Update on Vick's dogs

The Washington Post had a moving article yesterday on what has happened to the dogs seized when Michael Vick's dogfighting operation was shut down.

"Of the 47 surviving dogs, 25 were placed directly in foster homes, and a handful have been or are being adopted. Twenty-two were deemed potentially aggressive toward other dogs and were sent to an animal sanctuary in Utah. Some, after intensive retraining, are expected to move on to foster care and eventual adoption."

The jury is still out, for some experts, on whether the dogs can be retrained.

"John Goodwin, a dogfighting expert with the Humane Society and a proponent of euthanizing fight dogs, is skeptical of the emerging reports of the Vick dog recoveries. ... 'The behavior is bred into them,' he said. 'These groups are not rehabilitating these dogs. They're training them to behave in a more socialized manner. But these pit bulls should never be left alone with other dogs, because you never know when that instinct to fight another dog is going to surface.' "

Be sure and listen to the audio gallery.

Here are some other entries I did on the Vick saga.

UPDATE: Michael Vick filed for bankruptcy protection, saying he owes up to $50 million. Here is the story from ESPN.com.

Vick dog update

Here's an incredibly moving article from The New York Times about the dogs who were rescued from Michael Vick's house of horrors.

"... [T]here is one haunting sign that Georgia might have endured the most abuse of any of the 47 surviving pit bulls seized last April from the property of the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick in connection with an illegal dogfighting ring.

"Georgia has no teeth. All 42 of them were pried from her mouth, most likely to make certain she could not harm male dogs during forced breeding."

I hope there's a special place in hell for people who do this to animals.

More Vick

Atlanta Journal Constitution editorial cartoonist Mike Luckovich has a good cartoon about Vick, who recently said he would plead guilty to dog-fighting charges.

You can see it here. Make sure you choose Aug. 21 on the calendar if it's not already selected.

And others are piling on to Vick's self-created woes.

Want your dog — and by extension, you — to get a chance to get even with Vick? How about a Michael Vick chew toy?

Need some new T-shirts? Bumper stickers? Coffee mugs? Try this link. Some images may not be safe for work.

Vick fesses up

Michael Vick, the quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons, will apparently plead guilty to charges that he ran a dog-fighting ring. The New York Times has the story.

Vick's co-defendants were ready to testify against him, saying that he killed eight underperforming dogs by hanging and drowning them.

I believe that how someone treats those weaker than they are speaks volumes about the type of human being he or she is.

An attorney for Vick said that the NFL star wanted to apologize to "everyone who has been hurt by this matter."

Yeah. Right.

Doc on Vick's dogs

Whatever happened to the pit bulls taken from Michael Vick's illegal dog fighting ring?

The first episode of DogTown on the National Geographic Channel will fill you in when the series returns at 9 p.m. Friday, Sept. 5.

Check out their Web site and see some pictures of the pooches and the people who have helped them.

The two-hour program focuses on four of the dogs and how far they've come since the horrific circumstances in which they were found.

Here are some entries I did on the Vick saga.

Supreme Court upholds right to dogfight videos

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down a law that would ban videos of animal cruelty.

Read the article by Adam Liptak in the New York Times here.

The 8-1 decision ruled against a federal law making it a crime to create or sell videos of dogfights and animal cruelty.

The decision left open the possibility that Congress could enact a narrower law that would pass constitutional muster. But the existing law, Chief Justice [John G.] Roberts [Jr.] wrote, covered too much speech protected by the First Amendment.

The ruling stemmed from the prosecution of Robert J. Stevens, who billed himself as a pit bull authority. Stevens, who did not participate in the dogfights, compiled and sold videos showing them.

The Times said he got a 37-month sentence.

The government argued that depictions showing harm to animals were of such minimal social worth that they should receive no First Amendment protection at all. Chief Justice Roberts roundly rejected that assertion. “The First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter or its content,” he wrote.

The chief justice acknowledged that some kinds of speech — including obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement and speech integral to criminal conduct — have historically been granted no constitutional protection. But he said the Supreme Court had no “freewheeling authority to declare new categories of speech outside the scope of the First Amendment.”

Justice Samuel Alito Jr., who usually rules with Roberts, was the sole dissenter, saying "the majority's analysis was built on 'fanciful hypotheticals' and would serve to protect 'depraved entertainment.' "

I agree with Alito — wow, never thought I'd be writing that. Allowing videos of this illegal activity, in my opinion, only feeds the interests of the likes of Michael Vick. It serves no purpose in society.

Here's hoping Congress will re-examine the struck-down legislation and narrow its scope to end this vile practice.