We have movement on the corporate "personhood" issue: Sens. Tester (D-MT) and Udall (D-NM) have introduced Senate versions of Rep. McGovern's two constitutional amendments that would overturn Supreme Court rulings in Citizens United v. FEC (in which the Court held that corporations can make certain campaign contributions because they enjoy the "rights of personhood," including free speech) and Buckley v. Valeo (in which the Court struck down several campaign contribution limits due to free speech concerns). If you find yourself a little squeamish reading the McGovern/Udall amendment giving the federal government and the states the ability to restrict how much money can be spent on campaigns, remember that money isn't speech. If it were, then folks with more money would have more of a right to speech, and at that point we're not really talking about rights anymore, are we? Free Speech for People helps you tell Congress to end the absurdity of corporate "personhood."

Meanwhile, Penn Environment helps you tell your Senators to support S. 338, which would permanently authorize funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The Land and Water Conservation Fund, in a wonderful burst of irony, collects oil and gas drilling fees in order to fund projects protecting parks, forests, and wildlife -- but in a far more bitter burst of irony, Congress has to appropriate those funds every year, and most years they divert that funding toward other, arguably less worthy projects. Hence the Florida Everglades, Arizona's Petrified Forest, and Virginia's Civil War battlegrounds don't get the attention they deserve, and neither do parks and recreation projects at the state level. And the Fund has an annual ceiling of $900 million by law -- a ceiling S. 338 would guarantee is fully-funded -- so deficit peacocks can't preen around it. Not that they really care about the deficit -- they care more about their oil and gas paymasters who want the public's land for themselves.