Genius! In what looks like an amphibian homage to our "baby" coat, Lady Gaga has chosen a "ribbeting " way to tell the world that skins aren't in.

Check out what she said about the newest addition to her wacky wardrobe:

"The Kermit the Frog outfit is by an incredible designer by the name of Jean[-Charles] de Castelbajac, and he does a lot of museum art fashion pieces. … I really loved this one in particular because I thought it was commentary on not wearing fur, 'cause I hate fur and I don't wear fur. We were all laughing in the house about how it looks like a pile of dead Kermits."

Written by Shawna Flavell

We’ve been trying to get designer Donna Karan to watch some footage of exactly what happens to the animals killed for her fur coats for a long time now—and yesterday, a brave PETA member who was up in New York for fashion week made sure that happened, with a little help from some soy lattes: Dressed to the nines and carrying a tray of coffees, she marched up to Donna Karan’s apartment and was welcomed inside without any questions, and offered a seat in the living room. When Donna Karan returned home, my friend pulled out the mini DVD player she had in her bag and cued up the fur farm footage, prompting the following exchange:

…and so on, until Donna decided enough was enough and escorted my friend out of the house. Pissed off as she was, hopefully this has at least planted the seed in her head that it’s time to stop supporting the horrific abuses of the fur industry. But if that doesn’t work, we’ve got a few more tricks up our sleeve:

The New York Post featured this story on their front page today. You can read their coverage here.

Last week, there were a lot of news reports mentioning the fact that President Bush had turned up for a dinner with Saudi King Abdullah wearing a full-length fur-lined robe. It’s probably for the best that there aren’t any available images of this little fashion disaster, but we did confirm that the President had received the robe as a gift from the king, which prompted this response from PETA VP Dan Mathews:

The damage is done as far as the animals are concerned, but we’re hoping the President will consider donating the robe to our anti-fur campaign. We have a great program in which old furs are given to homeless people who can't afford to buy coats (the only people who have any excuse to wear fur), so we’d be sure to put it to good use. You can read PETA President Ingrid Newkirk’s appeal to the President here.

In response to a request from PETA, DirectBuy, which had been selling fur coats, hats, and wraps, has agreed to remove all the fur from its catalogs. DirectBuy is the nation’s largest franchiser of members-only consumer buying centers with 149 showrooms across the U.S. and Canada (thank you, Wikipedia), so that’s a whole lot of fur not being sold anymore. If you see what I mean. Hooray!

Here's another classic for you, from a few years back. I've often heard people make the point that no one would wear fur if they were able to see that draping yourself in dead babies is barbaric, regardless of the species. Of course, only at PETA can you make that point in a meeting and end up with a "baby" fur coat by the end of the day. Yup. The handsome model in luxury baby trim is my friend Pulin. And the expressions on those people's faces are priceless.

Have you voted for North America’s sexiest vegetarian yet? Here's an interview with one of the finalists in Sacramento.

I had heard of this video about the “Bionic Burger” but I had never seen it until today. Gross.

Nancy from LA sent me this amazing story about a cat who must have heard about the Iams recall and took matters into her own hands, err, paws. Nancy said the cat must have decided, "Screw this, I'm going for fish and chips."

Guess which dinosaur is an ancestor to the chicken.

In case you're looking for another reason to go vegetarian . . . bacon may cause lung damage. For real.

Is your rescued dog lonely? Maybe this could help. I don’t even want to think about the cleanup.

Chicken ghost stories.

Andy Dick is funny. Check out his spoof Gap ad.

And finally, here’s a great piece from ABC on our chinchilla ranch investigation.

As always, if you find something cool on the Internet that you think other PETA Files readers would like, be sure to send it to me. Thanks!

Maybe Britney should stick to her trademark crotch shots, because her new post-rehab look definitely isn’t working for her. Unless of course she’s actually going for the whole "street walker" look, in which case she nailed it. I’m referring to this pic from an article talking about her supposed “comeback”:

I realize the girl has had it rough and the whole teen star aftermath meltdown was inevitable, but now that she’s got a couple of husbands and a stint in rehab behind her, one would think she’d get over her desperate need for attention and ditch the furs. Anyway, if you’d like to send her some inspirational thoughts to help her get over her current fur addiction, you can do that here (click on the star).

And of course, if the furs are fake Britney, I totally take back the whole “street walker” thing. I was just joshing with ya.

Word on the street is that fashion maven Tim Gunn is going to be introducing Dan Mathews at his New York booksigning for Committed: A Rabble-Rouser’s Memoir tonight. If you live in NYC, I highly recommend making the trek to the Chelsea Barnes and Noble at 7 p.m., as any evening with Dan is bound to be, um, interesting to say the least, if this pic from one of his runway takeovers in Milan is anything to go by:

The other dates of Dan’s whirlwind tour are on his MySpace page. Dude has been on MySpace for, like, five months and he already has almost 700 friends, which makes me feel a bit lame, given that my friend list has barely progressed beyond Tom and Princess Cuteyface in three years. Maybe I need to get into the book game.

You know what was sweet? PETA's "Eat The Whales" Campaign. For those of you not familiar with it, the concept behind this campaign was to encourage people who just "can't do without meat" to limit themselves to really, really large animals in order to minimize the number who had to die for their flesh addiction. I always bring that point up when people say "I only eat white meat." As if eating more chickens were somehow better than eating a combination of chickens and cows.

"Eat The Whales" was launched outside the 2001 International Whaling Convention by PETA activists "distributing 'Eat the Whales' leaflets," as the press release puts it, "displaying a colorful 'Eat the Whales' banner, and serving 'whale meat' to nonvegetarians, pro- and anti-whalers alike," and it made (excuse the pun) a really big splash. I've always thought of "Eat The Whales" as one of the best things of its kind that PETA has done. The campaign immediately grabs your attention, because, well, why in God's name would PETA be encouraging people to eat whales? But it also raises some really important questions about the arbitrary lines we draw when it comes to what kind of killing is acceptable to us. Why do some of the same people who get up in arms at the notion of a whaling ship harpooning a whale have no qualms whatsoever about eating a ham sandwich?

I know this one is controversial, and I know that not all animal activists share my enthusiasm for it—but my attitude towards "Eat The Whales" has always been this: I can guarantee you that whether people took it seriously or not (the “whale meat” PETA handed out was vegan after all), there wasn't a single person who actually ate more whale because of the campaign. But a lot of people who were outraged at the very suggestion that anyone would kill and eat these wonderful creatures were also forced to ask themselves whether, just maybe, they shouldn't be eating any animals at all.