By now you've heard that Congress, confronted with airport delays on their way out of town for the week, acted to fix that with a quickness -- but have left every other odious thing about the sequester in place. Normally I'd say anything that gets Congress out of town is a good thing! But Congress has done nothing about food inspections getting slashed or folks getting thrown off food stamps, so NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you email your Congressfolk with your displeasure. Oh, but NETWORK's not done with you yet, Congress! NETWORK also helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 1579, the Inclusive Prosperity Act. H.R. 1579, you may recall, would enact a financial transaction tax (alternately called a "Wall Street tax" or "Robin Hood tax") that would vary from 0.005% to 0.5%, depending on the transaction. That latter number, of course, is not "five percent" or "fifty percent" but one-half of one percent. Any "liberal" media hack who gets that wrong really should never be able to work in media again -- and wouldn't, in a sane, decent, and healthy society.

Speaking of sickness, immorality, and decadence, Key Bank won't forgive Cameron Akers's student loan, even though he killed himself a year ago. Dude went to college, joined the Air Force -- becoming a cryptologist! -- and made all his payments on time for six years, but then had an accident, suffered brain damage, and quickly spiraled downward into depression and suicide. That's too damn familiar a story by now, yet Key Bank still harasses Mr. Akers's mother, because she co-signed the loan, even though they've been known to forgive loans on a case-by-case basis. This is one of those cases, maybe? One couldn't argue -- not reasonably, anyway! -- that forgiving this loan will open the floodgates to forgiving all sorts of loans from all sorts of stragglers. Once more: college, soldier, cryptologist. And who will dare say that's the price you pay when you co-sign a loan, as if your son's suicide is so likely an eventuality that it should keep you from helping him out? Change.org helps you pimp-slap Key Bank for its lack of compassion.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Pennsylvania state government to declare a moratorium on fracking, Public Citizen also helps you do that. Fracking in this state is a real clusterfrack for so many reasons, not just because gas drillers drill in a state that has a hundred thousand unplugged water wells, or because gas drillers dispose of their carcinogenic refuse in unlined pits, or because methane makes its way into your tap water. Gas drillers have committed over 3,000 environmental violations in a state whose own DEP has shown a disquieting willingness to look the other way. Oh, and that same DEP still gives homeowners incomplete water test results. The homeowners who asked for them! From their government! Government owes us more than the back of its hand, does it not? And legislators can't claim they don't know fracking is dangerous -- why else would certain state Senators have slipped a fracking moratorium in Philly-area suburban counties, and nowhere else, into last year's budget resolution? Don't people who live in the T deserve clean air and water, too?