If your idea of fun is torturing stray dogs and cats, you live in the right place. Arkansas is one of the few places in the United States where you can do it and the government will smile.
But that, mercifully, may be about to change.
Rep. Sue Madison, D-Fayetteville, and a few other lawmakers have tried for several years to pass an anti-cruelty law to make it a felony to torture pet animals. The Arkansas Farm Bureau, which always gets its way in the legislature, objects because a prosecutor somewhere might go after a farmer for using generally accepted procedures for dealing with farm animals. No assurance or amendment ever changes the bureau’s opposition, so the legislation fails year after year.
Madison unveiled another proposal the other day, and she says she had tried to meet every possible objection. That would not change anything, but she has some powerful new support: Gov. Mike Beebe and Attorney General Dustin McDaniel.
McDaniel said an animal-cruelty bill will be a part of his package of legislation for the 2009 session and he’s deadly serious about it. His bill, he said, would make cruel treatment of a cat, dog or horse a felony on first offense and cruelty to other animals a felony on the second offense. As he delicately put it: “You should not be able to put a ferret in the microwave, and as soon as you pay your fine go home and put another ferret in the microwave.”
Arkansas is one of only five states that do not make it a crime to torture pets. What has been missing is strong support from governors. There might have been suspicion during the Mike Huckabee era that the cruelty legislation was somehow related to stories of the governor’s son torturing and killing a stray dog at a Scout encampment where he was a counselor. The State Police director said Huckabee fired him for not publicly renouncing an investigation of the incident. But the effort to pass anti-cruelty legislation never had anything to do with that episode.
Gov. Beebe’s advocacy, we imagine, ought to get the job done. He has no record of failing. If he can persuade the big energy companies that they should fork over a hundred million dollars a year to the state in severance taxes on the gas that they harvest from Arkansas shale, he ought to be able to persuade the Farm Bureau that someone should be punished for using cats for archery practice or letting 11 horses starve in abandoned trailers. Those deeds, incidentally, went unpunished last year in Arkansas.
