Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

--Dorothy

It must be mailbox day. Here's something else that just came in:

PETA bankrolls arsonists -- Tell the IRS it’s time for them to go! Dear Conservative Friend, If you were watching the State of the Union Address on the Fox News Channel last week, you also saw a provocative commercial from the Center for Consumer Freedom. It wasn’t about social security or Hillary Clinton, but it deserves your attention just the same. The Center’s advertisement asked Americans to support a petition asking the IRS to investigate and penalize People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), an extreme animal-rights group that brazenly supports and openly funds domestic terrorists. Click here to watch this groundbreaking commercial. While most of our national discussion about Homeland Security has focused on threats from outside the United States, we’ve overlooked the dangerous threat of domestic terrorism. Since 1990, attacks by home-grown arsonists and bomb-throwers have caused over $150 million in damage. The FBI calls these animal-rights zealots and extreme environmentalists “the most dangerous and prolific domestic terrorists” in the United States today. PETA, it turns out, is bankrolling some of them. In 2001, according to publicly-available tax records, PETA contributed at least $1,500 to the North American Earth Liberation Front (ELF), a group of arsonists who engage in absolutely no lawful activities. PETA was either careless or bold enough to report this to the IRS. Eight different reporters have asked PETA’s leaders why their group wrote this check; they have offered eight different and contradictory answers. In 1995 PETA gave over $70,000 to Rodney Coronado, a convicted arsonist who firebombed a Michigan State University research laboratory on behalf of the terrorist Animal Liberation Front (ALF). While PETA insists that the money was for Coronado’s legal defense, court records show that PETA president Ingrid Newkirk communicated with Coronado about the Michigan State arson before it happened. Coronado never fingered PETA in court, took the fall alone, and served 58 months in federal prison. In 2003, six months after his parole expired, he was filmed in a Washington, DC college classroom showing dozens of young animal-rights activists how to build “crude incendiary devices.” Asked later that year on 20/20 to explain herself, Ingrid Newkirk called Rodney Coronado “a fine young man.” If PETA were financially supporting Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, or Al Qaeda, it would be laughable to argue that it’s possible to bankroll terrorists without supporting terrorism. Yet PETA continues to insist its motives were warm and fuzzy when it wrote a check to the arson-happy (and FBI-designated “terrorist”) ELF. PETA’s habit of propping up violent splinter groups shouldn’t surprise anyone. In the 1980s, PETA was a “spokesgroup” for the terrorist ALF, holding press conferences to gleefully announce arsons, burglaries, and thefts -- all perpetrated “for the animals.” PETA once had a “fact sheet” calling the ALF “an army of the kind.” And PETA’s leaders have openly advocated arson and other violence. Click here to listen to PETA campaign director Bruce Friedrich discussing the merits of “blowing stuff up” at a national animal rights convention. It’s time to put a stop to PETA, and you can help. Add your name to the list of over 50,000 Americans who have already asked the IRS to revoke PETA’s federal tax-exempt status. Believe it or not, PETA pays no income taxes -- just like universities and churches. And the promise of tax deductions helped the group raise over $21 million last year, mostly from unsuspecting Americans who thought they were helping puppies and kittens. Click here to sign the petition and “Take a bite out of PETA.” The Center for Consumer Freedom is dedicated to protecting the choices of American consumers. Those choices are threatened on a daily basis by PETA and other animal activist groups who presume to tell us all what to eat. PETA’s stated goal is “total animal liberation.” That means no steaks, hamburgers, chicken, veal, lamb, bacon, milk, or cheese. No milk chocolate on Valentine’s Day. No Thanksgiving turkey. No hunting, fishing, rodeos, circuses, wool, fur, silk, leather, or seeing-eye dogs; and no medical research using lab animals. PETA’s president is on record saying that “even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.” We’re pushing back against these lunatics, but we need your help. To make a one-time gift or a recurring pledge, please click here. Every little bit helps. Sincerely, James Bowers Managing Director Center for Consumer Freedom