Both the ACLU and Free Press help you support H.R. 3361/S. 1599, the USA FREEDOM Act. I'm sorry to report that, as with the USA PATRIOT Act, the USA FREEDOM Act is a tortured acronym, but that's about all the latter has in common with the former -- the USA FREEDOM Act would curb our government from indulging in many of the abuses it thinks the USA PATRIOT Act blesses, including the data-vacuuming the NSA does with just about every electronic communication of just about every American. And I'm pleased to report that, as of this writing, three of S. 1599's 18 co-sponsors are Republicans (Dean Heller of Nevada, Mike Lee of Utah, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska -- though not, conspicuously, Rand Paul of Kentucky), which bodes well for the USA FREEDOM Act's passage in the upper House, at least. The lower House will make its multitudinous excuses, but the longer they delay justice, the closer many of them will come to getting tossed out of office.
Meanwhile, closer to home, we successfully shamed Pennsylvania Gov. Corbett into releasing $45 million in state aid to the Philadelphia public schools -- but Philadelphia's superintendent, Walter Hite, plans to reserve $10 million of that money for charter schools. The "charter" school is a complete scam, designed by its creators to siphon money from public schools into schools that can reject students at will (and, not incidentally, prevent its teachers from organizing into unions) -- all of which makes public schools worse, which makes charter schools more "necessary," which makes charter schools "eligible" for more public money, which then makes public schools even worse, ad nauseum. But we're either a civilized society or we're not: when we fail to educate our children, we fix what we're doing wrong; we don't rely on the "free market," which acts only in the interest of its biggest players, to bail us out. MoveOn helps you tell Mr. Hite to spend all that money on public schools.
Finally, today is Election Day, and though we may not live in New York City (who will elect a Mayor today), or Virginia or New Jersey (who will be electing Governors and state legislators today), or in any of the six Congressional districts holding special elections or any of the several dozen cities who will also elect Mayors today, it's still our duty to vote. So, if you experience or witness any problems voting today -- said problems including, but not limited to, finding the polling place, voter intimidation, accessibility issues, voting machine problems, or provisional ballot issues -- the number to call is still 1.866.OUR.VOTE (that's 1.866.687.8683, if you have as bad a time converting letters to numbers as I do). And remember: this is our government, no matter how little it may resemble a good government, and voting represents only the beginning of our duty to make our government a good government. It's a duty we'll carry out every day after we vote, whether we call our representatives, march in the streets, or talk to our friends and neighbors.
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