Thieves in the Temple.

Around the table: journalism, the "war on terror," climate change deniers, media violence, fracking, and charity.

FAIR explains how our government has been stepping up its efforts against actual journalism. No, not the kind of "journalism" CNN did all day Monday about whoever-that-was doing whatever-she-was-doing -- I mean the kind where actual journalists reveal actual secrets people deserve to know. People, it's bad.

Alternet lists five corporations making boatloads of money keeping us terrified of terrorists. Some of their officials pop up on TV, and naturally the "liberal" media hasn't been telling its viewers they make money off the "war on terror," because why would that be relevant? Note well, also, the revolving door between government and private security firms as described therein.

Another day, another dumbass Republican Congressman justifying doing nothing about pollution because the earth has warmed in the past. Once again: the fact that global warming happened in the past does not automatically mean "there's a cycle to all this," or that we can go on polluting as much as we feel like. Consider Mr. Rokita part of the Pro-Pollution Caucus.

Psychologists find that exposure to media violence does generally predispose its consumers toward physical aggression. For too long (and I've been just as guilty of this as anyone else), we've dismissed the relationship between media violence and real violence by pointing only to things like school shootings, when there are many kinds of violence.

Get your surprised face ready -- fracking can drive property values down. Evidence is anecdotal so far, but if banks don't want to lend to folks buying near fracking sites, that's going to affect the industry. I won't go so far as to say it'll affect the industry more than pressuring your legislators does, but it's nice to get some help from the "free market" for once.

Finally, Raleigh, NC police threatens a local ministry with arrest if they continue to give out food to the homeless. Police spokeshack says police were merely enforcing an ordinance prohibiting folks from handing out food at a park without a permit, though the police haven't enforced said ordinance in years. Well, they said helping the poor wasn't the government's job, and now, apparently, it's not the church's job, either -- nor yours, if you can't afford the permit (and at $1,600 per weekend, you can't).

Action: war with Syria, *a la carte* cable, voting rights, and community radio.

Per a Reuters/IPSOS poll taken last week, 60% of Americans don't want to go to war with Syria -- even as we despise what the Syrian government has done to its people -- and only 9% of Americans do. But it looks like a miniscule minority will get all the say about everything again, especially since the "liberal" media have been acting like Mr. Obama "doing something" is a foregone conclusion. It's not -- our Constitution mandates that Congress declares the wars, not the President, and the War Powers Resolution also mandates that the President cannot use military force unless Congress approves. Well, the War Powers Resolution allows the President to retaliate against an imminent threat -- but how many Syrians have been attacking the U.S. lately? So Just Foreign Policy joins with MoveOn to help you tell your President and your Congress not to attack Syria without Congressional approval.

By now you've no doubt heard that Miley Cyrus's antics at the Video Music Awards Sunday were the talk of CNN all day Monday. Well, that's as good a reason as any to demand that we be able to pay for cable channels a la carte! I mean, I suppose we could write CNN and demand they ask themselves whether some celebrity shaking their butt on stage really constitutes news, let alone something a news channel should obsess about all damn day, but why would they care? You may not be watching CNN, but you're still paying for it, as part of your cable package, so they've still got your money. But S. 912, the Television Consumer Freedom Act of 2013, would (among other things) prevent cable packaging corporations from offering package deals on cable channels if they don't also offer those channels a la carte. The Parents Television Council still helps you tell your Congressfolk to support a la carte cable packaging; you'll likely have to amend their email tool to reflect actual support for an actual bill.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to strengthen the Voting Rights Act so that state and local governments can't keep "the wrong people" from voting, the Sierra Club still helps you do that. As you recall, the Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder, invalidated Section 4(b) of the Act, saying that the conditions that prompted its enactment had changed such that singling out certain states for heightened scrutiny now comprised an unconstitutional burden on those states. Perhaps not coincidentally, several of those states have pursued new avenues of discrimination against "those voters" since the Court's decision. Since the Court didn't strike the whole law down, Congress could come up with a new formula to replace the one the Court struck in 4(b). Some Congressfolk have said they don't see that happening. But recall that 2006's Voting Rights Act reauth looked dicey, too -- until public pressure made Congress do the right thing. We can do that again.

Finally, the Local Community Radio Act passed in late 2010, and the Federal Communications Commission will accept license applications for new community radio stations during the last two full weeks of October. If you want to build a community radio station, then Free Press and the Prometheus Radio Project help you learn what you need to know to get started. It won't be easy, and you'll eventually need to raise some cash, but your community radio station could serve folks that the big corporate radio stations (with their repetitive playlists and right-wing blowhards) don't. If your community doesn't get Spanish-language radio, you could do that. If your community doesn't get to hear a whole lot of local music, you could do that. If your community doesn't get reporting on agricultural wage-slavery, you could do that. The possibilities are endless. And it'll be a lot of work, but so's anything worth doing.

Action: "free" trade, women in Afghanistan, and working families.

Word on the street is that the corporations who'd benefit most from the Trans-Pacific Trade "Partnership" -- that is, the ones that would get to not only break our environmental, labor, and product safety laws, but sit in judgment over them -- want to give the President fast-track authority to put the "free" trade deal in place, without Congressional approval. You may recall that Congress (over the loud protests of alleged liberal Rahm Emanuel, then a U.S. Representative from Illinois) allowed Presidential fast-track authority to lapse in 2007, which at least helped delay approval of the nefarious Columbia and Panama "free" trade "deals" by four years. Why do we want this miserable excuse for a Congress involved? Because Congress is supposed to represent our will, and forcing "free" trade deals to get Congressional approval at least gives us a fighting chance of stopping a monstrosity that will eventually make us all slaves to large corporations. And a fighting chance is all I ask. Both Public Citizen and CREDO help you tell your Congressfolk to say no to Presidential fast-track authority.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan continues to be an absolutely wretched place for women to live, as its Parliament is actually mulling a bill that would greatly aid abusers of women, by banning relatives from testifying against each other in court. Real family values-type stuff, that! If you're at all familiar with domestic violence cases -- even the ones that don't involve a family ganging up on you and torturing you because you won't prostitute yourself, which was Sahar Gul's life until recently -- you know that a lot of cases don't get very far without the testimony of relatives, since they're generally the only ones in any position to confirm abuse claims. So one can only presume that the Afghan government would impose an otherwise completely arbitrary standard on court testimony so it can continue to turn a blind eye to how some of its citizens still treat women. Thus Avaaz helps you tell the Upper House of the Afghan Parliament to reject the "gag rule" bill passed by the Lower House. The Upper House might respond positively; it has in the past. But that's no reason to be complacent.

Finally, Making Change at Walmart joins with Daily Kos to help you tell WalMart to stop firing striking workers and pay them a living wage. Four of the ten richest folks in America come from the Walton family, and WalMart made nearly $16 billion in profits in 2011, but many of its workers have to rely on taxpayer-funded programs including food stamps and Medicaid -- which means, folks, that you're paying WalMart workers, too! That should dispel the glow of perpetually low prices, if the continued wage-slavery of Chinese workers making all that cheap crap hasn't dispelled that glow already. WalMart has also disciplined or fired more than 70 workers for the crime of going on strike for decent wages, when retaliating against workers who agitate for better conditions is illegal; WalMart might be able to buy their way out of trouble there, though that's yet another reason not to let big corporations get that big in the first place. And paying workers a living wage is, of course, one way we prevent corporations from getting so big they run roughshod over us -- if we have more power, they have less.

Around the table: stockbrokers vs. their clients, Germans vs. the NSA, corporations vs. work, sin taxes vs. working folk, Louisiana poll respondents vs. the truth, and the Koch brothers vs. the people (and the people win!).

Both the Labor Department and the SEC are apparently mulling rules (again, mandated by Dodd-Frank and what's taking them so long?) making stockbrokers act as fiduciaries -- which is to say they'd have to work entirely on behalf of their clients and not for themselves. Former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) responds that Wall Street won't be able to service small investors if they actually have to act on their behalf. No, really, that's essentially what he said. And this has been another installment of "The Uselessness of Republican 'Moderates'."

Germans seem to respond more negatively to the news of American domestic snooping than Americans do, and ProPublica explains why. Long story short: Germans generally agitate for privacy rights more than Americans do (at least since the end of World War II), and Germans just so happen to be the NSA's favorite target, as the NSA has collected more metadata from Germany than from any other European nation. Not to be discounted: that Germans' experience with agencies like the SS and the Gestapo is more recent than Americans' experience with Redcoats bursting into their houses whenever they felt like it.

David Graeber explains why we don't all work 15-hour work weeks, as John Maynard Keynes once predicted we would. It's like the we-were-promised-jetpacks bit, except that we were promised something more interesting and useful than jetpacks. Long story very short: our economy destroys real work (via technological advances and outsourcing, certainly, but mainly through corporate "populism" against those "parasite" schoolteachers and dockworkers), and then creates all sorts of paper-pushing "work" for us to do, "work" that, perhaps not coincidentally, teaches us to align our needs with that of our economic elites.

Pennsylvania mulls SB 1080, which would enact a 2¢ fee on every plastic bag used. Put me down as opposing that sort of thing, though: small though the tax is, it'll hit working folks harder than it'll hit the 0.1%, and I don't know anyone who doesn't reuse these plastic bags, frequently more than once. It is kind of a necessity when you're not rich, you know.

Public Policy Polling finds that while 28% of surveyed Louisiana residents blame George W. Bush for our government's lackluster response to Hurricane Katrina, an astounding 29% blame Barack Obama, though Mr. Obama wouldn't be President for three more years. And 44% more just can't decide! Seriously, when confronted with this level of stupidity, it's getting harder and harder for me to convince people that the Obama-hate is mostly because he's a Democrat, not because he's black.

Last but certainly not least, the Koch brothers have decided not to purchase the Tribune Company newspapers. A Koch Industries spokeshack says the brothers still "have an interest in the media business," but no longer, apparently, in papers such as the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Hartford Courant. Who stood against the Koch brothers? Nobody but us. So celebrate, and then come back tomorrow ready to do more good works.

Penny rants: voter ID, an Article V convention, and the "part-time jobs" myth of Obamacare.

Colin Powell tells a North Carolina audience that their state's just-passed voter ID law will hurt the Republican Party, because it "immediately turns off a voting block the Republican Party needs" and signals to minority voters that "we are really sort of punishing you." I guess it's nice he still cares about the party that's left him. But dig Gov. McCrory's weak rebuttal to "those who say voter fraud is not a problem in North Carolina": "without the higher level of identification a photograph provides, is it possible to know?" Mr. Powell's statement that voter fraud can't possibly be "widespread and undetected" satisfies me, but won't reach the rage-addled, so I'll try reaching them: we live in a nation where you're innocent until presumed guilty; perhaps a dozen folks go to jail for voter fraud in any given year; conservatives believe you don't solve problems that don't exist or which you can't define; therefore, voter ID laws are a solution in search of a problem. Ah, forget it -- most right-wingers these days are reactionaries, not conservatives.

From the "stopped clock rule" file: far-right commentator Mark Levin proposes a Constitutional convention under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, in which two-thirds of state legislatures could petition (actually, already have petitioned!) to create a convention of state delegates, which could directly propose Constitutional amendments and put their ratification to state legislatures, without Congressional involvement. Many of the article's commenters have completely defensible objections -- mainly, that an Article V convention would be as subject to pressure from corporate forces as our Congress seems to be. And I don't advocate throwing all my eggs in an Article V basket, of course. But, being a creature of hope, I would prefer to fight it out with the autocrats in an Article V convention -- they may have the money, but they don't have the numbers, or the arguments. Most folks know this by now. What most folks haven't fully comprehended yet is that we can (and must) do something about it.

Finally, Reuters strives desperately to prove that the Affordable Care Act drives a spate of part-time hirings -- this, despite three of the stars of their anecdotes denying that the Affordable Care Act has anything to do with any part-time hiring they might be doing! And none of this wrangling would be a surprise to you if you've, you know, actually worked any jobs over the last twenty years -- you know as well as anyone else that absent a collective bargaining agreement, full-time work means health benefits and part-time work, generally, doesn't. And businesses have known all of this as acutely as we have during that time, so we ought to suspect any complaining they do about "uncertainty" now. Also, it doesn't matter so much what "executives at several staffing firms" "have seen" as, you know, what is -- i.e., that since January 2010, this economy has created full-time jobs well over twice as fast as it's created part-time jobs. And aren't our economic elites our best and brightest? If so, why do they whine about everything?

Action: zombie copyright proposals, tailpipe emissions, and (for the last time) fracking on public lands.

The Obama Administration's Department of Commerce has proposed that streaming copyrighted content should be a felony -- perhaps not coincidentally, a proposal once part of the notorious SOPA, which we defeated in 2011. The Commerce Department's Internet Policy Task Force apparently hasn't differentiated between actual piracy and fair use, because anyone performing a copyrighted song on youtube (and there's a lot of that on youtube these days) would get jail time. While no civilized person approves of folks making money from (for example) bootleg DVDs of first-run films, sentencing someone to years in prison because they put up a video of folks singing "Happy Birthday" is exactly what we're trying to stop doing. Demand Progress helps you tell our government to stop with these zombie copyright proposals already.

Meanwhile, Consumers Union helps you tell the EPA to back strong tailpipe emissions standards. Why? So that we can dramatically reduce air pollution from gasoline -- by CU's estimate, the EPA's proposed standards would be the equivalent of taking 33 million cars off the road, and though cars ain't the only thing on the road, that's a big deal. And when we reduce air pollution, we reduce all the health issues that come with air pollution, and thus also all the health care spending that comes with air pollution. Just about everyone's behind this plan, even the big carmakers. Who's not behind the plan? The oil corporations, naturally, because they care so much about the price of gas going up a penny per gallon when just about everyone on Earth knows they can poop money with the profits they already have. So don't be shy.

Finally, today is the last day to comment on the Bureau of Land Management's proposal which would allow fracking on public lands (and which would not force gas drillers to disclose the chemicals and toxins they're putting into our water table). On public lands, I reiterate using the italics hammer -- that means in places like the George Washington National Forest, the Red Rock Canyon area, and the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and these places all have streams and groundwater that we'll wind up drinking from. And, once more with the italics hammer, public lands are our lands. So both Public Citizen and the Center for Effective Government help you leave a public comment about the BLM proposal, while Food and Water Watch helps you call President Obama and tell him do the right thing.

Action: domestic surveillance, employment non-discrimination, and the Tribune newspapers.

The U.K. detained David Miranda for almost nine hours at Heathrow Airport Sunday, confiscating (among other things) his cellphone and laptop before releasing him. Just so happens David Miranda is the partner of Glenn Greenwald, who broke the Edward Snowden story on the Guardian, and Mr. Miranda himself had just visited journalist Laura Poitras, who has been detained over 40 times while, perhaps not coincidentally, reporting extensively on domestic surveillance issues. And not long afterward, U.K. authorities raided the Guardian's London office -- and word on the street is that our own government may be readying an indictment against Mr. Greenwald, which would make David Gregory happy, I guess. Both CREDO and Free Press help you tell the U.S. and U.K. governments to stop harassing journalists who shine a light on nefarious government acts.

Meanwhile, closer to home, almost 90 Pennsylvania state House Reps from both parties (always do I hope for the best from Pennsylvania Republicans!) have signed on to HB 300, which would amend a 1957 Pennsylvania state anti-discrimination law simply by adding the phrase "sexual orientation, gender identity or expression" to the list of reasons employers cannot discriminate against workers. No, really -- read the bill and you'll see that's all it does. So it doesn't even establish "special rights" for gays, unless by "special rights" one means "what's equal rights for the rest of us," which I'm afraid is what most folks who use the phrase "special rights" mean. Keystone Progress helps you tell your state legislators to support nondiscrimination legislation.

Finally, the Union of Concerned Scientists now helps you tell the Tribune Compnay not to sell their newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, to the Koch brothers. We have so, so many good reasons to oppose such a sale, chief among them that two men should not have that much power, but UCS is concerned that the Koch brothers will use their eight new newspapers to spread a bunch of malarkey about how all our fossil-fuel burning has nothing to do with climate change, which, given that the Koch brothers made a lot of their money in coal, seems like a perfectly explicable fear. I have no idea, honestly, what it means that the Koch brothers haven't bought the Tribune papers some nine months after I first received action alerts about it. But I sure don't think we should be complacent.

Around the table: oil, money, rage, stupidity, and a very small advance in teleportation technology.

At long last, a CIA document admits that it, indeed, "direct(ed)" the overthrow of Iran's democratically-elected Prime Minister in 1953. You remember, that subject Ron Paul brought up in every Republican Presidential debate in 2008? Of course, CNN doesn't take any trouble to prove that Mr. Mossadegh's attempt to nationalize the Iranian oil industry would have been "a win for the USSR," and not just a loss for British Petroleum -- or, heaven forbid, a win for Iran.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet perhaps the stupidest man in America -- Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), who somehow thinks Wall Street doesn't commit any crimes. First, he seems to think you need a gun to commit a crime (which will no doubt confuse avid Clue players!), and second, he seems to think getting ripped off by Wall Street is all your fault and the price you pay for freedom. Amazing, how these tough guys never say "it's your fault" to the people doing the ripping off.

Michael Cohen at the Guardian finds "Republicans are being destroyed by the monster they created," i.e., the Tea Party. While it's basically an accurate analysis, I hope Mr. Cohen is being facile when he calls our center-right President "uniquely capable of upsetting the far-right."

Time magazine hack twitters that he "can't wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian #Assange." And there you have the problem with most contemporary "journalists" -- they just can't wait to defend evil.

Finally, researchers in Switzerland manage to teleport information about a quarter-inch. Journey of a thousand miles and all that. I doubt we'll get teleportation right in my lifetime, but if we do, I'll try not to get all Dr. McCoy about it.

Action: factory farm waste, leaded bullets, and fracking on public lands.

We talk about corporate threats to clean water a lot -- which is fitting, because clean water makes healthy people possible. Want to know what else dirties up our water? Animal waste from factory farms, that's what -- the EPA recently declared that "preventing animal waste from contaminating surface and ground waters" is one of its National Enforcement Initiatives. Yet EPA rules currently exempt about six in 10 of the largest factory farms from even getting Clean Water Act permits. And having witnessed an Obama Administration that's been even worse than Tha Bush Mobb on issues ranging from GMO labeling to food inspection, you have to wonder what kind of appetite Mr. Obama has for defying the will of factory farms. But, once again: it doesn't matter what he wants; it matters what we want. The Pew Charitable Trusts help you tell the EPA to write stronger rules keeping factory farm filth out of our drinking water.

Meanwhile, the NRA, which really does give us pro-gun folks a bad name, is trying to keep lead in bullets, saying that the lead doesn't harm the millions of animals that feed off the animals hunters shoot (and, presumably, don't eat). I guess the NRA doesn't think lead in paint harms kids, either. Why would the NRA want to keep lead in bullets? Wait, let me guess: taking lead out of bullets would force gun manufacturers to make their bullets differently, meaning less money for their CEOs. Of course, they'd say it means "killing jobs," which isn't true, unless gun manufacturing corporations think oompa-loompas are going to design the new bullets and refit factories for their manufacture. Note well that Arizona hunters use copper bullets without whining about it, and the California condor damn near died out until the state banned leaded bullets within the condor habitat. The Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to ban lead from bullets.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Obama Administration that it needs to do more to protect our public lands from gas drillers, well, a few organizations still help you do that: namely, the Wilderness Society, Breast Cancer Action, Organic Consumers, Daily Kos, and the Center for Effective Government. The Bureau of Land Management's comment period ends this coming Friday -- unless, I suppose, the BLM doesn't get enough pro-pollution comments -- so don't look at the long list of organizations helping you speak your will and say hey, lots of folks are working on this, I can let them take care of it, because this is our America, so we must take care of it. Certainly gas drillers aren't going to take care of it -- they're going to continue injecting toxins into our forests and national parks and wildlife reserves, and make your water unsafe to drink, just so they can continue to make money. I wish I didn't have to speak ill of folks, but I've seen no evidence gas drillers care about anything other than mammon, and we can't let people who only care about mammon get all the damn say about everything.

Around the table: Iranian city council elections, NSA BS, prisoner mistreatment, food stamps, better pay for federally-funded workers, taxes.

Woman denied City Council seat in Qazvin, Iran, for as-yet-unconfirmed reasons which may include her own youth and beauty. This is a big deal; the press in Iran covers city council elections (which are held every two years) like we cover midterm elections in the U.S. Shame on the election review board members who won't even enumerate the "problems" "causing" them to flout the will of the voters, let alone deal with these "problems" like grown-ups.

Obama Administration finally releases its legal reasoning (on a Friday, no less!) behind all the data-vacuuming its NSA does, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation finds it lacking. "Lacking," as in "(t)here is no direct authorization for the Associational Tracking Program in section Patriot Act section 215," in bold-face type. I hope the EFF does better in its court proceedings than I think they will -- judges have been notoriously willing to let the last two Administrations claim everything's "classified" because, you know, terrorism.

New York state still sticks too many prisoners in solitary confinement, despite its promise to keep prisoners with serious mental health issues out of solitary. New York has made some strides in treating seriously mentally ill prisoners, but on the flip side, has given that diagnosis to many fewer prisoners. Today's nominal "conservatives" will squeal see? This is why government doesn't work! Unintended consequences! But if you let one bad consequence foil all your efforts to do good works, you have no right to call yourself a conservative.

Bloomberg finds that over 80% of the counties in which the number of food stamp recipients doubled between 2007 and 2011 voted for which Presidential candidate? Mitt Romney, of course. Liberals find this sort of thing persistently frustrating -- why do the folks who need the most help vote for the party that gives you the least help? Partly it's social issues, of course, but a lot of folks who get government assistance feel that other people who get government assistance are lazy.

Richard Kirsch tells us how President Obama could move two million Americans into the middle class, simply by issuing an executive order hiking wages for workers in federally-supported jobs. You mean Mr. Obama could so something fairly popular, something that would do a lot of good, and Congress couldn't even stop him from doing it? Then it's a near-certainty he won't.

In case you didn't know much about Jeff Bezos's politics, Citizens for Tax Justice tells you all ye need know about how the Washington Post's new owner feels about taxes. Long story short: he helped defeat a tax-the-rich initiative in Washington state in 2010, he paid zero taxes on over $6 billion in sales in the U.K. in 2012, and he even considered starting Amazon.com on a Native American reservation so he could, in his words, get "access to talent without all the tax consequences." Amazing, how many of our elites think consequences are a) unjust and b) for the little people.

Penny rants: voting rights, climate change, and the "environmental jihad."

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) says "I don't think there is objective evidence that we're precluding African-Americans from voting any longer." Why? Because "African-American voters voted at a higher percentage than whites in almost every one of the states that were under the special provisions of the government." But finding that the percentage of eligible blacks who voted is larger than the percentage of eligible whites who voted doesn't prove that states don't suppress the black vote -- he might have begun to prove that by saying the percentage of black voters who wanted to vote but couldn't vote was similar to the percentage of white voters who wanted to vote but couldn't vote, but of course he didn't say that. This game Rand Paul plays, where he sounds libertarian while still "thoughtfully" defending his party's absurd antics? It's not gonna make him President. It's not gonna make him a better public servant than his father, either.

Rush Limbaugh opines that belief in God is "intellectually" incompatible with a "belief" in human-driven climate change. He's been singing this song for years -- he used to say we can't destroy the environment because God made it and God made us, as if we'd be arrogant to believe we could destroy something God made. But the "opinion" based on the best science we have isn't "arrogant" -- his opinion is. Set aside that he's always seemed to regard governmental regulation itself as a species of arrogance, though our government belongs to us. Rush Limbaugh would have you believe God doesn't put challenges in front of people they can't overcome (when we all get at least one of those!), and would never allow the entire human race to destroy itself through its own protracted stupidity and greed -- in short, Mr. Limbaugh puts the continued existence of humankind at the center of God's concerns. Why should that be so, except that we need it to be so?

Finally, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) calls the League of Conservation voters "an extreme left group on an environmental jihad" in a fundraising email. Well, if he means jihad in the sense of an inner spiritual struggle or a struggle to better society, I suppose that's a compliment. Seriously, Mr. Johnson may be a bit behind the messaging here -- Fox News hack Eric Bolling called EPA regulators "job terrorists" two years ago already. But if Mr. Johnson thinks the LCV are "jihadists," I shudder to think how he described Greenpeace in the '80s. And people who attempt to effect change via the democratic process aren't "jihadists," but calling them that -- and receiving overgenerous coverage from the "liberal" media for calling them that, as so many other teabaggers have received -- only helps moves the center ever further rightward. The good news? It also makes people like Mr. Johnson sound like whiners.

Action: corporate "personhood" and closing Guantánamo Bay.

People for the American Way helps you tell Congress to pass a Constitutional amendment reaffirming that corporations aren't people and thus can't spend bajillions of dollars to warp American elections. When close to seven out of 10 Republicans polled disagree with Citizens United v. FEC, we know it's rubbish. But the vast majority of our Congressfolk, whose very livelihoods depend on the endless flow of corporate campaign cash, obviously need more convincing. Whatever you do, don't let your Congressfolk tell you that we really should move very carefully before amending the Constitution is somehow a "conservative" argument. Wanna hear a conservative argument? Concentrated, untrammeled power anywhere is evil; thus concentrated, untrammeled corporate power in influencing elections is also evil, and we must fight evil. You may even want to remind your Congressfolk that "moving slowly" out of "caution" on this issue isn't exactly the attitude that got slavery abolished.

Meanwhile, the Center for Constitutional Rights helps you tell President Obama to close the Guantánamo Bay detention center. Apparently, the last defense authorization bill gives Mr. Obama the power to release Guantánamo's remaining detainees and shut the damn joint down; why would he not use it, having long declared his intention to do so, with plenty of consensus, even, from the McCain/Graham foreign policy "hawks" on the right? And those are just reasons of expedience -- he's got plenty of moral reasons to release them as well, including if you can't even charge them with something, anything, after ten years, you should give them their freedom back. You have to wonder why so many useful things our government does have expiration dates but Guantánamo, apparently, doesn't. I can't help but think that's because Guantánamo in Cuba is a dry run for Guantánamo, Indiana and Guantánamo, Colorado and Guantánamo, Idaho. I'd love to be wrong about that, but I'd be a schmuck not to be suspicious.

Around the table: Barack Obama, banksters, frackers, activist judges, and a rodeo clown.

Mike Whitney, who was all over the financial crisis before any of our prized "liberal" media reporters were, absolutely eviscerates President Obama's new housing plan. Long story short: Mr. Obama has now accepted the right-wing lie that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the cause of the housing crisis, when even Forbes will tell you that 85% of all subprime mortgages were privately held -- and his new plan puts bankster profits above his own duties to the citizenry. Anyone who still calls Mr. Obama a "socialist" deserves a punch in the nose.

In a related note, a just-unsealed lawsuit from 2011 suggests that mortgage-holders still simply don't own the houses upon which they foreclose, simply because they don't have the correct documents. Now our government stepped in and "settled" this imbroglio for $95 million -- but they only settled with five defendants, meaning the original plaintiff can now go after the other 23 defendants. And while it's regrettable that our government's settlement did shield Bank of Amerikkka and J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo from further action, the remaining 23 defendants ain't exactly small-fry.

Get your surprised face ready: gas drilling corporations find ways not to pay royalties to landowners. I'm sure energy lobby says gas corporations should get to deduct expenses such as processing and transportation, but some corporations deduct them even when their contracts with landowners prohibit it. And setting up subsidiaries to which they "sell" the gas cheaply might be legal, strictly speaking, but I oppose any corporation owning any other corporation, so I'm not impressed. And some folks find telling landowners to do their due diligence a lot easier than telling corporations to do right by landowners. I wonder why.

A Tennessee judge forces a couple to change the name of their seven-month old boy from Messiah to Martin, because "(t)he word Messiah is a title and it's a title that has only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ." Citing reams of case law, no doubt! I can't feel too bad for the parents, since they were only in court because they couldn't agree on the kid's last name, but what a shame to find that activist judges have even infiltrated child support courts.

Finally, a Missouri rodeo clown dons an Obama mask, while an announcer asks the crowd if they want to see "Obama run down by a bull." Just imagine the reaction from the right if some liberal had done something similar to George W. Bush.

Action: mandatory minimums and executive pay.

On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder outlined how the Obama Administration would address mandatory minimum sentencing. The Administration plans to let U.S. Attorneys develop more flexible guidelines for filing federal charges, change the Justice Department's charging policies so that non-violent drug offenders get fewer mandatory minimum sentences, and expand the compassionate release program's eligibility criteria so that older, non-violent inmates can get out a bit earlier. The Executive branch has the power to do these things (so spare me the AMURIKAN CAESAR!!!! bit, right-wingers), but Congress will have to do more as well. Hence S. 619/H.R 1695, the Justice Safety Valve Act, which would give federal courts more discretion to vary from mandatory minimum laws, you know, like judges ought to be able to do. FAMM still helps you tell your Congressfolk to support S. 619. Also, S. 1410, the Smart Sentencing Act, would cut mandatory sentences for drug crimes and apply the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 retroactively; I have no email tool for that, but you can always call your Congressfolk.

Meanwhile, a mere three years after the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill passed, the SEC is apparently still debating whether and how to enforce the Dodd-Frank requirement that publicly-traded corporations disclose executive pay in relation to those corporations' workers' pay. What's the hang-up? Big corporations don't want to have to disclose the money, that's why! Probably they think it's some sort of First Amendment issue, that no one has the right to know what I make, but the SEC does have the right (indeed, the duty) to protect shareholders, and shareholders want to know how much money their executives make, and not just because executives get paid in their money. And it's been almost five years since the banksters took a dump all over the economy; why, exactly, should they still get veto power over the people's will as expressed to and by their representatives in Congress? USAction helps you tell the SEC to implement regulations forcing publicly-traded corporations to disclose executive pay.

Around the table: stop-and-frisk, the far-too-rich, Rand Paul the sellout, treating banksters right, racism and the President.

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York rules that New York City's stop-and-frisk practices violate the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In case you were wondering, the Court found that police stopped Black and Hispanic folks in proportions well above crime rates for Blacks and Hispanics, so stop-and-frisk supporters don't even have that leg to stand on.

Alternet shows us "Eight Signs the Rich Have Way Too Much Money." You'll recognize a lot of them -- like that the super-rich, far from being "job creators," hoard over a third of their wealth -- but you should read anyway, lest you miss the internet billionaire's Tolkien-themed wedding which trashed protected lands. From the magnificent third-to-last paragraph: "Billionaires increasingly control our world. But they don’t live here. They dwell in a Hobbit-like fantasy, far from our worries and fears."

Ralph Nader instructs us that Rand Paul, far from being the Great Libertarian Hope, is just another Washington, D.C. player. Evidence: Sen. Paul has embraced the military spending he used to (weakly) deride, loves "free" trade, and hates environmental regulations -- and even his famous filibusters (on drone strikes and indefinite detention, and, I'd add, the PATRIOT Act) haven't actually accomplished bupkus, almost like that's the plan or something.

Russian man alters fine-print conditions in credit card contract, and then bank gets mad when it finally notices. Mr. Agarkov inserted clauses guaranteeing zero interest, zero fees, and an unlimited balance, plus a clause mandating that the bank pay him over $90,000 every time it alters the contract. The bank sued Mr. Agarkov when they finally figured out what had happened -- but a Russian judge sided with Mr. Agarkov because, hey, the bank signed the contract. Now Mr. Agarkov's suing the bank, and the bank's talking a lot of smack, for some reason. Why don't we do this with our banksters again?

Finally, Harry Reid says he sure hopes his fellow Senators oppose President Obama's agenda because they're sincere, and not because he's black. I don't think either answer is correct -- they oppose his agenda simply because they want to cut down a Democrat. But I can see why folks would think it's racism, since it looks about as stupid.

Action: the death of Israel Hernandez-Llach; surveillance state repeal.

First things first. Miami police tasered an 18-year-old Colombian immigrant, Israel Hernandez-Llach, for the crime of writing the letter "R" on a wall after a short chase -- and the victim, Israel Hernandez-Llach, ultimately died in a hospital. Mr. Hernandez-Llach's friend says the cops high-fived each other afterward, which I sure hope isn't how it went down. Could those cops have had that much of an Ahab complex over someone writing graffiti -- which, after all, is still only a misdemeanor? And do we punish misdemeanors with extreme force? Even better, Mr. Hernandez Llach was a well-known artist at his high school and had two sculptures on display at the Miami Art Museum -- and the taser-wielding cop has multiple excessive force complaints on file, which may not be all just coincidence, you know. No use arguing that Mr. Hernandez-Llach maybe shouldn't have been listening to artsy-fartsy types urging him to "challenge convention" -- I reiterate, with the italics hammer: no one deserves to die for writing graffiti. Presente helps you tell the Miami police department to hold the officers accountable.

Next, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) has introduced H.R. 2818, the Surveillance State Repeal Act. Go on thomas.loc.gov and read it; it's not long. Section 2 says, in its entirety, "The USA PATRIOT Act (Public Law 107-56) is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such Act are restored or revived as if such Act had not been enacted." Then section 3 repeals all but two sections of the noxious FISA Amendments Act of 2008. It gets better: Section 6 spells out that our government must get a warrant to conduct surveillance, Section 7 forbids our government from mandating that internet service providers build back doors into their security structures, and Sections 9 and 10 help whistleblowers do their job. To all those who squeal TERRORISTZZZ WIN!!!!!, kindly list all the terrorist attacks these laws have prevented. If you respond to that query with some version of "well, of course, that's classified," I'll know you're an intellectual fraud. And yes, I would always choose freedom over security, even if it really put me or my loved ones at risk -- for how worthy are your values if they don't put you at some risk? CREDO helps you tell Congress to repeal the PATRIOT Act.

Congress is off for most of the month, praise the Lord, so we get a chance to catch up on our progress on several fronts.

It probably won't surprise you to learn that the State Department's Inspector General will investigate possible ethics violations concerning the most recent draft of State's environmental impact report on the Keystone XL pipeline, but the Inspector General has also frowned upon the last report, so this could all be theatre. I'd prefer to believe the best of people, even politicians, but still, the Sierra Club still helps you tell Secretary Kerry to make State's environmental impact report reflect sound science, not oil industry biases.

H.R. 1010/S. 460, the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, has 143 House sponsors and 31 Senate sponsors, but remains stuck in committee in both houses -- in the House, actually, it's stuck in subcommittee. You'd think Congress would recognize a good idea supported by over two-thirds of the American public as a sure winner, but this is Congress we're talking about. Never mind calling the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections -- John Boehner's number is 202.225.6205. You can find Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee members here, or you can take more action at Ralph Nader's new website here.

Tier 3 tailpipe emissions, as you know, enjoy support from both environmentalists and automobile manufacturing corporations -- but not big oil, no, sir. Think big oil gets all us-against-the-world like pro sports teams do? If so, they're just another group of millionaires who waste their time cultivating a false sense of oppression. Gina McCarthy has been EPA Administrator for about seven minutes now, so the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell Ms. McCarthy to set the strongest tailpipe standards available, so we get less asthma and less cancer and suchlike. I do not believe you'd be double-commenting if you use this tool and if you've already submitted a public comment.

On the fracking front, the Bureau of Land Management still thinks allowing gas drillers to frack all over public lands while telling us little about the chemicals they're pumping into our water is a swell idea. After all, some corporation's "trade secrets" are so, so much more important than the possibility that you're ingesting poisonous crap. (End sarcasm.) The public comment period ends on August 23rd, so if you've missed previous opportunities to give the BLM what-for about their dumb rules, Breast Cancer Action still helps you do that.

Finally, hard to believe, but the USDA is still mulling whether to let chicken processing corporations do most of their own inspecting, and leave a mere one federal inspector per plant to look at almost 200 birds a minute and hope they spot the feces and blood and pus that would make a contaminated chicken a bad meal at the dinner table. Privatization -- it always works, except when it doesn't work, which is always. It gets better: one way the USDA plan would "make up for" the lack of chicken inspectors is to allow corporations to spray their chickens with more dangerous chemicals. It sounds like a Bush Mobb plan, except Tha Bush Mobb's USDA actually functioned better than this. One is tempted to ask why USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack couldn't be burned out by Cabinet work like Hillary Clinton was at State, and one is tempted to answer that winding down two wars slowly enough for all the corporate mercenaries to get their cut is harder work than just rubber-stamping whatever big agricultural corporations tell you. Anyway, the fact that they're still taking comments on this plan tells me they're still not getting enough comments from people who are perfectly happy to get salmonella if it means some CEO gets to gild his plumbing, so Food and Water Watch helps you tell the USDA to drop this dumb chicken inspection privatization plan already.

Certain Congressfolk seem to think the matter of arming Syrian rebels is "classified" -- and that even includes their own deliberations on the subject! It's like they've all forgotten they answer to us! When even Sen. Wyden doesn't give a straight answer about a decidedly non-classified matter of federal law, you know Congress is getting away with far more than we should ever allow.

Bloomberg sees the economy getting better, largely due to a renewed willingness on the part of Americans to borrow money. I'm not going to discount that notion entirely -- not many folks build a bigger life with money they already have -- but I'm skeptical of the slew of context-free statistics the article offers, and it doesn't tell us exactly how much of that record-setting household net worth comes from the rich households getting richer.

A Washington, D.C. NBC station rejects an anti-Keystone XL ad submitted for airing during a President Obama appearance on the Tonight Show, despite airing many pro-Keystone XL ads earlier. Climate change activists smell the Hand of Big Oil behind the rejection -- but nobody seems to consider that Mr. Obama might have pressured NBC himself, given that the ad would have run while he was on TV. I'd like to be wrong about that, of course.

Ken Buck, the Colorado Republican U.S. Senate nominee in 2010, files papers to run for the Senate again in 2014. They must be doing cartwheels in Mark Udall's office! Seriously, Ken Buck is the guy who a) couldn't ride a huge Republican wave to victory in 2010 b) against Michael Bennet. Michael Bennet! And Ken Buck routinely did Christine O'Donnell one better -- he not only said crazystupid crap, but he blamed other people for the cardinal sin of understanding perfectly well how crazystupid it was. (I'm glad he beat lymphoma, though.)

Popular Science looks at efforts to make body parts with 3-D printers -- body parts as in vital organs like the liver. We're nowhere near there yet, of course -- 3-D printers can make cells, but the cells still have to learn how to talk to other cells -- but it's been a fascinating journey so far, and more uplifting than using 3-D printers to make guns. (I don't particularly oppose 3-D printing guns, though I certainly oppose some of the ninnies doing it.)

Finally, Occupy.com looks at the Green Tea Coalition, in which, as one lobbyist laments, "the Tea Party has formed an unholy alliance with the left." And not just to pass that well-covered solar power mandate, either -- they've also come together to kill a sales-tax hike that would've done a bad job rehabbing public transportation, and a bill that would have stiffened penalties for protesting outside someone's house. I always hoped the Tea Party would figure out the difference between freedom for people and freedom for corporations; now it seems at least some of them are.

President Obama plans to urge Congress to gradually shut down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, "seeking to buffer taxpayers from future housing market downturns." But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, one more time, didn't cause the housing bubble to burst -- banksters and their hifalutin financial "instruments" did that. I guess Mr. Obama figures that because he got Dodd-Frank passed, he can do something for the right wing. Wrong again. He can do the people's will, because that's his job.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos buys the Washington Post. I suppose I should applaud any business icon who espouses "long-term thinking," since the major problem with today's economy is that big corporations want all the goodies right now, but he's against folks like himself paying more in taxes, though a 91% tax bracket would force all those CEOs to think about the future. And note well how paragraph 6 blames "the epochal change from print to digital technology," and not the Post's shilling for an ever-more unpopular class of American elites, for the Post's problems. Also note well that Mr. Bezos is one of those elites.

Another day, another liberal who sees nothing wrong with getting rid of the filibuster, because of demographic trends and because Republicans suck so bad they won't elect many Presidents in the foreseeable future. It's like some people have no recollection of the filibuster saving the Estate Tax in 2006, or of how 9.11 rescued a walking-dead Presidency. It's also like they can't type out the words "talking filibuster" without their hands seizing up. And Scott Walker can win in 2016, especially if the economy's still bad. And Brian Sandoval can win even if it's not.

Want to read one of the worst arguments ever? I don't care if she raised Temple Grandin, Eustacia Cutler argues like a right-winger, one who'd make Jonah Goldberg seem lucid, no less -- she seems to think autism equals masculinity equals lack of empathy equals obsessive logicality equals computer fixation equals pornography equals child porn, plus maybe fathers should go to more autism conferences. Nary a fact nor piece of research sullies this free-associative trip (and the "80 to 90% divorce rate" in autistic families is crap-with-crap-sauce, by the way). And what's with all the sentence fragments?

Ted Nugent instructs us that Trayvon Martin "got" justice, because, you know, he was a troublemaker, and Ted doesn't need to actually prove that, because he can spot trouble a mile away. I bet I know how he can spot it, too. You know what? Ted Nugent just wants attention now. He's done getting it from this space.

Food and Water Watch helps you tell the EPA to reopen three water-contamination investigations possibly involving fracking, and to ensure that citizens in the affected areas get clean drinking water. What's that, you say? The EPA actually abandoned water-contamination investigations? Yes, they did -- and what's worse, their preliminary report on Dimock, PA water pollution concluded that the entire gas drilling process released more methane into the drinking water, and that fracking may have caused methane pollution as well. (Sheathe those knives, right-wingers: you know as well as I do that there's more to gas drilling than just fracking.) Why did the Dimock, PA investigation, and similar investigations in Wyoming and Texas, get shut down? At least in Dimock's case, I'd hate to think it was because it was an election year. Well, Barack Obama ain't running for re-election, so he ain't got no excuses now.

Meanwhile, word on the street is that the Senate might change the law so nuclear power plants can ship casks of waste on American roads and railways to "consolidated interim storage" sites. And this idea's proponents are probably saying: well, at least we're shipping casks around instead of pools of spent fuel rods! You know what would be even better, though? Nuclear power plants storing their own waste in steel and concrete casks on their own property and those casks never going anywhere. Why would we move the casks, anyway? Because the nuclear power industry would rather store the waste on someone else's property. It's almost as if they somehow know it's bad stuff! Nuclear power plants can't make money despite decades of massive federal subsidies and now they want more from us? And any cask brigade would be a slow-moving target for terrorists, even worse than the "mobile Chernobyl" activists call it. CREDO helps you tell the Senate Energy Committee to scrap the "mobile Chernobyl" plan.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Senate to enact vigorous chemical safety reform, Moms Rising still helps you do that. Out of 80,000 chemicals registered for use in American products, how many have been safety-tested? 200. That's one-fourth of one percent (not one-fourth, "liberal" media!), which ain't enough, not when scientists link chemicals like flame "retardants," phthalates, and BPA to learning disabilities and cancers, and you can find these things in your furniture, your household cleaners, your packaging, and even your fruits and vegetables. Moms Rising will help you advocate for more rigorous protections for families in heavily-polluted "hot spot" communities, for making corporations (and not the public) prove the chemicals they make are safe, for letting states set stricter standards than our federal government if they so choose, and for giving the EPA vigorous law-enforcement power. And to your Senators who might harrumph about "the possible harm to businesses": businesses aren't more important than families.

NETWORK Executive Director Sister Simone Campbell spars with a Republican Congress about poverty. Possibly the biggest of many WTF moments from Republican Congressfolk: when Ms. Campbell explains, in dollar amounts, how hard it would be for churches to pick up the slack in helping the poor where government falls short, Rep. Reid Ribble (S-WI) responds that "your capacity (to respond to poverty) is the same as our capacity." Remember learning in school how churches have the power to tax their worshipers? Of course not. That's because they don't.

Just in case you thought banksters were the only ones stealing homes these days, Isaiah Thompson tells us how municipalities seize homes in "civil forfeiture" claims. Nominally a tool to deprive drug kingpins of the fruits of their "labor," municipalities like Philadelphia have gone rather haywire, taking homes from innocent homeowners because someone sold a dime bag on their property, and then pocketing the money. And get your surprised face ready: civil forfeiture claims just so happen to hit poor and ethnic minorities the hardest. The "War on Drugs" has gone completely bat-guano.

Paul Buchheit discusses "Eight Ways Privatization has Failed America." Number one, you'll be completely unsurprised to note, is health care. Spoiler alert: you won't be surprised by the other seven, either.

David Sirota explodes the myth that a minimum wage hike would result in huge price increases for everyone. FTW: "a report in Newsweek based on the calculations of University of Massachusetts economists...found that raising McDonald's workers wages to $15 an hour would likely add just 22 cents to the retail price of the Big Mac." $15/hour is double the current federal minimum wage, and, ah, 22 cents is not double the price of a Big Mac.

Remember last week, when we talked about the former Indiana School Superintendent revising letter grades upward for at least one of his big-donor charter school buddies? You may be wondering if he gave any public schools a similar break. In fact, no. Mr. Bennett now supervises Florida schools, because there's no such thing as failure when you're a right-winger.

As you may know, the Dodd-Frank financial reform law required that publicly-traded corporations disclose executive pay, particularly in relation to those corporations' average workers. But three years later, the Securities and Exchange Commission, charged with enforcing that part of the law, still hasn't written any regulations enforcing it. I wonder why. Were they going out of their way to listen to banksters who said such regulations just weren't needed? Were they waiting to see if Barack Obama would win a second term to the White House? Well, the SEC's mission is to protect shareholders, and since shareholders put up at least some of the money going toward executive pay for executives who constantly dream up new ways to crash the economy and destroy good American jobs, you'd think the SEC would take more of an interest in runaway executive pay -- or, at the very least, acknowledge the obvious self-interest of banksters telling them it's not that big a deal. It really is like our elites live in a completely different world than us, isn't it? Daily Kos and USAction help you tell the SEC to shine some sunlight on executive pay.

Meanwhile, the so-called Postal Reform Act of 2013 (H.R. 2748) would vastly curtail door-to-door mail delivery, kill 100,000 mail-carrier jobs, attack collective bargaining rights, and create yet another oversight committee. And right-wingers say we're all about needless bureaucracy and costly mandates? You know and I know how to solve the U.S. Post Office's problems: repeal the requirement, as mandated by Congress in 2006, that the USPS pre-fund its health care and pension plans 75 years in advance, as approximately no one else on Earth has to do. And email and Facebook aren't replacing the Post Office; a lot of folks in America don't have ready access to email and Facebook (or broadband internet, for that matter), so these "common-sense reforms" hurt them. Seriously, would "centralized" mail delivery hurt urban folks, or the rural folks who already have to go on pilgrimages to get to a Post Office? CREDO helps you tell Congress to reject these so-called "reforms." And, by the way, the USPS still gives pretty good service. I prefer it to UPS or FedEx, and not merely out of patriotism.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to support S. 619, the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013, FAMM still helps you do that. The bill would give all federal judges more leeway in ignoring mandatory minimum sentences for any convicted criminal. I approve of this, since mandatory minimums are a kind of one-size-fits-all mandate for a nation that's never been one-size-fits-all about its people, and also since we really ought to let judges judge. It's not only liberals that feel this way -- Sen. Paul (R-KY) joins Sen. Leahy (D-VT) in this effort, as Rep. Massie (R-KY) joins Rep. Scott (D-VA) in the House companion bill, H.R. 1695. Other bill supporters from the right include George Will (who's been a bit better than a stopped-clock rule lately), ex-NRA President David Keene, and National Association of Evangelicals Vice President Galen Carey; even 50 former federal prosecutors and judges joined together to write a letter to Congress supporting the bill. The bill doesn't just let judges be judges, after all; it also lets prosecutors be prosecutors -- it helps them make a real case for a defendant's guilt, rather than one tailored to some impertinent mandate.

Tea Party Group responds to North Carolina's "Moral Monday" protests with a "parody" of the Bangles' "Manic Monday" called (get your surprised face ready) "Marxist Monday." Sad to see Tea Partiers are as bad at rhyming as they are at thinking.

A pair of Kentucky Catholic religious orders won't allow natural gas-pipeline surveyors on their land. Which conservatives all over the land hail as a vindication of the power of private property over the interests of the too-powerful! Just kidding, of course -- I expect today's "conservatives" will call the Kentucky nuns and monks "socialists" instead.

The success of Montana's experiment in publicly-funded health care for its state employees in Helena gives hope that others will dare to try single-payer health care. After all, that's how it happened in Canada -- Saskatchewan did it first. I have less hope, only because of the persistent thick-headedness of Republicans -- even the Montana state Senator who really likes the program "wonders" how Montana will continue to pay for it, although the program has saved Montana money. I'm starting to think some people really are just robots.

Four Republican ex-EPA heads (including Christine Todd Whitman, Bush the Lesser's first EPA head) opine that we should really do more about climate change. I welcome their input more than a lot of contemporary Republicans do, I'll bet -- particularly their statement that "we should not tolerate" "purposeful delay" -- but I feel compelled to respond that "trusting in the innovation of American businesses and in the market" isn't a conservative principle. Trusting in people, however, is. Sad that even the best of Republicans can't get that straight.

Daniel Gross describes "what happens when fast food actually pays," as in "pays its workers more than a couple scoopfuls of dung pellets." Spoiler alert: fast-food chains like In-N-Out, Dick's Drive-In, and Moo Cluck Moo, which all pay over $10/hour and offer decent benefits, still make money and retain employees longer. And if you're skeptical because these joints may not be in your neck of the woods like McDonald's and Burger King are, ask yourself: are McDonald's and Burger King good things?

New York City announces a Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program, allowing doctors to "prescribe" food vouchers -- redeemable at any of the city's over 140 farmers' markets -- to their obese and overweight patients. Sounds damn innovative to me! Will right-wingers rise up against "fruit Nazis"? Without noting all the big gummint money -- their money, I hasten to add -- that goes to high-fructose corn syrup?

Finally, both of Mitch McConnell's Senate opponents -- Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes and Republican primary challenger Matt Bevin -- landed big punches on Mr. McConnell at Saturday's Fancy Farm event. I don't have anything interesting to say about it; I just enjoy the thought of Mitch McConnell suffering electoral hardship.

Hot on the heels of the news that the NSA can, in fact, wiretap pretty much everything you do on the internet as long it has your email or IP address, Free Press helps you tell Congress to stop blanket surveillance of American citizens. As far as your government is concerned, it doesn't matter that you think you don't have anything to hide -- it only matters that they think you might have something to hide, and if you can think of someone who shouldn't have all that surveillance power (you think a President Jim DeMint, for example, would be pretty chill with your activism on behalf of a higher minimum wage?), then no one should have it. So where's hope, besides in our efforts and our pure hearts? Well, more and more folks are coming around to the idea that this surveillance isn't cool -- and so are some of our Congressfolk. And you could hope for worse things than a Republican House deciding to embarrass Barack Obama for a good reason, for once.

Meanwhile, fast food chain McDonald's has suffered from a wave of quite deserved bad PR lately, partly due to their low wages, partly due to their "coaching" of workers who make those low wages, and also partly due to some of their franchises' new habit of paying their workers not with a check, but with a pre-paid debit card. You can imagine why you wouldn't want to be paid that way, right? Like that banks love to hit you with all kinds of fees every time you use it? And why should a worker have to put up with that? Because a franchise operator has some "right" to save a little money on cutting actual checks? It's the workers' money, and forcing them to take payment in the form of a fee-laden debit card is a way of taxing workers unfairly. And then delivering that "tax" to the banksters, no less! So Free Press helps you tell McDonald's to ban the practice of paying workers in debit cards, versus actual money.

Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rules that our government can continue to get cellphone location tracking without a warrant -- because the records are "business records." But they're records collected by businesses about particular people, are they not? And people aren't businesses any more than businesses are people.

Another day, another right-wing clown who thinks he can beat pro-minimum wage arguments with the $2/hour job he had almost forty years ago -- apparently forgetting that $2/hour in 1974 translates to $9.74/hour in 2013 dollars, or almost two dollars an hour above the minimum wage. Plus, you think his parents made him buy his own health care? Me neither.

Meanwhile, dig the drama staged by right-wing opponents of Kentucky's recent revision of state science standards. The "rich man's elitist religion of evolution"? Imputing whatever ideas you don't like to "rich" "elitists" does not automatically transform you into a populist. And do you also get the feeling that Ms. Stewart-Gore has waited her whole life to give her legislature a piece of her mind?

Ex-superintendent of Indiana schools, famous for giving letter grades to public and charter schools, changed his grading system after one of his big donor's charter schools got a C instead of an A. Said donor actually wrote that "anything less than an A for Christel House compromises all of our accountability work." What, you thought "accountability" had to do with the actual job you were doing? So, to sum: charter schools already siphon off public school money, keep teachers from organizing, kick out students whenever they need to goose up their scores -- and still need help not looking like failures. Sounds like a racket to me.

Finally, Larry Sabato speculates on (among other things) what the Democratic caucus in Congress might look like if John McCain had won in 2010. Long story short: Dems would likely have held the House in 2010, being the "out" party, and probably would have made Senate gains as well. Which makes complete sense, if for no other reason that a McCain Presidency would have obviated the need for corporate front groups to put together a Tea Party.

H.R. 2218, the bill that would prevent the EPA from regulating toxic coal ash, passed the House. Now it moves on to the Senate, where it will, presumably, get a less sympathetic hearing, but let's not get complacent: CREDO helps you tell your Senators to oppose the House effort to keep the EPA from doing its job -- which is not to make everything easier for the coal corporations, but to keep toxic crap out of our air and water. Don't brook any loose talk about "states' rights," either -- H.R. 2218 would give states power to regulate toxic coal ash, but states tend to be pretty lax about regulating toxic coal ash, which is why the feds must step in. And H.R. 2218 doesn't even demand that states meet minimum standards for protecting folks' health, which is almost unprecedented. If you find your Senator is still unconvinced, ask them this: are people more free when their drinking water is full of lead, mercury, and arsenic, or less free? Remind them, also, that regulations aren't job "killers" but job creators -- I mean, do they think robots are going to do all the work of getting coal plants up to snuff?

Meanwhile, Washington state will vote on I-522, an initiative requiring corporations to label genetically-modified food, on Election Day 2013, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association plans to plow millions of dollars into defeating it -- just like it did in California in 2012, where it spent some $2 million to help sow confusion about the "cost" of labeling GMO food and thus defeat Prop 37. It just so happens that Safeway, Starbucks, and Target are all members of -- and big-money contributors to -- the Grocery Manufacturers Association, and since you may well shop at two (if not all three!) of these stores, you may well spy opportunity. So MoveOn helps you tell Safeway, Starbucks, and Target to stop spending money on anti-GMO labeling efforts. Nine out of 10 Americans want corporations to label their genetically-modified food, and 90% is way more than a supermajority; if corporations can't do what virtually everyone wants them to do, what good are they? We're not asking them to do anything unconstitutional -- just tell us what Frankencrap is in their food. It's really not that much to ask.

Finally, Mr. Obama may be talking a good game about the economy lately, but he's still trying to talk Republicans into a "Grand Bargain" on the economy, which would include Medicare cuts. Doesn't his head hurt from five-plus years of wall-banging? Talking to Republicans about the economy is like talking to an arsonist about home rebuilding. And I'm profoundly tired of hearing about Medicare benefit cuts like it's a good idea for anyone, let alone the millions of seniors Medicare has saved from the poverty that persistent medical issues would have otherwise ensured. Mr. Obama could be playing 13-dimensional chess again, hoping that Republicans will say YEZZZZ GIVE UZZZ THA MEDICARE CUTZZZ!!!!!! and he'll say I HAVE YOU NOW!!!! But I think things are much simpler than that: most folks know Republicans want Medicare dead, and most folks also know that Mr. Obama has offered to cut Medicare benefits again and again and again, and most folks would really prefer to have a choice among their elected officials. Daily Kos helps you tell Mr. Obama, one more time, to stop offering Medicare cuts already.

Court martial judge finds PFC Bradley Manning guilty of 20 charges relating to his release of information about America's "war on terror" to WikiLeaks -- but not the "aiding the enemy" charge. That last item promotes the common good, I suppose, but when is anyone from Tha Bush Mobb going to jail?

Mr. Obama again offers to cut the corporate tax rate as part of an imagined "Grand Bargain" on jobs. I think all this bargaining misses the whole point of governing -- if Mr. Obama's supposed to negotiate with anyone, it's the American people, who have no great yearning to lower the corporate tax rate.

The U.K.'s proposed anti-pornography firewall will also "protect" folks from "web forums" and "esoteric material." And here I'm reminded, yet again, that British PM David Cameron has worked as a politician for most of his life -- at least Margaret Thatcher was a scientist, which is why she didn't believe the big corporations when they told her CFCs had little to do with ozone depletion.

David Dayen reminds us that while the Justice Department has gone after a reality TV celebrity for mortgage fraud, it hasn't gone after any banks for mortgage fraud, though a reasonable case against the banks would rather closely resemble the case the Justice Department will pursue against the Giudices. FTW: "Banks have been found to systematically lie to bankruptcy courts, yet their executives don’t appear on TV shows tossing over furniture and getting into slap fights, so they commit these crimes with impunity." And that is all.

R.J. Eskow's piece called "Tom Friedman: A New Ayn Rand for a Dark Digital Future" crossed my filters a half-dozen times before I read it. Each time I saw it I said I know, right? But those chores ain't gonna do themselves! But it's actually even more incisive, and chilling, than it sounds. So read it, even if you already know the story -- and not just for turns of phrase like "Panglossian panegyric."

Ed Kilgore notes that former Pennsylvania Gov. William Scranton (R-PA) and former Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr. -- who both died this past week, at a combined age of 194! -- belonged to an America we'd have a hard time getting our heads around today. Mr. Scranton was a fairly liberal Republican, back when Lyndon Johnson needed a bunch of them to pass civil rights legislation, and Mr. Byrd was a far-right Democrat back when most Southern Democrats belonged to a "conservative coalition." Strange times -- almost as strange as these times.