Thieves in the Temple.

sunlight bathed the golden glow.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed, despite "moderate" Republican attempts to destroy it with amendments; now we turn our attention to H.R. 12, a.k.a. the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1965 so that, you know, women enjoy equal pay. Specifically, the act would change much of the wording of current law to better reflect the difficulties women face in getting equal pay, would fund negotiation skills training for girls and women, and would require more data collection on pay disparities. The U.S. Census Bureau has been telling us for years that women make around 75 cents for every dollar men make -- even adjusting the data for factors such as similar job titles and experience, etc., don't yield a figure much higher than that, and women still face discrimination in even getting to the point where they have similar job titles and experience. The point is, women should be making a dollar for every dollar men make. The ACLU provides the contact tool.

Americans United has stated that the current stimulus bill makes progress in keeping church/state separation principles intact. The House version of H.R. 1 doesn't fund religious schools, but does fund the Compassion Capital Fund, which (as we know from living under Mr. Bush for eight years) directly funds religious institutions and permits them to discriminate in hiring. How many times must I tell these pimps! If you want federal money, you have to follow federal laws, and that means don't discriminate in hiring. But the Senate version of H.R. 1, strangely enough, doesn't fund either religious schools or the Compassion Capital Fund. Let's try and keep it that way. AU provides the contact tool.

Meanwhile, H.R. 669, the Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act, shall, in its own inimitable words, direct the Secretary of the Interior to "promulgate regulations that establish a process for assessing the risk of all nonnative wildlife species proposed for importation into the United States." The bill would also establish a list of "approved species" for importation and assess penalties for importing, well, unapproved species. The bill would even allow the Secretary to issue permits for importing unapproved species, "for scientific research, medical, accredited zoological or aquarium display purposes," et cetera. Congress seems to have put the right amount of thought into this bill, so Union for Concerned Scientists helps you support it.

In other news, Greg Palast (a.k.a. America's last reporter) has, rather unexpectedly, written a tome praising Mr. Obama's performance so far, especially insofar as Mr. Obama only "pretends" to listen to Republicans. I wish it were so. As commenter number two suggests, Mr. Obama started out by compromising with Republicans -- for example, he didn't insist on any tax increases for the rich in the bill, which this economy (and any moral society) desperately needs. And the "liberal" media isn't praising Mr. Obama for "post-partisanship" right now -- they've already decided that if zero Republicans vote for a stimulus bill, then the bill isn't "bipartisan" enough. How many times must I tell these pimps! Americans don't want "bipartisan" government; they want good government. Only the fat and lazy "liberal" media elites want "bipartisan" government, and by "bipartisan" they mean "let's all come together to give the Republicans whatever they want." We need a new circle of Hell for these clowns.

I worship the sun.

What's with the Senate? H.R. 2, which would reauthorize SCHIP, passed with a veto-proof majority in the Senate when Mr. Bush occupied the Oval Office, and now one clause helping legal immigrant children and pregnant women is hanging them up? Legal, you dorks, not illegal. Even Heath Shuler voted for the damn thing. Hell, even Thaddeus McCotter (who just barely beat a guy who raised about as much money as the movie Clerks cost) voted for the damn thing. You, good citizen, may use 1.888.797.8717 to call your Senators, or use this contact tool, courtesy NETWORK.

The Senate, also, has attached a $90 billion Alternative Minimum Tax "patch" to the stimulus bill (H.R. 1) that passed out of the House yesterday. But they've also fooled with the Child Tax Credit. The House lets all low-income families' earnings count toward the Child Tax Credit, but the Senate wants to impose a floor of $6,000 before letting earnings count toward the Child Tax Credit. Yes, that is better than current law, but I don't see the need for an earnings floor at all. It's not gonna kill the federal government to be a little nicer to the least fortunate, and it will help the economy -- certainly more so than another patch on the AMT, which has a quite overrated effect on middle-class earnings. The Coalition for Human Needs provides the contact tool.

In other news, I'm disgusted that Mr. Obama decided to strike the "hundreds of millions in contraceptives" part of the stimulus shortly after Republicans stomped their feet about it. Mr. Obama should not reward bad behavior -- not just from Republicans acting like babies, but from the "liberal" media egging them on. I understand you're supposed to pick your battles. I understand you don't have to do everything you want to do right away. I'm even willing to consider that Mr. Obama set up this battle just to draw their stupidity out into the light. But I think all of that is less relevant than this: when Republicans act like brats, you don't enable them -- you slap them in the face and tell them to start acting like grown-ups. I think it's going to be a long four or eight years, folks.

crystal ball.

Earlier this week we heard that the stimulus bill would fund road building three times more than it would fund public transit; now CALPIRG informs me that two amendments would boost public transportation funding in the bill by $14 billion. H.R. 1 currently appropriates $30 billion for roads and a little over $7 billion for public transit, so with an extra $14 billion for public transit we still have an imbalance, but it's a better imbalance than before. So CALPIRG still provides a way for you to talk to Nancy Pelosi about the need for more public transit funding. You'll want to edit the text CALPIRG provides, in order to reflect changing situations.

You may have heard of recent salmonella problems with peanut butter from the Peanut Corporation in Georgia, which supplies peanut butter to schools, nursing homes, hospitals, and snack food corporations; hundreds of people fell ill and seven died. So Consumers Union provides a contact tool with which you may demand better screening and enforcement from the FDA. This isn't a Bush Mobb FDA anymore, which greatly increases the probability that the FDA will give a hoot about protecting people from tainted food, instead of just letting the market take care of it. I think we all know by now the market takes care of itself, not you or any other consumer.

Meanwhile, factcheck.org provides yet another sober analysis of the Franken/Coleman drama in Minnesota. The summary makes clear early that Mr. Coleman has not accused the Canvassing Board of "funny business," though the "liberal" media has made, it seems, hundreds of such accusations without a scintilla of evidence. (They moved votes around in boxes in cars? How dare they not install transmat technology in Minnesota!) Even factcheck.org thinks it's unlikely Mr. Coleman will win, especially now that he wants even more rejected ballots counted -- but folks like Bill O'Reilly, whose own "coverage" of this drama would have gotten him fired in an earlier era, can still dream. (And yes, football fans, that is former Purple People Eater Alan Page writing the December 24 decision and selecting the three judges who'll oversee Mr. Coleman's "election contest.")

shoulda killed me last year!

CREDO alerts me to the Congressional Review Act, passed by the Gingrich Congress in 1996, which permits Congress to overrule federal regulations simply by joint resolution. Did Mr. Gingrich ever imagine that a Democratic Congress could overrule a Republican President in this manner? Maybe, but this Congress could overrule a slew of "midnight" Bush Mobb regulations weakening the Environmental Protection Act and permitting industries to emit more toxic lead, among others. You can find a good list of "midnight" regulations to discuss with your Congressperson here, and you can find your Congressperson's phone number using the tools in the upper left-hand corner, as always. Nancy Pelosi's number is 1.202.225.0100, by the way; you might encourage her to take the lead in these matters.

Congress will consider setting aside $10 billion for home and building "weatherization." That sounds like an awful lot of money for an awful little good, don't it? In fact, it's exactly the opposite. Weatherization means, mainly, making your home or building more energy-efficient, and a little weatherization goes a long way -- you'll put insulation in or install a more energy-efficient water heater or seal air leaks around the house once, but you'll reap the benefits for dozens of winters and summers. And in the context of a stimulus bill that could be larger than Mr. Bush's $700 billion welfare handout to his financial service cronies, $10 billion gives a lot of bang for the buck. The government routinely gives away more to the oil industry and the nuclear industry to no discernable public benefit. Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk what to do. You may want to remind them: working with Republican extremists is not what the American people want, no matter what the "liberal" media says. Americans want good government. This is good government.

The Coalition on Human Needs suggests that the Senate, in considering SCHIP reauthorization, might strip out the part that gives legal immigrant children health care immediately, instead of making them wait 5 years. SCHIP reauth cleared the Senate Finance Committee with the pro-legal immigrant children part intact, but other Senators might have their scythes out. Is the hate-illegal-immigrants-at-all-costs lobby really that powerful? Not in my America -- according to a First Focus study, Americans approve of legal immigrant children getting SCHIP benefits by a 79-15 margin, with 60 of those 79 points in the "strongly approve" category. You may call your Senators at 1.800.828.0498 (a number provided by Families USA) or 1.888.797.8717 (provided by Faithful Reform in Health Care in collaboration with the United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries) and ask them not to be a bunch of cruel bastards. You may eschew the words "cruel bastard" if your Senator happens not to be a cruel bastard. It does happen.

Finally, just in case you thought I still wasn't carrying a torch for sending Tha Bush Mobb to jail: the People's Email Network has compiled a database of contact information for every state and county district attorney in the nation. No district attorney will bring a case against Mr. Bush and/or his Mobb unless they think it would be a strong case, but if they know many people in their community think it would be a strong case, they'll be more inclined to consider the possibility that it would be a strong case. So here's where to get started, and here, also, is an excerpt from Vincent Bugliosi's book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, which, I trust, is self-explanatory.

penny rants for the day of January 27, 2009: special "Republicans are still stupid!" edition.

"Hundreds of millions of dollars in contraceptives" is the new Republican attack line on the stimulus package? Yeah, that'll work. I hate it when politicians use scare numbers, and this one won't work unless the "liberal" media does a lot of heavy lifting, which, admittedly, it does seem awfully prepared to do. But no reasonable citizen will be scared by "hundreds of millions" when everyone's already been talking about the coming stimulus package in the hundreds of billions. And Mr. Bush already dropped the ultimate scare number, the $700 billion welfare handout for his cronies in the finance industry; who's scared by numbers after that? And, of course, people don't hate contraceptives like John Boehner seems to think; most people seem to think they're pretty useful. If Republicans keep this sort of thing up, America really will be a one-party state, and that party's going to be Democrat.

Speaking of scare numbers: since Mr. Obama ordered the closure of Guantánamo Bay, both the "liberal" media and Pravda TV have been flogging the myth that 61 former detainees have "returned to terrorism." Really? And these 61 individuals are not in actual American jails facing actual charges why exactly? Possibly because Tha Bush Mobb's actual figure was "18 confirmed and 43 suspected." Possibly because even that number, according to one Seton Hall law professor, is a load of horsedoodle. And keep in mind that's 61 out of some 770 folks who've been detained at Guantánamo, most of whom (if this McClatchy report is accurate) didn't have enough (if any) ties to terror to justify being detained. The wonder is that all 770 don't become terrorists after being held without charges for several years. Sean Hannity shouldn't worry, though -- no one will be asking him to defend the United States against 770 people. He couldn't even scarf up a few dollars out of his millions to keep us from having Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker, though it was (in his words) a cause "worth dying for."

Finally, you may have heard that Mr. Obama ended the abortion gag rule (which prevented U.S. support for any international aid groups that provide abortion services) on Friday. Gag supporters actually have the gall to say no one who morally opposes abortion should have to pay for abortions abroad -- which I guess means they also think that no one who morally opposes the Iraq war should have to pay for that, either. They've said that, right? No, they said, shutup you traitor do you want more planes to fly into more buildings you're killing our troops you hate America. That's more or less what they said. If anti-abortion folks want their morals enacted into policy, all they have to do is a) elect a Republican Congress and b) elect a Republican President who'll appoint more Supreme Court justices who might overturn Roe v. Wade. They had their chance to do these things two and a half months ago, but a) they didn't outvote the rest of us in Congressional elections and b) they spent too much time whining that John McCain wasn't pure enough for them. So, please, Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence, no whining now.

one Christmas catalogue too many.

Bank CEOs testify before the House Financial Services Committee this week, and Common Cause helps you tell your House Rep what to ask. You know, because bank CEOs haven't exactly been forthcoming about what they've been doing with all those hundreds of billions. Maybe it's a matter of national security. Maybe the terrorists will find out and then we'll all die. Seriously, Common Cause provides a list of four questions you might want to ask, but leaves the email form blank, so that you might feel more free to ask your own. Like, "why are you 'too big to fail'?" Well, some might consider that rude. But then, some folks consider me rude.

Jewish Voice for Peace and Just Foreign Policy join together to remind Mr. Obama "to make good on his promise of hope" in re Israel/Palestine relations. I don't remember Mr. Obama ever giving me any hope of better Israel/Palestine policy -- in fact, I distinctly remember Mr. Obama making hawkish speeches defending Israel, more hawkish than would be explained by his need to remind voters that he's not a Secret Muslim About to Start a Caliphate. I don't think his appointment of Mr. Mitchell as Middle East peace envoy demonstrates a sea change, either -- I mean, who else is he going to call? Nonetheless, he's our President now, and we can but demand.

Meanwhile, Families Against Mandatory Minimums notes that Mr. Bush commuted the sentences of two former Border Patrol agents (for the crime of shooting an unarmed man while he was running away) shortly before leaving office. Turns out the two agents were serving mandatory minimum sentences for their crimes, so maybe Mr. Bush did approximately half of a right thing there. Of course, we also know about all the nonviolent and/or first-time and/or low-level drug offenders also serving lengthy mandatory minimum sentences who didn't get a pardon from Mr. Bush. FAMM thus provides a letter-to-the-editor tool with which you may argue against mandatory minimums. There's "required text" and "editable text" in the tool, and the more "editable text" you add, the better your chances of publication. Generally, I find that tough-on-crime types don't do much about crime. They sure do a lot for the prison industry, though.

(Who will dare tell me the source of today's subject header? I think at least one of my readers knows, if she's been paying the requisite amount of attention to her email inbox lately.)

masculine eclipse.

The House version of the economic stimulus bill currently ends the minimum earnings requirement to receive the Child Tax Credit. Said minimum earnings requirement might have been a good idea when we had welfare-as-we-knew-it, but not now. And don't listen to the Brit Humes of the world whine about "people who don't pay taxes getting tax cuts" -- you know full well, because you take approximately twelve breaths a minute and have twice as many ears as mouths, that poor folk get hit harder by sales taxes and payroll taxes than anyone else. So you can sign onto that idea right here, thanks to the Coalition for Human Needs. But the House version also allocates three-quarters of its transportation funding to road-building and just one-quarter to public transportation projects, when that should be the other way around, if anything. People value buses and trains in a way they haven't in years, and not just because gas was four bucks a gallon not too long ago, but also because people know public transportation curbs traffic and reduces our dependence on fossil fuels. It's not that roads don't need help (ever driven through New York state?), but government needs to refocus the way its people have. CALPIRG helps you tell Mrs. Pelosi to get this policy initiative done right.

So there I was, yesterday, urging caution about Mr. Obama stopping military commissions for four months, and then he went and signed an order requiring the closure of Guantánamo within a year. And then another one banning torture. I reserve the right to be skeptical of what my government does -- there's still plenty of time for Mr. Obama to change his mind about any and all of this, frankly -- but he does seem to be curbing the worst excesses of Tha Bush Mobb. Thus the ACLU provides another thank-you note, and True Majority provides yet another. SOA Watch also reminds us of the White House's Comment Line, 202.456.1111, and the White House's Email address, president at whitehouse dot gov, so that you may express your appreciation for these acts -- but also so that you may encourage him to close the infamous School of the Americas (or WHINSEC, as it's now known), where thugs from all over the world go to learn to torture people better.

Finally, the Progressive States Network exposes yet another anti-union front group, this one called (get your hanky) Save Our Secret Ballot, which appears to be a project of members of the Heritage Foundation (the father of the myth of the $73/hour auto worker) and the Goldwater Institute, among others. Guess what they're on about? The Employee Free Choice Act, of course, which, the "liberal" media often tells us, would invalidate secret ballots for workers deciding whether to join a union, except, of course, that it doesn't -- as I've said a million times, and as I'll say a million times more. SOSB looks to amend constitutions in five states to prevent any of this card-check business. Funny thing, though -- given that the Employee Free Choice Act neither ends nor requires the right to a secret ballot, I suspect that the amendment as written by Clint Bolick won't even achieve its supporters' aim, unless a state already has a law requiring a secret ballot for a union election -- and if the Employee Free Choice Act passes, I'm not sure a state could do that. Is it me or are corporate greedheads getting even stupider?

UPDATE. An alert reader reminds me that "banning torture" is far too easy a description of what Mr. Obama did on Friday -- he merely ordered that interrogation techniques follow the Army Field Manual, and said manual was, as you may remember, suddenly loosened up a bit in that regard two years ago. I'm not going to change the wording above, so that I may remember to remain skeptical of my government, as the Founders commanded us to do. Besides, I'm not good with that crossout html doohickey, and even if I were, I'd probably only do it for laughs.

more walls that must come down.

The ACLU provides a thank-you message to President Obama for halting military commission trials at Guantánamo for 120 days, which many reasonable folks have interpreted as the first step toward closing the Guantánamo detention center entirely. Frankly, I would be more cautious -- I think this is the kind of move he can easily go back on. But the message does state the hope that Mr. Obama will continue on this path, and if you want to be more precise about how you feel about it, you can always change the text. My message wound up only being one paragraph instead of three, and I didn't say anything mean. He hasn't earned that yet.

Meanwhile, the wheels of the Senate grind slowly, as Republican amendments (a dozen as of this writing) threaten to derail the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Republicans have been complaining that the Ledbetter Act doesn't limit restitution for pay discrimination complaints, but in fact it does -- in Section 3, the bill clearly limits recovery of back pay to two years prior to the charge. You can look up S. 181 at the thomas website if you want to read it for yourself (I'd link to specific searches, but they expire). American Rights at Work still helps you tell your Senator to pass the Ledbetter Act, but I think a phone call is necessary. Especially to my senior Senator, who I think is being a hardhead.

The Electronic Freedom Foundation points me to FreeYourPhone.org, which aims to liberate cell phones from the software locks that force you into contracts with particular providers when you buy a particular phone. The iPhone, of course, comes to mind -- I'd have one already if it didn't have to come with AT&T, who were perfectly happy to hand over your phone records to Mr. Bush, or if it didn't block applications that compete with Apple's. The more enterprising among you have already broken the chain between phone and provider, but unfortunately that's against the law. I don't recall Moses handing down a tablet from Mt. Sinai saying you're stuck with the provider you got when you got the phone, so go sign the petition already.

penny rants for the day of January 20, 2009: special inauguration edition!

You know what I want? I want a "mute gasbag" button when I watch a new President get inaugurated. I want to hear the crowds and I want to hear Yo Yo Ma, but I don't want to hear Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper or any other punditoid. And you know what else? That "mute gasbag" button doesn't have to work just during the inauguration -- it can also work during moments like the one documented here. Come on, TVs go digital in less than a month. Surely we can roll out the "mute gasbag" function with it.

At around 12.05 pm EST, Chief Justice Roberts hardly knew how to administer the oath of office. Another Bush appointee, I said aloud. Shortly thereafter, the crowd started chanting "O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!" and then politely applauded when President Obama thanked Mr. Bush for his service. And he's given a good speech, duh -- a little too ambiguous for this liberal, but I didn't expect otherwise. I just hope he's looking out on this crowd, and remembering the crowds that have been gathering at the mall for days because they're happy Barack Obama is about to become President, and thinking something like, "I don't need to take (insert name of overrated, overpaid politician/punditoid here) all that seriously." Good luck to him. He'll need quite a long rack of shovels for this Augean mess.

dismantled king is off the throne, there's nothing left.

The House passed their SCHIP reauth last Wednesday, and the Senate Finance Committee approved their version on Friday. The Senate's version isn't much different from the House's, apparently -- both versions will cover documented immigrant children, for example -- and the Senate will probably vote on their version this week. It will not usher in a new era of bipartisanship or post-partisanship or whatever, but it will do better by the least of us, which is our job as citizens. RESULTS provides a toll-free number (888.797.8717) and an email contact tool. Calling is better, of course.

In other news, OMB Watch has published a report, The Bush Legacy: An Assault on Public Protections, concentrating on the myriad ways Mr. Bush has subverted the process of government regulation. The report includes a brief historical perspective, both of the philosophy behind successful government regulation and the philosophy behind its enemy. It's only a little over 60 pages long, and it's not particularly dry, so take some time and reflect on the Reign of Stupid that finally ends today -- and prepare for the rough road ahead.

just give me some truth!

Grassroots.com provides links whereby you may voice your thoughts on Mr. Obama's cabinet picks -- specifically, Health & Human Services nominee Tom Daschle, Labor nominee Hilda Solis, State nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton, Energy nominee Steven Chu, Education nominee Arne Duncan, EPA nominee Lisa Jackson, OMB nominee Peter Orszag, Veterans Affairs nominee Eric Shinseki, Interior nominee Ken Salazar, Agriculture nominee Tom Vilsack, Treasury nominee Timothy Geithner, Attorney General nominee Eric Holder, Homeland Security nominee Janet Napolitano, and U.N. Ambassador nominee Susan Rice. I'm generally indifferent to cabinet nominees -- press me and I'd say thumbs up to Ms. Solis, Mr. Orszag, and Mr. Shinseki, thumbs down to Mr. Vilsack, Mr. Duncan, and Mr. Geithner, and thumbs way, way down to Mr. Daschle -- the Architect of Capitulation is going to hammer out a national health care plan with Congress? I'm sure it'll be just as great as Mitt Romney's, or it won't exist. I'm puzzled by the nomination of actual scientist Mr. Chu for the Department of Energy, since the Energy Department has essentially been a nuclear weapons research facility since President Reagan. Maybe his nomination signals a sea change, or maybe it's the kind of red herring we lefties always get. Anyway, those are the links, and for your convenience they all have editable text.

Meanwhile, that big stimulus package is coming, and the great danger with stimulus packages is, no, not that Republicans will whine about how big they are after they've already spent us into oblivion, but that big corporations will use them to steal taxpayer money without taxpayer accountability. So Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to demand better, as far as broadband policy goes. Specifically, Free Press helps you demand a) focusing on the poor and rural Americans who have no broadband access; b) a commitment to free speech and network neutrality; c) affordability; d) dedication only to new projects and availability to new competitors, including municipalities and non-profits; and e) openness to public scrutiny. You'll notice there's no f) massive welfare handouts to Comcast/AT&T/Verizon so their CEOs can continue to gild their plumbing. Thankfully, these are not three very popular corporations at the time, so take heart. Without getting complacent, you know.

Common Cause also provides a contact tool with which you may support Rep. Frank's TARP Reform and Accountability bill. Like I said, the bailout happened; we tried to stop it, but now we have to make the best of it, and this bill should help make the best of it. We'd like to think having a non-criminal in the White House in charge of disbursing the rest of the money would also help make the best of it, but that remains to be seen. It'd be better to have the law tell banks to negotiate with the government as to how the money will be spent before getting any of it, for example, than to trust the President to do that. We know where "trusting the President" has got us.

Finally, American Rights at Work reminds us that chances are better than ever for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act -- what with both President- and Vice-President-elect being original co-sponsors of the bill while in the Senate, and with 58 (soon 59) Democratic Senators, and with almost three-quarters of those polled by Hart Research Associates this month supporting passage of the bill. And who's on the other side? Republicans who think workers are nothing but a drain on profits and who lie incessantly and shamelessly that the Employee Free Choice Act will wipe out the workers' right to a secret ballot election. That's all they got. So watch a couple ads and sign the petition.

adult education.

Just happened to check in with Glenn Greenwald yesterday, and what was he on about? Tom "Suck On This" Friedman suggesting that killing civilians in Gaza is OK with him as long as it "educates" Hamas, that's what. Admittedly he's a bit clever -- witness paragraph eight, which strains to make you think that maybe no civilians really were killed in Lebanon in 2006, just "pain(ed)." FAIR quickly follows with this analysis, which argues that a) arguing for the targeting, direct or "indirect," of civilians is, in fact, arguing for terrorism, and b) the New York Times has standards for its opinion writers which it may not be enforcing all that strongly. Mr. Friedman no doubt considers himself compassionate in arguing for Hamas's "education" rather than their "eradication," but such is the debasement of all currencies in Bushland -- even "compassion" is worth less than it used to be. The FAIR link above includes contact information for the Times's public editor and Editorial Page editor, whom you may ask if the Times has standards that might prevent its op-ed writers from advocating "pain" for civilians.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed the House earlier this week, no doubt thanks in part to you, but those pesky Republicans in the Senate still might filibuster the thing. CREDO still provides a petition, but forcing cloture might be worth a phone call, especially if your Senator is a Republican. My Republican Senator -- you know, Arlen Specter, the fellow I slammed the other day -- probably would vote for it, but Mr. Specter just hates being the deciding vote on anything if it hurts his party. He's getting a phone call, and your Republican Senator should get one, too. Ask them if it's fair to dismiss fair pay lawsuits just because the plaintiff didn't find out about it 180 days after it started (which is how the Supreme Court interpreted current law), in a corporate culture where workers get punished for discussing their pay rates, no less.

Meanwhile, at the end of his post on Hillary Clinton's Senate confirmation hearing and Rod Blagojevich's sudden embrace of Lord Tennyson, Dick Polman invokes the infamous Tammany Hall pol George Washington Plunkitt (you remember him from high school history class, surely?), and I swear I haven't laughed this hard in months. He even breaks up Mr. Plunkitt's most famous quotation (the one that ends with "I seen my opportunities, and I took 'em") into free verse. I suggest Mr. Polman try that trick for an entire book of Plunkittisms, like the Village Voice did in 1992 with Phil Rizzuto's on-air wanderings during Yankee games. As for Mr. Plunkitt's advice on "the hankerin' to show off your learnin'," well, I wish I could take credit for making that up, but I can't.

whirlpool vision of shame.

If you missed any of yesterday's action alerts regarding SCHIP, don't worry, I've got more. RESULTS helps you call your Congressfolk, Families USA provides a toll-free number at 1.800.828.0498, and Faithful Reform in Health Care (in collaboration with the United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries) provides another, at 1.888.797.8717. OMB Watch reports, by the way, that SCHIP passage might get delayed a bit -- essentially, Congress may choose to reauthorize SCHIP for 4 1/2 years instead of 5. But that doesn't sound like a deal-breaker. Actually, it sounds like a way to delay the bill's passage until Mr. Obama takes office -- it has occurred to me (despite what I suggested yesterday) that Mr. Bush would love to take credit for a SCHIP expansion after vetoing it twice. The fellow is said to be concerned about his legacy, you know, though frankly it's a little late for that.

Meanwhile, Consumers Union now advocates passing credit card reform as part of whatever stimulus program arrives on Mr. Obama's desk in the coming weeks. The House passed fairly strong legislation last year, but could not get a bill conferenced with the Senate; meanwhile, the Fed has also issued stronger guidelines, but they don't take effect for 18 months, which means the credit card companies have until then to gorge themselves. I'm not the biggest fan of attaching legislation to other legislation in a gambit to get it passed, but this is legislation that has already demonstrated staying power, legislation that would only be a poison pill for 30-odd Senators. And 30-odd Senators don't get to tell the rest of us what to do -- at least, not in a healthy society.

ignite the seven cannons!

I have two more tools from Just Foreign Policy in re the Israeli shelling of Gaza: one for Mr. Bush and Congress and another for President-elect Obama, both calling for a ceasefire and an end to the blockade of Gaza. Meanwhile, the incorrigible Alexander Cockburn suggests that Israel's incursion into Gaza isn't even good military strategy. It's enough to make you think that crazy people are in charge over there. It's not that I don't sympathize with what drove them crazy. But crazy is still crazy.

The House may schedule a vote on a SCHIP reauthorization as early as Wednesday, and then it might move to the Senate. NETWORK provides an email tool as well as a toll-free number, 202.225.3121. This version of the SCHIP expansion includes a provision to cover health care for pregnant women and children of legal immigrants, which I believe was the sticking point for some Democrats last time. Let Mr. Irrelevant cite his arcane philosophical objections all he wants this time; given the Democrats' 20-odd vote gain in the House and their 7-odd vote gain in the Senate, Congress should be able to override another veto, which would be Mr. Bush's third.

The $700 billion welfare handout to the financial "industry" is an offense that can never be erased or forgiven, but Rep. Frank has introduced H.R. 384, the TARP Reform and Accountability Act of 2009, which would increase oversight of the last half of the bailout and investigate how the first half was used (or, perhaps more to the point, not used). H.R. 384 will also control executive compensation at corporations receiving TARP money, and will require the Executive branch to set aside between $40 billion and $100 billion for foreclosure mitigation. I suppose it's better than nothing, so here's the contact tool.

Finally, I note that Mr. Bush has decided to address the nation on Thursday evening. I will not be able to watch this address, as I will be at my job, working, I think, more effectively than Mr. Bush ever did at his own job. Perhaps I'll catch the address on youtube later on, unless I have something more interesting to do, like pick the lint out from between my toes. Am I being clear enough on how much I want to listen to a total failure tell me what a total success he is? Just let me know if I'm not. I'd be happy to try harder to make myself clear about this.

penny rants for the day of January 12, 2009.

Last Monday night, we may have witnessed an "if we've lost Jon Stewart, we've lost the country" moment as far as the Israeli shelling of Gaza. The last minute, especially, deconstructs the whole "well, you'd react the same if it were your backyard getting shelled" analogy. One might even apply that deconstruction to 9.11. Oh, wait -- Ron Paul already has. Seriously, I would feel pretty vengeful if someone shelled my backyard. But I would also wonder if I'd done something to deserve it. Right-wingers have a serious problem with the latter formulation, as if for them, man-in-the-mirror moments are only for poor black folks.

Miraculously, I managed to post the very first comment on Dick Polman's American Debate blog on Thursday (before all the right-wing trolls started their crap), and my comment fairly well summarizes my feelings about Pennsylvania's (and therefore my) senior Senator, Arlen Specter -- he's not much of a moderate, let alone a maverick. Let me add, however, that if a race between Mr. Specter and that gasbag Chris Matthews had materialized in 2010, I might have voted for Mr. Specter. I'm befuddled that anyone who thought about it for two minutes would have considered Mr. Matthews a viable candidate. The left hates Mr. Matthews for sucking up to Republicans during the early days of the Iraq war, and the right hates him for jumping off the bandwagon when the war went south. And no, both sides hating a man doesn't translate into "independents will like him," as if independents are somehow a statistical median of what everyone else thinks.

Meanwhile, I'm wondering why Senate Democrats ever considered not seating Roland Burris. Let Dick Durbin talk about Senate rules passed in 1884 all he wants, but the facts remain: the Constitution lets the states decide how to appoint Senators to fill unexpired terms, Mr. Blagojevich had not been impeached (let alone removed from office) at the time of the appointment, and the Illinois state legislature did not change the law to mandate a special election before the appointment, ergo, Mr. Blagojevich gets to appoint Barack Obama's replacement. Mr. Burris is 71 and might not even stand for re-election -- but I bet Republican Rep. Mark Kirk gives him a run for his money if he does. Mr. Kirk is one of the half-dozen actual moderates left in the Republican party, and since he currently represents the least gerrymandered district in a very gerrymandered state, he might be looking forward to facing a nail-biter every six years instead of every two.

Finally, I note that four Republican Senators have so far decided not to stand for re-election in 2010 (and didn't John Thune always want to be Governor more than he wanted to be Senator anyway? His next move depends on Stephanie Herseth Sandlin's next move, I guess). I sort of regret Mr. Martinez's retirement -- he held the line on off-shore drilling in Florida better than Bill Nelson did and made up for his Terri Schiavo shenanigans with his criticisms of Guantanamo later that same year. And George Voinovich wasn't that nasty, either -- sure he called for a temporary tax increase in 2005 only when such an idea had no chance of passing, but he seemed to disdain the down-and-dirty work of pandering to the worst in us. I'll even miss Sam Brownback a little, since his particular brand of right-wing insanity is entirely consistent -- given the choice of pandering to the God-fearing or pandering to corporations I think he might actually pick the former, and that's no small thing. Kit Bond's departure, however, I celebrate. Mr. Bond might have been relatively invisible for four terms, but that FISA Amendments Act, which made all of Mr. Bush's warrantless wiretapping legal and immunized the big telecoms from lawsuits, was all him. Sometimes you can undo a lifetime of good works (or even indifferent works) with one sin. It works the other way, too, but it's not as common.

UPDATE. Sandlin, not Handlin! Sheesh. Error corrected. Also, I have no basis, really, for claiming that it's not as common for one great work to undo a lifetime of sin than for one sin to undo a lifetime of great work. I do not believe the scientific community has tested the claim with any rigor. But I'll leave the assertion uncorrected, since it reflects how I felt at the moment.

ANOTHER UPDATE. I somehow forgot to mention above that Mr. Voinovich was also a critical vote against both Estate Tax repeal and the Kyl/Snowe Estate Tax "compromise" back in 2006. Are Ohio Democrats sure they can do better than him? I'm a big Sherrod Brown fan, but I think he's lightning in a bottle.

how we roll.

While the $700 billion welfare handout cannot be forgiven, we might as well push for some accountability as to how it's being used (or not used). Common Cause helps you email the CEOs of nine corporations who received almost $160 billion of the $350 billion or so that's been disbursed. Before you protest (and I wouldn't blame you for protesting) that asking a CEO anything doesn't get us anywhere, consider that CEOs tend to overreact wildly to bad PR, or even the threat of bad PR. Hoarding hundreds of billions in taxpayer largesse without actually doing anything to make the economy better is bad, bad PR. It makes them look like crooks, oddly enough.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the artist formerly known as not-Don Rumsfeld, has ordered his underlings to draw up plans to close Guantanamo. Now, Defense Department types draw up all kinds of plans all the time, so let's not go repeating that famous line from Pulp Fiction just yet. Still, the ACLU provides an open letter to President-elect Obama supporting the closure of Guantanamo, which you may sign. Guantanamo, as I've said repeatedly, is an eyesore of democracy -- if it were really necessary, detainees would be facing actual charges and actual trials, instead of just languishing there for seven long years. Hopefully Mr. Obama doesn't decide that the "centrist" position is the position that just happens to keep Guantanamo open. That's not the Change We Need.

Meanwhile, I note with interest that Glenn Beck will have a new show on Pravda TV soon, and that in one of its promos he professes that "I'm tired of the politics of left and right." I guess Fox now wants all its prime-time pundits to use the Bill O'Reilly stratagem -- you know, where the pundit pretends to be "beyond left and right" but just happens to agree with the right-wing almost all the time, except on a handful of points that he doesn't emphasize unless some unruly guest points out he's obviously a right-winger. I've been hearing quite irresponsible rumors that Fox actually did Alan Colmes a favor by moving him off Hannity and Colmes because they're planning to exile Sean Hannity at the end of 2009, and now I wonder if that's true. But given that most good Americans are already on to the O'Reilly Stratagem after all these years, I can't see Fox's new face of propaganda being all that successful -- unless, perhaps, we have another 9.11. I'll bet that's come up in executive meetings at the News Corporation.

double the double trouble!

I have two more ways to call for a ceasefire in Gaza -- Peace Action helps you email your Reps and Senators, and Just Foreign Policy helps you call your Reps and Senators. Apparently Congress is considering a resolution that would express its unequviocal support for Israel in its efforts against the citizens of Gaza, who have now been under siege for two years and under occupation for 40. Trouble is, Americans don't support Israel's actions unequivocally, if all the polls I've ever read on the subject tell me anything. And I don't think Americans have to choose between Israeli security and Palestinian security. In fact, I don't think the first can exist without the second.

The ACLU sends me a double-barreled action alert, in support of H.R. 11, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (which we discussed here yesterday) and H.R. 12, the Paycheck Fairness Act (which would mainly strengthen the language in existing equal-pay laws and require more accountability from the executive branch on equal-pay matters). Both bills head for a House vote this week; decisive House victories in said votes might persuade the Senate to vote the right way, too. Actually, it's more likely that the 41 remaining Senate Republicans will filibuster anything and everything that might make life a tiny bit better for anyone who's not a rich old white guy. But let them do it, so that their numbers may dwindle even further in 2010.

Meanwhile, I've found a sober anecdote to all of Fox News's hatorade-drinking about the Franken-Coleman drama in Minnesota. Eric Black's piece at minnpost.com is thorough, thoughtful, bursting with rhetorical skill, and pleasantly understated in a way that all good Americans, even the more caustic ones like myself, can appreciate. Really, it is one of the finest things I've read on the internet in a long time. Thanks be to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire (found, perhaps not surprisingly, at politicalwire.com) for pointing it out.

alive and kicking.

Democrats plan to push "mortgage cram-down" legislation again, and despite its unattractive name I think it's a good idea. The legislation (long a priority of North Carolina Democratic Rep. Brad Miller, and long filibustered by Senate Republicans) would permit bankruptcy judges to renegotiate mortgages to erase some debt, specifically the debt that outstrips the actual value of the house. And since these mortgages lie at the heart of most of our economic problems right now, it'd be good to fix as many of them as possible. Need I mention that it'd be a lot cheaper than the $700 billion welfare handout perpetrated by Tha Bush Mobb and a Cowardly Congress? This one's worth a phone call; tools are in the upper left-hand corner, as always.

With a new Congress in session (one that, hopefully, will be less cowardly than the last), CREDO promotes the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would make it easier for women to redress pay discrimination in court. The Supreme Court, you may recall, told Ms. Ledbetter she could not sue for almost two decades of pay discrimination because she did not address the matter 180 days after the discrimination started -- which either points to a badly-written law or a group of Supreme Court Justices who are happy to commit absurdity to make a philosophical point. Senate Republicans, you may recall, filibustered the Ledbetter legislation last year; Sen. McCain sounded especially foolish in doing so, and how did that work out for him? Let Republicans continue to stand against good legislation that helps people; that way there'll be even fewer of them in 2010.

Speaking of putting pressure on the new Congress, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network provides a new petition to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and replace it with the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which would ban discrimination in the Armed Services on the basis of sexual orientation. I expect Republicans will continue to fight against gays in the military, believing that soldiers really give a damn who their comrades sleep with -- especially when they're all under enemy fire. I think better of our soldiers than that. I think they know that we're fighting two wars and so we don't have the luxury of being bigots.

penny rants for the day of January 6, 2009.

"Obama's Team Rankles the Right: To some conservatives, advisers are alarmingly liberal," headlines this January 2 Washington Post report, and already we've learned that a) a little alliteration is a dangerous thing and b) we're in for at least a dozen paragraphs of straining to make a point. And, sure enough, "some" conservatives don't appear to have a problem with the Architect of Capitulation at Health and Human Services, or the mining companies' man at Interior, or the recent Bruce Bartlett endorsee at State, but with four untitled advisors, including one "militant-activist-mean lesbian" (though her connections to the "mean" community have never been firmly established). "The transition team as described to me was made up of nothing but people on the far left," putative conservative Roger Clegg exclaims in paragraph 3. "As described to me" -- because Mr. Clegg is just too busy fighting evil to find out the facts for his damn self! After such a quick collapse, the article has no choice but to run to "government experts" for balance.

From the "I wish I'd said that!" file: Matthew Yglesias finds Ed Gillespie's defense of the Bush "record" wanting. When Mr. Gillespie says "(o)ur homeland has not suffered another terrorist attack since September 11, 2001" (yo, Ed: anthrax!), Mr. Yglesias zings back: "This is like saying that except for the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover had a good economic record." I know why good Americans give Mr. Bush a mulligan for 9.11, but the fact remains: he had the intelligence he needed to stop 9.11, without his vaunted warrantless wiretapping program, and he screwed it up. If I'm George W. Bush, I don't know if I want Ed Gillespie defending me, either. Mr. Gillespie, after all, told fellow Republicans to respond to criticisms of Mr. Bush with the charge of political hate speech while he was RNC Chair. Wow -- Republicans learned everything about political correctness except for the, er, correctness. In my ideal democracy, Ed Gillespie would be eating government cheese with his whine.

after long silence.

I have two petitions demanding an end to violence in the Gaza strip, one from J Street (via Council for a Livable World) and another from CREDO. You don't need to untangle the who-started-it skein in order to sign on to this effort, nor do you need to sympathize with the humanitarian crisis in Palestine, as I do. You only need ask yourself: has the Israeli occupation of Palestine made Israel more secure? Sadly, if (like me) you arrive at the answer "no," you may need to remind some good folk that you have neither called for the extermination of Israel nor signed its death warrant.

Meanwhile, Public Citizen helps you call on President-elect Obama to ensure that "free"-trade deals don't stop us from protecting ourselves from unsafe products. Do you recall Tha Bush Mobb telling corporations they could go ahead and sell their remaining unsafe toys even after the new law kicks in? Presumably "free" trade agreements permit that, if some part of their currently-unsafe product comes from elsewhere. An Administration (sic) that rushes to relieve corporations of any perceived hardship in production costs probably permits that, too. Hopefully, the incoming Administration won't do that -- or, more to the point, would be aware that the public doesn't want them to.