You’re going to enjoy this. Almost as much as I enjoy dog-related puns.

• Here’s the most important column you should read today. Oddly enough, the word poll appears nowhere in the text! It’s Tyler Cowen on stalled progress in the fight against world hunger.
• The Justice Department files suit against a bank for the crime of lending prudently.
• Ezra Klein on the carbon tax. This is a tax that I, a libertarian, support. Someday, when I’m done writing this book, I’ll put up a post explaining why.
• This seems like a weird fight for Facebook to be picking.
• Andrew Ferguson destroys the latest fawning presidential profile.
• New Mexico, which doesn’t recognize same sex marriages, fines a photographer who refused to photograph a same sex wedding.
• Congress passes a warrantless wiretapping bill despite having no idea what it actually does. The lede to the linked story also works with almost any other story.
• The real causes of Muslim protests.
• Lots and lots and lots and lots of great photos of dogs.

–Radley

Southern Coast K9 Inc is a company that trains drug sniffing dogs:

Eapen Thampy, Americans for Forfeiture Reform

Hi Folks — It’s Lenore here, from Free-Range Kids. So why am I posting about a sex offender and a dog? It’s sort of a long story, but it boils down to this:

At Free-Range Kids we LOVE safety…we just don’t believe that our kids are in constant danger. Lately, though, a lot of society has decided they are. That’s why, for instance, many schools won’t let the school bus drop a kid off at the bus stop unless there is a PRE-APPROVED GUARDIAN waiting there to escort him or her home. Even if the parents say, “It’s ok! I trust my kid to walk a block!” — no dice.

That same kind of fear of everyday life has come to pervade many adult-child interactions. The idea being: WHY does this adult want to be around a child? PERHAPS HE’S A PERVERT! In this state of panic, our country has passed laws that have little to do with keeping our kids truly safe and lots to do with suspicion of adults. Particularly egregious is the Sex Offender Registry. Instead of it listing adults who pose a big threat to kids, it is littered with people who did things like peeing in public, or going to a prostitute. You can get on the list if you’re a high school senior, age 18, and you sleep with your freshman girlfriend, age 14. Here’s a great article about the whole mess. 

And here, at last, is the article about a man on the registry for coming to help a neighbor with an ailing dog.It’s from 2010 but I just saw it today. And wept.

I feel the way this guy looks.

When we first bought goats in 2006, we also got two goat dogs; we got rid of the goats because we couldn’t make a profit on them, but the dogs are still here.  They’re a brother and sister, named Lassen and Shasta respectively; Shasta’s black mask is nearly continuous, while Lassen’s is broken with a vertical white stripe.  They’re quite large now, roughly 50 kg each (though Lassen is slightly taller and longer), but when the first picture was taken they were still pretty teeny; in the second they were about 6 months old, and not much bigger than Caramel yet.  The last was taken just after I shaved them for the summer at the beginning of June; as you can see the llama doesn’t quite know what to make of their new look.  Alas, he wasn’t nearly as easy to shave as they were; I was sore and bruised for days afterward.  The little shed in the background is my chicken coop.

As I told you two weeks ago, we had only lived at my country place a few weeks when, while we were pouring the slab for our shop, a stray blue heeler/border collie mix showed up and got pregnant by a black Labrador belonging to one of the neighbors.  The Lab’s name was Stampy, so we at first referred to her as “Stampy’s lady friend”, and when we realized she was going to stay we simply shortened that to “Lady”.  She’s actually quite difficult to take a good picture of; she always seems to either want to turn her back to the camera, or to run up to whoever is taking the picture to be petted.  So I actually had to go out with the camera yesterday to get a third decent shot; it took twelve tries.  The first one is nursing her puppies in March of 2003, and the second at the construction of my new house in August of 2009.

A few weeks ago, I took my dog, Nola Mae, for a walk. After digging in some bushes for a minute, she emerged, facing away from me, squeaking something she found.

I didn’t think much of it since dogs in the neighborhood drop/bury balls and other toys with squeakers in them all the time. She comes home with a new toy she found outside about twice a month.

But when Nola finally turned around, the head of a two or three-week-old rabbit was sticking out of her mouth. (I never imagined how realistic the sound of squeaker in a dog toy is – sounds just like the real thing.) Like any dog owner, I knew that if I tried to take something from my dog’s mouth, it would cause her to bite down even harder. I also knew that meant a decapitated bunny.

So I choked my precious little pup until she was about to tap out. That caused her to open her mouth to gasp for air and, when she did, the baby rabbit dropped to the ground with a thud.

I tied Nola up and grabbed the motionless rabbit off the ground. After performing bunny CPR on the little thing, the baby rabbit perked up and seemed like it might live. I found its nest or den or whatever you call a hole with three little baby rabbits in it and tucked it back in. The next day, when I checked on the rabbits, the attack victim seemed as healthy as its siblings.

The picture is me holding the baby rabbit seconds after heroically performing chest compressions and bringing the little thing back to life.

After feeding my dog a jar of peanut butter and about $20 worth of bull penis treats, she has apparently forgiven me for having to strangle her.

All’s well that ends well.

-Drew Johnson

Last week I mentioned how our puppies came to live here, and shared pictures of Caramel; this week is her beloved brother Stampy, Jr., from whom she has been inseparable practically since birth (though that doesn’t preclude bitchiness over prime spots in the doghouse).  Yes, their sire was named after Bart Simpson’s elephant.  Stampy is probably the most docile, friendly dog you would ever meet; even our vet has remarked on it.  The first picture was taken when he was only 3 days old (I had just come in from the deep woods, hence the anti-cougar armament); the second when he was two (cooling off in one of our creeks); and the third just two months ago (staking out a discarded chair which had grown too shabby even for the porch).

After buying my country place in October of 2002 I moved up here for about a year, running my escort service by phone.  And we hadn’t been here more than a few weeks when a stray blue heeler/border collie mix showed up, got pregnant by a black Labrador belonging to one of the neighbors, and whelped eight puppies in our shop in March of 2003.  Two of those pups still live here, as does the mother, and I figured I’d share pictures of them over the next few weeks.  First up is Caramel; the first shot was taken when she was 30 days old, the second when she was four and the third just two months ago (in one of her favorite warm-weather spots under the porch).

I like dogs too. One of the things I’ve always liked about the Agitator is that its host isn’t afraid to puppy-blog. Puppy-blogging is frowned on at Popehat, because Ken has allergies. He claims that even images make him break out in hives.

I’ll be putting up images of dogs as long as Radley allows.  Here are three of mine, who were nice enough to pose this morning in order of seniority:

On the left, Wilbur. In the middle, “Tan Man” (that’s the name the rescue folks gave him; we call him “Tanner” as often as not, or when we feel like singing, “Oh, Tanny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling…”). On the right, our youngest, Bela.

Our senior boss-alpha dog, Rose, is approaching fifteen, she’s blind, and she doesn’t trifle with group photos any longer. She’s tolerant of the others, so long as they let her nap, and understand that she eats first…

In her salad days, Rose got around more often. This is what she looked like as a young lady, back when Bill Clinton was President:

I thought Bill Clinton was a scofflaw who deserved impeachment when this photo was taken.  Twelve years on, Bill Clinton looks pretty good, doesn’t he?

– Patrick at Popehat

• LZ Granderson embarrasses himself. As a journalist, I’m embarrassed for him.
• New York man literally charged with assaulting two police officers’ fists with his face.
• Some wonderful portrait photos of dogs.
• “[We] can call your editors and publisher…trust us, you don’t want to get on the Department of Justice’s bad side.”
• Louis C.K.’s daughter is my new favorite comedian.
• TSA outrage of the week.
• Parole board member fired for considering parole.
• Jenny McCarthy is really a horrible human being.
• “In April 2010, when President Barack Obama’s then-White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announced that ‘this is the most transparent administration in the history of our country,’ Politico reported that ‘laughter broke out in the briefing room.’”
• Chicago vote may decriminalize marijuana.
• Puppycide.

. . . from whatever you doing, and watch this dachshund pup attempt to pick a fight with a crab.  Or maybe it’s trying to play with the crab. I’m not sure. I don’t think the dog is sure, either. (Via Reddit.)

Reader Dave Cross writes:

Here are some photos of Trixie, my Treeing Walker Coonhound.  She and three others were found by Animal Control close to starving when they were around a year old.  They’d apparently been so hungry they’d been eating sawdust. Trixie has filled out nicely, gotten over her initial shyness with people and turned into a great companion.  She doesn’t hunt — she’s gun-shy and chases deer — but she loves to run around in the woods and pretend she’s a tough hunting dog.  She’s now 9 and still has plenty of energy, although we’ve stopped the Agility training that she used to love.  She still gets antsy if we don’t go to the dog park for a couple of days, although she’s there for the people and not the dogs.  The regulars love Trixie and tolerate me.

By the way, the other three coonhounds found with her were all adopted and doing well, last I heard.  We still see one of them at the dog park every now and then.

I like her gangliness.

This is Nola Mae, a pal of Daisy’s, owned by Agitator chum Drew Johnson.

She reminds me of one of these.

This is Ollie, a Shar-pei mix of some kind, owned by reader Brian Hawkins. He lives in Seattle.

This is Audie, owned by reader Janeen McMurtrie.

Here’s Jake, owned by reader George Ertel.

This is Lucy, a neglected pup that reader and fellow writer David McElroy rescued  . . . from his neighbors. You can read the story here.

From commenter “divadab,” here’s Maggie and Blackie-Mae.

One is 5. The other (I’m guessing Maggie, the lighter one) is an impressive 19-years-old.

In case you needed a kick to the groin this Friday afternoon.

It took some bourbon to get through this one.

This is Jackie, an English Shepherd owned by regular commenter “jb.”

I think Agitator reader Greg Carroll wins, with this shot of his pups.

He would like to add:

• No animals were harmed during the making of this picture.
• No poker was played on-line, so please have the authorities hold off on any raids.

 

Here’s Sandy, sent by her owner Les Milton, who writes:

We got Sandy last December from a rescue organization and it’s been amazing to see how she’s affected my 12-year-old son.  Besides the responsibilities of feeding and walking, he’s just been so affectionate with her.  It’s like she discovered a hidden reserve of love inside him. My wife, who always thought of dogs as nice, but kind of gross, thinks of her as the daughter she never had and sleeps with her every night (and she doesn’t think dogs are gross at all anymore).

She’s not a big dog, but she’s all dog.

Beautiful dog. Keep them coming!

This is reader Dan Roll’s dog Marek, a Rottweiler/English Mastiff mix.

Reader Steve Hill writes: “This is Autumn, who passed away last year from cancer. She was my favorite dog.”

Beautiful photo.