There was good news for animals yesterday in Missouri, when Secretary of State Robin Carnahan officially certified the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act for the November statewide election. The measure will appear as Proposition B on the ballot, and we will be working hard this fall to encourage Missouri citizens to vote Yes on Prop B.

I joined nearly 1,000 animal advocates from across the country this weekend at HSUS’s sixth annual Taking Action for Animals conference here in Washington, where attendees heard from Nigel Barker, Wayne Pacelle, Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., and other leaders and experts in the animal welfare field. And today, hundreds of those who attended also rallied on Capitol Hill with actress Wendie Malick and Rep.

I’m always curious about which blog posts resonate most with you—the readers. Traffic to my blog is a good indicator of what subjects are top of mind for animal advocates. So, below, I list the top ten most popular blog posts so far for the first half of 2010. In first place (by a mile) is my January blog on the release of our 2009 Humane Scorecard. Many of you want to know where your legislators stand on key animal protection issues—and our annual report card is a great place to start.

Here’s a selection of comments that have come into the blog lately. I recently wrote about the efforts to end cruel animal “crush” videos. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee passed a bill by Reps. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., to crack down on traffickers of these videos of extreme animal cruelty. Many of you are angry about these sick videos, too:

Ten states held primary elections yesterday, and voters across the country decided which candidates will face off in the November match-ups.

In a year that could spell trouble for long-serving incumbents, as voters are fed up with Washington insiders and politics as usual, it seems unlikely that a former seven-term congressman with ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff could stage a comeback. But that’s what former Rep. Richard Pombo is trying to do—by moving to another district.

California Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez (D-Shafter) announced today that he was withdrawing his name from the lieutenant governor’s race, and he threw his support behind other Democratic hopefuls.

Voters in two states—New Jersey and Virginia—tomorrow will decide on candidates for statewide elected office, and the Humane Society Legislative Fund is letting animal advocates know that the stakes are high for animals on election day. In the two gubernatorial races, HSLF strongly endorses one Democrat and one Republican who have each demonstrated a career-long commitment to public policies that protect animals from cruelty and abuse.

Virginia state Sen. Ken Cuccinelli may be one of the only elected officials in the country running for statewide office who is an apologist for staged animal fighting and has the record to prove it. He’s running this November for attorney general in Virginia, yet he’s soft on dogfighting and cockfighting. One of the last boosters of cockfighting to run for statewide office, former Democratic U.S. Rep. Chris John, got clobbered when he ran for U.S. Senate in Louisiana in 2004 and it was his tolerance for animal fighting that was his undoing.

The confirmation process for federal appointments can be a long row to hoe, as we are now seeing with the Supreme Court nomination hearings for Sonia Sotomayor. But the agriculture metaphor is even more relevant for Cass Sunstein, the Harvard Law School professor and constitutional scholar who is President Obama’s pick to be regulatory czar, or more technically the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).