Thieves in the Temple.

Action: press freedom, school lunch nutrition standards, and redistricting.

Amnesty International helps you tell the Burmese government to release two Reuters journalists investigating that government's ongoing extermination of its Rohingya minority. And what bogus charge do these two intrepid journalists face? The Burmese government says that by procuring "important and secret government documents" -- it's a good thing they said the documents were "important" and "secret"! -- they've broken the Official Secrets Act, but legal experts inform us that Burma rarely-if-ever prosecutes anyone under this law, a relic of British colonial rule. And even the Trump Administration has demanded the release of the two journalists; surely the Nobel Peace Prize-winner heading up the Burmese government doesn't want to be outclassed by the Orange Menace just so she can avoid even more PR hits from the genocide she's currently allowing her military to conduct. At least, that's what I'd imagine, as a reasonable, civilized person.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Trump USDA to abandon its effort to roll back school lunch nutrition standards, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. I'm old enough to remember when the phrase "school lunch nutrition standards" would get laughs from kids and adults alike, but the standards the Obama Administration put in place back in 2014 have actually helped kids get more fruit and vegetables in their diet and have actually helped get junk food out of schools. Of course you already know the key word in the previous sentence for the Republican party is "Obama," and anything with Mr. Obama's name on it must be erased from history. That's not just the Trump Administration's problem, either -- Congress has been hot to repeal the standards since they regained full control in 2015, even though doing so would make them look, you know, objectively pro-childhood obesity. But they don't get all the say around here -- we do.

Finally, the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court ruled that the state's Congressional district map "clearly, plainly, and palpably" violates the state constitution, and gave the legislature about 2 1/2 weeks to submit a new map -- so now's as good a time as any to let Common Cause help you to tell your Pennsylvania state legislator to pass HB 722/SB 22, which would reform the state's redistricting process. If the politicians have proven anything, it's that we can't trust them to draw legislative districts that put the people's needs over their own -- but taking it out of the legislature's hands and putting it into the hands of an independent commission (as HB 722/SB 22 would do) would give us a better chance at avoiding the evil of gerrymandering. We shouldn't let legislators draw districts that split counties and cities apart (let alone districts that exclude single houses and sides of streets!) out of their greed for continued and undeserved power.

Action: healthy school lunches, clean water, and campaign finance reform.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Department of Agriculture to keep, and not roll back, the school lunch nutrition standards set by the previous Administration, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. The right has ginned up a "controversy" over what should be a very uncontroversial matter -- keeping junk food out of school lunches and putting more healthy food into school lunches -- and it's quite possibly even more ridiculous than the other fake outrages they peddle. For a time the "controversy" relied on anedcotes about kids not eating their apples, overblown accounts of states "having trouble" meeting the standards, and the tired right-wing trope of TEH BIG GUMMINT REGULASHUNZ IZ ALWAYSEZ TEH WRONGZ!!!! But now the controversy also relies on our Agriculture Secretary's rather flexible definition of "standard." You didn't know conservatism was all about not following the rules when you feel like it, didn't you? I kid, of course -- conservatism is not about that, even when the reactionaries who call themselves "conservative" act like it is.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania state Senate passed SB 624 not that long ago; you may recall that SB 624 would amend state clean water laws so that corporations -- like, just to pull an example out of the air, corporations that practice longwall coal mining -- can pollute local streams with as long as they submit a plan to clean up their mess later on. Whether they actually follow through on their plan to clean up their own mess isn't even the point -- the water's polluted in the meantime, meaning you can't drink it, bathe in it, swim in it, or fish in it! If your kid didn't want to clean his room, but instead wanted to submit a cleaning plan to you so he could do it later, would you put up with that? Of course you wouldn't! And your kid isn't even planning to pollute your water! The state House Energy and Environmental Resources Committee has planned a vote on SB 624 for this coming Monday, so the Sierra Club still helps you tell your state Reps to oppose SB 624 (and also SB 561, a sort of REINS Act for Pennsylvania, which we need like we need a hole in the head).

Finally, Pennsylvania still barely has any campaign finance laws to speak of, not even gift-banning laws with any teeth, so Common Cause helps you tell your Pennsylvania state legislators to pass a strong gift ban. It's bad enough that so many of our allegedly greatest legal minds think money is speech, but they also get their shorts in a bunch when folks try to ban gifts to lobbyists, saying that of course politicians can vote objectively even though they get gifts, though virtually any sentient life form would regard such gift-giving as a temptation, if not an outright bribe. Odd, how some people find themselves defending politicians' good nature! Still, avoid the temptation to throw up your hands and say people are just corrupt -- or worse, to say that human nature is corrupt and any law that tries to change that is a bad law. People do change over time -- we settle far fewer of our disputes with murderous violence than we used to, after all. And a world without corruption would be a better world than the one we've got, and that alone makes it worth fighting for.

Action: voting rights, cable set-top boxes, and school meal reauthorization.

CREDO helps you tell the Election Assistance Commission's Inspector General to investigate the EAC Director's recent decision to let Kansas, Alabama, and Georgia require proof of citizenship to vote. What's that, you say? Shouldn't you have to prove you're a citizen to vote? Here's a better question: do you routinely carry information proving your citizenship around with you? No, that's not your driver's license: it's your birth certificate, your passport, your certificate of citizenship, or your naturalization certificate, and you carry none of these in your wallet. And no, these states do not intend to target "undocumented immigrants" -- they mean to target black and Latino voters. These states have already pulled similar shenanigans, after all -- closing down DMVs in black neighborhoods (Alabama), putting out Spanish-language voting guides with inaccurate info (Kansas), or just plain old sitting on voter registrations from black folks (Georgia). So I'm going to go out on a limb and predict they won't ask any white voters for their paperwork.

Meanwhile, you may not have given any thought to this matter, but your set-top cable box may be costing you as much as $230 annually. But your cable provider won't permit you to use any other device with their service -- instead, they require you to get the box they want you to get and then overcharge you for it every month. The FCC has proposed rules that would force big cable corporations to allow you to use the box you want, even if it's not their box, and if you've watched Hulu or Netflix over your Wii or XBox, you already know this isn't some pipe dream. Of course, the cable corporations are treating it like that, and they're counting on you not to notice all the fees they stick in that bill you pay every month. But President Obama has, surprisingly, spoken out in favor of the FCC proposals, and the FCC is accepting public comments on the matter now, so Demand Progress helps you tell the FCC to protect consumers from excessive set-top box fees and require cable corporations to give us more choice in the matter.

Finally, Congress has been negligent in reauthorizing school breakfast and lunch programs. Obviously Congress hasn't been so negligent as to let kids starve while they're at school, at least not yet, but without an actual sense of what our government will spend on school meals for the next few years, schools won't know what equipment they'll be able to afford or what staff they'll be able to hire, among other things that actually require long-range planning. Of course, Congress likes that sort of chaos, more so now, even, than in Tha Bush Mobb years. But, once again: it doesn't matter what they want, it matters what we want, and that's a stable school lunch program with nutritious meals for kids. Really, you'd have to be a Scrooge McSmallgovernment to disagree. Hence the Pew Charitable Trusts helps you tell Congress to reauthorize the school meal program already. Note that Pew's email action tool helps you demand they keep the USDA's stricter nutrition standards, too, since Congress has been so hot to gut those.

Action: "free" trade, school vouchers, voting rights, and predatory prison phone call rates.

The Trans-Pacific "Partnership," as you know, is a done deal, awaiting ratification by the various signatory nations, including ours. Roots Action's petition, with which you may tell Congress to reject the TPP, goes like this: "We are writing to urge the Congress to reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This agreement would destroy jobs, degrade the environment, undermine the Internet and weaken U.S. democracy and sovereignty." That's all true, and fairly succinct besides -- and if your Rep or Senator decides to write you back with a bunch of booga-booga about China or bipartisanship, remember that, as a citizen, you don't necessarily have to explain yourself to your Reps or Senators; you need only communicate your will. (They still have to explain themselves to you, of course -- and if they're snippy about that, well, they can always get another job, more easily than you or I can, I would think.) Public Citizen also helps you tell Congress to reject the TPP; their missive is a bit longer, if you prefer that (I go back and forth myself). Either way, the time to act, as usual, is now.

Meanwhile, the House plans to vote on H.R. 10 tomorrow; H.R. 10 would extend the voucher program in Washington, D.C. that allows taxpayer money to be diverted toward private and religious schools. See? House Republicans can get it together long enough to vote on bad ideas! Maybe next week they'll vote to put junk food back in public schools! But seriously, how does H.R. 10 harm the country? By diverting public money -- taxpayer money, your money -- away from the public schools that belong to you, the schools over which you have more control, toward private schools that will not necessarily accept your children, do not necessarily do a better job than public schools just because they're private, and are often religious schools. And making you, the taxpayer, pay to support religions you don't agree with? You'd think the "sincere religious belief" crowd would relate to that. But they do not, since the religious schools they'd fund are their people, and their people are always better than you. People for the American Way helps you tell your House Reps to reject the D.C. voucher program and reject H.R. 10.

In other news, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the U.S. Attorney General to investigate whether Alabama's plan to shutter more than 30 DMVs across the state violates the Voting Rights Act, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. What do DMVs have to do with voting rights? Well, Alabama has one of them there Voter ID laws -- you know, the ones that make everyone produce photo ID at the voting booth even though hardly anyone actually commits the kind of voter fraud Voter ID laws supposedly protect against. And the most common place to go to get the photo ID that would satisfy Voter ID laws is the DMV. So why is Alabama closing 30 more DMVs? Well, they say it's because of "budget problems," but lots of states have budget problems, particularly in the last seven years or so, and very few of them resort to this manner of "resolving" them -- and surprise, surprise, the DMV closures will disproportionately affect black folks, rural folks, and seniors, many of whom have been voting for longer than many Alabama state legislators have been alive! So, yeah, let's try to kill this rubbish.

Finally, the FCC is mulling whether to stop phone corporations from charging prisoners and their families more than 20 times the cost of a phone call made on the outside, and they could issue new regulations in mere days. So if you haven't done it already, Sum of Us helps you tell the FCC to cap the predatory phone rates some big telecom corporations charge prisoners to keep in contact with their families. Should families have to pay thousands of dollars annually to keep in touch with their loved ones in jail -- particularly when we know that the more contact prisoners have with their families, the less likely they'll backslide once they're out of jail? If you think the answer is "yes," you should point out exactly where judges have issued sentences including "gouging the prisoner for phone calls to his/her family." Too many Americans still think it's OK to pile on whatever punishment they think prisoners deserve (never mind what society has already given them!) to prove they're tougher than everyone else. But this is a civilized society, so they shouldn't get all the say about everything.

Action: voting rights, clean water, and child nutrition.

Common Cause helps you tell your Reps and Senators to support H.R. 2867/S. 1659, the Voting Rights Advancement Act. Renewing and strengthening the Voting Rights Act used to be a bipartisan cause, but the bill just got its first Senate Republican co-sponsor, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. And the Supreme Court, as you know, struck down a significant part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. I dare Republicans to say, well, the Supreme Court spoke, and we have to follow their will -- not just because they tend to say the exact opposite when, say, a Kentucky county clerk decides she's not going to issue any marriage licenses to gay folks, but also because the Supreme Court all but invited Congress to fix the Voting Rights Act in a way that would satisfy their concerns. The Voting Rights Advancement Act does that, by applying pre-clearance formulas to any state or municipality that establishes a pattern of voting rights violations, not just Southern states. But clearly we'll need to tell Congress to do the right thing, perhaps many times. Of course, we're Americans, so we're up for that.

S. 1500, the so-called Sensible Environmental Protection Act, would allow corporations to dump certain pesticides in our waterways without a permit. "Certain pesticides" only include those "authorized for sale, distribution, or use" under federal law, but don't feel better, because S. 1500 doesn't say how much of an "authorized" pesticide a corporation can dump without a permit, and this is a fairly important matter to consider when determining how to protect our waters. Sadly, S. 1500 bill has a certain "bipartisan" sheen -- five of its 15 co-sponsors are Democrats, leaving a mere 41 who might filibuster the bill. And one of those five is North Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp, who just swore off a run for state Governor in 2016 and thus will need, ah, help getting re-elected to the Senate in 2018. None of that is our concern, of course -- protecting clean water from pollution is our concern. Hence Penn Environment helps you tell your Senators to actually be sensible about the environment and reject S. 1500. (Like how they re-define "sensible" to make your concerns look "insensible"?)

Meanwhile, the Child Nutrition Act expires on September 30. You recall that one of the few things the USDA has done well under President Obama is improve nutrition standards in school lunches -- which, naturally, has resulted in the House repeatedly trying to roll back this standard, by promoting legislation letting lagging school districts "opt out," instead of telling them to get with the program, as civilized people would do. And their arguments in favor of this absurdity? That some indeterminate number of kids throw away their school-provided apples instead of eating them, and that government is tyrannical because it sets standards for food provided in public schools, instead of just letting kids eat whatever they like. Because the only thing that says "freedom" more than letting kids pursue the ephemeral sensations offered by junk food without the distraction of discipline? Letting them get obese and suffer from intractable health problems well into adulthood! The Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell Congress to protect child nutrition standards.

Action: keeping banksters out of government, and keeping big ag corporations from ruining school lunch standards.

Americans for Financial Reform still helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 3065/S. 1779, the Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act, which would slow the "revolving door" between bankster corporations and government regulatory agencies. The bill wouldn't prevent folks from moving from Wall Street to government and back, but it would remove some of the incentives folks have for doing that -- it would ban "golden parachute" pay packages banksters hand out to executives who move to our government, it would limit the amount of lobbying regulators can do for the banking industry after they leave our government, and it would force more regulators to recuse themselves from cases affecting their former (and future?) employers. These are all, frankly, common-sense reforms, and if your lawmaker exclaims that it "restricts the freedom" of bankers to get work, you may remind them that your freedom to be protected from Wall Street crapping all over our economy is more important. (If they claim that only bankers understand banking, refer again to said crapping.)

Also, if you missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to pass a strong Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act, then CREDO helps you do that. The USDA has done one thing right, by kicking a lot of the sugary, salty, fatty crap out of our schools and getting more fruits and vegetables in, but naturally our Congressfolk want to roll all that back, so they can appease their big junk food and big agricultural corporate donors. The Republican-held House went very, very far out of its way, as you recall, to try to roll back the USDA's school lunch standards because one in 10 school districts had some indeterminate problem meeting the new standards, and also because some kid, somewhere, didn't eat the apple he got at school that afternoon. Since no good American is objectively pro-child obesity or objectively pro-juvenile diabetes, that attempted rollback should have finished at least a few Congressional careers, but it didn't, because Democrats didn't run ads about it, because they're weak. But that doesn't mean we can't make Congress do the right thing, no matter who Congress thinks is in charge.

Action: war in Iraq, and healthy food for schoolkids.

If you missed previous action alerts in re preventing America from fighting another war in Iraq, then USAction still helps you tell President Obama and Congress that you oppose any military action in Iraq, including airstrikes, which seems to be Mr. Obama's preferred option. Yes, it's perfectly awful that ISIS fighters have been terrorizing good Iraqi citizens, but Mr. Maliki's government was no model of statecraft either, and that's the whale we found ourselves lashed to back in the mid-2000s, when Our Personal Lord and Savior George W. Bush clearly gave no thought (not an unprecedented occurrence) to whether toppling Saddam Hussein for short-term political gain might actually strengthen the regime of an actual religious dictatorship, that of neighboring Iran. But Sen. Graham (R-SC) has lately told us we need to go attack Iraq again in order to prevent another 9.11. Why, it's almost like that was the idea all along -- to wage war on Iraq so aggressively awfully that we'd have to go back again, thus helping to create even more terrorists to avenge! Didn't Ron Paul warn us about blowback?

Meanwhile, Congress postponed voting on the agricultural appropriations bill last week, perhaps out of embarrassment that the bill would let our public schools opt out of the USDA's new nutrition standards for school lunches, standards that would help keep junk food out of school cafeterias by ensuring that cafeteria food had more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Congress says it wants to help struggling schools, but the USDA is actually already doing that, by providing grants and technical training to schools struggling with the standards. Hence the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell Congress to support the new nutrition standards for all schools. And though I don't know if the new nutrition standards really will save over 125,000 lives annually and save $17 billion in health care costs annually, I do know that my parents were right when they told me as a child that if I ate right, I might not enjoy it as much as I would if I ate Little Debbie snack cakes all the time, but I'd certainly enjoy the health benefits later -- health benefits like, you know, not being obese or having diabetes or heart problems.

Interesting story: the Librarian of Congress decided, late last year, to end the exemption of cellphones from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, thus making cellphone unlocking illegal. But then over 100,000 folks petitioned the White House, saying you should be able to use your cellphone with whatever service provider you want -- and the Obama Administration agreed! Naturally, that's not going to be enough -- apparently unable to force the Librarian of Congress to revisit the decision (the Librarian continued the exemption in 2006 and 2010), the Obama Administration called for Congress to pass a law making cellphone unlocking legal. After all, it's only a cellphone industry artifice that makes you buy a new phone every time you switch providers, and even the big telecoms seem to want to move past it. So Free Press helps you tell Congress to do the right thing. I know, I know, but it's still our duty to tell them.

Meanwhile, the USDA has updated nutritional standards for the snacks and drinks kids get in school from vending machines, school stores, or the a la carte line -- all the food available in school outside of the school meal programs, in fact. And this is the first such USDA update in over 30 years; think how much we've learned about the food that makes us fat since 1979, and you see the need. The new standards would, once finalized, require "any food sold in schools" "(b)e either a fruit, a vegetable, a dairy product, a protein food, a 'whole-grain rich' grain product (50% or more whole grains by weight or have whole grains as the first ingredient), or a combination food that contains at least 1/4 cup of fruit or vegetable." Food would also contain less than 35% of its calories in fat, and total sugar levels would be either less than 35% of calories or 35% of weight. Moms Rising helps you tell the USDA to set the strongest standards possible.