ohmidog!

I was honored to learn today that ohmidog! is in the running for a “Mobbie” — a new series of awards for the best blogs in Maryland, sponsored by the Baltimore Sun.

I’m even more honored to learn that we are in the category “misfits.”

Click the link on the top of our leftside rail to vote for us, though I should point out it does requiring logging in and setting up an account with the Sun – meaning not that you have to subscribe, only that they will probably bug you to later.

As I am a good week late learning of this competition, and as dogs don’t get to vote, I don’t hold out much hope of  besting the other “misfits.”

But a respectable showing would be nice — at least topping, say, “The Baltimore Sewing Examiner.”

John Manard, who escaped from a Kansas prison by hiding inside a dog crate, was sentenced yesterday to another 10 years in federal prison on weapons charges, according to the Kansas City Star.

Manard was sprung from the Lansing Correctional Facility in 2006 by a prison volunteer, who used her dog van to drive him to freedom. Manard was hidden inside a cardboard box placed inside a dog crate.

The volunteer, Toby Young, was the founder of Safe Harbor, a program that rescued dogs from animal shelters and worked with inmates to train the pets and make them suitable for adoption. Married and a mother of two, she became romantically involved with the prisoner while working inside the Lansing Correctional Facility. You can read more about that saga — a Lifetime movie waiting to happen — here.

After leaving the Lansing prison, the two went to Young’s house where they took her husband’s two pistols.

Young, was sentenced to 27 months in prison for giving a firearm to a felon. Manard’s new conviction on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm comes on top of his escape conviction and a previous murder conviction, for which he was serving a life sentence.

Another celebrity is missing her Malti-poo.

Former “Baywatch” star Brooke Burns has posted signs around the Los Angeles area offering a reward for her dog Max, missing since Saturday, TMZ reported.

Posters describe the dog as “very friendly” and offer a $250 reward.

Jessica Simpson, meanwhile, has given up on the search for her Malti-Poo, Daisy, who she says was snatched by a coyote.

Should the sale of videos depicting dogfighting and other animal cruelty be protected by the First Amendment?

That’s the question the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on today in the case of Robert J. Stevens, author and producer of several films about pit bulls and dogfighting.

Stevens, 69, says he had nothing to do with the dogfights themselves. He only made and sold tapes showing them — tapes he says had educational and historical value. He was convicted and sentenced to 37 months under a 1999 federal law that bans selling “depictions of animal cruelty.”

The law was struck down last year when a federal appeals court overturned Stevens conviction on First Amendment grounds.

The  case has divided animal rights groups and free-speech advocates, according to the New York Times.

At issue is whether the court should designate a category of expression as so vile that it deserves no protection under the First Amendment. The last time the court did that was in 1982, with child pornography.

The law was enacted in 1999 in response to the sale of  “crush videos,”  which showed small animals being stomped on by women.

The law applies to recordings of “conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed.” It exempts materials with “serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical or artistic value.”

News organizations, including The New York Times, filed a brief supporting Stevens, arguing that the 1999 law “imperils the media’s ability to report on issues related to animals.”

In a brief supporting the government, the Humane Society of the United States said that “gruesome depictions of animal mutilation targeted” by the law “simply do not merit the dignity of full First Amendment protection.”

The American Humane Association also supports the federal government’s position. “This is a case about animal cruelty, plain and simple,” said American Humane President and CEO Marie Belew Wheatley. “… While many parties may argue the technicalities and interpretations of the law, the real focus should be that it is immoral, it is inhumane and it should be illegal to exploit, torture and kill animals for someone’s twisted sense of ‘entertainment’ and someone else’s profit.”

“While acts of animal cruelty have long been outlawed,” the brief for Stevens said, “there have never been any laws against speech depicting the killing or wounding of animals from the time of the First Amendment’s adoption through the intervening two centuries.” The brief also notes that Stevens’ sentence was 14 months longer than that of Michael Vick.

The police chief of the small California town of Maricopa has apparently been ordered to turn in his gun after shooting and killing a family’s dog in September.

A temporary restraining order delivered to him Friday by  the Kern County Superior Court commissioner also requires Chief Gene Fretheim to stay away from the four people whose dog he shot.

The chief told the Bakersfield Californian he had no intention of giving up his gun. Later Monday, however, he did turn in his weapon, according to Bakersfield Now, the website of Channel 56.

Lutie Thompson, a Bakersfield attorney who requested the restraining order, described the a 63-year-old officer with more than 27 years experience at the Los Angeles Police Department as “a loose cannon,” according to the newspaper report.

Th0mpson requested the order on behalf of  Lisa Chavez, who claimed that her 8-year-old pit bull mix, Matty, had been snared by a dog catcher and then shot by Fretheim. She said the chief wants to get rid of all pit bulls in town, and told her he shot her dog because it was a pit bull.

The chief said the dog had bitten a city employee, and that as he and  ”a volunteer dog catcher” tried to capture it, the dog lunged at him. He shot the dog, and then it was snared, he said.

The court order says Fretheim has to stay100 yards away from Chavez, 38, Milne, 35, and their two children aged, 7 and 13. A hearing is scheduled Oct. 15 on whether the order will be extended.

City officials say the restrianing order may have been delivered prematurely – and that  the court merely approved scheduling a hearing on the request for a restraining order, as opposed to the order itself.

Until it’s all figured out, the chief will perform only administrative duties.