Thieves in the Temple.

Around the table: Standing Rock, millennial voters, affordable housing, defense spending waste, and the Governor's race in North Carolina.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' has delayed the easement permit that would enable the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline, pending an environmental study, but Kelly Hayes at TruthOut reminds us that this fight is far from over. "(W)hile it's true that environmental impact statements can in fact take years to complete," she says, "no attention to detail -- either legal or environmental -- should be expected under a president-elect who has promised to govern in the style of an autocrat." But Republicans typically overestimate the public's impatience with environmental regulations, and so we have another opening.

Another day, another "liberal" media article blaming young folks for Donald Trump's win. Mr. Obama may have done better, but folks 18-29 went for Mrs. Clinton by a 19-point margin, whereas folks over 45 went for Mr. Trump by at least 7 points, and of course the "liberal" media won't blame seniors voting against their own interests. Frankly, though, in an election where the "winning" candidate only got 46% (his total seems to be going down all the time!) and lost the popular vote by 2.5 million votes, you could argue almost anything was the deciding factor -- maybe, even, that Bernie Sanders (or someone else at least as inspiring) wasn't the Democratic nominee.

Buried somewhat in this news item about Ben Carson's nomination as Housing and Urban Development Secretary is Mr. Carson's opposition to putting affordable housing in "wealthier neighborhoods." He's upset with that, and not redlining? Also, n.b. his general opposition to government programs for the poor: "(w)e the people have the responsibility to take care of the indigent...it's not the government's job." Always they pretend our government is some alien thing that couldn't possibly derive its power and authority from us and couldn't possibly belong to us -- certainly it couldn't work on our behalf! Why would they want us to think that way, I wonder?

Department of Defense buries internal study finding at least $125 billion in "administrative waste," thinking, apparently, that Congress would use their findings to cut their overall budget. But it seems to me the Pentagon worried over nothing! Democrats are so weak they won't do anything that could be seen as being "weak on defense," and Republicans are no doubt already drafting their statements that the Pentagon understands the problem and should be allowed to fix it on their own. (Oh, and don't wait for Sen. McCain to do something about it. He'll condemn it, and that'll be far from worthless, but he won't do anything else.)

Finally, and I do mean finally, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory concedes his race to Roy Cooper, and Tom Jensen at PPP reminds us that sustained and organized liberal opposition to Mr. McCrory's reactionary policies may have done the most to finally bring him down. Mr. Jensen cites the state's Moral Monday movement in particular for keeping these issues out front, and while their work is obviously very important, I wish it had more effect down-ballot, as Republicans still enjoy huge majorites in the state legislature. I doubt 2018 will present very much opportunity to change that in North Carolina -- but I'd be pleased to have Moral Monday prove me wrong.

Around the table: featuring suspiciously narrow minimum wage hikes and stunningly broad-hearted religious folk.

McDonald's announces that they'll hike their minimum wage for certain workers by a dollar over local minimum wage requirements. But the move would only affect some 10 percent of its workers -- the vast majority work at franchises, and thus McDonald's pretends its hands are tied. McDonald's will also offer five days of paid leave after one year of employment, which makes me wonder how many McDonald's employees stay that long.

New Hampshire clergy protest recent Republican budget proposals that would cut taxes for the wealthy and services for everyone, calling the proposals "immoral." Most religious Americans really are very good people -- it's just a few bad apples that give the rest of us a bad name, the kind of folk that would cut emergency services for domestic violence victims in half. And good for New Hampshire Voices for Faith that they invoke the Moral Monday movement down in North Carolina, where the state legislature is even more reactionary.

FAIR catches "liberal" media outlets falling for "ISIS plots" that don't actually involve ISIS. The plots involve ISIS wannabes, as well as federal agents pretending to be ISIS terrorists. I'm not against undercover agents, obviously, but you're free to wonder to what degree our efforts actually catch home-grown terrorists, versus growing them -- and you're equally free to wonder if growing them is the idea.

The Center for Effective Government issues a report cleverly entitled "Burning Our Bridges," describing how we could fund the massive infrastructure improvements America needs by taxing corporations fairly, rather than relying on pro-corporate gimmicks like tax amnesty "repatriation." A little more than two dozen corporations hold about half of the $2 trillion-plus that corporations shunt offshore to avoid taxation. Oh, and since the last tax amnesty about 10 years ago, their offshore profits increased fivefold. Folks who think tax amnesties are an "incentive" to do good must also be the people who think giving their kids cookies before homework is an "incentive" to do homework.

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina says she's at least 90 percent sure she'll run for President. Because, she says, she has a "deep understanding of how the economy actually works," which may be true, in the sense that she nearly destroyed HP during her tenure and got paid $20 million to go away. She'll also hit a snag with the nativist wing of the party when they find out she wanted to expand the H-1B visa program, but I'd rather see her candidacy perish on her economic views, which made her rich but didn't do anyone else any good.

Finally, in a bit of good news, President Obama on Tuesday commuted the sentences of 22 prisoners, all of whom were serving lengthy sentences for non-violent drug offenses. We've advocated for such action, of course, and I won't criticize him for not doing more, at least not yet. He did appear to grant fewer pardons in his first term than his four predecessors did in their first terms -- and such frugal mercy has really endeared him to right-wingers, hasn't it?

Around the table: includes reason 424 why wireless broadband doesn't compete with Comcast no matter what Comcast says.

Today begins a 12-state "Moral Week of Action," an extension of the "Moral Monday" protests that have followed the wave of reactionary laws from the North Carolina government. Seven of the 12 states are Southern; the others are Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Wisconsin, and New York; the first four of these have seen similarly reactionary state governments, while the fifth can claim to be merely disappointing. I wish the Moral Monday protestors luck, but more than that, I wish them faith.

Trumpets are blaring about the $16.6 billion settlement between our government and Bank of America, but David Dayen at the Guardian reminds us not to expect too much good to come of it. Our government has mandated that out of the $16.6 billion, about $7 billion of that money actually go toward reducing homeowner principals or interest payments -- and if the JP Morgan Chase settlement is any guide, that money will come out very, very slowly. Banks can weasel out of helping homeowners in other ways, too -- by the time you read about them, you might well think our government and the big banksters have rigged these settlements to benefit the banksters.

Yet another data point in our ongoing effort to slam the Comcast meme that merging with Time-Warner is OK because the real competition comes from wireless: Kate Cox at the Consumerist finds that streaming the entire series Breaking Bad over one month's time would cost $1200-$2200 -- if your wireless provider doesn't hit you with the data-throttling stick first. You already knew (if you've ever used your laptop in a Starbucks, for example) that wireless broadband is slow, unsteady, and insecure; now you know it's also pricey as hell. Some "competition."

Remember the wealthy teenager who drunk-drove four people to death and got probation because his lawyer argued his wealth hadn't taught him enough responsibility? The kid's pa is in the news now, for impersonating a police officer. Why was he posing as a reserve police officer at a disturbance call? The world may never know, as Mr. Couch hasn't commented since the arrest. In any case, it looks like "affluenza" either runs in the family or is very contagious.

Finally, Larry Klayman says President Obama and Attorney General Holder "jump to judgment, on a consistent and regular basis, against 'whitey' and in favor of their black brothers." I'm sure glad he said "consistent" and "regular," or I would have had no idea what he meant. Seriously, passages like "racist hacks who should be removed from office and banished to hell by whatever legal means are appropriate" more accurately describe a writer with anger-management issues than they describe his targets. And if he thinks Messrs. Obama and Holder have created "a huge racial divide" in America, he must not be acquainted with slavery or Jim Crow or redlining.

Around the table: crushed by the wheels of industry!

London School of Economics anthropologist David Graeber tells us how modern-day workers got to be overworked and overproductive. He also explains how "the more obviously your work benefits others, the less you’re paid for it," and how the right turns workers against other workers. Finally, he describes the conflict in left-wing movements over the value of work -- and then slices through it: "I’m thinking of a labor movement...that manages to finally ditch all traces of the ideology that says that work is a value in itself, but rather redefines labor as caring for other people." There's a lot to think about there.

As the reactionary North Carolina legislature gets together to pass a budget before adjourning for the year, Moral Monday protestors plan a massive sit-in. Fun fact: South Carolina's reactionaries have bellowed that implementing the Moral Monday movement's "Five Point Moral Framework" would cost as much as $10 billion (over 10 years, which scare number purveyors never say), but the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center put the price tag at $1 billion, with the revenue easily raised by (surprise!) reversing the legislature's tax cuts for the rich and for corporations.

ProPublica informs us that public schools use physical restraints on children over 250,000 times annually, and three-quarters of the time, public schools use them on disabled kids. What a shame that "tough love" weariness hasn't yet migrated to the public schools. Personal to those who ask how do you handle little monsters? Well, first off, autistic kids are not monsters. Second, look to the man in the mirror when asking that question, and you'll usually find who's to blame when children act cray-cray.

Counselors (if you can call them that) at famous fundamentalist college Bob Jones University have been telling rape victims to "repent for their sins" first, with at least one just coming out and saying "we have to find the sin in your life that caused your rape." And not the sin in her rapist's life? No, rape victims should not look to blame themselves first, because nobody should be raped, and forcing sex on someone is always wrong. The end.

Finally, Norm Ornstein says a new Pew study should settle the debate over who's to blame for our polarized politics. Spoiler alert: Pew says right-wingers are mostly to blame for the polarization. Note well, also, the graph near the top of the page, which suggests that House Democrats have moved leftward over the last 70 years (though not as far rightward as House Republicans have moved). We must remember that, for a long time, conservative Southern Democrats made up a big chunk of the party, thus dragging House Democrats significantly rightward at least until the '70s, when Southern Democrats started to become Republicans.

Around the table: populism vs. "populism."

New York Times columnist David Brooks writes perhaps the single most offensive op-ed I've read this year, in which he actually argues that we should borrow the workings of more totalitarian states like China in order to "make democracy dynamic again." The notion of an "unapologetically elitist" "Simpson/Bowles-type commission to push populist reforms" would be merely hilarious if his "populist reforms" weren't the kind of Beltway autofellatio that's actually unpopular with Americans. The best part will be when he complains that we folks just aren't sophisticated enough to understand that when he said we should have less democracy, he wasn't really saying we should have less democracy.

Dick "Tha Dicksta" Cheney suggests that President Obama scrapped missile defense systems just because Vladimir Putin told him so. No word on whether Mr. Putin was shirtless when he gave Mr. Obama the order, but could it be possible that Mr. Obama scrapped missile defense because missile defense doesn't work, and only benefits defense contractors who'd rather not build something useful? And why on Earth is Mr. Cheney walking around in public without a paper bag over his head after everything he's done?

Navy reservist suspended for two weeks after refusing to hide wait times for appointments at the Veterans Administration. You'd think the King of Everyone Getting Along would welcome the testimony of government workers who want government to work better, but Mr. Obama generally treats whistleblowers like they've just leaked wartime troop movements, regardless of what they've actually said. And no, this isn't a mark of George W. Bush's tenure, Bush-league though it may seem.

Three North Carolina Republican state Senators introduce bill making it a felony to disclose fracking chemicals. Because some corporation's "right" to "trade secrets" trumps everyone else's right to drinking water that doesn't catch fire and doesn't turn gelatinous if left out too long! No fracking currently goes on in North Carolina, but that'll change soon -- and we'll see if the Moral Monday folks can counter the will of a reactionary legislature that cares about nothing except money.

Philly.com blogger tells us how "Tom Corbett Just Won Re-election." Sympathetic as I am to how-Democrats-will-screw-it-up-this-time narratives, and noting that Democratic nominee Tom Wolf pounds an I'm-an-outsider-can't-we-all-get-along message that has stranded better candidates at 48 percent, I still think listing Mr. Corbett's leftward moves (or non-moves -- refusing to appeal reversals on Voter ID and gay marriage hardly required him to lift a finger) doesn't prove he's been playing us; it merely proves that he's not completely brain-dead. Plus, dude always looks mad even when he's got nothing to be mad about. People get tired of that.

Jim Hightower delivers the messaging goods when discussing the Koch Brothers' obsession with making solar power users pay a Sun Tax: "Koch Brothers Demand More Government Intervention and Taxes," runs the headline, "they want states to tax homeowners as punishment for becoming innovative energy producers" runs the last line of paragraph five, and here's how the final paragraph begins: "Now we know what the Koch-ALEC complex means by 'free markets' and 'liberty.' They mean that corporate energy interests should be free to stifle our individual liberty." You'd almost wonder why the Crusty Centrists of the Beltway don't find Mr. Hightower's words to be "pitch-perfect populism." OK, not really -- we all know the answer is "money."

Penny rants: public prayer, "too big to jail" banksters, and the true colors of an extremist.

U.S. Supreme Court, in yet another 5-4 decision, allows New York town to open public legislative meetings with Christian prayers. Justice Kennedy again writes the majority opinion, showcasing his habit of thinking with his heart that we've found both refreshing and infuriating over the years -- discarding the precedent set by Justice O'Connor that asked whether similar practices constituted an "endorsement" of one religion or another, he writes a paean to the power of prayer and reminds us that the assembled don't have to pray, but can just leave the room if they're so offended, and as we know no legislature in history has ever tried to ram through unpopular legislation by clearing the room first, right? Worse than that is his assertion that Greece, NY didn't discriminate in favor of Christianity because the township "limited its list of clergy almost exclusively to representatives of houses of worship situated within Greece’s town limits," which, we assume, are generally Christian. He is aware that local zoning ordinances can prevent churches from being built within a town's limits, isn't he?

Jesse Eisenger at ProPublica explains why the Justice Department's recent announcement that "the era of 'too big to jail' is over" might merely be bluster. I mean, of course I like to believe the best of people, but the evidence of recent years is hard to ignore: when a Justice Department prosecutor gets a corporation to agree to "change its culture" instead of face formal charges, but then doesn't actually enforce the agreement, you have to wonder if incompetence or malice is at work. And when the money for fines doesn't come from the CEO's pocket but from those of their shareholders', certainly the banksters who authorized/ignored bad conduct have no incentive to change. Federal prosecutors can also charge corporations and their employees at the same time -- but, strangely, they have a habit of throwing up their hands and walking away from the whole thing when they can't get employees to cooperate; again, you have to wonder if incompetence or malice is at work. I'd disagree, though, that it's merely "prudent" to "minimize the damage any charges against companies might inflict on the larger economy" -- if we continue to think that way, we'll be the banksters' hostages forever.

North Carolina Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis gets caught on film (from 2011) telling folks that we have to "divide and conquer the people who are on the (government) systems," to make the "woman who has cerebal palsy" who had "no choice" but to take Big Gummint help "look down at these people who choose to get into a condition that makes them dependent on the government." In case you're wondering whom he means by "these people," he means women who have babies, not the men who help make them, and certainly not the big corporations soaking up money in undeserved tax breaks so they can redistribute their workers' wealth upward to their CEOs while not creating jobs. He's already said he regrets using the phrase "divide and conquer" in that context, but I think you're going to see it in a million Kay Hagan ads anyway come October -- hopefully, after the ads reminding North Carolina that Mr. Tillis is Speaker of the House in the most radical state legislator in recent state history, a legislature whose reign of horror has inspired the Moral Monday demonstrations.

Around the table: a Moral Monday super-march on Sunday, and other stories.

You may not have seen it on the news, but over 80,000 good folks took to the streets in North Carolina this Saturday in a "Moral March on Raleigh," growing at least in part out of the "Moral Monday" protests against the reactionary policies of the McCrory Administration and the N.C. state legislature. You can find a list of said policies here -- the list may be quite dispiriting, but 80,000 good folks protesting against a state's legislative agenda is at least as impressive.

The FDA issued voluntary guidelines in December in re antibiotic abuse in feed animals, but the two biggest veterinary drug corporations have said they'll follow them. Turns out if the big drug-makers don't specifically label their drugs for "growth promotion" or "feed efficiency," farmers can't legally use the drugs for those purposes. Farmers could lie, of course, and say they're giving the drugs to "sick" animals, but the guidelines also require veterinarians to write prescriptions for drugs, meaning at least two parties have to lie to continue the abuse. I don't know if it'll work or not -- I always prefer mandatory regulations to voluntary ones -- but I'll reserve judgment.

The CBO strikes back against reports that it said the Affordable Care Act would "cost 2.5 million jobs." To reiterate: the CBO told us that workers would work less because the ACA would help ensure that they don't need to keep bad jobs just to keep their healthcare, and they estimated that this "voluntary cutback" of hours would amount to 2.5 million full-time jobs. As MIT economist Jonathan Gruber says, "Voluntary reductions are not a cost of the healthcare reform law, they are a benefit." None of that matters to Republicans, though -- they'll keep pounding that JOB KILLAH!!!!! myth as long as the "liberal" media enables them.

Another day, another Republican claiming that Affordable Care Act taxes hit small businesses and working families the hardest, when, in fact, it hits folks making over $200,000/year the hardest. Which isn't the same thing. And working families and small businesses can get subsidies from the ACA. And the medical device manufacturers who will get hit hardest, big shock, aren't small businesses. Remember: if Republicans claim some policy hurts "small businesses," you can assume they really mean "my rich friends."

Finally, a college football player who projects as a mid-round pick in April's NFL draft came out as gay on Sunday, and Think Progress rounds up the best and worst reactions to the news. The worst reactions (Meadowlands Miracle-maker Herm Edwards, sadly, has one of them) are all a bit mind-boggling -- I especially wish Patrick Crayton (once a decent punt returner, but I had to look that up) would stop trying to dig his way out of a hole. There's hope, of course: Dave Kopay, who played eight years in the NFL and came out after his retirement, testified that none of his teammates cared about his sexuality as long as he hit and blocked, and I'm pulling for today's players to act the same.

Tea Party Group responds to North Carolina's "Moral Monday" protests with a "parody" of the Bangles' "Manic Monday" called (get your surprised face ready) "Marxist Monday." Sad to see Tea Partiers are as bad at rhyming as they are at thinking.

A pair of Kentucky Catholic religious orders won't allow natural gas-pipeline surveyors on their land. Which conservatives all over the land hail as a vindication of the power of private property over the interests of the too-powerful! Just kidding, of course -- I expect today's "conservatives" will call the Kentucky nuns and monks "socialists" instead.

The success of Montana's experiment in publicly-funded health care for its state employees in Helena gives hope that others will dare to try single-payer health care. After all, that's how it happened in Canada -- Saskatchewan did it first. I have less hope, only because of the persistent thick-headedness of Republicans -- even the Montana state Senator who really likes the program "wonders" how Montana will continue to pay for it, although the program has saved Montana money. I'm starting to think some people really are just robots.

Four Republican ex-EPA heads (including Christine Todd Whitman, Bush the Lesser's first EPA head) opine that we should really do more about climate change. I welcome their input more than a lot of contemporary Republicans do, I'll bet -- particularly their statement that "we should not tolerate" "purposeful delay" -- but I feel compelled to respond that "trusting in the innovation of American businesses and in the market" isn't a conservative principle. Trusting in people, however, is. Sad that even the best of Republicans can't get that straight.

Daniel Gross describes "what happens when fast food actually pays," as in "pays its workers more than a couple scoopfuls of dung pellets." Spoiler alert: fast-food chains like In-N-Out, Dick's Drive-In, and Moo Cluck Moo, which all pay over $10/hour and offer decent benefits, still make money and retain employees longer. And if you're skeptical because these joints may not be in your neck of the woods like McDonald's and Burger King are, ask yourself: are McDonald's and Burger King good things?

New York City announces a Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program, allowing doctors to "prescribe" food vouchers -- redeemable at any of the city's over 140 farmers' markets -- to their obese and overweight patients. Sounds damn innovative to me! Will right-wingers rise up against "fruit Nazis"? Without noting all the big gummint money -- their money, I hasten to add -- that goes to high-fructose corn syrup?

Finally, both of Mitch McConnell's Senate opponents -- Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes and Republican primary challenger Matt Bevin -- landed big punches on Mr. McConnell at Saturday's Fancy Farm event. I don't have anything interesting to say about it; I just enjoy the thought of Mitch McConnell suffering electoral hardship.

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.

The American Conservative profiles the two gentlemen behind Media Lens, a fairly productive watchdog mainly of Britain's BBC. I often need reminding that the right uses the "humanitarian intervention" to convince the left to go along with various Empire-building schemes, no doubt an easier task a century ago when large swaths of the left embraced eugenics. Another necessary reminder comes in the form of this chilling quotation from a now-political editor at the BBC, in re why he didn't challenge the US/UK rubbish about Iraq's WMDs: "It was my job to report what those in power were doing or thinking." And we heard this a lot from right-wingers during Tha Bush Mobb years, who apparently felt that True Objectivity could only be attained by Stenographers for Power. Please remember to shame anyone who still thinks like that -- or, if you can, send Zombie Ben Franklin and Zombie Peter Zenger over to their house to discuss it with them.

In other news, the North Carolina state legislature's distinctly reactionary agenda has inspired "Moral Monday" demonstrations at the state capitol -- over 50 good North Carolinians arrested yesterday, and over 150 arrested in four Monday demonstrations. Republicans now control both state Houses and the Governor's mansion in a state Mr. Obama actually carried in 2008, and they've proven dutiful servants of the powerful this year; Daily Kos diarist MsSpentyouth catalogues their record of infamy here. Of course the teabagger in paragraphs 20 and 21 of the first link thinks these demonstrations are a bad idea, though I'm not sure exactly why, despite having just read his statement for the fourth time. Could it be because these demonstrators don't wear tricorner hats? Or because they invoke "morality" when he thinks the right owns the word? Or because he's pooping himself with fear that populism might actually thwart the right-wing agenda in North Carolina?