So Think Progress asked Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) what he thought of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (or ENDA) last week -- wow, already I feel like I'm starting a joke. But it's no joke: Mr. Rubio did not directly answer whether he'd support ENDA, which he says he hasn't read, but says "I’m not for any special protections based on orientation." If he'd read the bill, of course, he'd know that ENDA does not mandate any "special" protections based on orientation -- unless he thinks "the right not be fired just because you're gay" or "the right to be protected from retaliation by your employer" are "special" protections. I said it before and I'll say it again: what's rights for us ain't "special" for them. Why, ENDA (H.R. 1755/S. 815) doesn't even establish any affirmative action programs and still exempts religious organizations! The right will have to make up objections to this bill -- and I'm sure they will. In the meantime, People for the American Way helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass ENDA.

Meanwhile, the League of Conservation Voters helps you tell the Tribune Company not to sell their newspapers to the Koch brothers. But anyone (even good government groups that have been fighting the Koch brothers' pro-pollution agenda for decades) would have an interest in making sure the Koch brothers don't have the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times and the Hartford Courant and five other newspapers. After all, one Koch brothers front group (Americans for Prosperity) gave us the Tea Party and another (Patients United) helped gut health care reform, and that's before we get to the Cato Institute (founded by Charles Koch), the Heritage Foundation (funded by the brothers), or the so-called Competitive Enterprise Institute (also funded by the brothers). With all these mouthpieces, why do they need eight more newspapers? I guess when you have too much, you're jealous of folks who have more -- or you're paranoid and you don't feel safe until you have more. That's what mammon-worship gets you.

Finally, Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the Trans-Pacific "Partnership," a "free" trade agreement known to many folks as "NAFTA on steroids." You remember the "giant sucking sound" of jobs out of America that followed NAFTA, right? The Trans-Pacific "Partnership," which now includes the United States and ten other nations, will be all that and more, for what we know of the treaty (since no one actually negotiating it will let anyone read it!) is truly awful: the TPP would make affordable generic drugs a lot harder to come by, would subject all environmental, labor, and financial reform laws to extra-legal "investor tribunals," and would allow corporations to censor the internet even when it suspects someone's violating someone else's intellectual property rights. Any of that sound like a good idea to you? That must be why they don't want anyone to know about it! Thanks to the few leaks we've gotten, they're too late on that. But we still have to speak out.