Oh, for god’s sake. Overreact, much? A few dead dogs is just as bad as, say, 3000 dead Americans on false pretenses? Come on.

I get that many people may find Vick’s actions cruel, needless, and possessed of a disregard for the suffering of an animal.

If you eat meat, though, so are your actions. Yet you accept that it’s ok to needlessly torture and kill pigs for meat, even though you could just as easily live on beans. Suddenly the same mistreatment for entertainment is wrong?

If you do things like:

Go to the zoo
Eat beef and pork
Use animal-tested products
Use medicines or benefit from science

then you’ve been a part of the vivisection and killing of animals for human purposes.

I don’t have a problem with it. I eat meat because it’s delicious. A pig is just as smart as a dog and they’re hardly raised under better circumstances than some of these dogs (I know, I’ve visited the barns.) I certainly find animal bloodsports cruel and offensive.

I just don’t see why it should be illegal. Vick didn’t steal the dogs. That his conduct with them offends some of our consciences doesn’t strike me as terribly relevant. You or I may believe that his conduct was a breach of ethics, but clearly he did not; what’s society’s interest here? Why are dogs better than pigs? If he bought and sold cattle, why would that have been better?

Cause and effect, or merely a function of the size of the pool?

Here we’re talking about a movement which almost entirely consists of cowards, which is probably why they’re so het up about maintaining control over Teh Evil Womenparts via the law.

Personally, I think they should be met by the maximum amount of intimidation allowed by the law. Make certain they know you have their names and addresses. If it’s legal to publish them, publish them. Take their photographs - and make sure they know you’re taking their photographs. If your State allows the overt display of guns (which I find really, really wierd), make certain their protests always include a bunch of silent watchers carrying guns.

It really doesn’t matter how many are actually killed. Because if the garden-variety nutters, who work on the backs of those that DO kill, in increasing their intimidation of women through the fear the women have of being killed, above what their own harassment of these women gives them, then what they are doing is terrorism, just like what the actual killers do.

How many women have they actually murdered?

I get the impression that for every actual nutter who’s willing to shed blood, there’s a thousand pin-dicked little bastards who cream their undies at the thought of women being scared of them because of the actual nutcases.

The people who think this way have no problem with Gary Bauer praising then-Governor Bush, who was a serial executioner, for respecting the “Sanctity of Life.” He clearly does not respect the sanctity of the word, “sanctity.” What this shows is the wingnuts’ bloated sense of entitlement. They expect us to come a-running when they use the Magic Words, but when it’s pointed out that Issue B has a greater claim to that word than Issue A, they won’t lift a finger.

I hope I live to see the day when I can hear politicians and activists talk about “life,” and I can assume they mean Life and not Antiabortionism.

No Bible-thumping Bush voter ever blew his load and made an elephant.

That’s just great.

THAT’S sperm magic.

..fundies refuse to believe that humans are primates and that in the cosmic, universal scheme of things, we are no more important than another terrestrial species.

You don’t have to be a fundie to have bought the notion. Millions of atheists have, too.

I’m not so certain that Vick was prosecuted out of some fuzzy and sympathetic need to protect animals.

It’s not fuzzy or sympathetic, it’s an interest in rudimentary ethics. It’s a simple concern for suffering. I dislike pets and don’t like being around animals in general, but I respect ‘em.

..the viscerally disgusting animal torture charges.

Livestock are essentially tortured too. A British court even decided it in a case against McDonald’s. All day today animals were tortured, all over the world.

I’m just saying that we should be this outraged every day over animal rights if we want it to mean anything at all.

Not only is Vick’s crime being compared to abortion, it’s also being compared to drunk driving and domestic assault, as in, why should he get time for this when some people get away with crimes against humans?

But there’s no need for a comparision. A bioterror attack would be worse than dog fighting too, but so what? How does that minimize what he did? I wouldn’t click on the link that was cited above regarding cats, it would make me cry and I can’t take it anymore. Not after I read about how he and cronies would kill the underperforming dogs by HANGING and DROWNING (and I capped that so that those who don’t want to think about this ‘cause it’s “just dogs” get a picture in their heads about what happened to them. It chills me. Vick is an EVIL person, and I wish there were a hell because enternity isn’t even enough time for this sadistic monster to rot in it.