In the process of posting our honorable Sen. Mello's "reasons" for his nay vote on sb 55, Ms. Mooring used some colorful descriptions. Mr. Broome then responded to Ms. Mooring's post, counselling a calmer approach: >While I can appreciate the feelings you have toward the failure of SB55, >and I may share your opinions of elected officials who don't seem to >represent the opinions we'd like them to, I think you're out of line by >stooping to name-calling. Mr. Broome's advice is no doubt sage, but having suffered through the same ignorant, unchanging rhetoric from Sen. Mello and other Natural Resource & Wildlife Commissioners, I empathize with Ms. Mooring completely. I'm aware that name-calling accomplishes nothing at best, but logic, fact, and compelling evidence are equally ineffective on several of our senators. This sorry state of affairs has almost reduced me to name-calling also, and has led me to the conclusion that there's something amiss in Sacramento. All of the nay-sayers have heard the pro-ferret arguments many times over, and yet we still have the same 'Stubborn Seven', the commissioners who refuse to change their votes citing the same disproved "reasons" over and over. Why? What could be the cause of this apparent failure to communicate? Stupidity, deaf ears, apathy, ignorance, extremism, and laziness immediately spring to mind as possible causes, though accusing our senators of these undesirable qualities becomes name-calling. It's also possible that they have ulterior motives - that they're using the issue as a political lever to gain some unrelated end - but intentionally preventing 500,000 animals from being inoculated against rabies (while simultaneously spouting the "rabies danger" that the animals present) seems an unwise and reckless course of action to me. In short, until one of our opposing commissioners replies with salient reasons for continuing to ban domesticated ferrets in CA I can think of nothing good to say about them. The odd thing is that they're probably *not* stupid, extremist, etc., but that only makes their unresponsiveness *more* frustratingly uncomprehensible. Swampp [Posted in FML issue 1446]