Here's the right way to use a "signing statement":
To the Members of the California State Senate:
I am signing SB 769, which allows for a dead mountain lion to be stuffed and displayed.
This presumably important bill earned overwhelming support [from] both Republicans and Democrats.
If only that same energetic bipartisan spirit could be applied to creating clean energy jobs and ending tax laws that send jobs out of state.
Sincerely,
[Gov.] Edmund G. Brown Jr.
Mountain lions are "specially protected mammals" under California law, meaning it is ordinarily a crime to "take, injure, possess, transport, import, or sell" one. The bill, which in fact passed without a single dissenting vote, creates an exception allowing one to possess the carcass of said mammal if preparing it for display, exhibition or storage for a bona fide scientific or educational purpose.
Nothing wrong with that, really; but maybe it was the designation of this as an "urgency statute" that put Jerry over the edge:
SEC. 3. This act is an urgency statute necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, or safety within the meaning of Article IV of the [state] Constitution and shall go into immediate effect. The facts constituting the necessity are:
In order to allow the display, exhibition, or storage of mountain lion carcasses or parts or products thereof for a bona fide scientific or educational purpose as soon as possible, it is necessary that this act take effect immediately.
Emphasis added. Apparently the state's many taxidermists have been threatening to riot unless the threat of an unfair lion-stuffing prosecution was lifted at once. The facts supporting this conclusion are: this won't be lawful immediately unless the law making it lawful takes effect immediately.
It does seem hard to argue with that.
