As you know, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act on Tuesday -- but the Court also said Congress could "draft another formula" for pre-clearance of states "based on current conditions." I really wish I hadn't suggested, yesterday, that it'd be a cold day in hell before this Congress does that -- sure, it's easy (and too often correct!) to be skeptical of Congress's ability or willingness to do anything, but if Harry Reid's office wrote a new Section 4(b) or its equivalent tonight, he'd have at least 56 Senate votes for it tomorrow, and that might give John Boehner the oppportunity to prove to the world, at last, that he isn't the biggest fool ever to hold the House Speaker's gavel. Recall, also, that we expected little from the 2005-06 Congress, and they're the ones who reupped the law for 25 years, by huge margins. So the ACLU helps you tell Congress to repair the Voting Rights Act. What are they going to say? That they have too much on their plate?

Meanwhile, Public Citizen still helps you tell your Congressfolk to support constitutional amendments curbing the fiction of corporate "personhood." The relevant bills are H.J.Res. 20/S.J.Res. 19 (sponsored by Rep. McGovern and Sen. Udall of New Mexico, respectively) and H.J.Res. 21/S.J.Res. 18 (sponsored by Mr. McGovern and Sen. Tester, respectively). These bills have a few dozen co-sponsors between them, but their numbers include only one Republican, Walter Jones of North Carolina. It's sad to find only one Republican, out of the hundreds serving in Congress, willing to defy corporate power these days. Public Citizen also reminds us that 15 states -- California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont and West Virginia -- have publicly called for anti-corporate "personhood" amendments; if your Rep or Senator hails from one of those states, it wouldn't be untoward of you to remind them of that.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Bureau of Land Management that their proposed regulations for fracking on public lands don't meet the most rudimentary standards of disclosure, then the Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch) helps you do that. Full disclosure of chemicals used in fracking is yet another promise Mr. Obama made, but perhaps BLM didn't get the memo -- they won't require fracking corporations to disclose the chemicals they're using before drilling, and they seem prepared to let corporate concerns about "trade secrets" overrule disclosure. How many times must I tell these pimps! Somebody's right to a "trade secret" doesn't overrule our right not to have poisonous crap in our air and water. The BLM proposals would even make emergency personnel jump through hoops to get information about what might be poisoning the person they're trying to treat! How do some people sleep at night?