PETA wanted me to starve yesterday

Create Your Own Sea Kitten at peta.org!

I try to be a good Catholic - which, as part of my faith, means not eating meat on Fridays during Lent. (No, wait, no meat on Fridays, period. No, no, just during Lent...) Anyway, I couldn't eat meat yesterday, at least not land-meat. Fish was ok, in the eyes of the Church - but not, apparently, in the eyes of PETA, who have launched a new campaign to save the fish.

Their tongue-in-cheek view is that the reason people are so callous toward fishing is that the name "fish" is so unappealing. So PETA has renamed them "sea kittens." Because kittens are cute and cuddly, get it?

In the political landscape, PETA is something of a mixed blessing. Silly campaigns like the Sea Kittens and Kentucky Fried Cruelty underscore their status as a fringe group, and demonstrate the left's lack of common sense. And, since some nutcases are willing to send them money, they soak up resources that could be devoted to ideas that have a better chance of cracking the mainstream. However, groups like PETA also allow more mainstream liberals to distance themselves from the radical thought that serves as their philosophical foundation.

In other words, President Obama may be talking about a radical overhaul of the best health care system in the world - but hey, at least he's not as crazy as those sea kitten whack-jobs, right?

(By the way - yesterday's lunch was sushi. Meow.)