In case you’re wondering whether or not the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission is an overtly political body, today’s News & Observer story puts to rest any doubt.

The October issue of a taxpayer-supported wildlife magazine was briefly banned from the State Fair this week over a letter to the editor critical of Gov. Bev Perdue.

Gordon Meyers, director of the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, said he ordered all copies of the magazine pulled because he was unhappy with the editorial response to a letter titled “Smells Suspicious,” in which a reader questioned the decision to publish an August article featuring the governor and her administration’s conservation policies.

“This section doesn’t pass the political sniff test,” Wallace Chambers, the president of the Piedmont Wildlife Hunt Club, wrote of the Perdue article. “It stinks like three-day-old road kill. It stinks almost as bad as the Mike Easley article stunk just before the previous election.”

The paper reports that once the governor’s office learned of this, the commission was told to restock the magazine.