Diane and I don’t talk politics at the breakfast table much anymore. In well-meaning attempts to keep my blood pressure in check, she’s been counseling me to forget about the Obama phenomenon and try to focus on the positive. Why, just the other morning I looked up from my Frosted Mini-Wheats and asked, “What’s all this talk on TV news about the Obama administration representing the turning point? What exactly does that mean, the turning point?”

“It’s just a generality, dear. It merely suggests that the new president will help get the troubled economy back on track. You’re taking it all too seriously,” she assured me.

Her words helped. I stopped hyperventilating to the point where I could remove the paper bag from my head and finish my cereal. The rest of the morning went pretty well. At least, it did until I stumbled across a news release about a new Obama appointment. It seems that Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein has been named director of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Ouch!

Sunstein has a track record that shows him to be an animal rights zealot of the first order. In a book he co-authored, “Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions,” Sunstein advanced an ambitious plan – are you ready for this – to give animals the legal “right” to file lawsuits. This is no joke. Sunstein writes:

“Animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law Any animals that are entitled to bring suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who would owe guardian like obligations and make decisions, subject to those obligations, on their clients’ behalf.”

I know what you are thinking. Too far out. It could never happen. Right? Wrong. As we are seeing in our scary, convoluted New Age, with politicians and lawyers calling the shots, nothing is beyond the realm of possibility! What is to stop a well-heeled animal rights activist from bringing a civil damage suit against a hunter in behalf of that deer you bagged last fall? Or maybe a seeking an injunction against you and your bird dog in behalf of the ruffed grouse that you and your canine companion were about to treat inhumanely come October.

Granted, this Orwellian nightmare might not be possible without some enabling legislation from Congress, or executive order from the White House, but consider: the Endangered Species Act, which was well-intentioned legislation. It is being used by animal rights extremists as a legal fulcrum to stop trapping. Would it be a stretch to argue that Maine’s disappearing north woods whitetail deer population needs to be protected under the Endangered Species Act? Or that in context of the Endangered Species Act, hunters pose the same species threat to deer that trappers do to Canada lynx?

Of course, there is quite a difference between people suing people to protect animals (Endangered Species Act) and animals, with legal standing, in effect, suing people. But please take another look at the words above in italics from President OBama’s new regulatory affairs czar. It says, “Any animals that are entitled to bring suit.”

As farfetched or implausible as this idea of animals suing us may seem, we are only one hurdle away from this utterly preposterous prospect. That hurdle is merely a congressional act that grants legal standing to specific animal species. Given professor Sunstein’s writings and utterances, he sounds like just the guy in the Obama administration to get the ball rolling. As the White House’s new Director of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Sunstein will have the political authority to accomplish what most reasonable sportsmen once considered the unthinkable.

And by the way, the Harvard professor also has said this on the record: “We ought to ban hunting, I suggest, if there isn’t a purpose other than sport and fun. That should be against the law. It’s time now.”

V. Paul Reynolds is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network (WVOM-FM 103.9, WCME-FM 96.7) and former information officer