A week ago, in my post "The Palin Pick Spurs National Organization For Women To Endorse Obama", I drew attention to the fact that NOW was driven to endorse Barack Obama for president by John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Looks like they're not alone.

Yesterday, Obama got another endorsement, this one from The Humane Society Legislative Fund. Interestingly, like NOW's, their endorsement was a rare foray into presidential politics. In the endorsement, Mike Markarian, HSLF President wrote:

While we've endorsed hundreds of congressional candidates for election, both Democrats and Republicans, we've never before endorsed a presidential candidate. We have members on the left, in the center, and on the right, and we knew it could be controversial to choose either party's candidate for the top office in the nation. But in an era of sweeping presidential power, we must weigh in on this most important political race in the country. Standing on the sidelines is no longer an option for us.

I'm proud to announce today that the HSLF board of directors -- which is comprised of both Democrats and Republicans -- has voted unanimously to endorse Barack Obama for President.

As for their reasons for endorsing a presidential ticket this year, Markarian cited Barack Obama's "solid support for animal protection" and called Joe Biden "a stalwart friend of animal welfare advocates," while he called John McCain "absent" and "inattentive" to animal protection issues and noted that McCain didn't even bother to fill out the HSLF presidential questionaire. But that alone likely would not have been enough to push them off the fence into publicly announcing their support for Obama/Biden. No, what did it for them was, like NOW, Sarah Palin's presence on the ticket.

Again from Markasian's endorsement (there's so much good stuff here, I don't know where to cut, so I hope HSLF will forgive my liberal citation):

While McCain's positions on animal protection have been lukewarm, his choice of running mate cemented our decision to oppose his ticket. Gov. Sarah Palin's (R-Alaska) retrograde policies on animal welfare and conservation have led to an all-out war on Alaska's wolves and other creatures. Her record is so extreme that she has perhaps done more harm to animals than any other current governor in the United States.

Palin engineered a campaign of shooting predators from airplanes and helicopters, in order to artificially boost the populations of moose and caribou for trophy hunters. She offered a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf as an economic incentive for pilots and aerial gunners to kill more of the animals, even though Alaska voters had twice approved a ban on the practice. This year, the issue was up again for a vote of the people, and Palin led the fight against it -- in fact, she helped to spend $400,000 of public funds to defeat the initiative.

What's more, when the Bush Administration announced its decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, Palin filed a lawsuit to reverse that decision. She said it's the "wrong move" to protect polar bears, even though their habitat is shrinking and ice floes are vanishing due to global warming.

The choice for animals is especially clear now that Palin is in the mix. If Palin is put in a position to succeed McCain, it could mean rolling back decades of progress on animal issues.

This actually mirrors what The Defenders of Wildlife said in their endorsement of Barack Obama earlier this month:

"John McCain's choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate confirmed that the only candidates we can truly count on to protect our air, land and water are Senators Obama and Biden, and we are proud to today offer our endorsement of the Obama-Biden ticket," said Schlickeisen.

Which makes this as good a time as any to re-post what may be the most effective ad this year, from The Defenders of Wildlife:

Remember to donate HERE if you'd like to keep it up on the air.