i watched that Sen. Byrd video while petting my dog, almost made me a little misty-eyed. although this experience has probably raised my blood pressure, not lowered it.

Vick should be booted from the NFL permanently.

NFL benched him! http://www.hsus.org/

I dont like dogfighting either, but i dont think its fair to make michael vick the poster boy for it - everyone who eats meat participates in cruelty to animals (and on a much grander scale than dogfighting)- and even those who dont benefit from drugs and medications developed through animal experimentation (this is cruelty to animals too in most cases)! Thus its height of hyprocisy for people who benefit from the suffering of animals to condemn someone else! If it was RATS fighting, would PETA care then? Probably not - and what about COCKFIGHTING? I dont see people throwing fits over that!

Thanks for your insightful comments, Ray. You make some excellent points! I couldn't agree more that the double standard that most Americans hold between "companion" animals (such as dogs and cats) on the one hand, and "food" (chickens, turkeys, cows, pigs, sheep) and "pest" (rats, racoons, skunks, oppossoms, etc.) animals on the other is totally and completely unjustified. You are absolutely correct, in my opinion, that meat-eating Americans who are outraged about Michael Vick's alleged behavior should take a harder look at their eating habits. As you implicitly suggest, these people should ask themselves why they're enraged by the likes of Vick's alleged crimes, but perfectly comfortable with consuming the corpses of animals who are just as intelligent and capable of love as dogs and who endure treatment that is just as horrific in factory farms and slaughterhouses.

Having said that, I disagree with your suggestion that Michael Vick shouldn't be exposed to public ridicule for his involvement in these very serious federal crimes. While you are right that there are important similarities between the violence against dogs in dogfights and the violence against "food" animals in factory farms and slaughterhouses, you seem to have overlooked the very important fact that eating meat from factory farms (however morally questionable) is not a crime in the United States, while dogfighting IS a crime, and a federal crime at that.

I also disagree with your statement that PETA "probably [would] not [care]" if rat-fighting (whatever that might look like) were the activity at issue. Though rat-fighting does not exist (to my knowledge), if it did, I suspect that PETA would be conducting campaigns to end it. After all, they have conducted many successful campaigns to reduce or end various forms of animal experimentation that use rats for commercial and "scientific" research, so there is very good reason indeed to think that PETA cares quite a bit about rats.

I am confused, as well, about your choice to single out PETA on this particular case, since the campaign that produced the most immediate evidence of public outrage over Michael Vick's alleged crimes was run by the Humane Society of the United States, not PETA. Though I'm by no means a fan of many of PETA's tactics (objectifying women to make headway for animals, encouraging teenagers to "give the finger" to KFC, etc.), PETA actually does a more thorough job than the Humane Society in obliterating the pet/farm double standard you criticize above, since PETA advocates directly and explicitly for VEGANISM (a call for the end of the exploitation of ALL animals), whereas the Humane Society of the United States doesn't explicitly advocate Veganism, but focuses on the more pragmatic objective of bettering welfare standards for animals.

As for your claim that "you don't see people throwing fits" over "cockfighting," it seems to me that the fact that you're not seeing such fits is perfectly expectable, given that there aren't currently any massively famous football superstars under investigation for cockfighting. If you looked past the main headlines, you'd see that there are in fact A LOT OF PEOPLE kicking up a fuss about cockfighting; if you don't believe me, check out this campaign at the Humane Society of the United Sates, which has 10 MILLION MEMBERS, by the way. The fact is that there are fists o' plenty in the air over cockfighting. It's just that there's no media there to cover it, since there's no NFL star to prosecute.

One more point that seems to be worth making:

The fact that meat-eaters and pharmaceutical users who are outraged over Vick's behavior are "hypocrites" in some sense doesn't change the fact that they are right to be outraged over Vick's behavior. While hypocrisy reflects badly on hypocrites, it has no effect whatsoever on the facts that (1) dogfighting is a morally deplorable activity, and that (2) righteous indignation is the appropriate response to it. Instead of calling people "hypocrites" in hopes of shaming them into silence, I'm inclined to think that we should applaud them for having correctly identified a moral evil and responded to it appropriately, and then challenge them, in the next breath, to explain why they aren't equally outraged about the treatment suffered by "food" animals in factory farms.