Thieves in the Temple.

Around the table: tabulating an unusually high number of setbacks to civilization, sorry.

Supreme Court stays various injunctions against our Administration's transgender military ban -- meaning the ban is in place until all the legal challenges thereto can be resolved. Seems to me the conservative thing to do would be to leave the injunctions in place and let the lower courts work it out, but apparently that's insufficiently conservative to this Court's "conservative" majority. Dig, also, our Administration Solicitor General whining about how many federal courts are now issuing used-to-be-rare injunctions against "major policy initiatives." That couldn't be because so many of your "major policy initiatives" break our laws, could it? What a snowflake.

Apparently because absurdity just isn't absurd enough, Vice President Pence compares our President to Martin Luther King, Jr., saying that both men have "inspired us to change." I guess he means to equate the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Open Housing Act with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which remains our President's only significant legislative "achievement." The only way our President has "inspired us to change" is that he's inspired so many more good Americans to confront corrupt bigoted assholes like him a lot more forcefully, but I don't praise or thank corrupt bigoted assholes for that, nor do I argue for their continuance in office because some good happens to come of their assholery.

Lo and behold, Senate Majority Leader/Obviously Great and Wonderful Real American Co-President Mitch McConnell, mere days after saying he won't allow a Senate vote on any shutdown-ending bill that wasn't obviously the result of spirited negotiations between Democrats, Republicans, and our President, now plans to bring a shutdown bill that meets precisely none of those criteria to a vote this week. No use lamenting that he has no principles, because folks like Mob Boss Mitch think principles are for us "little people," not their "betters," like him.

Buried in this article buying the Republican fiction that they can't get our President's nominees through quickly enough despite the fact that Democrats literally can't filibuster them anymore is Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) whining about how "(i)t's very difficult for a president to advance his or her agenda if you don’t have the right people in place." I also despise the holds and withdrawals of unanimous consent that comprise Senate Democrats' last tools to stall our President's nominees, but Sen. Young appears completely unconcerned about the people's right to advance their agenda through their representatives in Congress, or about our President's constitutionally-mandated duty to do the people's will. I don't give one rat's hind quarter about a President's "agenda," and that's how our Founders wanted us to be.

Finally, why does our "liberal" media suppose our President has ever been any kind of "deal-maker," like this shutdown mess should be some kind of surprise? It's not just that every "great deal" he's ever made only allowed him to suck out a bankrupt corporation's wealth like the vampire he is -- a good deal benefits everyone, not just the guy who makes it, but our "liberal" media haven't attended that aspect of deal-making in some time, so obsessed are they with "who wins" and "who loses" like everything's a damn horserace.

Around the table: what "free markets" really mean, and other important lessons.

Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals rules that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gays from discrimination at the workplace. The word "gay" doesn't appear in the Civil Rights Act, but the Court ruled, essentially, that discriminating against gay workers isn't appreciably different from discriminating against workers because of their sex, which latter item is in the Civil Rights Act. An 11th Circuit panel reached the opposite conclusion last month, but don't bet that even a Neil Gorsuch-infused Supreme Court would strike down such a ruling, at least as long as Anthony Kennedy is still around.

One great economist, Paul Craig Roberts, briefly describes the work of another great economist, Michael Hudson. You'll learn how classical economists use the term "rent" (i.e., "an income stream that has no counterpart in cost incurred by the receipient of the income stream," not necessarily what you pay your landlord). Also, "(c)lassical economists, such as Adam Smith, understood a free market to be one in which taxation freed the economy from untaxed economic rents. In neoliberal economics, Hudson explains, 'free market' means freedom for rent extraction free of government taxation and regulation. This is a huge difference." And if you were to suddenly see rents everywhere in this economy, you wouldn't be alone.

Third-party private tax collectors will begin operating soon, and given all the The Consumerist tells you what you need to know. Long story short: the IRS won't outsource just any old tax collection effort, you'll still get written notices from the IRS and the private collector before you get any phone calls, the private collector still can't call you just any old time, you can opt out of working with the private collector, and private collectors will by law direct you to pay the IRS, not them. I'd still prefer the IRS just did all the work they're mandated to do, though of course they can't mainly because Republicans have been starving their budget for years.

From the "Racism is Not Dead" department: a ProPublica analysis of four states finds car insurance corporations charging higher premiums to folks in minority neighborhoods, though these folks don't actually cost car insurers more! This "may amount to a subtler form of redlining," they say, which is quite an understated way of putting it. You'll also find that the article includes many criticisms of its methods -- and refutes just about all of them. (That doesn't stop the trolls in the comment section, because what reason ever stopped a troll?)

Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect thinks "Republicans have made a key miscalculation in their decades-long strategy of attacking social programs," since their white working-class supporters need these programs more and more now. I'm sure the poll figures cited are quite accurate, but I remember saying a long time ago that folks would be more sanguine toward food stamps as they knew more people using them (or had to use them themselves) and I'm just not seeing it. All that seems to happen is that the 25% of this country that's bat-guano crazy (a sector which, sadly, overlaps pretty well with "downwardly-mobile whites") just gets crazier.

Finally, Republicans get rid of filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, clearing the way for the confirmation of Judge Gorsuch to the high court. And Sen. McConnell (E-KY) had this to say: "There cannot be two sets of standards: one for the nominees of the Democratic president and another for the nominee of a Republican president." Of course, the Republican standard for "nominees of the Democratic President" is to completely fail to even hold hearings, which they did in 2016, and were planning to do if Mrs. Clinton won the Presidency, and surely would have done in 2009, too, if they'd had a Senate majority then. Good citizens of Kentucky, could you please turn out this clown in 2020? And Democrats: how about running candidates who might inspire people to vote for them?

Action: fighting government spying on Muslims and Donald Trump's Cabinet of Horrors.

Demand Progress helps you tell Congress to reject any attempt by our government to monitor Muslim-American citizens in violation of our Constitution. Apparently, Rep. King (R-NY) has pushed for just such a program, based on the New York city Police Department's "Demographics Unit," which was so wildly unsuccessful and unpopular (setting up cameras outside Muslim-owned stores and community centers, putting spies in Muslim communities) that they called it a "demographics unit." Monitoring Americans once you get a warrant from a judge is perfectly lawful and constitutional, but monitoring good Americans merely on the basis of their religious beliefs certainly violates the First Amendment, which protects folks from oppression by their government merely for their speech or religious beliefs. Of course, when Republicans bring up their so-called First Amendment Defense Act early next year, we'll have to remind them that the First Amendment only protects your right to speech and belief, not your right to deny other people their rights because of your beliefs. But we'll get there, too.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to reject all of Donald Trump's reactionary Cabinet nominees, then the appropriately-named Block Trump's Cabinet still helps you do that. You remember Barack Obama's first slate of appointees? Some of them were pretty good (though Lisa Jackson at EPA is the only one that springs to mind presently) while some others (Timothy Geithner, Tom Vilsack, and Tom Daschle are, sadly, easier to remember!) were pretty awful. Not so with Donald Trump's first slate of appointees, who are all awful -- the objectively pro-racist Attorney General nominee, the objectively pro-pollution Secretary of State and EPA Administrator nominees, the objectively pro-bankster Commerce and Treasury nominees, and the objectively pro-government spying CIA nominee (you remember, the one who thinks people who use encryption are probably guilty of something?). Please remember that, thanks to short-sighted Democrats in the Senate majority back in 2013, that Presidential appointees (outside of the Supreme Court) can no longer be filibustered -- which means you have to contact your Republican Senators, too.

Around the table: a surprising (and amusing!) announcement from the Trump campaign, and other stories.

From Stephanie Woodard at In These Times, we learn that police kill Native Americans at a higher rate than any other ethnic group -- but the "liberal" media hardly covers these killings. I would caution against using this fact to tell black folks they have nothing to complain about, because they finish second in a race you really don't want to earn a medal in. Still, though tales of mistreatment of Native Americans are every bit as vivid as tales of mistreatment by black folks, we don't talk about it nearly as much, which could be because of Black Lives Matter's mobilization efforts, but could also be because we can only feel guilty about one thing at a time in America.

The Economic Policy Institute offers a lengthy primer about the gender pay gap. You probably already know that adjusting for simliar levels of training, experience, and expertise doesn't make the gender pay gap go away, but you may not know that the gap is actually worse the higher up you go on the pay scale -- because at the low end, minimum wage laws have a more profound leveling effect -- and you may also not know that the gap has narrowed over the last 35 years not necessarily because we're getting so much better at being fairer, but because men's wages have gone down over that period. There may be other things you may not know, but you'll never know unless you read the article.

Outgoing Senate minority leader Harry Reid says Democrats will likely get rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees if they retake the Senate this fall. And it's still a bad idea, just like it was when Democrats got rid of the filibuster for almost all Presidential nominees back in 2013. The better solution remains two-fold: get rid of Senate holds on bills and nominations, and make politicians work for their filibuster by actually speaking, instead of signaling their willingness to filibuster and then go off to dinner. I'd certainly be happy to look like a fool to stop, say, Estate Tax repeal, so why aren't Republicans willing to look like fools to stop, say, campaign finance reform? We'll just never understand.

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway suggests that Mr. Trump would like to have another debate with Hillary Clinton between now and Election Day. No truth to the rumor that Hillary Clinton's has campaign responded, "why, yes, that's a great idea! How does November 7 look?"

Around the table: the liberal love for George W. Bush, and other absurdities.

Sen. Bernie Sanders delivers a withering Jeremiad denouncing banksters and the chaos and drama they cause in our economy. He's got good policy prescriptions, and he even backs up his statement that "the business model on Wall Street is fraud" pretty well (i.e., he notes that even banksters believe that's true). But I'd go further: why not a 7% cap on credit card rates, versus a 15% cap? And how about a 2% cap on mortgage rates? Believe me, banks will still make money under these conditions -- they just won't make enough to write the tax laws so they can make even more money doing nothing.

And what are Mr. Sanders' potential Republican opponents up to? Running campaign ads in Iowa and New Hampshire about terrorism and ISIS and who'll "chop" their "head" off and who's "serious" about fighting them, that's what. Well, they say talk about what you know, and these guys know fearmongering. Seriously, we could have made these two paragraphs a Goofus and Gallant strip.

Praise the Lord that Amanda Girard reminds us of "Five Taxpayer Handouts the Bundys Receive While Railing Against Government 'Tyranny.'" Not just in subsidies or "animal damage control" or Small Business Administration loans, either -- grazing on federal land costs ranchers less than seven cents on every dollar that private landowners charge, and ranchers also get a massive Big Gummint discount when they lease federal land directly. But you already got all that information from the "liberal" media when that whole Cliven Bundy thing blew up in 2014, right? I kid, of course.

Senate Republicans mull plan to end pre-debate filibusters on the Senate floor. Always the majority party wants to slash away at the filibuster and the minority party wants to keep it, and it doesn't matter which party is which -- Democratic majorities famously ended the filibuster for budget resolutions in the early '90s and also for Presidential judicial appointments a little over two years ago, that last item after minority Democrats decried Republican attempts to do the same in the mid-2000s. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the Senate needs to get rid of holds (which are the real obstruction) and force Senators to sustain filibusters by actually talking for hours on end, rather than signifying their intent to filibuster and then going out to dinner.

Consistently-ignored Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says that "a lot" of Christian leaders on the right are "scared to death" that a President Huckabee might actually end abortion, because then they "wouldn’t have the ability to do urgent fundraising because if we slay the dragon, what dragon do they continue to fight?" And you know what? He's likely right about that -- you may recall Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) saying something even harsher about certain Tea Party groups. And I can never shake the feeling that Democrats threw the last two midterm elections so they could fundraise off the crazy things all these newly-elected Republicans would say.

Finally, John C. O'Day, writing at FAIR, finds a lot of liberal commentators suddenly pining away for the good old days of George W. Bush, specifically because Mr. Bush didn't publicly demonize Muslims like a lot of today's Republican Presidential candidates do. This is a grim development, but not a surprising one -- I began many sentences during the Bush years with "at least Reagan didn't." But we have to work against thinking Bush-wasn't-so-bad when what's really happening is that our politicians keep getting worse, and will keep doing so until we a) stop the money-flow to their campaigns and b) force big telecom corporations to offer cable channels a la carte.

Around the table: more observations about the ongoing slow-motion wreck that is American politics.

William Greider, writing at The Nation sees in the ongoing GOP House caucus chaos "the final unraveling of Nixon's 'Southern strategy.'" That is, perhaps, an optimistic assessment. I'm more inclined to think that voters swayed by the Southern strategy don't really want to accomplish anything -- they want to feel rage and then get attention for their rage, which means the business wing of the party can eventually patronize them and then go back to using them to win elections. One can only hope the business wing of the party is as bad at strategy as they now are at business.

In a related note, Francis Wilkinson says that the "Archconservatives' Real Enemy is Democracy." That's true, of course -- a lot of far-right fools will reveal as much with startlingly little prodding -- and I'm glad to see that Mr. Wilkinson also sees no difference between the Freedom Caucus's aims and "mainstream" Republican aims. But could he kick the word "conservative" out of his description of the far right? They don't deserve it. They deserve the word "reactionary."

Mike Huckabee -- he's still running for President, isn't he? -- says "I trust Bernie Sanders with my tax dollars like I trust a North Korean chef with my labrador!" Now that he's had the "courage" to say something that racist, maybe he'll jump to double-digits in the polls! Seriously, though, the sight of grown men jumping up and down to get attention gets downright sickening after a while.

Various Republicans declare they're disgusted with the Senate filibuster and would like to get rid of it. They shouldn't -- they should make Senators earn it by actually talking. Both parties have been absolutely ridiculous about this matter in recent years, each one declaring it an evil when they're in the majority and a necessity when they're in the minority with no apparent recollection of having ever felt differently. But Republicans should consider that if they get rid of the filibuster, and Democrats win the Presidency and retake the House and the Senate in 2016 (not outside the realm of possibility, this!), and actually do some good things for the American people, Republicans might lose their low-turnout midterm advantage in 2018.

Finally, "sources" say that Sen. McConnell (E-KY) wants "significant changes" to Social Security and Medicare, along with a rollback of clean water regulations, in exchange for getting a budget passed and raising the debt limit. Never mind "negotiation" -- in a sane and healthy society, supporting these policy initiatives (let alone holding our government's funding and credit hostage to them!) would destroy political careers, for who besides an ideologue supports dirty water or a weakened Medicare or Social Security? But I guess that just means we have a lot more work to do.

Around the table: three more Supreme Court decisions and lots more right-wing gasbaggery.

U.S. Supreme Court rules that the EPA did not "lawfully" consider cost to polluting corporations when writing its air toxics rule, meaning they should've considered that cost much earlier in the rule-making process than they did. But Justice Scalia should not suggest that the health benefits of clean air amount to "a few dollars," since that's inaccurate and it's his job to know better.

However, Justice Scalia also authored a Supreme Court ruling striking down the federal "three strikes" law, writing that the law's definition of "violent felony" is too "shapeless a provision to condemn someone to prison for 15 years to life." That's stirring -- of course I was tempted to say he has a lot of compassion for white supremacists (like the plaintiff in the case that prompted this ruling), but he's been against the "violent felony" provision for years.

The Supreme Court also upheld Arizona's independent commission for redrawing Congressional districts, ruling that, while Article One of the U.S. Constitution specifically states that state legislatures determine "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives," when the people vote on a ballot initiative (such as the one that created the commission), they essentially become a legislature. This is no small victory -- if the Court had interpreted "legislature" more literally, they could have wound up hampering ballot initiatives all over America.

Texas's Attorney General says county clerks can refuse marriage licenses to gay couples based on their "religious objections." Again, I'm not seeing how that's different from refusing to issue licenses to interracial couples based on "religious objections." It's enough to make a man wish President Obama would send in the National Guard to enforce the ruling. (Yes, I'm well aware of the difficulties in doing so; that's why I said "wish.")

Obama Administration lifts requirement that marijuana research protocols receive a "Public Health Service review" before proceeding. No other Schedule I drug (which pot shouldn't even be) needs this kind of review before research on it can proceed, and politicians on both sides of the political spectrum (including some who oppose legalization!) have advocated lifting that review process. So we have another instance of small government working.

Finally, Jeb Bush said he'd consider getting rid of the Senate filibuster in the context of repealing the Affordable Care Act. Senate Republicans have abused the filibuster mightily and cried like brats when Democrats (inadvisedly!) ended the filibuster for Presidential nominations in 2013 -- which Republicans had just tried to do in 2005! -- but whatever; this is just more right-wing swordfighting. We should just bring back the actual filibuster, and get rid of this absurd and cowardly version where Senators signal a filibuster and then go out for martinis.

Around the table: more good news from Election Day...and more "liberal" media "advice" after Election Day.

Scott Baker at Op-Ed News lists a few more victories from our recent Election Day debacle. Key finding: politicians constantly whine about spending money on public projects, but voters don't often feel the same way, approving massive infrastructure spending projects in no less than 11 states. People actually do want their politicians to spend money on worthwhile projects, and complaining about "corruption" in that context is pointless noise if one can produce no actual evidence of corruption.

Ho hum, another bad day for Democrats, another slew of "liberal" media outlets arguing that the lesson is for Democrats to move to the right. Exit polls find economic populism to be, well, popular, but who cares, when there's bipartisanship to be had? After you read the "liberal" media's counsel and you hear Mitch McConnell suddenly talk about the value of "bipartisanship" after all these years, you may be reminded that "bipartisanship," for the "liberal" media, seems to mean Democrats and Republicans coming together to do whatever Republicans want.

Mike Konczal advocates "shrinking" the financial sector to promote more equitable economic growth. You already know the financial sector's too big because banksters go to some length to obscure its workings, and also because you've suspected that "finance has increased inequality by convincing corporate executives and asset managers that corporations must be judged not by the quality of their products and workforce but by one thing only: immediate income paid to shareholders." Conservatives are supposed to be about the long haul, but modern-day "conservatives" are only about getting money now, rather than providing services to people, as even 1990s conservatives believed.

The New Republic thinks that Senate Democrats should use the filibuster as "ruthlessly" as Republicans did. I disagree: of course you should filibuster awful legislation whenever it rears its ugly head, but bad behavior is bad behavior no matter who does it, and I still favor filibuster reform that makes Senators actually stand up and talk for 24 or 48 hours, rather than merely block legislation painlessly and go home. Even the "liberal" media can't put lipstick on a pig that actually stands up for 48 hours stopping a minimum wage hike or campaign finance disclosure.

Julia Angwin at ProPublica discusses the best encryption tools for internet communications. I invite those folks who still think big corporations create innovative products to list the major corporations creating the more highly-regarded products Ms. Angwin discusses. Spoiler alert: there's one, and it's Apple, and it's still well down the list. Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook are rather further down. Most of your innovation, here as elsewhere, comes from small businesses.

Finally, another study finds that shift work actually impairs thinking and remembering. Every 10 years on shift work ages you about 6.5 years, as far as your cognitive abilities, and n.b. that "shift work" includes second-shift work, because you probably don't get to bed before midnight. The good news? Once out of shift work for five years, your abilities recover. Still, the lead doctor suggests "design(ing) work schedules...that minimize the disruption of the body clock," a schedule which could include "not working very many nights in a row." I'm all for that, and somewhere, someone running a hospital is probably all for that, too.

Around the table: blows against sanity!

After multitudinous Republican filibusters against President Obama's Executive branch appointees, Senate Democrats vote to bar filibusters against all such appointees except Supreme Court Justice nominees. I still think that's a big mistake -- don't Democrats remember that Republicans wanted to do exactly this in 2005? I opposed it then, and I oppose it now. Still, hearing Mitch McConnell say Republicans have been very fair to Mr. Obama's nominees doesn't exactly garner my sympathy. You may recall that Mr. McConnell is the man who filibustered his own bill late last year.

Oklahoma's state-owned National Guard facilities will no longer offer benefits to any married couples, rather than give spousal benefits to same-sex couples. Pro-family policies at work! Those same-sex couples can get spousal benefits at one of five federal National Guard facilities, but that might be a long drive, since Oklahoma ain't a small place; I'd be interested to see if the Supreme Court calls that an "undue burden" upon same-sex couples. But isn't this a long way to go, Oklahoma, just to appease bigots?

David Dayen instructs us that we shouldn't be jumping for joy over the $13 billion settlement JP Morgan Chase made with our government. Apparently the reported $13 billion includes other costs from another settlement, but the bigger deal is that the principal reductions might actually hurt homeowners, as their reductions get counted as income and thus subject to unexpected tax hits.

In a peripherally-related note, Jesse Eisenstein at ProPublica notes that Mr. Obama's nominee for Commodity Futures Trading Commission, one Thomas Massad, is a bit of a blank slate. He could be the fellow who supposedly pushed back against Bank of America while running the bailout, or he could be the fellow who frequently clashed with bailout special inspector general Neil Barofsky, a man who should be a hero to Americans. I'm leaning toward the latter, but I'd be happy to be wrong.

Finally, Monica Potts at The American Prospect describes a fairly successful program that helps poor New Yorkers save money by diverting some of their tax refunds into a savings account, and then matching the money they save (at about 50 cents on the dollar) over the course of a year . Such programs just so happen to have a lot of conservative support -- building as they do on the Earned Income Tax Credit, a Reagan-era achievement -- but guess how eager today's "conservatives" are to take such programs national.

President Obama plans to urge Congress to gradually shut down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, "seeking to buffer taxpayers from future housing market downturns." But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, one more time, didn't cause the housing bubble to burst -- banksters and their hifalutin financial "instruments" did that. I guess Mr. Obama figures that because he got Dodd-Frank passed, he can do something for the right wing. Wrong again. He can do the people's will, because that's his job.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos buys the Washington Post. I suppose I should applaud any business icon who espouses "long-term thinking," since the major problem with today's economy is that big corporations want all the goodies right now, but he's against folks like himself paying more in taxes, though a 91% tax bracket would force all those CEOs to think about the future. And note well how paragraph 6 blames "the epochal change from print to digital technology," and not the Post's shilling for an ever-more unpopular class of American elites, for the Post's problems. Also note well that Mr. Bezos is one of those elites.

Another day, another liberal who sees nothing wrong with getting rid of the filibuster, because of demographic trends and because Republicans suck so bad they won't elect many Presidents in the foreseeable future. It's like some people have no recollection of the filibuster saving the Estate Tax in 2006, or of how 9.11 rescued a walking-dead Presidency. It's also like they can't type out the words "talking filibuster" without their hands seizing up. And Scott Walker can win in 2016, especially if the economy's still bad. And Brian Sandoval can win even if it's not.

Want to read one of the worst arguments ever? I don't care if she raised Temple Grandin, Eustacia Cutler argues like a right-winger, one who'd make Jonah Goldberg seem lucid, no less -- she seems to think autism equals masculinity equals lack of empathy equals obsessive logicality equals computer fixation equals pornography equals child porn, plus maybe fathers should go to more autism conferences. Nary a fact nor piece of research sullies this free-associative trip (and the "80 to 90% divorce rate" in autistic families is crap-with-crap-sauce, by the way). And what's with all the sentence fragments?

Ted Nugent instructs us that Trayvon Martin "got" justice, because, you know, he was a troublemaker, and Ted doesn't need to actually prove that, because he can spot trouble a mile away. I bet I know how he can spot it, too. You know what? Ted Nugent just wants attention now. He's done getting it from this space.

With Senate Democrats and Republicans reaching an agreement to avoid changing filibuster rules -- Senate Republicans will graciously allow a vote on several Obama Administration nominees in exchange -- Daily Kos helps you tell the Senate to make the filibuster into a talking filibuster. Senators should actually have to talk to maintain a filibuster, as Rand Paul did for 13 hours not long ago; now they just "signal their intent" to filibuster and then go home, and that makes too many cowards far too powerful. I've received a few dozen action alerts over the past week calling for an end to the Senate filibuster entirely, but I didn't pass any of them along; I'm fully aware that calling for the filibuster's end was, for some, a negotiating tactic, but I'm a citizen, not a politico, and we citizens must advocate for what we believe to be right. They call it "honest counsel" for a reason, after all.

Meanwhile, the European Commission has begun investigating collusion on the part of BP, Shell, and Statoil, going back to 2002. The EC suggests that the three corporations might have violated European Union antitrust rules against reporting distorted prices and shutting other actors out of the price-reporting process. Sounds pretty arcane, doesn't it? But I'll bet the resulting inflated prices at the pump don't seem arcane. And you have to wonder why the United States doesn't investigate -- after all, BP and Shell are household names here, too. You have to wonder even more when you recall that Mr. Obama told Mr. Holder to monitor oil and gas prices back in 2011, and Mr. Holder launched the Oil and Gas Price Fraud Working Group in order to do just that. I guess they ain't been doing very much working, so Public Citizen helps you tell the Justice Department to stop fraud in the oil sector.

In other news, Facebook still mulls letting children under 12 join up. What's the big deal? Children can't deal with sophisticated advertising, that's the big deal -- I was a relatively intelligent child and I was positively helpless in the face of TV ads. Praise the Lord that my parents and grandparents kept me on the straight and narrow! And TV advertising in the '70s was nowhere near as sophisticated as social media advertising is today -- even parents have little understanding of how facebook turns every photo and comment and click into a dossier that corporations can use to target you. And hello? Adults don't always grasp the ins and outs of relating to people and sharing information with them online; how much more difficult must that be for children? Thus the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood still helps you tell Facebook to avoid flinging ads at kids. I don't claim that parents should get a break from being parents. But I don't think corporations need to make parenting so much harder, either.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Bureau of Land Management (or BLM) to require corporations to disclose all the chemicals they use when fracking on federal lands, then the Center for Effective Government still helps you do that. The BLM's current proposal lets corporations keep a few of their chemicals secret, and allows "disclosure" to a website funded by the gas drilling industry, and there is just no possibility for a conflict of interest there, no sir! Gas drillers often cite the need for "trade secrets." I've said it before and I'll say it again: no "right" to keep information secret from competitors trumps the people's right to know what the hell corporations are pumping into their water table. And if gas drillers want to use public lands, they have to play by public rules -- the people's rules, that is. It's a shame the BLM doesn't quite seem to grasp that. We'll have to tell them until they do.

House passes Farm Bill completely devoid of food stamp funding; they say they'll pass a separate food stamps bill later, perhaps at about the moment monkeys fly out of my butt. And they made big corporate agricultural subsidies permanent! It's like they're trying to do everything wrong. You know it's bad when Rod Frickin' Dreher quotes Ross Frickin' Douthat to tell you how monstrous the House Farm Bill is. (That The American Conservative printed it isn't a big surprise, though.)

TPM's Sahil Kapur says that Mr. McConnell may have lost the filibuster battle, but he's winning the war to enshrine a permanent minority obstructive force in the Senate. But that force could be broken by making Senators actually talk their way through filibusters -- when Senators have to make fools of themselves in public, and when good citizens will scratch their heads at our Senators yammering for hours on end about (for example) the "evils" of campaign finance disclosure, we'll see less obstruction, and the world will be a better place.

North Carolina state legislature passes an abomination of a tax "reform" "plan." Long story short: the rich get richer, the poor get shafted, because God and also because jobs. Anyone else want to forcibly eject North Carolina from our Union? We'll airlift the Moral Monday protestors out first. (Citizens for Tax Justice has more.)

Another day, another "liberal" media hack telling us that reinstating Glass-Steagall really isn't a good idea. Mr. Matthews actually tells us that the Warren-McCain bill's definition of "securities entity" is "pretty airtight," which is pretty much what you need to know, but n.b. that he (like others) says diversification is good for banks, as if we should give one rat's hind quarter what's good for banks at the expense of what's good for the American people. And he, like others, tells us that Alan Greenspan's Fed basically eviscerated Glass-Steagall, as if that's Glass-Steagall's fault and not Alan Greenspan's fault.

Now Daily Kos calls on Harry Reid to do away with the filibuster for Presidential appointees and judicial nominees. I reject this call -- rather, I call upon the Senate to make their members sustain a filibuster by actually talking for hours on end about a subject. But this short-sightedness is appalling -- does Daily Kos not remember that a mere eight years ago Republicans wanted to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominees? Do they remember what they thought about it then? I do. I hope Mr. Reid merely means to make Mr. McConnell cave on a few nominees, like Messrs. Perez and Cordray.

David Koch thinks getting rid of the minimum wage will help the poor. Because getting fewer dung pellets always helps them! As a side issue: does a putative "avalanche of regulations" create "a culture of dependency"? I think regulation prevents a culture of dependency -- a culture of dependency upon corporations. And it's hard to say you're "dependent on government" when it's your government. One more thing: when Mr. Koch talks about "the mobility of labor" I'm pretty sure he wants to exercise that mobility, not you.

As you know, federally-subsidized student loan rates doubled on July 1, and the Senate, again, couldn't agree on a way to cut it back. Which is to say, only 51 of 100 Senators wanted to keep the old 3.4% rate. I maintain that getting rid of the filibuster is not a solution -- if we made Senators work for their filibusters, they'd make fools of themselves and they'd filibuster less. Speaking of fools, I'm starting to wonder whether we'd all have been better off with another term for a do-nothing moderate in Maine than with Angus King.

From the "This Used to Be the Future" file: CNN wonders why we don't all work 15-hour weeks, like our intelligentsia thought we would by now. And takes 11 paragraphs to get to the obvious answer: because we wouldn't make enough money! And still mainly blames consumerism, which I'll grant doesn't help. Should I give them credit for noting, right off the bat in paragraph 11, that "income gains (in recent decades) have been disproportionately distributed"? Not as much as I'd give them if they'd said "technology has made workers more productive -- and delivered the wealth that production created to their bosses."

Indiana "reforms" its criminal code, with the "unintended" consequence that any same-sex couple filing for a marriage license in Indiana could get 18 months in jail! Also, any state official or clergy member performing a gay marriage could get six months in jail. The Supreme Court would strike down that restriction on Indiana clergy with a quickness. No, I'm not kidding.

Finally, Elizabeth Hasselback, until two days ago the token right-winger on ABC's The View, will join Fox and Friends in the middle of September. And THAT! IS THE MOST! SURPRISING! THING! I! HAVE EVER! HEARD!