Incredibly, the Obama Administration is mulling whether to kill an American al-Qaeda member with a drone strike. Let's stop the mulling: the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution tells us that "no person shall...be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Thus the President doesn't get to kill an American, even one working for al-Qaeda, just on his say-so. We value our rights here in America, even if doing so results in bad things happening -- even if it gets us killed, or gets someone we love killed. I've said this before, but it bears repeating: your values aren't worth horsedoodle unless there's a good chance they'll inconvenience you. I mean, anyone can come up with a system of values that just so happens to benefit them in each and every situation they go through in life, but it takes wisdom to adhere to a value system that challenges you, that outlasts your short-sighted desires, and that fulfills you when you stare into the void. So Roots Action helps you tell President Obama that he doesn't get to kill anyone he likes because terrorism.
Meanwhile, we've blasted Senate Republicans plenty for blocking Mr. Obama's judicial nominations -- even nominations with wide bipartisan support -- but we haven't addressed the fact that a lot of these judges get wide bipartisan support because they're corporatists. Thus Daily Kos helps you tell Mr. Obama to appoint more public interest lawyers than corporatists lawyers to federal judgeships. Does that sound presumptuous? Does that sound like pie-in-the-sky thinking? Let the haters say so, for every great change that comes in America also comes with haters telling everyone how stupid it is. More than 7 out of 10 of Mr. Obama's judicial nominees have been corporate lawyers, and of course they're not all Snidely Whiplash, but corporations train their lawyers to think like corporate interests are the most important thing in the world. Meanwhile, fewer than one in 25 of Mr. Obama's judicial nominees have been public interest lawyers, and these folks who are more likely to stick up for working families than corporate lawyers. Not all public interest lawyers are peaches, either, but if I wanted to bet on justice getting done, I know which way I'd go.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our government to stop the Comcast-Time Warner merger, then both Common Cause and Free Press help you do that. We've spent enough time combatting the most nefarious myths of mergers -- that they "create jobs" (they kill jobs, as the resulting megacorporation cuts "fat" from the job rolls of the two former corporations) and that they lower prices (because they'll be competing with whom, exactly?). But we should also remember that we have no net neutrality regulations in America right now, and thus Comcast would have even more power in stopping us from, say, watching TV shows that aren't NBC shows (since Comcast owns NBC) or movies that don't come from Universal Studios (which, guess what? Comcast also owns). Comcast would also have more power to exact tribute from certain websites, meaning you might not see your favorite websites, but only the websites of their partners. No corporation -- no one -- should have so much power. But we can put a stop to that, if we have the will.
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