"Canine Profiling"

Colin Dayan defends pit bulls:

The seizures, detentions, and exterminations of pit bullssanctioned by laws in many statesexpose the statutory logic for making preemptive justice constitutionally permissible: canine profiling supplies the terms for inclusion and ostracism, and even the suspension of due process rights. No criminal conviction of the owner is required for state seizure and destruction of property. In other words, the Constitution’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which prohibit the government from depriving anyone of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” can be suspended for the public good without evidence, without trial, by classification alone.

PETA’s Daphna Nachminovitch tracks down Michael Vick's former dogs:

The facility that houses many of Vick’s dogs may be on a large piece of property, but their pens or runs are still just cages. Marketing dogs who can’t be placed in homes as “success stories” is not just disingenuous, it is a betrayal of the dogs and of the public, which has been led to believe that rehabilitation is possible. The American public is spared the reality that sheltering and animal-control professionals face every day: fighting dogs rarely get a happy ending. Dogs who have been bred, raised, and trained to kill other animals will always be a danger to our communities. If Vick’s dogs are still too unpredictable to be adopted as family companions, living forever behind cage bars isn’t a solution; it is a life sentence.

(Photo: A pit bull looks out from a cage in the Liberty Humane Society shelter July 24, 2007 in Jersey City, New Jersey. According to animal shelter statistics, around one-third of all dogs coming into shelters nationwide are pit bulls, up from just 2 to 3 percent fifteen years ago. An estimated 40,000 people are involved in illegal professional dogfighting in the U.S. which often involves pit bulls. By Mario Tama/Getty Images.)