The Obama Administration's Bureau of Land Management has proposed updated federal regulations regarding fracking on federal lands, and if you find it rather like the third-way let's-all-get-along-with-big-corporations pablum we've been getting from Democrats for decades now, you're not alone. Federal law permits frackers to keep the toxic chemicals they use secret -- because it's a "trade secret," wouldn't you know? -- but the proposed rules would permit disclosure of said chemicals to a private web site in Oklahoma. Sound like much of a fix to you? The proposed rules would also allow fracking corporations to store their fracking waste in open, lined pits -- I guess, for the BLM, the "lined" part represents progress -- versus storing it in solid tanks. CREDO helps you tell the Bureau of Land Management to ban fracking on federal lands -- certainly until they can guarantee the safety of our air and drinking water. I don't care how difficult that is, or even if it's impossible -- some corporation's right to make money doesn't trump anyone's right to clean air and water.

Meanwhile, Sen. McCain (R-AZ) has introduced his a la carte cable bill -- S. 912, the Television Consumer Freedom Act. Too much criticism thereof is about money -- yes, Matthew Yglesias can talk all he wants about why it won't cut your cable bill, but I don't care and never have cared. He also worries that "the channels themselves will lose viewers," when that's the whole point! Consumers should be able to deny their money and their viewership to TV channels purveying shallow, sensationalistic, and decadent crap, or else said channels will never change their ways. Now S. 912 is a mixed bag -- Sec. 3(b)(3) forces channel vendors to provide channels a la carte to cable corporations, which is how you'd have to do it, but 3(a) should say that cable corporations "must provide subscribers with the option" to buy channels a la carte, not "may provide subscribers" -- Mr. McCain's temperamental aversion to our government telling corporations what to do doesn't help there. So Consumers Union helps you contact the Senate Commerce Committee, and the Parents Television Council still provides their email tool.