KBOO's locally produced series of reports and commentary about the environment in Our backyard: This edition: Murder on the Columbia. The Swiss have in their constitution a requirement that "account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms". Writing in the current edition of The_Weekly_Standard , author and lawyer Wesley J. Smith complains that what the Swiss did is yet another symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization. This disease, he writes, causes us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns and reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people. Smith also says " … the animal rights movement grew out of [this] same poisonous soil … Thus … animal rights advocates believe that what is done to an animal should be judged morally as if it were done to a human being." It should come as no surprise that neither Mr. Smith nor The Weekly Standard have anything to say about the 6 sea lions to death this past weekend while they were trapped in cages near the Bonneville dam. But the traditional media has weighed in with the meme that sea lions are the greatest threat to endangered the salmon while the root_cause get's little attention.