I don't have anywhere near enough background in the life sciences to be 100%
certain that Bob's disdain for the scientific procedures of the California
Department of Fish and Game is warranted.
 
HOWEVER: I am a fairly serious lay-student of governmental and police abuses
of power, both historical and current.  Enough information has come to light
on the law-enforcement practices of the Wardens (armed police wing of the
Dept.) to show a pattern of serious problems, such as:
 
1) Prolonged stakeouts; up to 2 days in at least one case of a suspected
ferret-owner's home in SoCal where a warrant was unavailable.  This is far
more effort than any municipal police would spend on a mid-level drug case.
 
2) The established pattern of keeping a confiscated ferret alive only so
long as the distraught owner doesn't fight the charges in court.
 
3) Use of media publicity in cases of suspected trafficing in endangered
animal parts.  This isn't directly related to ferrets, understand...when
Wardens bust a suspected stash of, say, bear gizzards headed for the Asian
traditional-medicine market, they make a big media splash and put people on
trial in the public's image long before they go to court.  This obscene
technique was first developed by "drug-war" federal agencies and was later
taken to new lows by the BATF, who in several cases have displayed large
piles of ammo and/or guns that later turned out to be perfectly legal, yet
the resulting image problem for the victims of such smears often put them
out of business, which was the point.
 
4) There's the very basic problem of a legislative-branch body (the F&G
Commission) which is appointed by the Governor (executive branch) which in
turn has it's own private executive-branch armed police force (the Wardens
of the DFG) at it's beck and call.  Confused yet?  To *continue*: the other
major part of the DFG, the Biologists, are theoretically executive-branch
but advise the legislative-branch Commission on the passage of
critter-related laws (technically, "regulations" - but they're ultimately
enforced at gunpoint like every other law so who gives fert-fart what they
call 'em.).
 
Hold it, wait, we have some really major constitutional problems here, no?
Bigtime...unfortunately, this kind of interlinked branches of gov't with the
checks and balances just plain trampled on is increasingly common.  On the
federal level, this is one reason why there's as many as 17 different
federal agencies that have fully-armed agents with police powers ranging
from "sorta" to "full-tilt".  The DFG/Commision mess is just symptomatic of
a larger issue...Treasury/BATF is far worse and in both cases, agencies
linked to huge problems are at their core flagrantly twisting the
constitution just in their method of *existing*.
 
CONCLUSION: If Bob C. says that their science is freaky, I'd call that just
a symptom of a far larger interconnected series of problems with the
structure *and* actions of the Commission/DFG "body/agency".  They are in
reality two very different critters crudely grafted at the hip in a
blatently unconstitutional manner.
 
Bob is putting as humorous a light as possible on a disaster.
 
Jim March
 
 -------------------
 For a wild true story of crooked cops, stolen guns, perjury, fraud
 and false criminal charges, see http://www.infinex.com/~jmarch
[Posted in FML issue 2167]