Center for Consumer Freedom

The self-described “press sluts” at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have really been earning that title with their response to the Michael Vick animal-cruelty scandal. The ink on Vick’s indictment -- charging that he and two co-defendants had run an illegal dog-fighting ring out of the football star's Virginia mansion -- had barely dried before PETA launched an all-fronts media assault, including courthouse protests and a flurry of breathless emails vowing, among other things, to push the NFL to change its personal conduct policy.

As is too often the case, PETA’s press prostitution has worked -- marvelously. Virtually every story about the Vick case from the last week or so mentions them, normally in glowing terms. (See here, here, here, here, here, and here for just a few examples.)

PETA’s posturing as righteously indignant animal advocates is exceedingly ironic considering the group’s well-documented history of killing healthy puppies and kittens by the thousands. The old saying about throwing stones when you live in a glass house doesn’t quite cut it in this case: Watching PETA publicly berate someone for mistreating animals is like watching someone catapult grenades from a papier-mâché palace.

And we’re more than willing to respond in kind. A brief recap of the facts: PETA killed over 14,400 animals between 1998 and 2005. (They still haven’t fully reported their 2006 body count.) PETA euthanizes an astonishingly high 90 percent of the animals it takes in -- more than triple the rate of a nearby SPCA. And one of its staffers has admitted in court to gathering up dozens of healthy shelter pets, “putting them down” in her PETA-owned van, and dumping the carcasses in a nearby dumpster.