I'm wonder if I could find and purchase a few dozen SAM launchers and rig them to target and fire at low, slow firing aircraft. Then I'd find the areas where aerial hunting is carried out (big, clear areas, I'm quite certain) and place the SAM's such that some number of wolves being pursued by aircraft will run by them. The SAM's would perhaps target the aircraft and shoot them down. Since I have both the technology skills and the wilderness travel skills to do that, it would be an interesting project.

Seem unfair? I might shoot down people who don't 'deserve' to get shot down? Just trying to level the playing field. The wolves can't run away from the hunters, no reason the hunters should be able to run away from the SAM's.

Or, the real hunters could get a rifle, a pair of skis or snowshoes and go hunting. You'll be safe from the SAM's. Of course, once you've put the effort into the hunt, you might well choose to take something edible; much better ROI than trying to eat a wolf.

All the defenders of Palin's insane and cruel wolf killing program are tying themselves into knots to defend the indefensible. This digusting Governor, and those who support her actions regarding wolves, kills wolves for one reason only: to increase the number of prey animals for human hunters to shoot. That's it, period.

Wolves, like other natural predators, weed out the sick and weak and keep prey animal populations healthy. Twisted human hunters like Sarah Palin kill the biggest and strongest, for fun and trophies. They, not the wolves, are the problem. They, not the wolves, are the species we should hope go extinct.

Defend cruelty all you want, hunters, but you're engaging in pure self-justication for your bloody and sadistic "sport."

that is.

A rational case exists for the rights of preborn humans. An equally compelling case exists for the rights of animals.

Animals are highly complex creatures, possessing a brain, a central nervous system and a sophisticated mental life. Animals actually suffer at the hands of their human tormentors. Author B.R. Boyd in The New Abolitionists (1987), notes that animals exhibit such "'human' behaviors and feelings as fear and physical pain, defense of their children, pair bonding, group/tribal loyalty, grief at the loss of loved ones, joy, jealousy, competition, territoriality, and cooperation."

Dr. Tom Regan, the foremost intellectual leader of the animal rights movement and author of The Case for Animal Rights (1983), notes that animals "have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; and emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference and welfare interests; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a psychophysical identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for them, logically independent of their being the object of anyone else’s interests."

Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983) notes: "Animals are just as intelligent and communicative as small children or even some mentally defective adult humans. If we do not eat small children and mentally defective humans, then what basis do we have for eating animals?" C.S. Lewis and other Christians have even acknowledged that denying rights to animals merely because they do not exhibit the same level of rational thought most humans exhibit upon reaching full development justifies denying rights to the mentally handicapped, the senile, and many other classes of humans as well.

John Stuart Mill observed, "The reason for legal intervention in favor of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves— the animals." In his 1987 book, Christianity and the Rights of Animals, Reverend Andrew Linzey, an Anglican priest, notes that "In some ways, Christian thinking is already oriented in this direction. What is it that so appalls us about cruelty to children or oppression of the vulnerable, but that these things are betrayals of relationships of special care and special trust? Likewise, and even more so, in the case of animals who are mostly defenseless before us."

The way we treat animals is indicative of the way we treat our fellow humans. One Soviet study, published in Ogonyok, found that over 87 percent of a group of violent criminals had, as children, burned, hanged, or stabbed domestic animals. In our own country, a major study by Dr. Stephen Kellert of Yale University found that children who abuse animals have a much higher likelihood of becoming violent criminals.

Some of the greatest figures in human history have been in favor of animal rights. These include: Albert Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, Alice Walker, George Bernard Shaw, Robert Browning, Percy Shelley, Voltaire, Thomas Hardy, Rachel Carson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Wesley, Victor Hugo, St. Francis of Assisi, Jean-Jacques Rosseau, Pythagoras, Susan B. Anthony, Albert Schweitzer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gertrude Stein, Frederick Douglass, Francis Bacon, William Wordsworth, the Buddha, Mark Twain, and Henry David Thoreau.

In Animals, Men and Morals (1971), Patrick Corbett, professor of philosophy at Sussex University, captured the spirit of animal rights with these words: "We require now to extend the great principles of liberty, equality and fraternity over the lives of the animals. Let animal slavery join human slavery in the graveyard of the past."

Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment. The animal rights movement should be supported by all caring Americans.

Great letter, as always.

I enjoy reading about people espousing animal rights.

Where do you draw the line? What rights do animals have and which animals have those rights? For example, an insect is an animal, does a mosquito have certain rights? What about a mosquito that carries malaria? Does it have more or less rights than dung beetle?

Perhaps mosquitos don't have rights, maybe only mammals have rights. If so why?

Does a chimp have more rights than cow? Or do they have the same rights?

And even plants have life. For example, a redwood tree should have some rights if any plant does. What kind of rights does it have that perhaps a potato plant does not have?

It sure brings up a lot of questions in my mind when we start to talk about animal rights.

I would suppose that wolves, dolphins,and elephants would definitely have rights. But does a mouse in your house have rights? How about the cockroaches under your stove?