The Friends Committee on National Legislation sponsors a toll-free number, 1.833.STOP.WAR (or 1.833.786.7927), with which you may call your Senators and tell them to pass S.J.Res. 54, which would end our participation in the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen (and thus also the near-famine conditions therein). CIA chief Gina Haspel did brief a few Senators on the CIA's findings in re the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khasshogi, and, well, let's just say even our Republican Senators were loathe to toe the Administration line that there's no "smoking gun" linking the Saudi crown prince to the murder (Sen. Graham even said there was a "smoking saw," referring to the bone saw that carved up Mr. Khasshogi's body). Still, even the most welcome Republican skepticism doesn't translate into action very often -- Sen. Corker (R-TN) still says he might go for an amendment that would essentially gut the bill and turn it into something else. A phone call to your Senators could help forestall such a catastrophe.
Meanwhile, did you know professional phone spammers are able to "spoof" phone numbers to make it look like your bank or your utility provider is calling you? You can easily imagine the problems that would cause! But this is America, where we find solutions to problems, and thus Consumer Reports helps you tell our FCC to require phone corporations to implement technology that would confirm a call actually comes from the number it claims to come from. I'm old enough to remember when Michael Powell's FCC loosened media consolidation rules but also let folks move their phone number from one service provider to another for the first time; is it too much to ask that our current FCC also have a vestige of real conservatism left in them? I mean, fighting ripoff artists used to be a conservative cause. Sadly, today's "conservatives" tend to defend the ripoff artists -- and that's why we fight.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Greyhound Buses to stop letting Border Patrol agents to board their buses and search passengers without a warrant, then Color of Change still helps you do that. This is all pretty simple: produce the warrant, and Greyhound should cooperate, but if you can't get a warrant because you're going on a fishing expedition, nobody has the obligation to enable you. When law enforcement says it's too tough to catch criminals, we should remind them that our Founders deliberately created a Constitution that made it tough to catch criminals. Depriving someone of their freedom or their property, after all, is really something we ought to make sure we get right. Of course, folks who live in a state of euphoric rage over TEH ILLEGULZ TAKINGZ TEH JOBZ AND KILLINGZ TEH PEEPULZ!!!! are not necessarily receptive to this message. But our ministry isn't for them -- it's for the reasonable. And the reasonable outnumber the crazy in America.
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