[Taxacom] OK Taxacomers, you have had your chance, now it's the lawyers turn.

[Alec McClay]

I wasn't sure what the PLF was so looked them up and found a few 
statements of their philosophy on their website:

They say "We are a group of individuals united in our belief that 
personal liberty is essential to a thriving and prosperous society. We 
use bold and innovative strategies to challenge burdensome laws in 
courts and legislatures across the country, and in the hearts and minds 
of the American public. ... Governments at all levels undermine liberty 
by passing laws that interfere with peoples’ right to freely associate 
and express themselves, acquire and use property, or earn an honest 
living.  ... we secure the right to the productive and ordinary use of 
land; prevent governments from taking property; fight unconstitutional 
or unlawful regulatory requirements; promote balance in environmental 
laws; ... we fight to end the modern administrative state ... restore 
separation of powers against improper delegation of authority to 
bureaucrats"

Make of that what you will. I do wonder what they propose to put in 
place of the "modern administrative state".

Alec.

Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2017 22:38:56 +0000
> From: "Beach, James H." <beach at ku.edu>
> To: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> Subject: [Taxacom] OK Taxacomers, you have had your chance,	now it's
> 	the lawyers turn.
> Message-ID:
> 	<832d4d8a54e24f0cb9ba598204f1c93a at ex13-csf-cr-13.home.ku.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Lawyers decide the definition of 'species'.
>
> >From the article:
>
> Today, PLF and several allied organizations submitted a petition for rule-making<https://pacificlegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ESA-Taxonomy-Rulemaking-Petition.pdf> to the [U.S.] federal agencies that administer the Endangered Species Act.
>
> ...
>
> Our petition seeks an end to the arbitrariness [of what a species is] through the setting of clear, scientifically defensible and politically sensible definitions for the statutory terms "species" and "subspecies." The petition recommends that, for the former, the longstanding and well-regarded biological species concept be adopted, according to which a species is delimited by reproductive isolation. For the latter, the petition asks for the adoption of a variant of the equally longstanding "75% rule," pursuant to which individuals within a species must be diagnosed accurately at least 75% of the time as belonging to putative Subspecies A or B or C, etc., using genetic or other biologically significant characters.
>
>
> https://pacificlegal.org/a-petition-to-resolve-the-endangered-species-act-taxonomy-debate/
>
>
>
>
> James H. Beach
> Biodiversity Institute
> University of Kansas
> 1345 Jayhawk Boulevard
> Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
> Office: 785-864-4645
> Cell: 785-331-8508
> Zoom: https://kansas.zoom.us/my/specify
>

-- 
Alec McClay, Ph.D., P. Biol.

McClay Ecoscience
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www.mcclay-ecoscience.com
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