Editorial

According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, whales have rights, cows aren't happy unless PETA says they are and pornography is a great way to protect animals.

If you can make sense of this, you're way ahead of us. Here's an update on what those wacky livestock farm-haters at PETA are up to these days.

PETA went to court against SeaWorld, the marine park, claiming that it in some way violates the "constitutional rights" of killer whales it has in captivity. The animal activists argued the whales are slaves.

Though PETA hadn't figured it out before, animals are not people and because of that are not protected under the U.S. Constitution, the document that enumerates the rights of citizens.

"The only reasonable interpretation of the Thirteenth Amendment's plain language is that it applies to persons, and not to non-persons such as orcas," U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller ruled.

But there's more. Now some folks are calling PETA's publicity stunt racist because it tried to put slaves -- people -- on the same legal footing as animals. "The Daily Show," a comedy television program, even poked fun at PETA for its nonsense.

The failed stunt just goes to show how common interspecies confusion is at PETA. After all, any group that calls fish "sea kittens" really has its facts jumbled.

PETA is also back in court wrangling with California dairy operators over the 10-year-old "Happy Cow" ads. PETA sued the California Milk Advisory Board over the ads and is still trying to convince a judge somewhere that dairy cows aren't happy.

The latest dustup revolves around PETA's request for the confidential records of dairy producers in a last-gasp effort to prove, uh, well, something.

Our suspicion is that PETA's main goal doesn't involve the welfare of dairy cows so much as to generate publicity for itself.

Finally, we are happy to report that PETA's pornography website, PETA.xxx, is not yet operational. In an effort to see how low they can go, PETA operatives cooked up a scheme to show dirty movies to get people interested in its animal rights shenanigans.

A lot of people support PETA and its fellow travelers. All of them demonstrate varying degrees of confusion about animals and even fundamental moral issues of right and wrong. Yet they continue to chug along, collecting contributions that they use to buy their way into courtrooms and onto ballots so they can snow the public with fictions about farms and ranches.

The next time you see a dewy-eyed puppy or a fuzzy kitten in a PETA ad, know that the money it raises only goes to self-promoting attacks on animal agriculture.