Slow Down to Save Whales

Everyone knows speed kills. Speed limits in neighborhoods and school zones protect the safety of the community. But what if the government wanted to let those speed limits expire every few years? It would waste resources and threaten lives. Yet that’s exactly what the Obama administration is considering doing for a speed limit that has saved the lives of critically endangered whales.

Birds Falling from the Sky

Leaving poisons out in the wild is, in comparison to other ways of killing animals, among the most inhumane and indiscriminate of methods. Highly toxic poisons wreak havoc on the animals who ingest them, regardless of whether they were the intended victims or non-target casualties like endangered species and family pets.

Horse Soring in the Hot Seat on Capitol Hill

Tennessee walking horses got a well-deserved boost today in a House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade hearing on H.R. 1518, the Prevent All Soring Tactics (PAST) Act. The bill, introduced by Reps. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., and Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., has the broad, bipartisan support of 230 cosponsors—more than half the House—and the Senate version, by Sens. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and Mark Warner, D-Va., has 27.

Crying Wolf

MLive.com, which reports for eight newspapers across Michigan, has released the first stories in a jarring investigative series on how state politicians used exaggerated or completely fabricated tales of wolf incidents to justify stripping away legal protection for wolves and opening a trophy hunting season on the state’s small population of wolves.

Don’t Monkey Around with Chimp Cap

If the federal government could spend its dollars in a more cost-efficient way and make programs run better, shouldn’t Congress allow it? That’s the idea behind S. 1561, the CHIMP Act Amendments of 2013, which passed the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee by voice vote this morning. The bipartisan legislation sponsored by HELP Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, Ranking Member Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Sen.

Remembering Rep. Bill Young

This past week the animal protection movement lost a long-serving ally in Congress, with the passing of U.S. Rep. Bill Young, R-Fla., at age 82. He served 43 years in the House, coming to Washington in 1971 during the Richard Nixon administration, and was the most senior Republican in Congress at the time of his death.