ON TO PROTECTING LIFE ON MARS! (via Rob Swadosh):

Internet Hunting Has Got to Stop --If It Ever Starts: Even the NRA Agrees This Is One Humane Issue Everyone Can Get Behind (ZACHARY M. SEWARD, August 10, 2007, Wall Street Journal)

The Humane Society of the United States last year mailed more than 50,000 people an urgent message, underlined and in bold type: "Such horrific cruelty must stop and stop now!"

The cruelty in question was Internet hunting, which the animal-rights group described as the "sick and depraved" sport of shooting live game with a gun controlled remotely over the Web. Responding to the Humane Society's call, 33 states have outlawed Internet hunting since 2005, and a bill to ban it nationally has been introduced in Congress.
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Read the Humane Society's letter, plus see the society's Internet hunting page on its Web site.

But nobody actually hunts animals over the Internet. Although the concept -- first broached publicly by a Texas entrepreneur in 2004 -- is technically feasible, it hasn't caught on. How so many states have nonetheless come to ban the practice is a testament to public alarm over Internet threats and the gilded life of legislation that nobody opposes.

With no Internet hunters to defend the sport, the Humane Society's lobbying campaign has been hugely successful -- a welcome change for an organization that has struggled to curtail actual boots-on-the-ground hunting. Michael Markarian, who has led the group's effort, calls it "one of the fastest paces of reform for any animal issue that we can remember seeing."

The environmentalists' new specialty: lobbying on imaginary issues....

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 11, 2007 8:53 PM