Animal Torture v. Human Torture

I personally don't care whether Michael Vick is reinstated to the NFL or not. For one, he's not very good. And second, well, who cares.

But the arguments for keeping Vick out are really interesting. Peter King at Sports Illustrated prints some of the e-mail responses after he said Vick should come back. One of them gets at the heart of a lot of the outrage toward Vick:

"He's a dog torturer. He has no room in our society let alone our favorite sport. He should be banned for life.'

That's interesting because whereas Vick was roundly condemned for torturing dogs, we have an entire political party saying it's OK to torture human beings in secret prisons with no accountability.

Now I think torturing dogs is terrible. Animal rights are important. I had an uncle (now-deceased) who abused animals and I would have had no problem with him serving some time for it. But what does it say about our society when torturing animals is a far bigger deal with far more moral condemnation than torturing people?