Let’s start with a bit of a metaphor.
Suppose you’re worried about some random sociopath breaking into your house while you’re asleep. You might take in a watchdog. You’d expect this watchdog to bark at anything he (let’s suppose your watchdog is male) finds suspicious, trading off your immediate involvement for the chance to go to sleep secure in the notion that someone else is looking out for you. (Note that this is a watchdog, not a government, here. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)
If the watchdog barks frantically in the middle of the night, this tells you that he’s upset about something. That “something” could be the paperboy making an extra effort to jam your copy of the local fishwrap inside your screen door so it doesn’t get rained upon; it could be a drunken asshole making faces at him (at the dog, that is, not at the paperboy) on the long walk home; it could even be some goblin wedging a crowbar into your doorframe. In every case, your watchdog is convinced that there’s an intruder out there, and is doing what you expect him to do: he’s raising a fuss you can’t ignore. In every case, you get out of bed to investigate, with your cell phone and your flashlight (and if you’re privileged to live in a free country, your shotgun).
If the intruder in question doesn’t turn out to be a burglar, you don’t shoot your watchdog: you scrunch him behind the ears and tell him he’s a good dog. After all, he’s doing his job, even if he did wake you up at the crack of fuckin’ dawn.
With that in mind, have a read at this:
Lunn just shot his watchdog for barking at the paperboy.
Here’s the executive summary: on 18 November 2007, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission shut down the Chalk River reactor in Ontario over safety concerns. Chalk River produced some ridiculously high proportion of the world’s medical radiosiotopes (the story above claims two thirds). On 11 December, the federal government overruled the CNSC’s objections and ordered the reactor to resume operation (which it did on 16 December). Since then, the CNSC and the FedGov have bitched at each other non-stop. (Here’s a hint: if your dog barks at you, you might be doing something wrong.)
I can, of course, expect little better than this from an elected official. Nevertheless, this seems unusually petty and short-sighted… and ill-advised:
If the rest of your dogs see you shoot one for barking at an intruder — you think they’re going to raise a ruckus when someone climbs through the window?
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