The Amy Coney Barrett nomination goes before the full Senate very soon, so use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) to call your Senators and tell them to reject the Barrett nomination. We could belabor Republican hypocrisy in refusing to consider Merrick Garland's nomination in 2016 and then ramming through Ms. Barrett's nomination now, but the best argument against her is her own record. In her three years on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, she has not only demonstrated a pattern of ruling for corporations and against workers, but she has also demonstrated a pattern of refusing to even interpret laws, and that refusal too often manifests as a complete lack of compassion for those times our laws fail our people. Frankly, she acts like we should just put legal matters to justice machines and be done with it. Of course we also know that (in her life before federal court) she stated her opposition to Roe v. Wade publicly more than once and she belongs to a far-right religious group that teaches women to be subservient to their husbands. That might have suited our Court in 1830, but not now.
Pennsylvania residents, take note: our Department of Environmental Protection (or DEP) has proposed hiking fines for air polluters in our Commonwealth, which they haven't done in 15 years, but naturally pro-pollution state lawmakers want to put a stop to that -- it's like they don't breathe the air themselves! -- so Penn Environment helps you tell your PA state legislator to reject House Concurrent Regulatory Review Resolution 3, which would cut DEP funding dramatically. Pennsylvania legislators have long had a starve-the-best mentality with regard to punishing polluters (silly legislators, not understanding that the polluters are the beast!), and the result is a DEP that can't do its job the way our laws require. And the hike in air polluter fines would allow our DEP to continue to crack down on polluters. Don't let our legislators fool you: they understand perfectly well that revenues pay for services; they'd just prefer not to perform these services, so that big polluting corporate executives can gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation homes. But surely they shouldn't get all the say about everything.
Finally, the notorious 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force, the one they used to attack Iraq, is still on the books in America, but the negotiation of the annual defense appropriation bill presents another opportunity to repeal it, so Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to restore some semblance of the rule of law in America by repealing the 2002 AUMF. The war with Iraq has been over for many, many years -- George W. Bush told us so! -- but future Presidents, of both parties, invoked the 2002 AUMF for all kinds of unconstitutional adventures, from President Obama's adventure in Syria in 2015 to our current President's ordering of Gen. Soleimani's assassination earlier this year. Yeah, Mr. Obama didn't even go to Congress before bombing Syria, and our current President clearly forgot that Congress never declared war on Iran, which would be the only legal basis for killing Mr. Soleimani. And yes, Congress has spent the last 80 years essentially ceding its Constitutional war-making power to the President -- but why do we have to take that?
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