HumaneWatch

Daily clippings culled from all over the electronic news world. (E-mail submissions for next week.)

• The Washington Post interviews researchers who cast doubts on HSUS’s eggs-pertise
• Silly HSUS logo product of the day: doggie windbreakers
• USA TODAY gets it: The Humane Society of the United Stated ... encourages Americans to move toward a more vegetarian diet”
• California letter writer: HSUS’s egg ad is a “blatant attempt to inflame the public”
• Your Daily Shelter: West Virginia’s Canterbury Tails Animal Rescue (Donate. Volunteer. Adopt.)

It's hard to keep up with all the self-promotional press releases from the Humane Society of the United States, but one caught our eye this week. It appears that Humane Society International has convinced the 14th Dalai Lama to sign a letter condemning the consumption of eggs from chickens kept in cages.

An emotional appeal to a spiritual leader is, we suppose, all that's left when science isn’t on your side.The boilerplate language suggests that HSUS's P.R. department, not the Lama, wrote the text. The letter's release is clearly designed to keep pressure on egg farmers during the Salmonella crisis.

The Dalai Lama is certainly entitled to his opinion, but we disagree.

Here’s Humane Society of the United States CEO Wayne Pacelle, quoted in today’s Mason City (Iowa) Globe Gazette (emphasis added):

We have 11 million members because people want a strong advocacy organization that will defend all animals …

Eleven million? Oh, dear. Do we have to go through this again? There’s absolutely zero truth to the idea that 11 million Americans are members of HSUS. No chance. May God (and an HSUS lawyer) strike us down if we’re wrong.

Let’s review the evidence.

Daily clippings culled from all over the electronic news world. (E-mail submissions for tomorrow.)

• U.S. states could start constitutionally protecting hunters from groups like HSUS
• California egg farmer: San Diego State University's cage-free policy (touted by HSUS) will actually make campus food less safe
• HSUS finds a parrot
• Apparently, no one is "humane" enough for HSUS—not even farmers' markets
• Surprise! HSUS’s latest boardroom putsch has been put down
• Your Daily Shelter: Texas Italian Greyhound Rescue (Donate. Volunteer. Adopt.)

What did gunman James Lee accomplish yesterday when he took hostages and made his outlandish demands at the Discovery Channel headquarters? (Other than making An Inconvenient Truth seem like a re-write of The Turner Diaries…)

Not much.

It’s fair to assume that no one of sound mind will follow wherever Lee thought he was leading. But he did at least prove that it’s possible to take love of animals and the environment too far. Way too far.

Daily clippings culled from all over the electronic news world. (E-mail submissions for tomorrow.)

• After HSUS disinvited several attendees (ouch) to its South Dakota Meeting, the venue disinvited HSUS
• Really, HSUS? Prairie dogs? REALLY?
• More HSUS shareholder cracktivism
• Donated to HSUS in the last ten years? You might have helped HSUS fund its elephant birth control research (because what we really want endangered species to do is reproduce less)
• Your Daily Shelter: Pennsylvania’s Better Days Animal League (Donate. Volunteer. Adopt.)

Daily clippings culled from all over the electronic news world. (E-mail submissions for tomorrow.)

• What will happen when HSUS sues BP on behalf of seagulls?
• HSUS hosts kiddie propaganda drawing contest
• More nonsensical environmental claims used to impose expensive regulations on egg farmers
• Pacelle leverages bear attack in Ohio to renew rhetoric about exotic pet bans
• Your Daily Shelter: Oregon’s Redmond Humane Society (Donate. Volunteer. Adopt.)