Thieves in the Temple.

Action: climate change and fracking waste management.

Sen. McConnell (E-KY) introduced S.J.Res. 30 back in mid-January; S.J.Res. 30 would nullify the carbon emission rules the EPA issued earlier that month. What happens next? Mitch McConnell realizes what a fool he's being and says "never mind"? Not the man who filibustered his own bill a little over a year ago! Here's what happens next: if the Committee handling the resolution (in this case, the Committee on the Environment and Public Works) hasn't reported the bill out within 20 days, 30 Senators can petition to have the resolution placed before the Senate anyway; we're past 20 days now, and with 41 Republican co-sponsors to S.J.Res. 30, I think enough Senators will petition to force a vote. Of course, "forcing" Democrats to vote in favor of cleaner air and less crazy weather might not be the electoral gold Republicans think it is. So the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell your Senators to reject nullification of EPA climate change rules. And don't believe any rubbish Republicans peddle about EPA rules "hurting small businesses." Small businesses ain't the ones doing all the polluting.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is taking comments from the public about what to do with open-air fracking wastewater pits. Gas drilling corporations usually store their wastewater in open-air pits, which may have minimal or no lining protecting the soil from the wastewater; this just about guarantees that the carcinogens and heavy metals fracking wastewater comes with will get into our air and water -- whether the pits leak, catch fire, get flooded, or simply get exposed to air, which (among other things) causes benzene, which could give you cancer, to enter the air. The DEP's proposal would make some changes to open-air pits -- it would mandate fences around the pits, as well as liners under the wastewater -- but the pits would still be exposed to the air, which is, as we've said, a bad idea. So both Penn Environment and MoveOn help you tell the DEP to ban open-air pits entirely. Storing fracking wastewater safely shouldn't be so hard. Making unearned millions by storing it so poorly it befouls our air and water? That should be hard.

Action: prison privatization, handouts for frackers, and "free" trade.

Color of Change helps you tell corporations to stop investing in private prisons. Why? For any number of reasons: private prisons charge by the prisoner, which doesn't exactly motivate them to rehabilitate prisoners and which does motivate them to lobby our governments for longer and harsher sentences. And private prisons also like their profits, which doesn't exactly motivate them to pay people who care for prisoners. (Yes, prisoners deserve to be cared for while they're in prison. Yes, I've had this argument within the last six months. Yes, I'm stunned that we argue this matter, ever, in a civilized society.) And of course private prisons don't exactly help us become a nation that doesn't racially profile black folks. My main objection to the private prison industry, though, is that housing prisoners is our government's job, which means it's our job -- and when have we ever benefited from letting corporations do our job for us?

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Senate still mulls SB 411, which would open up a massive new loophole in the state's "Good Samaritan Law" so that corporations could take abandoned mine water, sell it to gas drilling corporations for fracking, and enjoy immunity from prosecution. Can you say welfare handout, children? The Good Samaritan Law aimed to get corporations to clean up mine wastewater, but SB 411 would let corporations simply sell that water to frackers, without cleaning it up. And that wastewater would then pollute the water you drink and wash and bathe with, and then you couldn't sue for damages -- even if their wastewater turns your drinking water brown and gelatinous or gives you cancer. Only a legislature that cares for nothing but mammon could do this -- or think that we wouldn't notice what they were doing. Food and Water Watch helps you tell your PA state legislator to reject more handouts for frackers.

Finally, the People's Email Network still helps you tell Congress not to fast-track the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" "free" trade "deal." You know who likes "free" trade deals that subjugate our labor and environmental laws to corporate "investor-state tribunals," who will be able to void laws at will when we try to hold some corporation to account for polluting our air and water? You know who likes "free" trade deals that will allow corporations to shut down internet sites on suspicion of copyright infringement? Almost nobody, that's who. Unfortunately, most of the people who like "free" trade deals in America seem to be serving in Congress at the moment, and these fools seem determined to force Congress to take a simple up-or-down vote on the TPP, without any debate. Why do you suppose they wouldn't want to debate it -- or even let Americans know what's actually in the "agreement"? What could they possibly be afraid of? Here's what they should be afraid of: the shame and humiliation they earn for hurting us.

The Sierra Club helps you tell the EPA to finalize rules requiring coal corporations to stop discharging toxic coal ash into our waterways. That would mean less mercury, arsenic, and lead in your drinking water. So what would the EPA have coal corporations do instead? The EPA would force coal corporations to transition out of using ponds to store their coal ash waste and into using "dry bottom ash systems," some of which you can read about here, if you're up to it. The forces of corporate power, in addition to yelling COMMUNISM SOCIALISM NAZISM KENYAN ANTI-COLONIALISM!!!! at every attempt to make sure we drink clean water, will tell us that forcing coal corporations to move to dry systems will make your utility bills go up. We could make many objections to that, but let's just boil them down to one: is that the world we want to live in, where the big corporations always hold us hostage so we don't make the world a better place? OK, two: if you can't drink the water, your cheap energy doesn't matter.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, the National Women's Law Center still helps you do that. Congress passed the Equal Pay Act fifty years ago, when women made about 59 cents on every dollar their male counterparts made, and now women make 77 cents on the dollar -- which is better, certainly, but which also isn't a dollar on the dollar, which is what women deserve. It's hard to imagine objections people could have to closing loopholes and tightening enforcement of what's already the law. OK, it's not that hard to imagine: a lot of right-wingers claim the bill is a boon for trial lawyers, as if women should redress allegations of corporate illegality somewhere other than the courts. Or maybe they'll tell us corporations have a First Amendment right to keep information about what they're paying their workers private -- as if workers have no First Amendment right to find out if their boss is screwing them! Argument-by-dog-whistle is no way to advance civilization.

In the Maldives, an island nation located some 250 miles southwest of India, a 15-year-old girl faces 100 lashes in public for the crime of having sex with an adult male. She's not actually in trouble for having sex with her stepfather -- who also faces charges for raping her and murdering her child -- but for having sex with another adult male. Anyone else think the Maldives has got it exactly wrong? We have "age of consent" laws in this country for good reason -- we don't believe children can consent to sex without being manipulated by adults. And we punish the adults for that, because the adults are supposed to know better. And we certainly don't give children a hundred lashes in public -- and the fact that she won't get the hundred lashes until she's 18 tells me they know, deep down, that they're wrong. I know, their laws aren't our laws -- but what prevents us from criticizing their laws, or shaming them for their laws? Both Avaaz and Amnesty International help you tell Maldives to stop whipping children in public.

Meanwhile, the EPA plans to revisit toxic wastewater limits for coal power plants for the first time in 30 years. These power plants leak out arsenic, lead, mercury, boron and other toxic chemicals into our waterways, and as these plants get older, that'll only get worse. We can filter out most of that crap before it gets into our drinking water -- but what of wildlife that don't enjoy the benefits of fine filtration systems? Surely they count for something, even if they don't vote. And all that crap gets into the ground, too, which means it gets into anything that grows in the ground -- or anything we might grow in the ground. I eagerly await Republican complaints that stronger toxic wastewater standards will kill jobs (for people who refit power plants?) and make us all Socialists. You have to ask: are they in favor of dirty water? And you have to answer: they are, as long as it makes some crony of theirs rich. The Sierra Club helps you tell the EPA to issue the strongest possible regulations on toxic wastewater.