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You may have heard about the incident this weekend in which an Iraqi reporter took aim at President Bush … by throwing both his shoes at him. The footwear was flung during a news conference in Baghdad, where Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki were just about to sign a security pact. Bush called it "a way to gain attention," which is why we've got an attention-grabbing idea of our own (without the projectiles, of course).

PETA has decided to gain some attention for an important issue by collecting more footwear to send to President Bush to decry his recent gutting of important regulations in order to benefit factory farms. Yes, that's in addition to his recent attack on wildlife protection regulations. Bush's changes would let factory farms continue polluting the earth with the waste that the animals create while they are stuck in those vile, feces-filled, cramped sheds. The bill allows factory farms to burn the waste instead of sending it off to an incineration firm. The waste disposal can be better regulated in the hands of incineration firms instead of being left to the notoriously dirty factory farms. Burning factory farm waste creates yet more air and water pollution, which affects the habitats of any living beings near the farms.

PETA has a better idea: Reduce the number of animals who create the waste in the first place! If you recall our recent undercover investigation of an Iowa pig farm, you'll know that pigs and other animals raised for food live in awful conditions, often spending their entire lives in cramped cages where they are abused before being led to the slaughterhouse. If farmers would simply stop breeding more animals, all these things could be avoided.

Posted by Lianne Turner

Aramnaharaim/Creative Commons

With that subject line you may be expecting a punch line here, but I’m under strict orders to play this one straight. Apparently, the “First Colon” is not to be joked about . . . So, no snickering.

Anyway, I’m sure you all heard that President Bush had five polyps removed from his colon during his colonoscopy at Camp David on Saturday. And although the growths were benign, PETA VP Bruce Friedrich fired off a letter pointing out that according to leading health and medical professionals, eating a diet based on meat and other animal products significantly raises a person’s risk for colon cancer. And since we’re so sure the president will be going vegetarian any day now, we also offered to dispatch a gourmet vegan chef to train the current White House cooking staff in preparing delicious and healthful vegan meals.

Surprisingly, we haven’t heard back from good 'ol Dubya yet. Must just be some rare White House mixup . . . Anyway, here’s the letter we sent.

It’s no secret that first daughter Jenna Bush is a bit of a wild child and as you know, we here at PETA can get as wild as anyone. But when the Bush twin switched from MGD and bong hits to foie gras, Ingrid Newkirk pulled out her pen and let Dubya’s rebellious daughter know what’s up.

You can read Ingrid’s letter here.

PoliticalHumor/Creative Commons

Sometimes, when you have serious concerns about the way something's being done, you just have to take it to the top. And PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich, who takes in all the latest political happenings with his bran flakes and soymilk every morning, has no qualms about doing exactly that. Bruce just dashed off a letter to President Bush offering a "modest proposal to help you win over your critics" about global warming. As Bruce puts it:

"It is past time for all those involved in the debate over global warming to acknowledge that what we eat has far more impact on the climate than the cars that we drive or the light bulbs that we use."

The letter, which you can read here, details a comprehensive plan of action for fighting climate change by going straight to the source—the meat i

Bruce Friedrich

ndustry. As I may have pointed out before, any debate about how to deal with the crisis of global warming will be stymied at the outset unless it includes a serious discussion of the environmental devastation caused by the meat industry—an attack on the Earth's resources that is far more dangerous than anything else you can think of, including the usual suspects: SUVs, jumbo jets, power plants … all those bad boys. Anyway, the point is that if we want to get serious about combating global warming, we need to stop squeezing ourselves around that big ol' elephant in the room, no matter how powerful their lobby is.

Bruce's arguments are much more cohesive than mine, though, so you should definitely check them out here. Note how he slips in a vegetarian starter kit for the President to peruse when he has a free moment. Love it.

Here's something. Today, George W. Bush "pardoned" a pair of turkeys, for whatever misdeeds they've been capable of packed into a filthy, windowless shed throughout their painful little lives. Two birds (out of the approximately 50 million turkeys who will have been killed for Thanksgiving this year) would at least be a start, if it weren't for the fact that the pardoned animals are usually sent to a place called "Frying Pan Park," which is about as unpleasant a retirement home for birds as it sounds. In case that isn't enough of a downer, the turkeys (who are morbidly obese because of the drugs they've been given to make them grow) aren't likely to live for more than a few months after their reprieve without specialized care. This year's lucky turkeys are being sent to Disneyland, to replace the turkeys who died last year shortly after their pardon. As we normally do around this time of year, PETA sent a letter to the president to point some of this stuff out. He hasn't gotten back to us yet, but we did get some good coverage of the story in the media, which you can check out here.

On a lighter note, I've been reading a bunch of stories recently about the increasing number of people who are going to be having themselves a vegetarian Thanksgiving. Fox news has a great article on the topic this week, and Business Week had a big piece on the success of Turtle Island Foods (which makes Tofurky products). The company "is turning a robust profit and expects $10 million in sales in 2006, despite dramatically lowering the cost of Tofurkys over the years." So, while this isn't exactly going to stop me from freaking out about the way turkeys are treated by companies like Butterball, it's pretty damn encouraging.