible. Keep your head below the parapet. This is what people did in the USSR under the KGB. And although the US isn’t quite there yet, we are heading in that direction. So that’s what we have to do now.
Nonetheless, Guns and Ammo is not just a glossy magazine, it is also good advice. In fairness, Kamala and Waltz are big gun people. She does own a “glock” — a black one apparently, and he owns a shotgun — even though he apparently can’t load it. And I have to say, I’m kind of glad Harris owns a glock. I think any woman married to a man who apparently beats and abuses women should definitely be armed.
Fraser Orr: I am less concerned with actually shooting anyone than I am that they all THINK I’m able and willing to shoot them. The statistics on mass gun ownership are probably more effective as a tool for freedom than the actual guns. “An armed society is a polite society” is true mostly because of the threat of the arms, not so much their actual use.
I can only shoot one gun at a time. (But I can shoot lots of bullets.)
I’m surprised that anyone is even mildly surprised at the Government destroying peoples lives for no good reason other than they can.
Here is Kamala Harris, as California’s Attorney General, bragging about how she can, at a whim, destroy peoples lives (from 1 minute 18 second onwards):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho1XhwTuloY
And this is the attitude and mentality of the next president of the USA – there is enough cheating going on right now to ensure that she will have enough votes, whether real or falsified to “win”.
Phil B, I have seen a longer version of that clip that gave a better impression of Harris, because after saying how much power she had, she went on to say that she took the responsibility seriously.
Natalie S, she may have added the proviso that “she took the responsibility seriously”, but if you review her record in CA, she did not take it justly, or fairly, or intelligently.
She’s the boot stamping on the face forever, but giggling as she does it.
Imagine the outcry if they had got the moose too.
In most countries of the world people seek government jobs because of the opportunity for graft. In the west it seems that the motivating factor is the opportunity to sadistically torment one’s fellow citizens.
Around here, the propensity for armed conservation officers (often referred to as the ‘duck police’) to go all Seal Team Six on members of the public is well-established. Every few months, it seems, one of these folks will get themselves into a high-speed pursuit that ends in drawn weapons and handcuffs over an expired trailer registration. It’s something they put in the water. A careful reading of the news reports shows that there was no SWAT team involved here, just a whole bunch of conservation officers playing at being a SWAT team. A total lack of anything even approaching the beginnings of a sense of proportion.
I’m not so much surprised by the actions of the officers – scorpions gonna scorpion – as I am by the fact that a judge apparently signed off on a search warrant that led to this clusterfuggle. At most, surely, this was a civil infraction, something about proper licensing? And the proper remedy would have been to knock on the guy’s door at 3 o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon and say ‘we’re here to discuss how to get you into compliance.’ I can’t help but assume that there was some prior interaction with the NYDEC and somebody, somewhere, decided that ‘we’ll show HIM!’.
@Roue – embrace the clarifying power of ‘and’.
In a just world, the righteous outcome of this episode would be that masked men would arrive unannounced at the homes of each CO that participated, and took away the family pet. And the judge, as well. But it’s not a just world.
llater,
llamas
Let’s also remember Fred the Raccoon / Trash Panda who was also murdered alongside his squirrel friend.
“Trash Panda Lives Matter Too!”
It is indeed about more than a squirrel – and more than New York State.
If K. Harris is declared elected Federal judges will be appointed who will destroy both the 1st and the 2nd Amendments – the American people will be the “squirrels”.
They will be punished for what they say (“Hate Speech”) and if they resist tyranny – they will be killed.
Exasperated: the squirrel wasn’t wildlife; it was domesticated and housebound for seven years, and the evil authorities knew that, so your “not excusing the Longo” betrays your willingness to bend the knee.
Also, if you had taken the time to read or hear what Longo said about the raid the jackbooted thugs did wear long sturdy gloves, similar to the kind that falconers wear.
Those who deny that the Progressive project was always about unlimited government should have a look at the vast city (just city) government building that was created in New York City in 1911 – it is around a million feet of office space, and was only one of the new government buildings created after the new mega city was created in 1898 (which people in Staten Island deeply regret – and are correct to do so).
People do not build such things if they intend government to be limited. Compare it to the tasteful, Jeffersonian, New York City Hall that still exists – a building on a human scale.
As for the State Government – the attractive Victorian State Capitol building still stands in Albany and the tourist promotion authorities push photographs of it – what they do not tell potential visitors is that the building is dwarfed by vast modernist blocks built by RINO Governor Nelson Rockefeller in the 1960s.
Whole areas of the city of Albany, homes and small business enterprises, were destroyed to make room for Nelson Rockefeller’s vast-and-ugly blocks for bureaucrats.
My apologies – the Manhattan Municipal Building was not completed till 1914, not 1911.
As for the New York Financial Industry – although the Federal Reserve was not created till 1913, the New York banks (and so on) were being backed by the Federal Government as far back as the Civil War – the National Banking Acts of the 1860s gave them privileges that no business should have.
The Credit Money “Finance Economy” of New York will collapse in 2025 – regardless of who is declared to have won the United States Presidential Election of 2024.
The question is NOT will the present economic system survive – of course it will not survive, the present economic system is utterly insane. The question is what will replace the current economic system – will it be the forces of tyranny (tyranny total and absolute) that control Harris/Walz.
I make no prediction on the outcome American election – as even without election fraud (which is common in the United States now) the level of propaganda, of brainwashing, of the American education system and media is already approaching Soviet levels.
The American education system has reached Soviet levels and is, increasingly, surpassing them.
Squirrels, and a few weeks ago, it was about dogs, cats and dogs.
Jefferson’s Republic, in the 21st Century.
And tomorrow, elephants and donkeys!
(Looking forward to Wednesday, the beginning of the 2028 election campaign!)
Johnathan Pearce – they did kill the squirrel, and (as many people in the town in Ohio have testified) the dogs and cats were killed. And the regime will kill PEOPLE, indeed they have already started to do so.
The real “shame of January 6th” was the murder of Ashli Babbitt – small business owner and Air Force veteran, but unarmed on January 6th (everyone was unarmed – apart from the servants of the permanent, unelected, government, they were armed to the teeth). Although YES the tiny percentage (less than one-per-cent) of people from the protests who entered the Capitol Building should NOT have done so – they were tricked by people who are now known to have been working for the FBI.
There will be many more killings – even if people stay quietly at home. Remember the Democrat Mayors of many large cities regard crime, including home invasions, as “Social Justice” or “Reparations” – and the Federal “Justice” Department agrees.
Even if people stay quietly at home they will not be safe – the regime and the “socially friendly elements” (which is what these Soviet types consider robbers and murderers to be) may well come for them.
Wealthy people may well leave the United States (including some wealthy Democrats – when they finally realize what sort of regime they have helped bring to power) – but what about ordinary people without the financial means to build a life somewhere else. What happens to them under a “President Harris”?