Update: You can read PETA’s letter to the Commanding Officer of the Marine Corps Base Hawaii (MCBH) about this video here, and if you want to show your support for investigating and punishing those involved, you can do so here.

A lot of people have been writing in and commenting about a shocking video that has recently surfaced which shows a smiling marine throwing a live puppy off a cliff while his friend laughs. Witnessing this kind of sadism under any circumstances is incredibly disturbing, but there’s something particularly horrifying about seeing it perpetrated by members of the military, and our caseworkers are currently analyzing the video footage to determine its legitimacy, as well as pushing military authorities to follow through on their own thorough investigation of this reprehensible act.

From what I understand, the culprit is believed to be based in Hawaii, and we intend to ensure that he—and anyone else involved in this atrocity—is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law if this video is determined to be authentic. I’ll keep you posted.

I think I may have mentioned before how unhappy it makes me when brain-dead celebrities buy puppies from pet stores and drag them around until they get tired of them. Well, following an investigation which indicated that Britney’s favorite Hollywood hellhole, Pets of Bel Air, may have been getting its animals from puppy mills and operating without a license, the place was shut down yesterday! I have to say, I don’t have the highest of hopes that ol’ Brit is going to be able to figure out the ethical implications of this little piece of news all by herself, but it sure as hell sends a great message to anyone who’s considering buying an animal from a pet store instead of adopting. Check out the full story here.

Well, for now anyway. The Ellen DeGeneres puppy story has been all over the news lately and a lot of people have been asking us for our stance on the issue, but I have to say I was pretty surprised by the reaction after I posted PETA’s statement on the subject yesterday. Comments ranged from complaints that we were being too soft on her to admonitions that we were being too hard on her to some very impassioned attacks against both Ellen herself and the shelter involved.

But this just isn’t a black-and-white issue. There really are two legit sides to the story, and I honestly can’t understand why anyone would paint either Ellen or Mutts & Moms (the shelter that confiscated her dog) as a villain here. For one thing, the shelter has rules in place for a very good reason—to protect the animals. It seems like in this case they really could have taken the time to make a more thorough evaluation in the hopes of avoiding another traumatic move for the animal (there are certainly plenty of suitable homes for animals with kids in them), but you can’t fault a shelter for enforcing the rules it has in place to prevent animals from ending up in bad situations.

Now as far as Ellen is concerned, she screwed up by not reading what happened to be some really important fine print, but that doesn’t make her a bad person. On the contrary, with so many vapid celebrities running around with puppies under their arms that they picked up from some Hollywood pet store without so much as a passing thought for the millions of homeless animals in shelters, Ellen’s choice to adopt was commendable, and I hope that message doesn’t get lost in all the partisan ranting about this story that’s going on in the media.

TimeInc/Creative Commons

For anyone who may have missed this story, Ellen Degeneres adopted a puppy from a shelter a little while back, but gave him away to her hairdresser when she found that he wasn’t getting along very well with her cats. When the folks from the shelter called to check up and found out what had happened, they took the dog back from the hairdresser, who didn’t meet the standards of a background check that the shelter requires of anyone adopting an animal.

An awful lot of people have been contacting us to find out where PETA stands on the issue, so I figured I’d share our official statement on the subject, since there really is a bunch going on with this story. Here it is:

At a time when so many people in Hollywood—like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton—are making impetuous "pet" purchases, PETA commends Ellen DeGeneres for adopting a homeless animal from a shelter rather than buying a dog. Every purchase of an animal from a pet store sentences to death an animal who is desperately waiting in an animal shelter for a home. We know that Ellen was trying to do the right thing in finding the dog a new home. She just missed a step in neglecting to contact the agency first.

PETA does think that the agency's policies of doing home checks and not allowing people to transfer animals to others are good rules that protect animals. Ellen was just trying to do the right thing—she is a huge animal lover—and she surely has learned from this experience.

So there you have it. It really sucks that Ellen had a bad experience after doing the compassionate thing and adopting from a shelter, but you can’t really fault a shelter for going the extra mile to make sure everyone who ends up with one of their animals is likely to be a responsible guardian. I guess we just see both sides of the story on this one.

I just heard that Mickey Rourke is holding a protest in Miami this afternoon. Apparently, he bought a puppy from a pet store around Christmas and the puppy died a couple of weeks later. Once Mickey learned from PETA’s Dan Mathews how pet shops sell all sorts of sick and inbred animals all the time, he fired off a letter to the store immediately. And today he’ll be in front of the store letting the public know what he’s learned.

Did you see the guy in Domino or Sin City? Total badass. My suggestion to the store: Do what the man says. For real.