Sarah Palin Flamed by the Left for Hunting

I knew that we would hear from some animal-rights wacko about Sarah's hunting. Simon Barnes, writing the the Times onLine:

Sarah Palin is an obvious pseudonym. John McCain's Republican Party running-mate is clearly not a Sarah at all. It's Michael Palin in drag. There is more than a touch of Monty Python in the way that this pseudo-Palin has been launched upon the world - a fact neatly skewered in a letter published in these pages the other day. Margaret Leonard was taken with lines about Mrs Palin's “steadfast belief in the sanctity of life” and adds: “Given the pictures illustrating the piece, I find it extremely hard to believe this.” Palin was posing with the bloody corpses of animals that she had just shot.
Pure Python - a woman pouting at the camera surrounded by dead bears and neatly slotted moose, declaring that everything that lives is holy, and that she believes in the sanctity of life. The more you shoot, the more holy life gets. How can they fail to make her vice-president?

What was it that terrorist Ingrid Newkirk said, some thing like "A dog is a pig is a rat is a boy"? Thats how the founder of PETA feels and apparently so does Simon.

Killing is part of life, all right. I have seen the terrible drama of death in the wild world many times; lions killing slim and lovely antelopes called lechwe, leopards killing still lovelier impala, wild dogs tearing Bambi into pieces. The sight is undeniably thrilling, as well as being many other things. Life and death: questions don't get much more bigger, especially for the ones doing the dying.
But a carnivore that kills for food still represents an aspect of the sanctity of life - or at least, of the processes that make life work. Popping off a moose for fun seems to me a complete denial of these principles.

But of course, Simon doesn't mention the fact that predators in the wild also get a kick out of hunting. If he doesn't believe that animals enjoy hunting as much as humans, he should come watch my dogs hunt. You will never see a more joyous creature.