Steve King is proud of his contribution to animal cruelty.

Steve King (R-IA) is a teabagging right-wing nut. So of course, he loooooves states' rights! According to Think Progress, he loves them so much that he apparently thinks that states maybe have the right to disregard Supreme Court decisions?

KING: Why should I care about the conclusions that have been brought forward by the Supreme Court if we can race from 1965, Connecticut having a Tenth Amendment right to establish a policy, a Supreme Court that creates a right to privacy that’s the foundation for mandated abortion, and here were are discussing whether we’re going to mandate everybody in America fund and provide that contraceptives. … Why should I care?

At least I think that's what he's trying to say. Either that or he thinks that Griswold v. Connecticu says the opposite of what it actually says. Anyway, he's a big old tenther.

Which made this news story pretty surprising:

(LA TIMES)

WASHINGTON — Taking aim at California's pioneering efforts to bolster animal safety, the House Agriculture Committee has moved to block states from imposing their own standards for agriculture products on producers from other states.

Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican who represents the country's leading egg-producing state, said he introduced the amendment because the California law and others like it "scrambles and creates a patchwork quilt of state regulations."
"If California wants to regulate eggs that come into the state, fine," King said. "But don't be telling the states that are producing a product that's already approved by the USDA or the FDA how to produce that product."
He said that the California requirement violates the commerce clause of the Constitution, which gives the federal government jurisdiction over interstate commerce issues.

Because if there's one thing right-wing Republicans love even more than states' rights, it's the commerce clause!  King's amendment is even called the “Protect Interstate Commerce Act”

 So this amendment must be all about protecting Interstate Commerce, right?

King released a statement Thursday night promising that his amendment “will ensure that radical organizations like the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and PETA are prohibited from establishing a patchwork of restrictive state laws aimed at slowly suffocating production agriculture out of existence."

Ooooh, that makes more sense. Of course, it's a bill to defend against an imaginary threat from relatively weak organizations like PETA against the super-powerful agricultural industry. Now that's the Steve King we've come to know and despise.

If you have the stomach for it, you can read all about King gloating about how his bill will stop animals from getting halfway-decent treatment in the loathsome "Daily Caller" here.