Dogs are not people

Tucker Carlson goes flying wildly off the rails:

“I’m a Christian, I’ve made mistakes myself, I believe fervently in second chances,” Carlson said. “But Michael Vick killed dogs, and he did in a heartless and cruel way. And I think, personally, he should’ve been executed for that. He wasn’t, but the idea that the President of the United States would be getting behind someone who murdered dogs?”

Killing dogs is not called “homicide” for a reason. It’s not murder anymore than killing a cow for its beef is murder. Now, I love dogs considerably more than most people do – Spacebunny laughs at how I carry the Viszla puppy around the house with me and he watched the entire Vikings game on my lap – but I didn’t even think Vick merited the legal punishment he received.

(That being said, Vick probably needed the slap to the head that the bankruptcy and jail sentence provided him.)

Now, I would no sooner want to be around a person who mistreats a dog than one who is prone to defecating in public. But if Vick deserves execution for killing his own dogs, then the people at the Humane Society are clearly worse than the Nazis and Soviets combined. And should the police investigate every suspicious canine death? Tucker clearly needs to take control his emotions on the subject; he is normally sharper than this.