I've read the 11/6 position paper by Deputy District Attorney Randall B. Christison, and the opposing paper by William Phillips, an excellent lawyer and CDFA board member as published on the CDFA website. There's no clear winner; Mr. Phillip's paper was of course not officially recognised but even if it were, Randy's no slouch either. Randall's paper makes several excellent points based on exactly the same material Bill covers. First off, all of us Califerters know almost by heart the whole bit in the F&G Code about "no members of order carnivoria except domestic cats and domestic dogs are legal" etcetera. He consistently claims that all of that was written by the *Legislature*; he points to nearby areas in the Code where mustelids seem rationed out for extra-tough language, and he points out that "the Legislature" specifically named lots of domestic critters but not *our* domestic critter. So my first obvious question to real lawyers is, "Who wrote all them bits of code?" If the legislature, then he raises some disturbing points; if however *COMMISSIONERS* wrote most or all of those bits, his arguments fall apart badly. Part of the F&G code is commissioner-written, part is legislator-written - did our buddy Randy bother to confirm which was which? Per his arguments, it *matters*. My second point is more complicated. The last time we went before the legislature, a specific Senate committee declined to go forward with a true legalization bill because "it was F&G's turf/job/etc". My question is, did DFG or F&G Commission lobbyists *encourage* that position in any way, by public or private lobbying, etc? Because if they did, they blundered back then - and rendered Randy's recent brief and the decision it led to "immoral", in that we are fundamentally entitled to a hearing where legalization is at least *possible* by our arguments as citizens of a free democracy. Can a judge suspend enforcement of the current ban until such a true, fair hearing is finally conducted? Isn't the F&G side morally obligated to do so, if indeed they've blundered in such a way as to deprive *ALL* of us of due process of law? Can we sue them on such a basis, never mind any other possible facts? I'd particuarly like to hear from Mr. Bill Phillips, since he's not only an excellent lawyer, he was present for the major battles in the legislature and should know first-hand how much pressure DFG was putting on the legislature, pressure that according to the esteemed Randy Christison is now understood to be WRONG, ILLEGAL AND IMMORAL? [Posted in FML issue 1752]