Thieves in the Temple.

Around the table: what the other side's public comments are *really* like, and other hard truths.

Tired of your Facebook friends telling you whom to vote for? Well, Atrios tells you to "Vote For Whoever The Hell You Want." Most of his rant concerns arguing about politics with people on Facebook and writing manifestos about your vote and why you made it, and those are two largely useless pastimes. But he is also correct that we invest too much of our own ego in our vote, when voting is really the beginning of our duty as citizens, not the end. (Full disclosure: I've been guilty of most of the sins I've summarized here.)

In case you were wondering what the other side's public comments on government regulatory proposals were like, dig this account of several oil corporation flacks testifying that deadly oil spills are actually job creators and not so bad for birds because fewer of them will be hunted to death. That's a little like saying cancer is good for you because it reduces the possibility you'll die in a car crash. And the fact that some good may come from evil is not a reason to excuse or propagate evil. When people say that "experts" leave better public comments than us dirty rubes, is this what they mean?

Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall says he "can't respect" people who think it's a good idea to boo Leon Panetta at the Democratic National Convention -- because "we're in the middle of a battle simply to make sure a dangerous -- uniquely dangerous -- figure like Donald Trump doesn't become President. Sorry, but I call that a hostage situation -- don't boo chickenhawk Democrats, or America gets it! And if "(e)very little bit and moment counts," someone should have told Terry McAuliffe that before he said Hillary Clinton will betray liberals on "free" trade. But then, rules are only for little people, like us.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio seems to think Donald Trump can learn how to be President "as he settles into this role as the nominee and ultimately the president." Because the Senate will act as a "check" on his power (if they're really interested!) and because "once you’re actually in that position, once you’re actually working at this thing, and you’re in there, and you start to have access to information that perhaps you didn’t have before, especially for someone that’s never been in politics, I think it starts to impact your views a little bit." And they say liberals use hundreds of words to say nothing? He gives empty suits a bad name.

Finally, in case you were wondering, Donald Trump did not commit treason by "hop(ing)" that Russia finds deleted emails from Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State. What does our Constitution say about treason, again? "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." If Russia and China aren't our enemies, then Mr. Trump hasn't committed treason. He's only committed his usual sin, that of being an asshole, and let's not heap additional charges upon him merely because what the Buddhists might call his asshole-nature hasn't yet earned him the appropriate punishment.

Action: student loan debt, and fairer districting.

Both CREDO and Wired for Change help you tell the Department of Education to make stronger efforts to help students defrauded by colleges to get relief for their student loans. Sounds fairly commonsensical, right? If you get screwed, and it puts you in a financial hole, you should never feel guilty for getting help getting out of that hole. Yet the Department of Education's proposed rules don't go far enough in offering that help -- they don't give all defrauded students full relief, they limit how long they have to get relief, and let colleges use forced arbitration agreements to prevent students from suing them over fraud -- which will, of course, have the effect of denying them the relief they deserve under the law. Why are the Department of Education's proposals so weak? Because the for-profit college corporations fight tooth-and-nail every attempt to civilize them. Our parents and grandparents would laugh at the idea that for-profit colleges are now so powerful that they can actually keep students from getting the relief they deserve under the law. We can fix that, of course, by speaking out in large enough numbers that our government can't ignore us.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Census Bureau has decided that it will continue to count prison inmates as residents of particular prison locations, rather than residents of the communities where they'd be living if they weren't in prison. I know, that also sounds commonsensical, but bear with me: generally, prisoners don't live in a prison forever, and prison isn't a home in any meaningful sense of the word. Also, two U.S. district judges have ruled this year that counting prisoners as residents of their prisons violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, because it forces folks from one Congressional district into another, and thus unfairly dilutes those districts' (and thus their citizens') political power. It's worse, of course, in states where felons can't vote (which is, of course, something we're also working on changing). You may respond if you don't like it, don't do the crime, but I'd merely respond that crimes have specific sentences, and piling on punishments doesn't make anyone tougher. You can leave a public comment with the U.S. Census Bureau, telling them to count prisoners as residents of their homes, rather than as residents of prisons, here.

Around the table: a Hillary flip-flop on "free" trade? And other horrors.

Virginia Governor/Friend of Clinton Terry McAuliffe says Hillary Clinton will flip-flop again on the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" if she gets elected President. Well, so much for that post-convention bounce! I won't say this is a surprise, but to hear Mr. McAuliffe utter this so carelessly, and then to hear his spokeshack walk the comment back so quickly, all brings back such fond memories of the 1990s, when the Clintons attracted drama the way carcasses attract vultures. Of course, we should trust Hillary Clinton on "free" trade exactly as much as we should trust Donald Trump, i.e., not at all.

Connie Bruck at the New Yorker writes an amazingly intricate piece addressing the issue of "Why Obama Has Failed to Close Guantánamo." Long story short: it wasn't just Congress's fault -- the Defense Department fought tooth-and-nail to keep it open, federal judges issued pro-detainment rulings, and the President was too lax about the matter in his first term and then too strident about it in his second. I'm a bit surprised to see both Hillary Clinton (as Secretary of State) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (as Senate Intelligence Committee Chair) looking fairly good on this matter.

The EPA readies a proposal to curb airplane emissions -- but would exempt military planes. And we don't know exactly how big a loophole that's going to be -- because the Pentagon doesn't have to report on emissions! I guess the military's reasoning is that they need to be allowed to do exactly as they like or they won't be able to protect the country, but you recognize that as a hostage situation, and you could easily argue that allowing military planes to remain dependent on fossil fuels actually compromises our security, as we remain beholden to the big corporations and foreign nations that make those fuels.

Davey Alba at Wired finds a peculiar way the FBI derails Freedom of Information Act (or FOIA) requests: they use 20-year-old software that returns lousy results, leading folks to believe the information they're looking for just isn't there. The FBI, using decades-old software -- who'da thunk it? Especially when the agency has much better software available. The FOIA requires government agencies to conduct a "reasonably calculated" search to locate requested records, but of course you already see the wiggle room in the phrase "reasonably calculated." I have faith that a federal judge will, one day, examine this issue and call BS; I just don't know if it will happen soon.

Finally, in case you were wondering if Donald Trump was ever going to release his tax returns, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort says no, citing the fact that he's being audited by the IRS. How can you tell right away Mr. Trump doesn't have a leg to stand on? Because even Ron Fournier can absolutely eviscerate his argument. (Though "I'm being audited" isn't necessarily Mr. Trump's "latest" excuse -- he's made it before. I suspect Mr. Trump has all his excuses sitting on a lazy Susan that he just spins to his heart's content.)

Action: government spying, and paid sick leave.

Congress was supposed to vote last week on the nefarious McCain amendment that would expand FBI spying powers such that they could vacuum up your browser history without a warrant -- but they haven't yet. Could they be, perhaps, afraid of the popular will? People tell me the popular will means nothing in politics, but they're wrong; I've seen the popular will stop Our Glorious Elites' attempts to loosen media consolidation rules and destroy net neutrality protections, and I've also seen the popular will delay the ratification of "free" trade deals for years. I wish we won more victories, but don't let the cynics and the haters fool you into throwing up your hands, because then you'll win no victories. And this push to expand the FBI's power to extract browser histories, email to/from headers, and other types of internet records won't be a victory for anyone but the Executive branch, which, as always, needs to be brought to heel, not given more power it can abuse. Hence the Electronic Freedom Foundation helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject expanded government spying powers.

Meanwhile, with the new school year beginning in a little over a month, Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass paid sick leave legislation so that parents can take a day off when their kids get sick. Some four in 10 workers (and over half of working mothers) can't earn paid sick leave in America, and the lower you get on the economic spectrum, the worse that number gets -- some eight in 10 low-wage workers can't earn paid sick leave in America, and America remains (stop me if you've heard this one before!) one of the very few nations on Earth where you can't earn paid sick leave unless you have a union contract or your boss is generous enough to offer it. I guess the fact that six in 10 American workers can earn paid sick leave is enough for right-wingers to squeal about Big Gummint, but I'm such a sanctimonious purist I won't be happy until 10 in 10 American workers can earn a few paid sick days, so they don't have to lose a day's pay to take their kids to the doctor's, so they don't have to go to work sick themselves and make other people sick. Really, this is not so much to ask of Our Glorious Elites.

Around the table: "Obama's Vietnam," and Trump's latest unforced error.

Dean Baker at TruthOut wonders if the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" will prove to be "Obama's Vietnam." Mr. Baker's thesis is a tad obscure -- Mr. Obama now pushes the TPP to "preserve American credibility," the same reason we gave for staying in Vietnam -- but it's sure a lot better than wondering if Afghanistan is "Obama's Vietnam" (versus, say, "Bush's Other Vietnam"), as Newsweek did some years back. But n.b.: "The classic story of gaining from free trade by removing trade barriers doesn't really apply to the TPP primarily because we have already removed most of the barriers between the countries in the pact." Unless, I suppose, one considers "I can't redistribute as much worker wealth upward to myself as possible" a barrier, as many of Our Glorious Elites apparently do.

Leaked DNC emails prove that top Democrat officials were certainly biased against Bernie Sanders, just as he always said -- so the "liberal" media instantly converts that fact from "conspiracy theory" to "no big whoop." They're "no big deal" now because politics is mean, though they were just saying that politics is not mean in precisely this way! You may smell the faint odor of "liberal" media coverage of the Downing Street memos, which the "liberal" media first ignored, and then said were no big deal because everyone knows Bush lied us into war, although everyone knew that with virtually no help from the "liberal" media. (But n.b. that the FBI is actually looking into foreign involvement in the DNC email leaks now.)

Iranian government destroys more than 100,000 satellite dishes because they "deviate the society's morality and culture" and cause "increased divorce, addiction and insecurity." Obviously I'm not unsympathetic to the notion that media is disruptive and decadent, but I suspect the "foundations" Gen. Naghdi values are the ones Iranian society has built on top of women. And if 70 percent of Iranians use satellite dishes despite facing a fine that exceeds Iran's poverty line, I'd say it's a bit late to close the barn door.

Finally, Donald Trump defends Roger Ailes from the multitudinous charges of sexual harassment that have helped end his career at Fox News by saying that "some of the women that are complaining, I know how much he's helped them." Because everything in life is a simple negotiation, even the law and order of which Mr. Trump professes to be the One True Defender! Seriously, Mr. Trump's post-convention bounce is over -- there aren't that many men in America who are this much of a neanderthal, but there are that many women who've suffered at the hands of one.

Action: police brutality, and Peruvian farm workers.

Randy Owens, of Deatsville, AL, has started a petition on Change.org which helps you pressure the Alabama State Board of Investigations to release video footage of Melissa Boarts's death-by-police-shooting. Ms. Boarts, of Auburn, was shot to death by Auburn city police on April 3; she was having a crisis likely brought on by bipolar disorder, and Ms. Boarts's mother communicated these facts to the officers who arrived at the scene -- but they shot her dead anyway, using the fact that Ms. Boarts was (likely) carrying a pocket knife as an excuse. Of course, this is the 21st century, so body and dashboard cameras recorded the whole incident -- but the state apparently doesn't want to release it, citing the fact that the investigation is ongoing. I'm scratching my head wondering what that would have to do with anything -- the footage is what it is, and surely the state of Alabama is capable of making copies of the relevant recordings, so their refusal to release them only makes the police look more guilty. Of course, we would prefer knowing their innocence to speculating on their guilt.

Meanwhile, despite our efforts, the Peruvian produce corporation Tal S.A. still hasn't fixed the problems they've caused by firing nine union workers, filing charges against them, and laying off thousands of workers. Actually, they've made them worse with their plan to pack the union's leadership with cronies. Gosh, an American corporation would at least be cleverer about something like this. Hence the International Labor Rights Forum still helps you tell American produce corporations to pressure Tal S.A. into changing its ways. I guess they're not going to listen to us, because who are we, after all, but honest, hardworking people who contain multitudes? But they might listen to the corporations that buy Peruvian produce for sale in the United States, since there'd be money involved. I feel compelled to point out that, if Congress rams through the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" in the lame-duck session, we'll find it much harder to exert this kind of pressure -- and then corporations like Tal S.A. will be able to sue us in "investor-state tribunals" and extract tribute from us! So, it's use it or lose it, then.

Around the table: health care mergers, terror deaths, high-performing economies, white supremacists, and poor folks with a purpose.

Good news: the Department of Justice has joined with nine states to block two proposed health insurance corporation mergers, the Anthem/Cigna merger and the Aetna/Humana merger. Attorney General Lynch may be a bit sanguine about how competitive the private health insurance market can be -- health insurance being pretty much a necessity, private corporations will always have some hostage-taking power in re pricing -- but she's certainly right to say the aforementioned mergers will make that matter worse.

A FAIR survey finds the "liberal" media gives a lot more coverage to European terror deaths than Middle Eastern terror deaths -- like, 19 times more coverage. We could always use a reminder that ISIS kills plenty of Middle Easterners -- as ISIS kills anyone who doesn't march in jackboot lockstep with their reactionary agenda -- because, after all, Middle Easterners are people too. I say this out loud because a huge chunk of Americans (not a majority, but still too many) think Middle Easterners are animals.

Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times notes that even as right-wing groups call California "bad for business," California has a pretty "smoking hot" economy. California has gained more jobs over the last 12 months than any state bar Florida, and leads the nation in GDP growth. Mr. Hiltzik goes on, with hilariously understated results, but just remember that the state where the Arthur Laffer Clown Car has the most influence -- Kansas -- remains a slow-motion train wreck.

Speaking of "too many Americans," the AP suggests that the white supremacy movement has a more "clean-cut" face now, and they get to cheer Donald Trump from inside the convention hall. Of course, cleaning up well has always been essential for hard-right assholes -- I'm old enough to remember how much plastic surgery David Duke got once he decided to run for state office. And I still think what really makes the Republican establishment mad is that white supremacists get to say out loud what they can only say to their friends. But, really, white supremacists want to be called "Europeanists" now? So how do they get to say liberals are politically correct?

Finally, Jack Shuler at TruthOut profiles the Newark Think Tank on Poverty, a community organization largely made up of folks suffering from poverty. Newark, Ohio -- "a red city in a red county" -- is "a microcosm of the American economy" in that it had its manufacturing base stripped away in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but no jobs in any other field ever came back. But the Think Tank organizes the poor into a fighting force that has already gotten the state of Ohio to "ban the box" asking about job applicants' criminal records for public jobs and has also gotten the city of Newark to "ban the box" entirely -- which is certainly a better use of their time than figuring out how to deliver their members' votes to Democrats. The best part is when members testify how the Think Tank has kept them out of jaii, away from drugs -- and filled with purpose. I wish them luck as they evolve.

Action: GMO labeling, and banning atrazine.

Well, the House followed the Senate's lead in passing the GMO "labeling" bill that will allow big food corporations to "label" their genetically-modified food in a way that looks suspiciously like not labeling genetically-modified food, and will also pre-empt Vermont's actual GMO labeling law to boot -- and then President Obama did what I expected him to do, which was declare victory and retreat by signing the bill. What else are Democrats good at, after all? But the fight isn't over -- the bill does compel the FDA to issue a national GMO labeling standard one day, and when they do, we'll be on that like white on rice. In the meantime, quite a few food processing corporations have actually bowed to popular pressure and started voluntarily putting GMO labels on their products, so Just Label It helps you tell seven big food processing corporations to put clear GMO labels on their food. Not all of them have decided to use GMO labels, nor have they committed to using clear ones, versus the QR codes or website addresses you'd need to jump through hoops to read. So let them know we're watching them.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell the EPA to ban the weed-killer atrazine from use on American crops. Why? Because the EPA's own scientific assessment has found high enough levels of atrazine, the second most-used herbicide in America, in rivers and streams that it negatively impacts fish and mammals -- this after UCal-Berkeley biologist Tyrone Hayes found that atrazine disrupted the sexual development of some amphibians. If that doesn't impress you, then consider that you are also a mammal -- not all that different from other mammals, really, except perhaps in self-importance -- and consider, also, that studies from earlier this millenium linked atrazine with delayed menopause, gestational diabetes, and birth defects in humans. It's no use arguing that banning atrazine would raise food prices, as if all attempts to improve our world must be held hostage to food prices, or as if a CEO couldn't break off some executive salary to keep food prices low, nor is it any use arguing that we'll just never come up with something to replace atrazine, when this is America, home of the can-do spirit.

Around the table: more tales about national security, the "liberal" media, banksters, racism, and Donald Trump.

Obama Administration clears Mohamedou Ould Slahi -- author of the famous Guantánamo Diary, describing the extensive torture he received during his dozen-plus years in detainment -- for release. Without charges, naturally; how splendid, that our government can torture a guy for more than a dozen years but can't even file a freaking charge. Good for you if you advocated for his release, but just remember that going from "being cleared for release" from Guantánamo to actually being released can be yet another long road.

In a peripherally-related note, Adam Johnson at FAIR catches the New York Times discussing the recently-deposed Roger Ailes "direct(ing) (Fox News) to break with classic journalistic detachment to get fully behind the war efforts of the George W. Bush White House" -- as if the New York Times's own pro-war reporting didn't also signify a "break with classic journalistic detachment." You'll remember Judith Miller's "reporting" and the pervasive drum-beat for war among most Times columnists as well as I do; I suppose the Times would respond that Mr. Ailes gave an actual order to support the Iraq war, while the Times editorial board was too smart to do that out loud or in writing. Then again, I'm not even sure that's true -- Our Glorious Elites are really sick, immoral, and decadent.

Government Accountability Office (or GAO) will look into Central States Pension Fund management, after Teamster activists point out that bankster fund managers have endangered the fund's ability to pay future retirees. Of course, as the Fund was losing billions of dollars on risky investments in Russian banks and low-rated mortgage bonds, firms like Goldman Sachs (of course!) made a crapload of money off their "management" in fees. As we know, of course, the whole point of a pension fund is not to outperform some other fund, but to be there for retirees, which is why pension funds used to put their money in safe investments. But bold thinkers continue to have too much say about everything in America.

Yet another Congressional hopeful seems to think slurs against Chinese folks will get him into office. Former Democratic Governor/Senate hopeful Ted Strickland has passed out fortune cookies whose fortunes say "Rob Portman. The Best Senator China's Ever Had." This brings back such happy memories of that awful Peter Hoekstra ad, that awful DSCC ad against Pat Toomey, and that awful Jack Conway ad. You can criticize "free" trade without being racist, but you shouldn't pander to the worst in people just to get them to vote against bad candidates.

Finally, you may have heard about Donald Trump's big speech the other night, and FactCheck gets you up to speed on its many fabrications and distortions. Sadly, I must report that it was, as written, a fairly effective speech -- converting the Hillary slogan "I'm with her" to "I'm with you" was particularly brilliant -- but of course he shouted the whole thing, and people really do get tired of that. And Mr. Trump is, of course, just another loudmouth who talks about law and order as if that never, ever has anything to do with polluters or corporate crime, when polluters can destroy clean air and clean water forever, and we still haven't recovered from what the banksters did to us in 2008.

Action: regulating banksters, and keeping oil wastewater off crops.

H.R. 5592/S. 3118, the Derivatives Oversight and Taxpayer Protection Act, would (among other things) stiffen penalties for law-breaking derivatives traders, bring more derivative trading under the regulatory umbrella, and put more of the consequences of risky trading upon traders, not taxpayers. Dodd-Frank does force more sunshine onto derivatives trading, but given that derivative trading helped crash our economy in 2008, we could use a bit more. A "derivative" literally derives its value from another contract -- mostly, it describes a "bet" on how the price of a particular commodity will go up or down in the future. It's rather like gambling, and, as you know, gambling isn't a good way of making money: unless you're in on a certain fix -- which is, of course, illegal and immoral -- "betting" on (for example) fluctuations in the price of corn remains largely a crapshoot, regardless of how much preparation you've done. And unlike, say, fantasy football, when a derivative goes bad, we all feel the effects. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support more transparency for high-risk trading.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell California Gov. Jerry Brown to stop farmers and big ag corporations from irrigating their crops with oil wastewater, then CREDO still helps you do that. California surely suffers from drought (and not from smothering regulations involving Donald Trump's "three-inch fish"), but that doesn't make oil wastewater on crops -- which sooner or later will become your food -- a solution. I'm sure some right-wingers will squeal well, you can't prove the wastewater is bad! To which I would respond: what, exactly, about the phrase "oil wastewater" exudes confidence in its safety? Right-wingers constantly point at dung and say you should go ahead and taste it because it might be meatloaf. The only thing we don't know about oil wastewater is exactly how concentrated its carcinogens and toxins are. Of course, I'm not just about avoiding catastrophe -- I'm also about solutions. And, in that spirit, I would suggest that using water for farming instead of fracking would help California (and its agricultural industry) cope much better with the drought.

Around the table: starring the usual causes for outrage and optimism.

5th Circuit Court of Appeals rules that Texas's Voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act -- specifically, Section 2, which the Supreme Court did not strike down in Shelby County v. Holder. The Court didn't strike down the law, however -- they mandated that Texas come up with some kind of workaround so voters who have a "reasonable impediment" to getting the required ID can still vote. Meanwhile, a federal district Court judge issues an injunction allowing Wisconsin residents without Voter ID to vote in November if they swear to their identity in an affidavit. That's far from ideal, either -- I can foresee a lot of "voter fraud" cases (which will play into the hands of the Voter ID crowd!) where, say, a fellow named Thomas D. Nelson gets convicted because his name is actually Thomas D Nelson.

Ho hum, the Nice truck attack last week killed 84 civilians, while a coalition airstrike in Syria earlier this week killed over 85 civilians, and just guess which item the big "liberal" media news outlets ignored. FAIR writer Adam Johnson, who's very, very good, refutes two potential opposition arguments with ease. But put six beers in big "liberal" media executives and they'll tell you it's OK when we do it. No, scratch that: they won't even need the alcohol's help.

New York City tries to keep a lid on skyrocketing rents by handing out property tax breaks to landlords -- but doesn't make data regarding those rental prices available, even though the law mandates it. Why is this at all acceptable to anyone? Because people make money off it, that's why -- and some of them could well be collecting the property tax break without actually offering the lower rents that would qualify the landlords for the tax break! I'd be a schmuck to think that's not going on merely because I haven't personally put people in jail for it.

Michael Corcoran at TruthOut reminds us that CNN's hiring of former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski isn't unprecedented -- in fact, it's part of a long tradition of hiring partisan hacks to give "insight" and "analysis." Oh, almost forgot -- they also hire active political lobbyists and rarely-if-ever disclose that fact. "Liberal" media executives will say -- out loud, too! -- that insiders know more than everyone else, without ever mentioning that insiders are not only looking for their next inside job, but typically fancy themselves as creators of reality, not reporters of it. (And, for balance, we learn that MSNBC is no better with hiring partisan hacks.)

Finally, NPR reports on a cookout in Wichita, KS this past Sunday -- a cookout put together by both Wichita police and the Wichita Black Lives Matter chapter. Protestors and police need to socialize with each other outside of superheated confrontations, so I'm glad they chose this cookout, and I hope they do so again. Cynics, of course, will drink all the Hatorade they want, but I think this is cause for optimism, and I'll think so even after the next shooting, and the next one, and the next one.

Action: church/state separation, and water privatization.

The Johnson Amendment, passed in 1954, prevents churches from speaking out on partisan politics (though not political issues), lest they lose their tax-exempt status. So Republicans now champion repeal of the Johnson Amendment as a "free speech" and "religious conscience" issue, so churches could actively promote political candidates and still avoid paying taxes. Seems to me if you get goodies from our government, you ought to play by our rules, but Republicans act like tax exemptions are a right, and one that apparently carries no responsibility at that. And they say liberals act like every boon is a right? Again: churches can still speak out on issues of the day; they just can't act as secret PACs for candidates. Hence Americans United for the Separation of Church and State helps you tell the IRS to investigate possible violations of the Johnson Amendment with considerably more vigor. The IRS may be avoiding this task out of fear that Congress will defund it, but Congress would invent reasons to defund the IRS, so you might as well piss Congress off by doing your job.

Meanwhile, Arizona is still slogging through a 17-year-long drought brought on largely by historically-low Colorado River water levels -- yet the notorious Nestlé corporation wants to bottle local water in Phoenix and resell it (and not necessarily to good Phoenix residents) at a massive profit. That sounds like the stupidest idea ever, doesn't it? Sadly, no idea is so stupid that some government, somewhere, won't push it, and worse, no idea is so stupid that a corporation won't BS everyone about it. Here, you're supposed to applaud the abject folly of drawing off public water in the middle of a drought-addled desert for profit by the "jobs" the plant will supposedly "create." And this plant may one day create 50 permanent jobs -- in a city of over 1.5 million people, all of whom drink water and cook with water and bathe in water, and all of whom have worked hard conserving water without having to lose more of it so some corporation can get richer. Hence Sum of Us helps you tell Phoenix's government to reject Nestlé's plan to profit at the expense of its citizens.

Around the table: that crazy Republican convention, and other sorrows.

Joan Walsh at The Nation reminds us that there was plenty of ugliness at the first night of the Republican National Convention without focusing on apparent plagiarism in Melania Trump's speech. Why, it's almost like the Trump camp came up with the plagiarism idea to distract us from everything else! Of course, we've lived through this already -- every time George W. Bush said something dumb as President, we got distracted from the real evil his Mobb was doing at that particular moment. (But memo to Chris Christie, who said Mrs. Trump's was "93 percent different" from Ms. Obama's 2008 speech: should I be impressed if he showed me his home and declared that he did not steal 93 percent of the items therein?)

Surprise, surprise, local and federal law enforcement officials went undercover to try to disrupt a major anti-fracking rally in Colorado two months ago, and that the Bureau of Land Management reimbursed local police for their efforts. Dear NSA agent reading my emails: want to know why they do these things? Because they don't want to drink poisoned water. Also, they don't want to live on a hothouse planet. Seems to me this is exactly why we asked Congress to investigate government spying on activists not too many days ago. Hate to pile on, but doesn't infiltrating grassroots organizations take money away from, you know, managing public lands?

In a peripherally-related development, New Zealand is contemplating granting personhood rights to the Whanganui River, only a few years after granting personhood rights to the Te Urewera national park. The arrangement essentially means that anyone bringing suit on the park's behalf can prove harm to the park, rather than a particular person, but I also spy a way not just of avoiding the hard work of shepherding public lands, but a way of avoiding paying to maintain public lands, too. And call me old-fashioned, but I don't think rivers are people, either -- even if they are far more natural than corporations.

HHS report finds a lot of 21st century innovations subverting the privacy protections offered by HIPAA. HIPAA, after all, only applies to the data your health provider and health insurer (and their partners) maintain, but the corporations that made the apps or wearables with which you count steps taken and calories burned? HIPAA's authors didn't anticipate that, and I guess I can't blame them. Of course, this is why we need a functioning Congress -- civilization demands constant maintenance.

Finally, America's Greatest Advice Columnist, Dan Savage, unloads on a questioner who queries him about voting for a third-party candidate. The crux of his argument: "Here's how you (create a viable third party in America): you run people not just for fucking president every four fucking years....Where are the Green Party candidates for city councils? For county councils? For state legislatures? For state assessor? For state insurance commissioner? For governor? For fucking dogcatcher? I would be SO willing to vote for Green Party candidates who are starting at the bottom." Slurs against America's Greatest Citizen Ralph Nader notwithstanding, he's got a point. And if you're thinking third parties have a lot of uphill climbing to viability -- and they do, especially here in Pennsylvania -- remember, also, that third parties have two big things going for them: the Democratic and Republican parties, perhaps the most hated political parties in American history.

Action: Saudi Arabia, and corporate tax avoidance.

Our government has released the 9.11 Congressional report's infamous 28 censored pages, which suggest that high Saudi Arabian officials may have given aid and comfort to the 9.11 hijackers. The absence of a smoking gun tying Saudi Arabia to 9.11 -- which, of course, may be a result of Saudi non-cooperation with Congress's investigations! -- has led the Saudi embassy here in America to declare that it "exonerates" them, but a fearless reporter could prove otherwise. In any case, it's well past time to confront the toxicity of our relationship with Saudi Arabia, a relationship where we not only trade massive amounts of weapons for oil, but also our silence as the Saudi government kills civilians in Yemen and oppresses its own citizens at home. Now, some folks actually tell me that we should do whatever Saudi Arabia wants, because other Middle Eastern nations are worse! Because that's what being an American is all about -- being a hostage to evil! Roots Action helps you demand that our government start a sort of BDS movement against Saudi Arabia, to deprive it of the money and weapons it needs to continue its errant ways.

Meanwhile, the SEC is (until tomorrow!) taking public comments on their proposal to force American corporations to disclose any foreign subsidiaries "working" in nations known as tax havens, as well as the taxes these subsidiaries would owe if they weren't "foreign." You recall the infamous Cayman Islands building housing almost 19.000 corporations? How do they all fit in there? Of course, those corporations only exist there as files in a filing cabinet. I suppose corporatists will argue that they shouldn't be compelled to disclose anything that isn't actually illegal, but a) people have that right, and corporations ain't people, and b) the SEC's job is to keep corporations from screwing over their investors, many of whom would like to know if their money is going toward tax evasion, and thus also depriving us all of the services we need. Indeed, that's probably what corporations are most afraid of -- that people will know, and not just suspect, the depths of their immorality. So Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell the SEC to mandate corporate disclosure of foreign subsidiaries.

Around the table: talking only to banksters about financial regulation, and other follies.

Dean Baker catches Bloomberg analyzing a proposed Wall Street tax by talking only to Wall Street banksters. Naturally, Wall Street banksters take "mom and pop" hostage, as if Mom and Pop are the ones indulging in the high-speed trading that does nothing for our economy except redistribute wealth upward. But it is stunning, that nominally intelligent people (I don't think it's an act of charity to assume reporters are nominally intelligent people) seem so blind to other people's self-interest. Can it be because they're paid to be blind to it?

Ho hum, Union of Concerned Scientists report due out tomorrow will tell us that "missile defense" programs the Pentagon has been laboring on all these years don't protect us from a damn thing. And, naturally, you'll discover that Barack Obama has been throwing good money after bad on "missile defense" just as much as George W. Bush did, without garnering any of the hero-worship the right bestowed on Mr. Bush back in the day. I wonder why "missile defense," despite its obvious problems and its rigged tests that still fail, still persists as a serious project. Cough corruption cough!

OpenSecretsBlog informs us that the Trump campaign will have serious trouble raising money from Wall Street this year, because Mr. Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, has the power to select firm (or firms) to run Indiana state or local pension funds, and the SEC has, since 2010, forbidden campaign contributions from any firm that could be selected to run those funds! Hey, it's called the "pay to play" rule for a reason. I expect Donald Trump will decry the "pay to play" rule as Big Gummint Run Amok, and would, as President, appoint some stooge to the SEC to kill it -- until, of course, he needs it to defeat his 2020 challenger.

Government investigators say that HUD Secretary Julian Castro violated the Hatch Act by praising Hillary Clinton to Yahoo! News -- in his own office, with the HUD seal in the background. The Hatch Act forbids public employees from conducting partisan political business at public offices, and while not many folks know what the Hatch Act does, this could still dash Mr. Castro's Vice Presidential hopes -- if there's anything Hillary Clinton hates, it's an amateur crook. I'll be mildly interested to hear Donald Trump's howls of anger, since I expect he'll be violating the Hatch Act every hour of every day as President (and probably telling us it's different when he does it, too).

Finally, buried in this mountain of pre-Republican convention coverage from Politico is the spectacle of George W. Bush openly fretting that he will be "the last Republican President." All together now: we can only hope! Now Mr. Bush shouldn't worry so much about that, because Republicans will always have bajillions of dollars in corporate campaign contributions and thus will always have a shot -- but he should have a little more shame. Donald Trump isn't the reason to worry that Republicans will never win the Presidency again -- George W. Bush's eight-year reign of incompetence and arrogance is that reason, even if today's Republicans pretend he never existed. Republicans sure don't deserve any more Presidents after George W. Bush.

Action: government spying, and endangered species.

CREDO helps you tell the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to investigate FBI and DHS surveillance of political organizations and activists. Recent news reports inform us that FBI and DHS personnel have visited certain folks in Cleveland, just to, you know, ask them what they might be up to during the Republican National Convention. Of course, you remember this sort of thing, and worse, happening frequently during the run up to the Iraq war and the Occupations of 2011, to name two examples. And Congress, of course, cares little about such oversight, since they'd only be performing it on behalf of their bosses, the American people, and not some big corporate donor who can ensure their re-election -- in fact, the Orlando tragedy has made Congress antsy to conduct more surveillance on the people. Of course, the preferences of Congress are only meaningful because they say they are -- they are not meaningful because they reflect the values of a civilized society, for example, unless they actually reflect those values, which they won't, unless we speak up en masse.

Meanwhile, American Rivers helps you tell the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation to improve their projects on the lower Yellowstone River so that the pallid sturgeon can survive. The pallid sturgeon has been swimming around for over 75 million years, but scientists tell us that fewer than 150 pallid sturgeon are still alive, and that no wild-born pallid sturgeon has reproduced in many, many decades. (Keep the Viagra-for-fish jokes sheathed, please. And I do mean sheathed.) Perhaps not coincidentally, we've been building dams on the Yellowstone for decades, with very little regard for the wild animals already living there, and that's dramatically reduced fish populations. If you're inclined to declare that the pallid sturgeon must be one of Donald Trump's "little three-inch fishes" that supposedly cause all the drought in California, please do two things: 1) slap yourself, and 2) consider whether wiping out a species is ever really a good idea. Once a species is gone, no Jurassic Park-style shenanigans can ever bring it back.

Around the table: Virginia's DMV turns the state into a debtors' prison, and other stories.

Murtaza Hussain at The Intercept reminds us that we shouldn't let the terrorist attack in Nice prompt us to "Give ISIS What It's Asking For," i.e., a world divided against itself. You know, kinda like we gave Osama bin Laden what he was asking for after 9.11 -- not just withdrawing American troops from Saudi Arabia (his only actual demand, if I remember correctly), but all the injuries we did to ourselves afterward, like the PATRIOT Act and the Department of Homeland Security and the Iraq war. If your impulse, upon reading the first sentence above, was to respond well, naturally a guy named Hussain would say that, please do two things: 1) slap yourself, and 2) stop reading this blog. (You would also have the option of repeating step 1 as often as necessary before proceeding to step 2.).

Charlottesville (VA) Legal Aid Justice Center files class-action lawsuit against the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, alleging that its system of automatically suspending drivers' licenses for unpaid minor infractions not only violates "the Constitution’s “fundamental principles of due process and equal protection," but has turned the state into a sort of debtors' prison. Before you laugh, consider not only that the fines are automatic (aren't judges supposed to set sentences in America?), but also that about one out of every six Virginia residents currently have suspended licenses -- meaning, if you live in Virginia, this could be you if you work a minimum-wage job and get caught with a busted tail-light in a state with inadequate public transportation, and you may be out of a job soon, and thus unable to pay your ever-increasing debt, et cetera. Wow, it's like the state is a payday lender or something.

As Donald Trump accepts the Republican Party's Presidential nomination this week, Justin Talbot Zorn at the Huffington Post wonders why Mr. Trump, supposedly so anti-"free" trade, chose a "free trade cheerleader" as his running mate. But I think he gives Mr. Trump too much credit for actually meaning what he says this one time, for his stance on trade, too, "has been subject to negotiation and revision" -- Mr. Trump said not long ago that he supports "free" trade, as long as it's a good trade deal, when we can all cite numerous reasons why the last dozen or so "free" trade deals are fundamentally evil. I bet President Trump's first yuge and byootiful trade deal will look just about exactly like the TPP he now professes to hate -- and I also bet he lies about it.

It gets worse, of course: Mr. Trump actually excused new running mate Mike Pence for his pro-Iraq war vote, while explicitly saying Hillary Clinton shouldn't be excused for hers. So now Mr. Trump has openly embraced hypocrisy as a way of making hard decisions, but then so have many of his votaries, who must do ever-more complicated intellectual gymnastics in order to keep the faith. Am I the only one who notices, by the way, that saying Mike Pence was "misled" about Iraq doesn't exactly endorse Mr. Pence's leadership ability? Does no one remember the time George Romney once had to quit the Presidential race in embarrassment after saying he felt like the military had "brainwashed" him regarding the Vietnam war?

Finally, some good news: the National Labor Relations Board (or NLRB) rules that temporary workers may bargain collectively along with permanent workers regardless of the wishes of either the temp workers' employer or the permanent workers' employer. And if your Tea Party uncle cries TEH OBAMA AND HIS BUREAUCRATZ IZ TEH AMURIKAN CAESARZ!!!!!!, you can go ahead and remind him that this decision actually restores the status quo as it existed before the NLRB under an actual aspiring Caesar, George W. Bush, reversed it. Dig, also, the corporate lobbies weighing in that this NLRB ruling would "sow uncertainty and conflict." Want some cheese with that whine, American Staffing Association? Or will you cry into hundred-dollar bills?

Action: fighting discrimination and "liberal" media laziness.

H.R. 2802/S. 1598, the so-called First Amendment Defense Act, still aims to protect folks who would discriminate against other folks, all in the name of "freedom of speech." Of course, a speech act (saying you love God in the manner of a Tony Perkins) does differ from an action (refusing to serve gays in your restaurant due to your "sincerely-held religious beliefs"), and the First Amendment does not recognize a right to free speech that runs roughshod over other people's rights -- it does not, for example, recognize libel, slander, or terroristic threats as "free speech" acts. FADA's supporters argue that unlawful acts such as denying services to gay couples or denying birth control pills to women should be excused because of the "sincere religious beliefs" that supposedly spur them. By that logic, of course, we could argue that the First Amendment protects murders provoked by "sincere religious beliefs"! And since when do we excuse unlawful acts merely because of the actor's intent? Anyone can find (or invent!) good intentions behind a bad act. Hence Americans United for the Separation of Church and State helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the so-called First Amendment Defense Act, and thus reject discrimination.

Meanwhile, Color of Change helps you tell "liberal" media outlets to curb their habit of routinely criminalizing and dehumanizing black folks killed by police. "Liberal" media outlets post mugshots of dead black folks with an extraordinary quickness, and you've heard the cries of the punditoids that these folks "weren't angels," as if "being an angel" is the standard to which you must rise to avoid being killed by police. Of course, there's a lot more going on here than simple racism -- "liberal" media outlets love the sensational, for one thing, and they also seem to think that attacking black victims of police violence will insulate them from charges of "liberal bias," but right-wingers will call anything they don't like on the news "liberal bias," and the love of sensationalism is an evil in itself, so why not change? And, as Color of Change points out, "liberal" media news outlets too often call white shooters "lone wolves," while surmising that Dallas shooter Micah Johnson, for example, must have had extensive ties to black justice movements, though the New Black Panther Party threw him out years ago and Mr. Johnson's ties to other groups seem to have existed only in his desires. You'd think there'd be a lesson in there, somewhere.

Around the table: a sad truth of the Sanders revolution, and other stories.

Eli Clifton and Joshua Holland at Slate suggest that Bernie Sanders squandered a huge chunk of his $200 million-plus mostly-small-donor campaign haul on "ads, consultants, and a dispiritingly conventional campaign." "Every dollar that went into broadcast ads, digital strategizing, or Democratic consultants’ pockets was one less for local campaign staff or get-out-the-vote efforts," they write, and I bet that sure sounds familiar to you. The rest is a cautionary tale about mainstreaming your revolution -- getting folks with "establishment" connections also means, in the words of one commenter, "redistribut(ing) income up, from working and middle class Americans to upper middle class consultants and ad makers."

From Chris Morran at The Consumerist we learn that the GMO "labeling" bill Congress rammed through last week is even worse than we thought. For example: "(t)he bill also says that an item is only to be labeled as genetically modified if the modification could not have occurred through 'conventional breeding,'" which suggests that big ag corporations won't label genetically-modified foods they could have raised conventionally but didn't. And the Rev. Jackson also reminds us that if you do have a smartphone, but live where internet connections aren't reliable, you still won't be able to read that damn QR code.

Corporations are starting to push back against the Treasury Department's anti-corporate tax inversion rules. I'll summarize for you: whine whine whine affects our business whine whine whine unintended consequences whine whine whine substantial disruption whine whine whine huge impact whine whine whine time-consuming. Our Best and Boldest Entrepreneurs, Ladies and Gentlemen! (Seriously, though -- if "decades of settled law" have resulted in corporations avoiding their tax obligations on this scale, then some "disruption" is absolutely necessary.)

Christopher Ingraham at the Washington Post's WonkBlog covers the recent finding that states that have legalized medicinal marijuana are seeing drops in Medicare spending on drugs. Dig this flatugasm from a corporation manufacturing synthetic THC, insisting that moving marijuana (which, as you know, contains natural THC) from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3 (where it'd still be illegal, but more available for research) would increase "the abuse potential in terms of the need to grow and cultivate substantial crops of marijuana in the United States." Setting aside this corporation's naked self-interest: seriously? More research would increase the potential for abuse? Why, you'd never know that knowledge came from research!

Benjamin Balthaser at In These Times interviews an organizer from a labor union comprising both Israeli and Palestinian citizens. Organizing in the settlements, of course, is extremely difficult, when employers can "fire" you simply by canceling your permit to get into the West Bank, or get rid of "troublemakers" just by calling them terrorists. Still, the rule of law can be of great help even when law enforcement isn't -- a 2008 court decision gave Palestinian workers access to better pay and benefits if they work for an Israeli corporation, which opened the way to organizing the Zarafty Garage.

Finally, Hanna Rosin at NPR describes how the town of Aarhus, in Denmark, "Helped Turn Young Muslims Away from ISIS." Instead of shutting down mosques or revoking passports, Aarhus told the Danish citizens who had gone to Syria to join ISIS that "they were welcome to come home, and that when they did, they would receive help" in re-integrating into Danish society. But I guess right-wingers would call this sort of thing "weakling work," as if the Aarhus principles hadn't already been used successfully by King and Gandhi -- and, more to the point, as if dancing around telling everyone how tough you are all the time, the way right-wingers do, isn't weak.

Action: pipeline safety, campaign spending disclosure, and human rights in Honduras.

Ever wonder how pipeline-building corporations get around those pesky risk assessments and environmental reviews -- not to mention public comment periods! -- they're supposed to get before building? Well, of course you haven't; you don't spend all your waking hours thinking up ways to get over. Anyway, they get the Army Corps of Engineers to approve their really long pipeline project as a series of much smaller pipeline projects, since smaller projects don't require all those reviews. The Corps has the authority to approve small pipeline projects via a process called Nationwide Permit 12 from the Clean Water Act, but if big corporations are using it to pretend their big pipelines are really a bunch of little pipelines, then we might call that a loophole big enough to build a pipeline through. We could also call it an abuse of power, a circumvention of the democratic process (since risk assessments, environmental reviews, and public comment periods benefit the public), and, not incidentally, yet another way of using small operators to shield the abuses of big operators. So the Sierra Club helps you tell the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stop fast-tracking big pipelines as small ones just to avoid public review.

Meanwhile, we could all grow old waiting for President Obama to issue his purported Executive Order mandating that federal contractors disclose their political campaign spending -- seriously, didn't we hear the Order was imminent, like, weeks ago? -- so, in the meantime, People for the American Way helps you tell the Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) to require publicly-traded corporations to disclose their campaign spending. I know, getting the SEC to do anything on behalf of the people (versus the banksters!) is like pulling teeth, but the SEC has already received over a million public comments demanding such campaign finance disclosure. The SEC looked pretty bad when they ignored all those comments, and you may argue that this means they won't act now, but I'd argue that we only need remind them of how bad they looked, because people don't want to look bad once, let alone twice. I'd also remind the SEC that protecting investors from abuse by corporate executives and corporate boards is their job, and that campaign spending by those executives and boards is something those investors deserve to know about. And if you're invested in a pension fund, you're likely one of those investors, too. So let's remind the SEC that they're supposed to serve people, not "markets."

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 5474, the Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act, and thus demand better human rights protections from the government of Honduras, then Just Foreign Policy and MoveOn still help you do that. H.R. 5474 would end American training and funding of Honduran security officers until the Honduran government launches a credible investigation into the murder of numerous human rights activists there, including Ms. Cáceres. After our government pulled a Hamlet and debated the precise definition of "coup" during the right-wing military coup of Honduras -- which, I feel compelled to add, deposed a democratically-elected President whom most corporations found too worker-friendly for their tastes -- this is, frankly, the least we can do. And I'll brook no silliness about the even-worse government we could have in Honduras if we don't support this one, because you know that's a hostage situation -- and you also know that exactly zero self-styled "foreign policy realists" were advancing that argument as the military was deposing President Zelaya in 2009. Call me quaint, but I think values actually matter, and they matter more when actions reflect them.

Around the table: a victory and a defeat for law and order, plus various cowardices from Our Glorious Elites.

U.S. District Judge throws out evidence gathered by DEA officers using a stingray without a warrant, ruling that "(a)bsent a search warrant, the government may not turn a citizen's cell phone into a tracking device." Judge Pauley is the first federal judge to rule against law enforcement in this manner, by the way, and good for him. I'll brook no silliness from the you-can't-expect-privacy-on-the-internet crowd, as if the Fourth Amendment is just something we'll have to give up so we can have nice toys.

North Carolina government enacts law making police body camera footage unavailable to the public without police consent. And the "public," in this case, includes folks who want the footage to prove the police officers broke the law, which is a violation of their rights, particularly since they'd have to pay court costs to overrule the police department. And I wouldn't call this a Fifth Amendment issue, either, since a video isn't testimony per se -- we'd more accurately call interpretation of the video "testimony." On balance, though, thanks to easily-obtainable smartphones with built-in HD cameras -- over which this bill would exert no control -- I'd say the horses are out of the barn.

Ho hum, "centrist Dems" seem to be iffy about ever passing a public option for health insurance in America. Because it doesn't have "bipartisan support," you see, as if anything worthwhile will ever win Republican support again. By that logic, they must also not support Medicare, since Republicans wish to destroy that as well, but of course they would never say that out loud. The good news? At least two of these Senators have zero chance of getting re-elected in 2018, and a third is in serious trouble -- and maybe, just maybe, since this is starting to happen all the time, Democrats will stop letting their right wing dictate what they fight for. (Personal to Mark Warner, talking about the "29 to 30 hour cliff" supposedly created by the 30-hour-work-week mandate in the Affordable Care Act: so you'd rather have the 39-to-40-hour cliff back, as Republicans do?)

Charles Koch, in an interview with Fortune magazine, says choosing between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is like deciding between "cancer or heart attack." Don't you believe it! Just like everyone else, he's got almost four months to rationalize himself into voting for Mr. Trump. You know how else I know he's going to vote for Mr. Trump? Because he did not raise the possibility of supporting Libertarian Gary Johnson even one time during his Fortune interview.

Finally, Politico talks to a few U.S. Senators who forecast that the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" doesn't have the votes in the Senate to pass. Don't you believe this, either! Rob Portman's "concerns" about "currency manipulation" will disappear; Thom Tillis and Richard Burr will throw their tobacco interests overboard, and Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee don't really care about "biologics." All they care about is money, and they won't protect relatively narrow interests at the expense of protecting money. And Politico, like the rest of them, thinks it's perfectly OK to report that the TPP's best chance for passage is in the lame-duck session, like that isn't abject cowardice or dereliction of duty.

Action: lead poisoning, elephant endangerment, and poultry processing workers.

H.R. 4879/S. 2776, the TEST for Lead Act, would require public schools to test their water -- water used for drinking, washing, or food prep -- for lead contamination; schools built before 1996 would have to test for lead at least twice a year, while schools built after that would have to test for lead once. You will not be surprised to learn that the home base for both House and Senate sponsors of the TEST for Lead Act (Rep. Payne and Sen. Booker, both Democrats of New Jersey) is the city of Newark, where some 30 K-12 schools have been cited by both city and state officials as contaminated sites, most if not all of them containing high levels of lead. This, when any level of lead causes brain damage which kids aren't just going to be able to shake off. Hence Jamani Montague has created a petition at DIY Roots Action which helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the TEST for Lead Act, and thus protect children's health. Lead contamination in water has been in the news for months on end, thanks to the ongoing (and entirely avoidable!) ordeal in Flint, MI, but our leaders have done nothing about it; passing the TEST for Lead Act would, at least, improve upon that sorry record.

Meanwhile, the European Union has lately signaled its opposition to a global ban on ivory trading, despite the fact that elephants are in danger of disappearing from Africa within a quarter-century, at the rate they're being killed for their tusks. That rate, by the way, is "about every 15 minutes," or almost 100 per day -- so no wonder Tanzania and Mozambique, for example, have lost more than half of their elephants just since 2009. World leaders will go to the Convention on International Trade in International Species (or CITES) conference in Johannesburg this fall to discuss what, exactly, should be done. A better question might be: what, exactly, does ivory do? Does it power the world's electric grid? Does it feed the world's hungry? And even if it did those things, we would still, as a civilization, be obligated to manage such resources in a way that doesn't lead to an animal's extinction, certainly out of self-interest if nothing else. But killing all the world's elephants for trinkets, whether trinkets of religious significance or not, is unconscionable. Hence Avaaz helps you tell world leaders to help the plight of elephants worldwide by giving them the most vigorous legal protections available to them, including a ban on the global trade of ivory.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell big ag corporations to treat their poultry processing workers with significantly more respect and dignity, then Add Up still helps you do that. Previous action alerts have helped you tell the Department of Labor to enforce fair labor standards for workers at these corporations, but it's time to go to the corporations themselves, and let them know that the Big Stick of Bad PR can be inflicted upon them. These corporations deny workers breaks to the point that workers have told Oxfam that they drink less water (never a good idea when you're doing hard work!) and even worn diapers to work so they don't lose their jobs. Should anyone be wearing adult diapers to work, if they don't actually need them? And if we don't stamp this meanness out right quick, any of us could very well find ourselves denied bathroom breaks at our jobs. It's not like working in a poultry processing plant is easy, you know -- workers denied breaks will sooner or later become very frustrated workers, and they may even take out their frustrations on the animals they're working on, which is another thing we don't tolerate as a civilized society.

Around the table: crushing debt, bankster propaganda, self-serving folly, app security, and the Republican 2016 platform.

Two Congressfolk propose the Wage and Garnishment Equity (or WAGE) Act, which would set limits on what creditors could do to low-income borrowers. The critical reform, here, would be new limits on creditors garnishing your bank accounts -- creditors can presently take 25% of your after-tax paycheck, but they can take 100% of it if you put it in the bank. I eagerly await the whining from the just-shut-up-and-pay-your-debts crowd, who will pretend that there are absolutely positively no predators among banksters and creditors, and who also pretend that "free markets" only means freedom for the market's biggest actors, and not everyone.

Speaking of which, Jim Naureckas at FAIR finds the New York Times publishing an op-ed by JP Morgan Chase CEO/whiny bankster Jamie Dimon about how he's going to raise his corporation's minimum wage for 18,000 employees to "between $12 and $16.50 an hour...depending on geographic and market factors." Kudos to you if you also recognized "I don't wanna" as a potential "market" factor. But Chase doesn't have 18,000 employees; it has more than 240,000, and not all of them are CEOs who make $27 million annually, as Mr. Dimon did in 2015, so BFD. Also, Mr. Naureckas reminds us that New York City's minimum wage will be $15/hour by 2019, and California's will be $12/hour by then, so, like, double-BFD.

Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL), lately indicted by the Department of Justice on fraud charges, says the DOJ should have been investigating the Orlando shooter instead of her. You'll recognize that as self-serving right off, of course, but it's also extraordinarily poor reasoning, as it implies that the DOJ can only carry out one investigation at a time. It also implies that the crime alleged by the indictment -- using a charity supposedly established to help poor students go to school as a slush fund for Ms. Brown and her cronies -- is small potatoes, which it's not. It's profoundly morally, ethically, and spiritually corrupt, in fact.

Any of y'all playing Pokemon Go? No? Well, you're probably better off, since iPhone users (and some Android users), in order to use the app, must give it permission to access their Google account in its entirety, including your email, browsing history, location data, and any other data Google stores and/or can access. If you go on a Google hunt, you can find a workaround, but there's no excuse for an app compromising your private data that much -- certainly "using an outdated sign-on process" isn't an excuse. The good news? The app may be updated shortly, though probably only because everyone's using it.

Finally, remember when we heard that Republicans might be scrapping their implacable opposition to gay marriage in its platform? Well, scratch that: the platform's most recent draft, among other things, bars women from military combat, smiles on state "bathroom" bills, supports "conversion" "therapy" for gays though it doesn't have the guts to come out and say so, and refers to coal as "clean" energy. Oh, and the platform also calls for building an actual wall along the U.S./Mexico border, not a "digital" wall, as former Texas Governor Rick Perry suggested earlier this week. Mr. Trump sure is going to be in big trouble at the debates if he hasn't read this platform by then.

Action: government spying, and GMO labeling.

As you know, the Senate failed to pass a John McCain-authored amendment giving the FBI power to use National Security Letters to spy on your browsing, emailing, chatting, and texting histories -- but they only failed to advance the amendment by two votes, and they could bring it up again literally any minute, so the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the Defending Dissent Foundation help you tell your Senators to protect our Fourth Amendment rights and reject the McCain amendment. As usual, supporters of the amendment hide behind technicalities -- the FBI would still need a warrant to access your content, but don't delude yourselves into thinking the FBI wouldn't find out virtually everything about you from your internet metadata. And don't believe the hype that National Security Letters are "precise" tools; they allow law enforcement to gather data without a court order, and without establishing that they're getting the data to investigate an actual terrorist suspect. Certainly don't believe the hype that getting a warrant from a judge is a pain in the ass. Law and order in America is supposed to protect the innocent, even at the expense of the guilty. Free people understand that -- and they also understand that the roots of terrorism lie in an economy that exploits other nations and redistributes worker income to bosses.

Meanwhile, despite our best efforts, the Senate passed that GMO "labeling" bill by a filibuster-proof margin -- but not a veto-proof margin. (The Senate vote was 63-30, but they'd need 67 votes to override a veto.) Hence Food and Water Watch helps you tell President Obama to veto the GMO "labeling" bill. I'm putting "labeling" in ironic quotation marks for good reason: the bill doesn't actually mandate proper GMO labeling, but allows food-producing corporations to put "labels" like QR codes (which you may not have the smartphone app to read) or website addresses (because you routinely remember website addresses from supermarket labels, right?) or 800 phone numbers (because you're never in a hurry at the market, are you?), instead of the simple "this product contains genetically-modified organisms," which you don't need a smartphone or a laptop to read. Mr. Obama long ago said he wanted real GMO labeling on food, but I don't believe he ever meant it -- given his USDA Secretary's overt support for things like QR codes, Mr. Obama is more likely to declare the Senate's bill "the real GMO labeling bill we've all waited for," never mind the actual GMO labeling Vermont is now doing (and which the Senate bill would pre-empt). Still, duty is duty, and our duty is to tell him to keep his word and veto the bill.

Around the table: be careful what you wish for regarding the exodus of British financial firms, and other lessons.

America's Last Economist, Michael Hudson, wonders if the "real scandal" behind the Clinton emails rests in the Clinton Foundation. I've wondered this, too, and it's not like we'll ever be able to read the emails to find this out, but it is too easy to imagine (as Mr. Hudson does) Mrs. Clinton using her Secretary of State connections to match up nations wanting to buy weapons with corporations that sell weapons, and also say, hey, by the way, want to donate to my foundation? The "liberal" media, of course, has been more preoccupied with whether or not Mrs. Clinton leaked national secrets than whether she fomented corruption, almost like that's the idea.

Dean Baker at TruthOut cautions the nations rubbing their hands together at the possibility that they might benefit from an exodus of London's financial corporations, saying "a larger financial sector will not necessarily be a boon to the winner's economy." The American financial sector has quintupled in size (as a percentage of GDP) since 1970, but "is there any reason to believe that the financial sector is doing a better job allocating capital to productive businesses now than it did four decades ago?" You'd very likely answer "no," even if banksters were to call your opinion "ignorant," but then banksters would be nowhere without their hifalutin talk.

Donald Trump says he'll probably use a teleprompter at the Republican National Convention -- not long after saying Presidential candidates shouldn't be allowed to use teleprompters. I guess the good news is that if he were Scott Walker, he'd be telling you that he meant candidates for the nomination and not nominees and you're stupid for not knowing what he meant. Donald Trump, on the other hand, will probably just say he never said that, and there's a certain value in that, I suppose.

Evan Bayh unexpectedly declares he'll run for his old Senate seat in 2016. He'll probably win, which means a pickup for Democrats, but to what good end? In my Goofus and Gallant strip, Mr. Bayh would be the wrong kind of red-state Democrat, the kind who's basically a pro-choice Republican. Former North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan would be Gallant in that strip, of course, the kind of red-state Democrat who finds what people across the political spectrum actually agree upon -- corporate crime, media consolidation, "free" trade -- and represents the people's will on those issues.

Finally, Paul Buchheit describes five ways the super-rich might destroy themselves, despite their gated communities and owned politicians. You'll get no joy from imagining the rich destroy themselves with their selfishness, short-sightedness, and worship of the financial sector, because we'll be getting destroyed along with them. But there may be some utility in persuading the rich they really are in the same boat as us, and that they're not going to die before things get really bad.

Action: police brutality, and clean water.

Moms Rising helps you tell the Obama Administration to take immediate steps to curb police brutality. They present a long list of reforms we've fought for here at various times, including reforms that directly address the Sterling and Castile killings (like more robust data collection on police brutality) and reforms that go deeper into structural issues with police departments (like limits on asset seizure and transfer of military equipment to police). If you're thinking that presenting this list of demands ensures that some of the demands will get lost, just remember that every time you utter a demand, you get closer to realizing it. And if you're wondering how police are ever going to defend themselves if we don't give them a wide berth to shoot black and brown people dead, do two things: 1) slap yourself, and 2) remember that our legal system presumes everyone innocent until proven guilty -- which is why I don't pass along action alerts demanding convictions or charges for the officers involved, though I will pass along action alerts demanding investigations. If a guy dies after being pulled over for a broken taillight, I can think of no good reason to oppose investigating further -- though I can think of plenty of bad ones.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 5313, the WATER Act, then Sign for Good still helps you do that. Our federal government has reduced spending on water infrastructure by some 75% over the last 40 years, which has shifted a lot of responsibility for such spending on the states -- which may please those who have a certain philosophical bent, but which does not, presumably, please the good citizens of Flint, MI, whose children now have permanent brain damage thanks to corroded lead pipes resulting from the bold thinking of an unelected "emergency manager." Also, for those of a certain philosophical bent, abdicating responsibility at the federal level doesn't just "leave matters to the states" -- it also leaves matters to corporations, who are hastening to privatize water systems across America as we speak. If it's hard enough to get state and federal officials to redress grievances; how hard will it be to get a corporation, which only owes its shareholders, to redress grievances? The WATER Act -- by funding water infrastructure spending with revenue collected by closing corporate tax loopholes, which I call a win-win -- will begin to break down this dystopia, so let's get to it.

Around the table: false hope and real hope.

Some Republican platform committee members want to soften the party's official position on gay marriage, and may even win concessions from some of the party's "staunch social conservatives." But BFD, not just because no Republican should be trusted to actually "moderate" on hot-button issues after George W. Bush presented himself as a moderate and governed as a far-rightist, but because you know there'll never be any Republican "softening" on the issue of ensuring all income gets redistributed from workers to executives.

Contra what right-wing jerks want you to believe, Officers Down Memorial Page tells us that while police officer deaths from shooting may have gone up, police officer murders overall are down rather dramatically from the Reagan years. And assaults on police officers are also down. But, of course, that's just part of Mr. Obama's nefarious plan to lull us into a false sense of security -- to ultimately increase cop-killing by decreasing cop-killing! No, really, someone's brother or uncle is saying it, and meaning it, right now.

Bernie Sanders supporters fret that since the Democrats didn't put actual anti-Trans-Pacific "Partnership" plank in the platform, Donald Trump could attack Hillary Clinton as insufficiently anti-"free" trade. They could be right -- certainly there'll be no use explaining to the people that the Sanders camp got the best anti-"free" trade plank they could into the platform -- but the Clinton campaign might neutralize that threat by reminding voters that Mr. Trump himself has flip-flopped on "free" trade, once saying explicitly that he'd approve a "free" trade deal if it was a good deal for us. And, you know, you can't really trust a salesman. And Donald Trump thinks he can sell anything.

Some 200 supporters of the South Carolina Secessionist Party spend their Sunday raising the Confederate flag at the statehouse. None were arrested, as Bree Newsome was when she took the flag down for the first time last June, which helped catalyze the legislature's permanent removal of the flag last year. Then the Party actually called that removal the "greatest treason" in South Carolina history on their Facebook page -- even greater, apparently, than that time South Carolina joined other Southern states to wage war against the United States so they could keep their slaves.

Finally, Jane Slaughter at Labor Notes describes three recent victories won by workers -- Verizon workers' contract after a 45-day strike, Chrysler workers ending that corporation's two-tier wage system, and retired Teamsters' work against their pension fund's plan to slash their benefits. Every time folks ask me how they can possibly have hope that we can fight and defeat the corruption and decadence that plagues our society, I tell them I know it can happen because I've seen it happen. And now you've seen it happen, three more times.

Action: corporate advertising and logging in national parks.

Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood helps you tell the National Parks service to keep corporate advertising out of our national parks. Yes, our government wants to embark upon yet another adventure in "public-private partnerships" -- or "synergy," or whatever other ridiculous corporate buzz word you can imagine -- by mandating that parks actively seek out corporate donations, and permitting parks to let corporations buy naming rights. Really, do they think we go to our national parks so we can see the same corporate advertising crap we see in our neighborhoods when we're home? I've got a better idea: let's properly fund our national parks by closing corporate tax loopholes and raising taxes on millionaire income back to where they were in the 1950s -- and then shame into submission any Congressdolt who objects in the name of "free markets" or "Big Gummint" or "the private sector is always better than the public sector." And let's keep corporate logos and advertising off signs, benches, and vehicles in our parks. Corporations have a place in American life, but that place is not everywhere.

Meanwhile, the Forest Service plans to allow logging in the Wrangell Island area of Alaska's Tongass National Forest, clear-cutting a third of the area and selectively harvesting the rest -- but this would also threaten critical salmon streams. We don't find this plan suspicious only for environmental reasons, of course; Alaska depends heavily on its salmon industry, to the tune of $1 billion in revenues annually, and logging corporations will send the trees out of state for processing into usable wood, meaning it won't create jobs that replace the salmon-industry jobs that'll be lost. And since this is a one-time sale, any revenue our government collects will be decidedly short-term. So, to sum, the Forest Service's plan injures local salmon, injures the human industry that depends on salmon, and injures the quality of our government's holdings in the Tongass -- but makes logging corporation executives richer. That's not a good enough reason to do anything, so the Alaska Wilderness League helps you tell the Forest Service to abandon the Wrangell plan for logging in the Tongass National Forest.

Around the table: hypocrisy, greed, arrogance, ignorance, and all these sins (and more) wrapped into the worst Mobb that ever ruled America.

Numerous NRA members take to their organization's Facebook page demanding to know why the organization hasn't defended licensed-gun owner Philandro Castile, shot to death by police in Minnesota last week. Good for them, and I thank them for reminding us that an organization's members are not its leadership. The NRA ultimately said they found reports of Mr. Castile's death "troubling," but didn't want to make any other comment "while the investigation is ongoing" -- which I'd more easily accept from an organization that hasn't been beating its chest for decades now.

Jim Hightower at Nation of Change reports on a highly-profitable steel corporation that's decided to up and move its Indiana factory to Mexico. Mr. Hightower quite rightly susses out the real reason Carrier's taking its workings south (since the move would only save Carrier an amount equal to one-eighth of one percent of their annual revenues) -- banksters want their stock to go up, and cutting workers tends to raise stock prices, so out they go. Dear right-wingers: is it a free market when Wall Street tells corporations what to do?

Some "liberal" media punditoids are afraid of Donald Trump's brand of populism -- so naturally, they think the solution is "a different kind of center" that could fight the dirty, "ignorant," "unrealistic" masses on left and right. Silly "liberal" media punditoids -- their "different kind of center" would be the same kind of center that keeps dumping all over everything, only with different faces (like, very soon, Julian Castro's). Naturally, some of these punditoids cannot conceal their admiration for China, though China's government really does combine the worst of Communism with the worst of capitalism.

Ho hum, Republican Congressman says "thousands of studies" say that ozone doesn't make anyone's asthma worse -- then can't produce a single one when questioned about the claim. Rep. Abraham let this flatugasm loose at a House Science Committee called "Ensuring Sound Science at the EPA," possibly because if it were called "Ensuring that the EPA Lets Fossil-Fuel Corporations Dictate How Clean Our Air Can Be," people would've been suspicious.

Finally, Calvin Exoo at TruthOut finds the famous Chilcot report on the run-up to the Iraq war "is failing to say plainly what the evidence so clearly shows: George W. Bush lied; so did Tony Blair." We can never be reminded too many times of the cost we pay -- in blood, treasure, and shame -- when we fail to vigorously exercise our duty to ensure our government works for us, and not for some politician's cronies. And we can certainly never be reminded too many times of the sins of Tha Bush Mobb, of their bald lies and their murderous notions, of the multitudinous humiliations they visited upon the American people who deserve so much better. (And psst: most Trump supporters used to be Bush supporters -- they just don't like to say so, for reasons you can imagine.)

Around the table: law-and-order issues, plus welfare and medicinal marijuana.

In light of recent events, TruthOut points us to a 2015 essay from Rachel Herzing explaining how we might get to a "police-free future," by advancing reforms "that lead toward the erosion of policing power rather than reinforcing it. I support a lot of the reforms described herein, but just as I dislike calls to "dismantle government" because politicians put their donors' interests ahead of ours, I also remain in the keep-police-but-oversee-them-more-effectively camp. Even if I were to accept, without qualification, the notion that the sole function of police is "armed protection of state interests," I still insist that we are the state, and if the state doesn't act in our interests, we change it into one that does.

Uh oh: ProPublica reports that police all over America are using a $2, 40-year-old drug test that routinely gives false positive readings. You think science has changed any over the last 40 years? Think maybe chemical processes have become more accurate? Among the problems: the kits don't have precise directions, and lots of other things turn these chemicals a different color. Moreover, the DOJ declared, shortly after these kits came out, that they shouldn't be admissible in court -- but, it turns out, unscrupulous/stressed people in law enforcement and the courts can work around that pretty easily, simply by pretending it's not true. I've worked enough jobs to know how overworked police officers and lab techs are, but that doesn't excuse the corporations that put out drug testing kits like they work.

Why are we having such trouble passing incremental criminal justice reform such as the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act? Alexander Bolton at The Hill suggests it's because Senate Majority Leader/Greatest and Brightest Shining True American King of Presidents Mitch McConnell doesn't have the cojones to face down two Republican Senators who might object. The bill's sponsor, Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, has carried plenty of water for Republicans over the years, but I doubt Mr. McConnell conceives of the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act as a payment for that water-carrying -- rather, he considers the water-carrying as payment for all the times he's let Mr. Grassley alone to do, you know, actual governing and oversight on behalf of his constituents.

John Cheese at Cracked talks about "The Four Types of People on Welfare Nobody Talks About." The article contains many necessary insights -- a substantial chunk of welfare recipients get it for seven months or less and then don't need it any more, which is kind of how it's supposed to work, while more than 90 percent of welfare benefits go to disabled folks, seniors, and folks who are also working (i.e., at McDonald's or WalMart), which means folks who constantly complain about lazy people getting free money are either stupid or deliberately lying to you. And don't miss Mr. Cheese's own reminiscences about being on welfare as a child. Spoiler alert: despite not asking to be born, he felt quite ashamed of himself.

States that have legalized medicinal marijuana saw a drop in Medicare drug spending between 2010 and 2013. If it were legal everywhere, you might see a half-billion dollar drop nationwide, which isn't a very big part of Medicare's budget -- but, ironically enough, it's very, very hard to research the medicinal benefits of pot, which means some folks using pot to treat their problems probably shouldn't do that. I suspect the big pharma corporations that make money off the antidepressants and painkillers that pot can replace will advance this point posthaste -- without recommending, of course, that we should make marijuana research much easier than it is.

Finally, former U.S. House Rep/talk-radio fixture Joe Walsh said this on Twitter after the shootings of at least a dozen Dallas police officers: "This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter (sic) punks. Real America is coming after you." (Naturally, he deleted the tweet not too long afterward.) While this flatugasm may not qualify as "threatening the President" (and only because the threat is rather non-specific), it certainly qualify as "being an asshole in public." Well, they always say you should do what you're good at.

Action: net neutrality, and sexual assault.

The American people, across the political spectrum, have spoken, and we want net neutrality -- but that doesn't stop our nominal representatives in Congress from trying to kill it. Not that they have the cojones to come out and say they're trying to kill it; normally they just try to defund the FCC, or demand more "study" on matters they've had over a dozen years to study. But it really is sobering, contemplating the message behind their attempts to kill internet freedom. Our Congressfolk apparently believe that the only kind of freedom that matters is freedom for corporations to herd you into some junk-news corner of the internet -- rather than your freedom to go where you want to go on the internet, unfettered by the gnarled hand of corporate gatekeepers. It gets tiring, speaking out to defend the victories we've already won -- but freedom is never cheap, nor do its enemies ever stop trying to destroy it. Hence both Free Press and the Electronic Freedom Foundation help you tell your Congressfolk to stop attacking internet freedom. Be sure to remind them you're not going away, either.

Meanwhile, H.R. 5571/S. 2566, the Sexual Assault Survivors' Rights Act, would help rape survivors get the justice they deserve. We all just watched the Stanford swimmer get a mere six months for a dumpster rape that two other men stopped from being much worse, but any sexual assault survivor will tell you that even getting a rape conviction is almost astronomically difficult. But the Sexual Assault Survivors' Rights Act would help reduce the possibility that rapists will go free, by ensuring that law enforcement entities store rape kits until after statutes of limitations expire, test rape kits without charging the victims for them, inform victims of medical information from their own rape kit unless it compromises an active investigation, and give victims at least 30 days' notification before destroying the rape kit. The bill would do other things as well, but the rape kit is, basically, where all the evidence is, and if that's gone, so's any chance of justice. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the sexual Assault Survivors' Rights Act, and thus help reduce sexual assault in America.

Around the table: a Republican campaign strategy emerges, and other absurdities.

Mike Ludwig at TruthOut wonders if Republican squealing about "the opioid epidemic" might enable them to keep the Senate. I don't think that will allow them to keep the Senate all by itself -- if you remember 2014, you know they'll have to squeal about many different things (this week it's ISIS, next week it's ebola, et cetera) to keep the Senate. Note well, though, that "change the subject" is all they have. And One Nation's attempt to blame New Hampshire's Governor (who also just so happens to be running against an endangered Republican incumbent) seems to have backfired big time.

Even the Christian Science Monitor is happy to tell you that millennials don't invest in the stock market mainly because they don't have the damn money. So banksters can take their "if you really want to change things, you have to have skin in the game" crap and cram it. You'd still like more "liberal" media organs to recognize that a major reason millennials don't have any money is that they're already in debt up to their eyeballs from college and home ownership, but saying that out loud would offend said banksters, who benefit from other people's debt.

Eben Bein at Yes! magazine profiles the Massachusetts woman who has spearheaded a years-long movement trying to get the state to adopt a cap-and-trade system for controlling climate change. I'm old-fashioned about these things -- I'd prefer vigorous regulation to cap-and-trade. But I wish her the best, not least because she put up at least $10,000 of her own money just to get research done (research that said cap-and-trade would actually grow the state economy, by the way). And I'm bracing myself for all the "conservative" excuses about why a state shouldn't be allowed to pass cap-and-trade on its own. (The Koch brothers' arguments can be easily answered, since they're essentially saying it's OK for energy corporations to raise prices on consumers, paying their executives less apparently an impossible option.)

Uh oh: turns out that little Star of David-related meme that Donald Trump put up and quickly took down over the weekend originated with -- get your surprised face ready -- a white supremacist message board. But of course the tweet isn't anti-Semitic, because Mr. Trump's Social Media Director got it from a Twitter user, never mind where that Twitter user got it. And usually the Trump campaign credits the sources of the memes it retweets, but, strangely, not this time. But nothing to see here, folks!

Finally, Illinois law enforcement officers arrest a man for "flag desecration" for, you guessed it, burning an American flag. Because of "the reaction it was gathering" and "the concern for the safety of all involved," of course! (They couldn't even bring themselves to say "our concern," you notice.) Cooler heads remembered that burning a flag, no matter how disgusting it may be, is a First Amendment right, according to a Supreme Court ruling written by the late Justice Scalia. I feel compelled to add, as always, that folks who feel they need "protection" from such speech -- speech that always loses its audience, no less -- are weaklings who dishonor our heritage as freedom-loving Americans.

Action: "free" trade, monopolies, and wastewater on crops.

As you know, the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" is signed, sealed, and delivered to Congress -- but Congress has hesitated to actually ratify the deal, because everyone in America hates it. Why do we hate it? We hate it because it will outsource our jobs to foreign lands where workers are accustomed to making less money, and we hate it because it will allow corporations to nullify our laws via its more widespread use of "investor-state tribunals." So, to sum: we hate it because it will crush our livelihoods, and because it opposes law and order. And yet Senate Majority Leader/Great and Awesome Real American Super-President Mitch McConnell thinks it's OK to say out loud that Congress should try passing the TPP in the lame-duck session after the election -- because no one who's running right now wants to run on their support for it! So, for Mitch McConnell, the livelihoods of other politicians are more important than yours -- and he might as well have just come out and said your will means nothing to him, too. So Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the TPP, now and in the lame-duck.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell the Senate Judiciary Committee to pressure the Obama Administration to force monopolies apart. The most-cited examples of monopoly power in the U.S. include the two cable corporations that are the only game in town in more than half of America's markets, and the four corporations that own the vast majority of American media organs, but it's worse than that -- two corporations have cornered the market on toothpaste, four corporations have done so in airlines, three in private health insurance, and five in book publishing. Contra recent propaganda that monopolies "free" up corporations to create more jobs and provide better service, the only thing monopolies do is redistribute income upward to corporate CEOs -- if you're the only game in town, what incentive do you have to do anything else, let alone anything worthwhile? You have no incentive to improve services without competition, and no incentive to create jobs without competition; when you're a monopoly, you sit on your ass. And that doesn't help good Americans pursue their God-given right to be free.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Governor of California to prohibit the use of oil wastewater to irrigate crops in California, then Breast Cancer Action still helps you do that. California, as you know unless you're Donald Trump, has been in a drought for over five years now, and aside from its population of over 39 million people (all of whom drink water, I'm pretty sure), California also provides two-thirds of the nation's fruit and one-third of the nation's vegetables. Hence, the bold solution, where oil corporations sell farmers their wastewater -- declaring it safe, of course, though you'd prefer a more objective opinion on that matter. But an actual conservative might tell you that you shouldn't make the solution worse than the problem, which this solution surely is. The reactionaries who insist on being called "conservative" these days figure that whatever helps big corporations must also be helping America. But even if the business of America were only business, you'd think they'd see that bad PR from using wastewater on crops would hurt California's business.

Action: concerning GMO labeling, discrimination, and privacy.

The Senate will vote on S. 2609, the alleged "bipartisan" "compromise" on "voluntary" GMO labeling, today, so both Consumers Union and Food and Water Watch still help you tell your Senator to allow real GMO labeling to continue (in Vermont, at least) by rejecting S. 2609. It is also possible that the Senate will attach S. 2609 as an amendment to S. 764 -- which you may recall as the bill that defunded Planned Parenthood. That's a bit of a head-scratcher, frankly, but no matter: we want real GMO labeling, not another "voluntary" system no food-producing corporation will use, and certainly not a "voluntary" system that allows corporations to put a QR code or a web address on a package, rather than the words "this product contains genetically-modified organisms." And no complaining from your Senators about how "patchwork" approaches (like the one that allows Vermont to label GMO foods) "confuse" people. You know what confuses people? QR codes, web addresses, and "voluntary" labeling. And it's funny how right-wingers want our federal government out of our lives -- until we want to know what's in our food.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania state legislature advanced a bill that would actually protect gays and transgendered folks from discrimination for the first time -- but one Senator, Lisa Baker (R-20), has apparently asked for more time to "study the impact" of the bill. This reminds me of that time in 2004 that Steelers coach Bill Cowher challenged the spot on a Patriots completion, aiming to put the ball on the Steelers' 6 instead of the Steelers' 4; I scratched my head wondering why two yards could possibly have meant that much to him, especially so close to the end zone, until I realized that the Patriots were marching up the field pretty much at will and this challenge gave him the chance to take the wind from their sails (which he did). Well, Sen. Baker is trying to do the same thing here -- trying to stop the momentum of a bill that has substantial bipartisan support. But what we tolerate in football, we shouldn't tolerate in politics -- Sen. Baker doesn't need to "study the impact" of this bill, because the impact will be that gays and transgendered folks will be able to fight discrimination against them a lot better than they can now. So Freedom for All Americans helps you tell Sen. Baker to stop trying to derail the state's anti-discrimination bill.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Department of Justice to thwart FBI efforts to exempt its biometric database from the privacy protections all citizens enjoy, then both the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Demand Progress help you do that. The FBI's biometric database, as you may know, consists mainly of fingerprints and photographs of faces and tattoos -- but this is an era where facial recognition software just isn't very good, and quite a few folks in the database haven't been charged with a crime, or, indeed, even suspected of a crime. And if you're in that database, why shouldn't you know about it? The FBI says you shouldn't know about it because it'd hamper their investigations. You know what else hampers investigations? The U.S. Constitution, whose Fourth and Fifth Amendments help craft a legal system where you're innocent until proven guilty. Does the FBI think we should get rid of the Constitution, too? (Perhaps I have loosed a demon by asking that.) And your presence in that database could keep you from getting a job. Again, why shouldn't you know about that?

Around the table: key findings about the Middle East, the working class, "Broken Windows" policing, methane emissions, and Olivia de Havilland.

Patrick Cockburn finds us not learning from our Middle Eastern adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria very well. Key point: "in most of these countries, where Islam is the dominant religion, extreme Salafi-Jihadi movements, including the Islamic State (IS), al-Qaeda, and the Taliban are essentially the only available vehicles for protest and rebellion. By now, they have completely replaced the socialist and nationalist movements that predominated in the twentieth century." Which you'll find resonant, not just if you read about the growing gap between rich and poor in Syria, but if you remember that our troubles with Iran started with a CIA-aided overthrow of the popularly-elected nationalizer-of-BP-oil Prime Minister Mossadeq, which paved the way for the Shah, which paved the way for the Ayatollahs.

Beverly Silver at Roar finds declarations of the death of the working class and/or the labor movement to be premature. They declared the labor movement dead in the early 20th century, of course, before its heyday starting with the New Deal, and though it's easy to look at the data and call what's been happening over the last 20 years a "race to the bottom," Ms. Silver notes that whenever corporations look for cheaper labor, they wind up creating new working classes wherever they land, who will soon have new grievances that corporations ignore at their own peril. Will there, one day, really be "nowhere left for capital to run?" We can only hope!

Josmar Trujillo at FAIR reminds us that "The Busted Theory of Broken Windows Still Has Media Defenders." So when even the NYPD Inspector General reports that cracking down on low-level lawlessness actually doesn't reduce felony-level lawlessness, what does the "liberal" media do? Act like it's the "bombshell" revelation it's clearly not, regurgitate the Broken Windows gospel with their fingers in their ears, or launch truly hysterical attacks against the report (with one "liberal" media outlet claiming the NYPD IG report was flawed because the NYPD IG's office is "filled with prosecutors and cops," which phrase I had not previously encountered from the "liberal" media as a criticism).

Over 100 community/environmental groups ask the EPA to investigate whether the EPA's Science Advisory Board Chair, Dr. David Allen, produced fraudulent research on methane leakage. When the inventor of the Bacharach Hi-Flow methane sampler goes on the record saying his machine has a fault that causes it to tend to low-ball methane emissions from gas drilling, I'd think you'd at least have to look into that -- but Dr. Allen, of course, doubled down on his research rather than be a grown-up and admit he might be wrong. The punchline: Dr. Allen gets some of his research money from oil and gas corporations.

Finally, two-time Oscar-winning actress Olivia de Havilland turned 100 on July 1, so Thomas J. Stipanowich at the Los Angeles Times recalls the time Ms. de Havilland "Took on the Studio System and Won." Finding herself unexpectedly not at the end of her seven-year contract in 1943 -- for years she'd been "arm candy" in films with male stars, and had even willfully taken on suspensions-without-pay so she could avoid such roles -- Ms. de Havilland sued her employer, Warner Brothers, and a California appeals court agreed with her that Warner couldn't lawfully "tack on" all that suspension time to her contract. Then she won her two Oscars, and actors began to find contractual terms considerably more favorable to them. She took on big money and not only lived to tell about it, but she thrived. That makes her a hero.

Action: discrimination, net neutrality, and clean water.

Congress comes back to work this week (please feel free to boo!), and, naturally, they plan to do some serious damage under cover of a bill whose title promises the opposite of serious damage, a bill called the First Amendment Defense Act. Of course, it wouldn't "defend the First Amendment" so much as injure other rights, by allowing people to ignore laws against discrimination if it conflicts with their "seriously-held religious beliefs," beliefs which apparently don't include "love thy neighbor." Don't believe the hype that it's hard to figure out exactly where to draw the line here, as if we haven't been drawing that line for over 200 years -- exercising your First Amendment rights does not give you the right to run roughshod over other people's rights under the law. And, frankly, if your religious beliefs compel nothing from you so much as denying gays their rights under the law, maybe you need to find another country. So Americans United for the Separation of Church and State helps you tell your House Rep to reject H.R. 2802 and thus protect good Americans' right to be free from discrimination.

Meanwhile, net neutrality is the law of the land in America right now, but not in Europe -- though EU regulators are crafting net neutrality regulations as we speak. They're fairly strong, as they are in America, but also (as in America) the issue of "zero rating," where telecom corporations offer some internet services for less money (or subject them to fewer pricing restrictions), has become a sticking point. Proposed EU regulations would largely leave it up to local regulators to stop "zero rating" practices, although these practices ultimately mean big telecom corporations will be able to herd their consumers into using the internet services big telecoms prefer, and that wouldn't protect your right to determine where you go on the internet. And this is not a matter you leave up to localities, because doing so would result in less freedom for Europeans, not more freedom. Whether we think there should be an EU or not, we still should make sure it protects the internet freedom of its citizens, so Access Now helps you tell the EU to implement the strongest net neutrality protections possible across its member states.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5313, the WATER Act, then Sign for Good still helps you do that. The obvious news hook, of course, is the Flint water crisis, where an unelected "emergency manager," in an effort to save a few bucks, moved Flint off of relatively clean Detroit water and onto polluted Flint River water, and then apparently didn't understand that the chemicals he used to decontaminate the Flint River water would also corrode Flint's ancient lead pipes. But the truth is that plenty of American cities, many of which have hundred-year-old lead water pipes, are on the brink of a similar disaster, and all it takes, apparently, is one "bold" Governor to destroy local democratic processes to achieve that disaster. Really, clean water is not only absolutely essential to everything we try to do as a nation -- for how can a people really be free unless they're free from pollution? -- it's also fairly popular. So, in a sane and healthy civilization, we ought to be able to make opposition to the WATER bill -- which would fund pipe repairs by closing corporate tax loopholes -- politically toxic. So to speak.

Around the table: lobbyists get their own celebrity magazine, and other absurdities.

The incomparable Thomas Frank writes about the Politico daily newsletter called Influence, and what it teaches us about this historical moment. A sort of celebrity magazine for Washington lobbyists, Influence describes "every squeaking turn of the revolving door" between influence-peddlers and our government "with a certain admiration," and conceives of the lobbying industry as a "community" that's "happy, prosperous, and joyously oblivious to the plight of the country once known as the land of the middle class." And yet it is so "brazen" in its celebration of the lobbying life that it also reveals real embarrassments -- protestors against the CFPB who admit they're actually "day laborers," "expert" witnesses giving "nearly identical written statements" to Congress. Could it, one day, be its own undoing? We can only hope!

Chris Morran at the The Consumerists describes SLAPP lawsuits in some depth. A SLAPP (or Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) is the very definition of a frivolous lawsuit, usually filed by some big actor to shut up some small actor merely exercising his or her right to free speech; they're betting that the target of their lawsuit won't want to spend the time or money fighting it. In some 28 states, you can fight SLAPPs to varying degrees, but no federal anti-SLAPP law exists -- and the bill that could create one, the SPEAK FREE Act, could also have unintended consequences.

Arun Gupta at Yes! magazine suggests that "(i)f we listen carefully to Trump's supporters, we can hear their desire for progressive policies." He's 100 percent right. Trump is what happens when weak Democrats don't offer voters anything of value -- and "at least I'm not an ogre like that guy" is not a thing of value, not least because even Republicans play that game against their brethren. I'm sure some folks think racists are irredeemable, but I don't -- real economic populism, versus the bait-and-switch kind peddled by Donald Trump, would go a long way toward bringing them back.

Donald Trump tweets, then deletes, an image of Hillary Clinton with the words "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!" contained within an apparent Star of David, and then, of course, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski goes on TV and calls the controversy over the tweet "political correctness run amok." Which, of course, leads me to think Mr. Trump didn't fire him so much as he redeployed him. It's just "a simple star," he says; it's "the same star that sheriff's departments" use, he says -- and it's also a Star of David, and it doesn't take very much "reading into" to get there, and it wasn't the only way to get that message across, as Mr. Trump proved mere hours later when he put the tweet back up, but with a circle. Too many folks think they're proud of their bullshit-detector when they're just proud of their ignorance.

Finally, Obama Administration revises fossil fuel royalty regulations so that coal, oil, and gas corporations will have to pay more to our government for extracting resources from public lands. We advocated for this, and the revisions don't go as far as we would have liked, but it is nonetheless progress. And if coal/oil/gas drillers want to whine about "consumers having to pay more for energy as a result" -- which, of course, you'll recognize as a manufactured hostage crisis -- they may want to remember that drilling on public land means you follow the public's rules, and it also means you pay the public.

Around the table: the continuing story of our leaders' folly and venality.

Rush Limbaugh instructs us that if Donald Trump wins in November, we'll see "levels of violence we have not seen" -- from liberals. C'mon, Rush, are we the 90-pound weaklings getting sand kicked in our faces at the beach, or are we waiting for your listeners in parking lots with baseball bats? It can't be both. And Mr. Trump has already said we could see riots if he loses. Could they be saying it might be better for us if we stayed home and didn't vote?

Ho hum, Obama Administration releases laughably low tally of civilian deaths from drone strikes. The Administration's list also argues that its numbers are smaller than what independent news organizations have reported because it has information "unavailable to non-governmental organizations." If it knows more than us, it ought to be doing better than us, and, quite frankly, it's not.

Surprise, surprise, Newt Gingrich has decided that "free" trade pacts aren't so great after all. This, just as he's being vetted to be Mr. Trump's running mate, and after whipping votes for "free" trade deals while in Congress! As Hillary Clinton can tell you, it sure is easier to apologize for what you've done after it's really obvious to everyone else how wrong you were. I wonder what the futures market says about the chances of Julian Castro turning against the TPP within the next week or so.

Alaska Gov. Bill Walker cuts annual Alaska Permanent Fund checks in half. The Alaska Permanent Fund, which comes from oil production revenues, has heretofore to pay $2,000 per Alaska citizen (regardless of age) annually. I tend to cut Gov. Walker some slack -- previous administrations have really fouled things up there -- but it's very telling that he said more than a few lawmakers begged him not to cut the checks for fear they'd lose re-election. Why do people say socialism isn't popular again?

Finally, former Montana Governor and Republican National Committee Chair Marc Racicot says he cannot "endorse or support" Donald Trump for President. I'm old enough to remember when Tha Bush Mobb used Mr. Racicot as an amulet against charges that they were too extreme, so of course I'm aggrieved to see him used similarly by a Republican "establishment" that doesn't hate Mr. Trump anywhere near as much as it wants us to think. Still, what a prose style on this guy -- he makes George Will sound earthy.

Around the table: from unelected bureaucrats in Puerto Rico to a transgendered woman in the Utah Senate race.

Robert Reich describes the five basic principles of patriotism. "Coming together," "sharing the burdens," "preserving...our democracy," "work(ing) to improve our government," and avoiding "divisiveness" are five pretty good values, of course, but why are they American? Because Americans say so, that's why, and if a foolish and venal aristocracy has seized power in our land, that doesn't make us less patriotic.

Over 50 retired generals and admirals call on both political parties to reject torture in party platforms. And this is where that constant right-wing refrain "listen to the generals" comes in! Or not -- right-wingers know, in their hearts, that they only listen to the generals (and everyone else!) when they already agree with them.

Senate approves their version of the nefarious PROMESA Act, which would allow unelected bureaucrats to take money from good Puerto Ricans and give it to banksters. Maybe if Democrats put it like that, it wouldn't have passed. No use telling me that "Puerto Rico should pay its debts like everyone else," when a) everyone else doesn't pay their debts, especially the very wealthy, and b) they don't have debts because of good Puerto Ricans, but because of corrupt banksters and politicians.

John Nichols profiles Misty Snow, a trans woman who just won the Democratic nomination in the Utah 2016 U.S. Senate race. Ms. Snow ticks off a lot of the right boxes -- she supports a $15/hour minimum wage, Medicare-for-all health care, and campaign finance reform, among other things -- though I'd be really impressed if she also says that all of Mike Lee's feints left (on Afghanistan, criminal justice reform, and government spying) don't seem to have amounted for much. Utah is one of the most Republican states in the union, so this could be a very educational race. Maybe even Democrats will learn something from it!

Michael Corcoran at TruthOut tells us Hillary Clinton's short list for VP has only three names on it. Elizabeth Warren won't get it because Wall Street will have a hissy fit, and that leaves Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine and HUD Secretary Julian Castro. I've been telling co-workers that Mr. Kaine is the pick, but then I read this passage about Mr. Castro: "because he has never served in Congress or run for federal office, it is hard to examine his financial backers or even find out his statements on scores of issues." So it's Castro, then.

Finally, The Straight Dope reveals why tabloids generally don't get sued into oblivion. The biggest theoretical issue, of course, is proving they printed information they knew was false; it's not like you can cut open a reporter or an editor and count rings. "Ah, 59 rings! A prime number! He knew!" More interesting, though, is the first paragraph's account of defamation lawsuits against Gawker secretly funded by Peter Thiel, who's still sore about being outed by Gawker back in 2007, summarized thusly: "If you’ve got enough money, you don’t need to prove libel or privacy violation in your own case...You just have to spend eight or nine years burying your nemesis in other people’s cases until you find one with enough merit to put ’em out of their misery."

Action: food stamps, and vehicle safety whistleblowers.

Now, at the behest of Governors eager to prove themselves as the biggest pricks in any room they enter -- led, of course, by the King of Pricks, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker -- Congress may permit drug-testing on food stamp recipients. You'd think you already qualified for food stamps if you were having enough trouble finding work, but no, now you must also qualify by not abusing drugs, even though your chances of paying for meth or heroin with your EBT card are precisely zero. And guess what? They will not catch drug-abusers on food stamps in any large numbers using this method. We know this, because some Governors have tried it with welfare recipients and failed. We'd be much better off making aspirants for public office pass a drug test, amirite? Of course we have other reasons to smack down this proposal -- if you take federal money you follow federal rules being one, people with drug addictions need treatment and not endless stigmatization being another. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt to make receiving food stamps conditional on a drug test.

Meanwhile, a mere year after faulty ignition switches leading to over a dozen deaths forced General Motors to recall almost 50 million cars, and a mere six months after Congress passed the Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act, the Department of Transportation -- charged with writing the regulations that will implement the Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act -- has done approximately bupkus. I guess they're not quite as slow as the federal agencies writing (or not writing, as the case may be) the rules that would properly implement Dodd-Frank, but there's still no excuse to get rattled before the corporations no doubt hoping to run out the clock before President Trump takes office. What arguments could they possibly deploy in opposition? That corporations should always be free to do whatever they want or (pulls gun) your jobs get it? That they're "unnecessary," although, hello, 13 deaths? Anyway, the National Whistleblower Center helps you tell the Department of Transportation to implement the Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act already.

Around the table: "free" trade, government spying, health care, the "liberal" media, and Charles Grassley maybe finally in trouble.

President Obama criticizes anti-"free" traders yet again. "The prescription of withdrawing from trade deals and focusing solely on your local market, that's the wrong medicine," he says, but we don't say we should "focus solely on our local market" -- we say we should not let trade deals outsource our jobs and nullify our laws. They strain to give us the impression that they hear us, but they don't. If I said it to the President's face, I can't say for sure he'd hear it.

"Privacy activists" target Senators over measure expanding FBI's ability to get your browser history without a warrant. We don't learn who any of them are, but we do "learn" that "privacy advocates found the political wind against them after the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history this month," as if subjecting everyone to more government spying would have stopped that. As an aside: they think Ted Cruz's "yea" vote for that amendment is a surprise?

Ho hum, doctors at for-profit, Southern hospitals seem to take more money and gifts from drug- and device-manufacturing corporations than doctors at other kinds of hospitals. However, New Jersey, which is not in the South, leads the way, which, though disappointing, is not surprising, as Big Pharma has virtually colonized the state. No use arguing that doctors are strong enough to not let gifts sway them, when a) the data says otherwise and b) doctors are people, after all, who might feel guilty at getting a gift and not using the product.

CNN's hiring of former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandoski as a punditoid has, as you might imagine, resulted in some rather tortured argument from the "liberal" media. One anonymous-of-course CNN staffer says "insider" knowledge of the Trump campaign could be "very valuable to us" (never mind the non-disclosure agreement Mr. Lewandoski signed with the Trump campaign!), while a Washington Post reporter says he gets the "logic." This is, of course, the "logic" of the stooge, and a "value" admired only by the slothful.

Finally, Loras College poll finds Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley a mere one point ahead of his Democratic challenger, former Lt. Gov. Patty Judge. Please remember, though, that this is one poll and that Mr. Grassley is pretty good at what he does, by which I don't just mean campaigning -- if you bring up death panels and Social Security and Merrick Garland, I'll bring up his investigations into churches violating IRS rules, dead people getting farm subsidies, and the Red Cross squandering donations. Still, his last race was his closest, and it was during the 2010 wave. And "vote for Judge so we can get a Supreme Court judge" might make a good ad.