Iowa Rep. Steve King must be a big fan of Philadelphia quarterback Michael Vick, or at least a fan when Vick was part of the Atlanta Falcons and busted for engaging in dog fighting.

In respect to Vick, he has changed his ways. King, on the other hand, recently made the argument for allowing animal fights to be legal. Of course, there is not a valid argument for this brutal torture, whether it involves chickens or dogs.

“When the legislation that passed in the farm bill that says that it’s a federal crime to watch animals fight or to induce someone else to watch an animal fight but it’s not a federal crime to induce somebody to watch people fighting, there’s something wrong with the priorities of people that think like that,” King said.

No one who has any concept of the horrible sport of dog fighting can compare it to a professional boxing event or a high school wrestling match. There are rules in those. If someone is noticeably hurt, then the contest stops. Plus, the contestants are doing it willingly and can stop at anytime.

Dogs are trained by being mistreated and molded into vicious fighting beasts. They are then thrown into a pit where it is a fight until the death, not unlike a Roman gladiator contest. The ones that survive are scarred for life in more ways than one.

The equivalent for people would be to take toddlers, abuse them and channel them to just one path in life – to fight until the death.

King is one of the major anti-animal welfare members of Congress. He recently voted against an amendment to the farm bill that would have made it a crime to bring a child to an animal fighting event.