Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning voting rights, warrantless spying, and Supreme Court ethics.

Long story short: tell Texas state legislators to reject yet another vote suppression scheme, and tell your Congressfolk to stop spying on us without a warrant, end warrantless collection of private money transfer data, and pass the Supreme Court Ethics Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

First things first: Cedar Key Progress helps you tell Texas state legislators to reject HB 2390, which would outlaw polling places on college campuses. A normal person who’s not well-acquainted with politics might well say: well, that seems like a total waste of time! But, sadly, too many of us who are familiar with politics figure that Republicans are just trying to suppress Democratic votes and throw up our hands, thinking it’s just “partisanship” and “both sides do it.” But “partisanship” and “both sides do it” are never good reasons to enable evil. And have liberals proposed closing polling places in rural areas and suburbs? No, we have not.

The ACLU helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is the section that enables our government to collect all sorts of private information about us without a warrant. I use the italics hammer on that phrase to dissuade folks who think "our government has to do something to fight terrorism!" If our government wants to fight terrorism, they can get warrants – there’s a big gulf between wanting to terrorize people and actually terrorizing them, after all, and real terrorists will out themselves enough before then to justify a warrant. Our government doesn’t need to spy on the rest of us, though.

Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to end warrantless collection of private money transfer data. So every time you use Western Union or MoneyGram, an Arizona-based non-profit collects the data, and then allows federal, state, and local law enforcement (including FBI and DEA personnel) to access that data. Warrants, schmarrants! If you’re old-fashioned, like me, you don’t want police to gobble up money transfer data without a warrant – even if it catches drug traffickers! – because then they’ll start gobbling up your PayPal and Venmo transactions, and then maybe you’ll get carted off to detention somewhere. If freedoms aren’t for everyone, they’re not freedoms.

Patriotic Millionaires helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Supreme Court Ethics Act, which would, at long last, subject our Supreme Court Justices to the same ethics standards to which every other federal judge must submit. You need not find Justice Thomas’s actions in re the January 6 attempted coup suspicious to support this bill, nor need you find accusations of leaking against Justice Alito or accusations of influence-peddling at the Supreme Court Historical Society convincing. You need only remember that our duty, as Americans, isn’t to trust our leaders to be ethical, but to make them be ethical.

Around the table: tabulating various kinds of corruption for the 814th time.

Thinking maybe sports isn’t a healthy outlet for our stress after all? Rick Eckstein at The Conversation discusses “how abuse is baked into American sports.” As you read about how many young athletes don’t speak out about verbal and physical abuse out of fear of getting “benched,” you may recall those Little League Dads who yelled at their kids all the way from the batter’s box after they struck out. You may also recall how news coverage has bled into “liberal” media news coverage in more ways than one, not just in sports news executives moving into straight news divisions, but also in all the horserace coverage. You may also decide that “winning at all costs” is just as toxic an attitude in politics as it is in sports.

Uh oh: Rep. Ted Budd, the Trump-endorsed North Carolina Republican Senate nominee, helped a pair of big banks merge in 2019, and the resulting behemoth not only laid off over a thousand workers and closed a few hundred branches, but it’s also resulted in at least one low-interest loan and tens of thousands of bucks in campaign donations for Mr. Budd!. I guess Donald Trump would call all that “smart”! Seriously, if Democratic nominee Cheri Beasley doesn’t make a whole lot of hay about this, she deserves to lose this race. There’s no “let’s not be too strident about corruption” vote out there to be had.

Ho hum, six of the seven biggest health insurance corporations get more than half their revenues from our government – i.e., the taxpayer, i.e., us – but still jack up prices much faster than inflation just like they were doing before the Affordable Care Act became law. Oh, but expanding Medicare to everyone would be TEH SOSHULIZMZ!!!!! The only people who think of “socialism” as a scare word are far right-wingers who let everything anger them. And even fewer folks get their hackles up at the words “price controls.” A lot of good Americans would like some more price control in their lives! (They’d also like to not be moved from their Medicare plans to Medicare Advantage plans – which deny a lot of claims! – without their consent.)

Wondering why rent prices are going up so quickly? Brace yourself: one corporation’s algorithm might be responsible for most of it. Algorithms ruining things where people might manage them more deftly – gosh, where have I heard that story before? But at least the algorithm isn’t an irredeemable asshole, like the people who promote the algorithm, who are the sorriest bunch of tone-deaf losers I’ve ever heard. They actually celebrate when prices go up beyond what good Americans can afford! They actually encourage landlords to leave units open because the jacked-up prices of their occupied units more than compensate! They actually say that landlords have “too much empathy” compared to the algorithm! If I were the Deity, they would abide in fire for all eternity.

The Center for American Progress describes, at some length, how “Offshore Wind Can Lower Energy Prices and Beat Out Oil and Gas.” Wind power has competed, expense-wise, with fossil fuels for the better part of a decade now, and “spills and cleanup costs are negligible with offshore wind,” (n.b. “negligible,” not “non-existent,” right-wing trolls!). This is all true regardless of the histrionics right-wingers employ about the “noise” (obviously none of them have ever lived in New Jersey!) or the “piles of dead birds” (as a friend of mine said once, it sure is a good thing oil spills have never killed any birds!). Time to kick climate change’s ass!

Finally, dig this simple-minded horseshit poll from Fox News alleging that more Americans want help from our government than they used to. I don’t mind the result, I guess (more Americans want help than don’t), but I do mind the question: whether you want your government to “lend me a hand” or “leave me alone.” Gosh, binary much? Good Americans want more help from their government where they need it and less interference where they don’t; most of us favor expanding Medicare to include everyone, for example, but I bet none of us favor expanded warrantless spying. Those are just the first examples that leaped to my mind! Did anything leap to Fox News’s mind when they formulated their poll, besides goading Americans into being the stupidest version of themselves?

Around the table: "woke heat maps," "suck on that," and other absurdities.

Oh Jesus Mary and Joseph now Democratic “moderates” in the House want to pass a reconciliation bill without even the mild tax reforms the Senate appears to have agreed upon. Someone needs to remind Rep. Gottheimer that the only reason, and I do mean *only* reason, he's a House Rep is that many conservatives in his district found former Rep. Scott Garrett too homophobic. He could lose in 2022, and he’ll blame the liberals for it – even though those same liberals, at least in our House, are not making themselves a nuisance by advancing an alternative tax plan that would tax the rich harder. And they should!

Matt Stoller reminds us that even though President Biden’s put antitrust opponents at our FTC and DOJ, he’s put a lot of corporate-friendly folks on the courts. Since these judges will rule on antitrust cases pumped out by our FTC and DOJ, I couldn’t blame you for thinking putting solid people at our FTC and DOJ was part of a plan to mislead us into thinking things were really going to change. And when you realize that some of his other appointments (i.e., Secretaries Buttigieg and Vilsack) haven’t shown the same hunger to confront monopolies, you might feel that more acutely. Mr. Stoller won’t go that far, of course; I hope he’s right to pull his punches.

When I hear that a right-wing group in Missouri has created a “woke heat map” to target “groomers” and folks who actually believe racism is a real thing, all I can say is: assholes ruin everything. That’s before I get to the part about how right-wingers took a map of trans-friendly clinics and turned it into a tool for harassing those clinics. Remember, also, that when they talk about “grooming toddlers with sexually explicit books,” that the only thing “sexually explicit” about those books is that they include gay or trans folks at all. First time I saw that particular stratagem, a certain loofah-loving Fox News “independent” was flogging it.

Ho hum, Steve Bannon gets caught on tape characterizing Mr. Trump’s plans on Election night thusly: “at 10 or 11 o’clock Trump’s gonna walk in the Oval, tweet out, ‘I’m the winner. Game over. Suck on that,'” actual election results be damned. Well, he’s been telling good Americans to “suck on that” for decades now; why should Election Night 2020 have been any different? Given Mr. Bannon’s habits, he won’t bother saying he was taken out of context, but will merely add Mother Jones (which unearthed the tapes) to his ever-lengthening list of enemies he’ll “crush” or “destroy” or whatever.

Surprise, surprise, Amazon has handed over data from its ubiquitous/notorious Ring doorbell camera 11 times to law enforcement this year, without requiring a warrant or getting consent from Ring owners. Amazon of course says it only does so in “emergencies,” without defining what exact emergencies prompted these 11 incidents, but we all know that, as Josephine Gattuso Hendin once said, “once you cross a line, you keep crossing.” You can enable end-to-end encryption on your Ring device, though really end-to-end encryption should be the default setting, not something you have to turn on. It’s almost like they know you’re too busy to consider this issue carefully or something.

Finally, John “The Mustache of Evil” Bolton went on CNN and, as part of an attempt to prove that Mr. Trump’s January 6 actions were not part of “a carefully-planned coup d’état,” actually claimed that he personally “has helped plan coups d’état, not here, but, you know, other places.” We all knew that, of course, but still, nice to have a confession. I’m actually a little more annoyed that Mr. Bolton apparently thinks incompetence at planning a coup means you didn’t really do it (he did insist on saying “carefully-planned,” after all), and I’m tired of right-wingers pretending that stupidity mitigates or excuses evil.

Penny Rants for June 28, 2022: you gotta read past the headline, and other concrete cold facts.

A lot of times you read a scary headline and expect the article’s text to explain it away, but the AP headline “More Than 1 Million Voters Switch to GOP in Warning for Dems” requires even more qualification than the article’s text gives. And that assumes that the research backing that finding (which relies at least in part on “statistical modeling”) is even valid! Only in paragraph 9 do we learn that while 1 million voters “switched” to the GOP, 630,000 others “switched” to the Democrats, which already makes the scare number smaller. And I keep putting “switch” in quotation marks for a reason: in the article’s one anecdote (I know, only one!), a Colorado man complains about vaccine mandates to explain his switch from Libertarian to Republican. You can thus easily imagine (more easily than the AP, apparently!) that many folks “switched” from independent or unaffiliated to Republican, and that most of them were probably already voting Republican. And finally, at the risk of piling on, this information pre-dates our Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, and as I’ve said, people hate politicians who take away things they’ve come to rely on, as we saw during the Affordable Care Act debate in 2017.

You may appreciate the long and complex discourse here about a First Circuit Court panel splitting evenly over whether a warrantless telephone pole surveillance camera – which, in the case before the panel, took over eight months of video footage of a suspect’s front yard – violates our Fourth Amendment Constitutional rights. Or you may, like me, make up your mind at “warrantless.” Whenever law enforcement won’t get warrants, you have to wonder why, and you also have to wonder why the three judges who didn’t find eight months of pole cameras unconstitutional didn’t wonder why. And one judge’s notion that our government won’t abuse telephone pole camera surveillance because the polls are so expensive? That is to laugh. You can justify any expense once you tell yourself the world will end if you don’t, and law enforcement routinely gets exactly that apocalyptic about drug dealers. If only they felt that way about banksters or polluters! And if they did, I’d still make them get their damn warrants.

Finally, I don’t know what Ron Johnson means to accomplish by suddenly saying yeah, now that you mention it, he knew all about lists of “alternate electors” his office tried to give to Mike Pence and oh yeah, he got those lists from Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA). People don’t just feel sorry for guys who can’t get their story straight about an attempted coup. (Rep. Kelly, for his part, denies the story, but that’s just drama.) I guess Mr. Johnson just figures he’ll run another feel-good ad everyone likes (maybe this one, though he’s dropped it pretty early in the cycle) and get re-elected no matter what he says or does, and given how well Democrats have run against him in the past, I can see why he placed that bet. Though he’s not running against Russ Feingold this time. If Ron Johnson is the man who gives the “Citizen Legislator” a bad name, Russ Feingold is the master of tying one hand behind your back in a campaign.

Around the table: featuring yet another Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate!

As Connecticut-based hedge fund manager David McCormick readies a Pennsylvania Senate run as a Republican, the burning question is: will Trump votaries support a bankster for Senate? I kid, of course -- Trump votaries will "hold their nose" at his profession, particularly since he doesn't have a Jewish-sounding last name, and in any case I'm sure Mr. McCormick will quickly disavow his year-old statement blaming Mr. Trump for the January 6 attempted coup. Still, look out for Jeff Bartos, who instigated Sean Parnell's disgrace; he's currently running around 3 percent in polling but is sitting on a lot of money I'm sure he'll deploy the last two weeks of the race. If he wins, Donald Trump will endorse him as if he'd never endorsed anyone else, and then the votaries will be pacified.

Ho hum, JP Morgan Chase has resumed suing its credit card users for falling behind on their payments. What's that, you say? So what? Well, Chase hadn't been doing that for 10 years, after our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found they were filing "flimsy" suits which not only too often said customers owed more than they actually did, but which also relied on actual robo-signed affidavits (rather than billing records!) as "evidence." And now they're doing lawsuits-with-affidavits again. You might almost call these frivolous lawsuits, though the tort "reform" crowd, strangely, never talks about them. If Republicans take back either chamber of Congress in November, you'll never get that crowd to STFU -- and all they care about is stopping lawsuits that help those good Americans wronged by big corporations.

When I hear that folks from 14 to 49 are generally having less consensual sex now than they did a decade ago, and I see that researchers offer a lot of possible reasons, like increased social media use, "rough sex," lower incomes, more drinking, and (even) more binge-watching, I find myself asking about two other possibilities: increased awareness of sexual abuse and more widely-available pornography. Do people have less sex if they're wary of being caught-out as a harasser or an abuser -- or, conversely, are potential partners more wary of such folks than they used to be? Also, does all the porn one can get today help folks satiate their curiosity about other people's bodies -- a curiosity you might have had to resort to actual sex to satiate not too many years ago?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) slams New York's new Mayor, Eric Adams, for referring to "low-skilled workers" as folks who "don’t have the academic skills to sit in a corner office." "The suggestion that any job is 'low skill' is a myth perpetuated by wealthy interests to justify inhumane working conditions, little/no healthcare, and low wages," she says, and she's absolutely right, and didn't they say Eric Adams would be a "different" kind of Democrat? By putting the guy in the "corner office" above the barista and the waiter, he's revealed he's just like all the others who look down on folks who don't happen to be entrepreneurs. Remember when folks looked down on manufacturing workers? Now that they're gone, we lionize them! And by the time we get to lionize baristas and waiters, there may not be any jobs left.

Chip Gibbons at Jacobin reminds us -- and we shouldn't have needed the reminder! -- that Dick Cheney certainly should not have gotten the warm reception he got from Democrats on January 6. Seriously, you have to do more than just be against attempted coups to be a good guy in America -- and waging war on Iraq, warrantless wiretapping, torture, and unconstitutional detainment (just to cite things he did as Vice President; Mr. Gibbons also tabulates his nefarious works during his decade in Congress) certainly don't make you a good guy. Why, whenever he thinks of how he managed to steal the 2000 election, I bet he looks at those January 6 rioters and says these guys are pikers!

Finally, Sen. Joe Manchin (D?-WV) now apparently doesn't even support his own proposal for restructuring the Build Back Better Act. Not only does he get to explain to those good folks in West Virginia why they can't have paid family leave, lower taxes for working families, and lower prices for drugs and child care, but he has further isolated himself as The Villain of all these proceedings, which could complicate Democrat efforts to throw the 2022 midterms -- voters will less likely blame all Democrats if they can blame one Democrat. If Kyrsten Sinema is the galaxy brain she thinks she is, she'll convince Mr. Manchin to vote for the bill, since he got everything he asked for, but she's not, so she won't.

Action: concerning government spying, voting rights, Social Security, Presidential power, and data privacy.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act; pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and get rid of the filibuster do accomplish these things; and to pass the Social Security 2100 Act, the Protecting Our Democracy Act, and the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Both Daily Kos and Win Without War help you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act already. The nefarious Section 215 -- which authorized our National Security Agency (or NSA) to collect metadata on good Americans without a warrant -- may be no more, but our work ain't done, because the entire USA PATRIOT Act is a mistake. And it's a mistake built to repel good-faith attempts to prove it's a mistake -- it allows our government to claim "national security" in court challenges and in response to calls to prove it's worked -- which is the worst kind of mistake. And I won't lie to you: I hated what the "war on terror" did to America and so I want the head of the PATRIOT Act on my mantle. Or is that not bleeding-heart enough of me?

Both Left Action and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act. Also, Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. And Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to dump the filibuster in order to get them passed, since a Republican filibuster is literally all that stands between these bills and their passage. And we deserve to have them passed -- they'd take campaign financing, gerrymandering, and state efforts to rig their elections all to the mat, and it might not kill them, but it'll leave them bloodied enough for more good Americans to express their will, which is what elections are all about. Elections ain't where the work ends, but it's where the work begins. And all Americans deserve to at least begin that work.

Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5723, the Social Security 2100 Act. Anyone who bleats about TEH SOSHUL SECURITIEZ RUNNINGZ OUTZ OFZ TEH MONEYZ!!!!! should attend that the Social Security 2100 Act would increase both benefits and revenues -- the former by increasing the size of checks and by calculating inflation in a way that reflects seniors' real costs, the latter by taxing income over $400,000 into the system for the first time. Why the bill puts a "donut hole" between the current cap ($142,800 in annual income) and $400,000 I couldn't say, but this bill will put Social Security on a stronger footing. Not that it's on a bad footing now! That's just something right-wingers say. But all victories need to be maintained, and Social Security is no exception.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5314/S. 2921, the Protecting Our Democracy Act. Perhaps not surprisingly, this bill aims to prevent someone like Donald Trump from putting our democracy through the woodchipper again, as it would explicitly prohibit self-pardons, limit the President's power to declare emergencies like Mr. Trump's sham "national emergency" he used to fund his vanity border wall, and protect our Justice Department from a President's political interference. People still think if the President appoints an Attorney General then that Attorney General should just do his bidding! But people who believe that are cynical, and the cynical shouldn't get very much say about anything in America.

Finally, Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2738/S. 1265, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. Internet service-providing corporations can't just hand over your private data to law enforcement without a warrant secured from a judge who believes the information secured by the warrant has a better than 50-50 chance of securing a conviction -- but third-party data brokers can hand over your private data to law enforcement, and they do, for, like, money. Which, since it's law enforcement paying the money, is actually your money, since your taxpayer money funds law enforcement! So when your friends and neighbors shrug and say if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to fear, just remind them that law enforcement misuses their money. Unlawfully and unconstitutionally, I might add.

Action: concerning government spying, the war on Yemen, and big ag monopolies.

Today's a good day to tell your Congressfolk, once again, that they should not use the January 6 attempted coup as a pretext to pass all sorts of draconian "anti-terror" laws that do nothing but clamp down on good Americans' free speech. After all, we all know that's exactly how that's going to work! Our government will more likely use new anti-terror laws against liberals and folks of color than against the right-wing assholes whose seditious behavior presumably spurred the laws, and how come our government doesn't have enough tools to foil these plots already? They have warrantless wiretapping and NSA data-vacuuming, and they were still helpless against an attempted coup plotted virtually out in the open on social media? Why, it's enough to make you think our government simply doesn't have the will to stop these clowns. That's why we're here: to lend the steel in their spine so they can go after them, but only with the tools our Constitution allows.

Meanwhile, I have two action alerts relating to our ongoing (and unconstitutional) involvement in the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen: in one, from World Beyond War, you would tell your Congressfolk to end our involvement in the war on Yemen via the War Powers Act, and in the other, from Win Without War, you would tell Secretary of State Antony Blinken to end all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. Congress tried a War Powers resolution in 2019, only to see former President Trump veto it, and President Biden has lately frozen arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which is good, but we need to make that a permanent freeze. Folks who wring their hands over what will become of the Middle East if we stop arming Saudi Arabia need to consider three things: 1) that Saudi Arabia is an authoritarian government, and we shouldn't sell weapons to authoritarians, 2) that the Middle East is always in chaos because governments like ours meddle in their affairs, and 3) why would we worry about intricate power struggles when we have more weapons than anyone else? If we're a strong nation, we should act like it. And strong nations act with brains and heart more than firepower.

Finally, Food and Water Action helps you tell President Biden to issue an Executive Order freezing big agribusiness mergers and investigating the monopoly practices of the industry. Even those of us who have generally approved of his Executive Orders thus far must ask: what would be the legal authority of such an order? Well, our Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission already have the legal authority to approve and disapprove corporate mergers, and our President can instruct them how to approach these matters -- you know, just like the last President did, by instructing his Justice Department to disapprove mergers involving his supposed enemies! And even though judges have ignored it in recent years, ample legal precedent establishes our government's authority to stop mergers for the public good. And proving that big ag mergers injure the public good ain't a big lift -- when a few actors control a market, they get to dictate terms to everyone else in the market, and we're talking the food we eat here, so let's get cracking.

Around the table: in which we confront our Administration's me-me-me philosophy yet again.

Surprise, surprise, our Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (or CPB) won't tell our Congressfolk how they're managing to track good Americans without getting warrants. Because that would, what, put some undercover agent at risk? Of course not -- though it might put some big telecom corporations at risk of embarrassment, given that our CPB is gobbling up location data. Folks who whine about how being forced to wear masks outside is oppression: no, this is what oppression looks like.

Top Federal Elections Commission official has made no secret of her support of our President, and has close ties to former White House counsel Don McGahn, who used to be an FEC Commissioner. Our FEC hasn't expressly banned such shows of partisanship since 2011 -- because you can trust your government, after all! -- but anyone with a handful of functioning brain cells would tell you this is corruption. And Mr. McGahn's own notorious career at our FEC should remind you that Bush was worse.

Ho hum, White House lists "ending the COVID-19 pandemic" among our President's accomplishments, even as daily case numbers hit record highs. The other four highlights list no substantive accomplishments, either -- no, "eliminating regulations that stifle innovation" doesn't count, since his efforts to eliminate regulations usually die in court. Well, he's tried to take credit for curing AIDS, so why not the pandemic, too? Especially since his votaries will believe anything.

In a development that should surprise no one, University of Gothenberg (Sweden) study finds that the Republican Party "now more closely resembles ruling parties in autocratic societies than its former centre-right equivalents in Europe." You'll know that's true merely by our President saying, out loud, that if so many people vote Republicans will never win elections again -- but you'll also know it's been a long time coming (as the study says) if you remember that Karl Rove started all this Voter ID crap after Republicans lost the 2006 midterms.

Finally, in the wake of an Omaha rally in which our President left hundreds of supporters in near-freezing temperatures for several hours because LOGISTICZ IZ FORZ TEH LOSERZ!!!!, a White House spokeshack goes on CNN, gets asked if our Vice President has "any pause" about doing a big rally in Wisconsin, where hospitals are straining to cope with a spike in COVID cases, and unfurls this flatugasm: "No, it doesn't. The Vice President has the best doctors in the world around him." Of course he acted like the question was all about Mike Pence, and not at all about the numerous would-be Wisconsin ralliers, who don't deserve to die from COVID-19.

Action: concerning government spying, immigration policy, paid sick leave, and corporate welfare.

Our Congressfolk hope to ram a PATRIOT Act reauthorization down America's throat this week, so Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop any extension or expansion of that law's abusing spying powers. I wish I could say this has been an exclusively Republican problem, but Democrats haven't been any better when they've been the gatekeepers -- two years of exclusive control of Congress and the Presidency yielded exactly bupkus as far as rolling back such abuses as warrantless wiretapping, and thanks to Edward Snowden we know that our government expanded its powers during the Obama years. Oddly, this President's NSA has declared it really doesn't need all that power to spy on American phone calls and emails, and historically it is odd for a government to give up a spying power it's gained. It's a lot easier for governments to give up the powers they use to restrain corporations and rich folks from abusing the rest of us, amirite? But let's keep working for a government that delivers the services we pay for with our taxes and then leaves us alone.

Meanwhile, our President has floated the possibility that he won't allow federal aid to flow to states with so-called "sanctuary cities"! Huzzah! Another right-wing hostage crisis! And another maneuver that makes our President looks like he's done something about the "scourge" of immigration when, in reality, he's done nothing, as usual. What is a "sanctuary city"? A city that won't cooperate with the feds on immigration matters unless the feds present a damn warrant; get a warrant and poof! No "sanctuary." You'd think right-wingers, who have swordfights all the time over who's "more conservative," would champion local control of law enforcement matters, but no -- instead, they make "sanctuary" just another cuss word! And our President benefits from undocumented immigrant labor as much as the next guy -- though his are "the best people," I bet! -- and has no interest in, say, letting farmworkers unionize under the National Labor Relations Act, which would actually result in fewer big ag corporations importing foreign workers to drive down everyone's wages. Anyway, the Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell our Congressfolk to prevent our President tying aid to "sanctuary cities."

In other news, the ACLU helps you tell big fast food corporation McDonald's to give all its workers paid sick leave now. Like we've been saying, if they want to do business, they need to take all the steps necessary to ensure that you don't die from your next Big Mac, and that includes giving their workers paid sick leave so that they don't come to work sick and make everyone else sick and, you know, unflatten the curve. McDonald's has almost a million employees, whom they already don't pay enough, such that nearly half of McDonald's workers who come to work sick do so explicitly because they can't afford the loss of money; McDonald's should be paying its workers a lot more (and some people need to get over the notion that fast-food workers "don't have skills," at least until they take a turn at the drive-in window), but getting them paid sick leave will help in the meantime. And boy oh boy McDonald's had better not try to say that kind of decision-making is "up to the franchises." The "franchise" is a fiction executives use to deny accountability for their own failures. And the way they treat their workers sure does count as failure.

Finally, Environmental Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to block any attempt by our President to give a billion-dollar-plus bailout to the uranium mining industry. Let's make a list of things you can do with uranium, shall we? Well, there's making nuclear weapons, and powering nuclear power plants, and not a damn thing else. No, we don't use it in yellow paint anymore, because it's freaking poisonous. Scientists have long linked uranium to cancer, it leeches too easily into the water table, and uranium ore gives off radon gas; you know we get houses checked for radon before we move in for a good reason, right? And not for nothing, but uranium prices have basically cratered over the last 40 years, basically because you don't need any more nukes when you have enough to destroy the world hundreds of times over, and also because nuclear power plants don't make any money no matter how many corporate welfare handouts it gets. So isn't it a bit late to be giving the uranium mining industry a bailout? And don't renewable sources of energy look a lot better?

Action: concerning our pandemic, and the various evils our government does under its cover.

We're almost two months after our first coronavirus diagnosis and somehow we still don't have enough tests! And we need them; after all, we can't all just cough on a rich person or shake hands with our President! Hence Penn PIRG helps you tell tell Brent Giroir, our Assistant Secretary for Health in the Department of Health and Human Services and the man who runs coronavirus testing in America, to ensure everyone who needs a coronavirus test can get one. And, like, now -- I'm sick of hearing all the supposed can-do types who run our country shrug and say we can't do this. We can give away hundreds of billions in bailouts under cover of a pandemic, but we can't test our own citizens? Who wants to take that achievement to the pearly gates? They used to say a government that can do anything for you can do anything to you, but they helped create a government that can do anything to you but can't do anything for you. And we deserve better.

Meanwhile, speaking of dastardly things done under cover of a pandemic: you may have heard that our Department of Justice (sic) has asked Congress for the ability to detain Americans indefinitely -- you know, because courts will be closed, or open irregularity, and thus they "can't" grant us our constitutional rights of due process and habeus corpus. Awfully suspicious, eh? Another thing our all-powerful government just "can't" do, and if you don't think this government (or the next one) won't abuse that power, I know a dead Nigerian prince who left you a lot of money. Hence Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt by our Administration to grab the right to detain Americans indefinitely. If you're thinking well, this is just until the pandemic is over, I direct your attention to our NSA's warrantless surveillance of good Americans, which has gone on for almost 20 years after 9.11; when our government abuses its power, it doesn't want to stop.

Remaining on the topic of "dastardly things they do under cover of a pandemic": our EPA has declared that it won't enforce clean air or clean water regulations very vigorously during the pandemic, citing physical distancing. I'm old enough to remember when conservatives routinely said stop complaining about how hard it is to do the right thing and just do it! But today's right-wingers spend an awful lot of time whining about why they can't do the right thing. You think clean air and clean water enforcers couldn't be designated essential personnel? You have to wonder why this Administration hasn't done that! And please understand that when I say that, I mean "because this Administration hates regulations that actually help people, and only likes regulations that let someone push their allegedly religious bigotry on someone else." Too harsh? The truth always is. So the Sierra Club helps you tell our Administration to stop making excuses and protect good Americans from polluters.

Finally, Whole Foods's CEO, John Mackey, has actually said that if some of his workers need paid time off during this pandemic, then their co-workers should be gracious enough to "donate" their paid time off! Gosh, is that all it takes to be a CEO -- to refuse to help your own workers in their time of need? And they say getting rich is hard! Seriously, those of us who aren't rich might actually have a lot to be proud of. And Whole Foods, as you know, is owned by Amazon, whose CEO, Jeff Bezos, is worth over $100 billion, that's "billion" with a "b," and he's echoed Mr. Mackey's suggestion that workers "donate" their paid time off, proving, again, that you don't get to be the boss by being generous or humane. I swear, if I've done one good work before I die, it'll be to make the word "boss" into a cuss word, a matter our President has helped a lot with, amirite? In the meantime, MoveOn helps you tell Messrs. Bezos and Mackey to ensure their workers have the paid time off they need.

Action: government spying, government harassment, and the DREAM Act.

Congress hasn't quite passed their evil tax "reform" bill, but they're turning their attention to the next continuing resolution (or CR) they have to pass to keep our government open -- or, more precisely, they're turning their attention to passing something quickly before you can pay attention to what they're doing! You know, just like with everything else they've done this year! So they're trying to sneak a reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, so the NSA can keep vacuuming up your email data without a warrant. That's right, they want to cement government spying powers in a must-pass bill, so you either don't know about it or are afraid to fight it! Considering how easy it's been to scare Americans to death over the last 15 years or so, it's telling that they're not even trying to do that this time -- they're just trying to sneak it past us. Well, too effing late! Defending Rights and Dissent helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect law and order by rejecting a Section 702 reauth in the must-pass spending bill.

Meanwhile, the International Labor Rights Forum helps you tell the government of Uzbekistan to drop charges against human rights activist/journalist Malokhat Eshonkulova What does the government of Uzbekistan allege Ms. Eshonkulova to have done? Well, the charge is "unauthorized pickets," which sure sounds like a made-up charge, but their real problem is almost certainly her work documenting and exposing Uzbekistan's habit of forcing its citizens to work the cotton fields every year, instead of making cotton corporations hire workers like a civilized nation would do. The fake charge isn't the end of their oppression of her, naturally -- they spent 11 hours searching her house for computers and cellphones recently, prevented her from leaving the country to address a labor forum, threatened to forcibly relocate her to a distant region of Uzbekistan, and have imposed $1400 in fines upon her -- in a nation where the annual per capita income is around $2,000. Why, it's almost like harassing her into silence is the whole idea. But nobody has to put up with that.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass the DREAM Act by the end of the year, then the Friends Committee on National Legislation still helps you do that. I never favored forcing the DREAM Act into a must-pass appropriations bill, as national Democrats have been, but I have no problem with Congress simply passing a bill protecting those folks who came here as children and wouldn't recognize the country we'd force them to go back to. And this has literally nothing to do whatever immigration policies people let politicians get them angry about. DREAMers had literally no say in coming to America, since they came here as children, and if they're well-functioning members of society, it'd be cruel to send them back to someplace they don't even recognize (and wouldn't recognize them!). And the DREAM Act wouldn't even let all of these immigrants stay -- you'd still have to meet standards proving your fitness as a law-abiding citizen. Seriously, there's no reason to let haters have all the say about everything in America, even with the ultimate hater as our President.

Action: the "war on terror," government spying, and monopoly power in the marketplace.

Both MoveOn and the People's Email Network help you tell your Reps to support the Barbara Lee amendment that would essentially repeal the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (or AUMF), but I think this issue merits a phone call to your Reps; let's let them know what this means to us. The last two Presidents have abused the AUMF in order to launch substantial military operations without getting Congressional authorization. And House Speaker Ryan, for his part, says that the Lee Amendment "undercuts our military," thus pretending that it would require us to strand our troops wherever they are, and also saying he'd prefer to "pass one that gives the military the latitude and the flexibility they need to do their jobs," thus pretending that the AUMF hasn't always been about giving unconstitutional "flexibility" to the President. And seriously, what law of physics prevents Congress from passing an actual war resolution? Note well that the law of Congressional cowardice is not actually a law of physics, even if it often seems that way.

Meanwhile, as you may recall, S. 1297 would permanently reauthorize Section 702 of the nefarious FISA Amendments Act, which specifically authorizes our government to collect emails, texts, and phone calls in bulk and without a warrant. Look over S. 1297's list of Senate sponsors and you won't find such far right-wingers as Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Ron Johnson, all to varying degrees skeptical of government spying, but you will find the Republican Caucus's Last Moderate, Susan Collins of Maine, and you'll also find Senate defense "hawks" such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain. I've said this before and I'll say it again: lone wolf terrorists and terrorist organizations are not "existential threats." Terrorists don't destroy societies -- they terrorize otherwise sane and healthy people into destroying their societies for them. So let's foil them by staying free. Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect the privacy of good Americans by rejecting S. 1297.

Finally, Food and Water Watch helps you tell the Federal Trade Commission (or FTC) to stop Amazon's proposed acquisition of Whole Foods. Currently four corporations control 60% of America's grocery sales, and food production is really not the kind of thing we should ever allow to become monopolized, not just because monopolies can control farmers as well as consumers but because, well, everyone has to eat. And while Amazon is a monopoly in online sales, not supermarkets, we should not allow them to use their monopoly power in online sales to wedge themselves into every other marketplace. This is why I always say no corporation should ever own any other corporation, because that concentrates power in fewer hands, and the fewer the hands that hold the power, the less freedom for the rest of us. That would seem like a conservative viewpoint, of course, if conservatism hadn't been so thoroughly debased by its loudest adherents over the years.

Action: health care, private data collection, and food labeling.

Today's a good day to call your Senators and tell them not to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. But you can also let Moms Rising help you write a letter-to-the-editor of your local newspaper opposing the Senate's health care "reform" bill, a.k.a. "wealth care," a.k.a. Trumpcare. And you may want to pay attention to what your local Trumpcare-bill supporting Senator is saying. Sen. Pat Toomey, for example, served up a bunch of word salad on Sunday's Face the Nation, trying to put lipstick on the pig of cutting our federal government's share of Medicaid expansion funding from 90% to 57% over seven years, pretending that states won't have to make hard choices affecting good Americans when that happens, saying the "tax credits" are better than those in the House bill like that even merits a participation trophy, and of course claiming that the "free marketplace" creates "wonderful innovation" all over America without giving even one clear example. I'm guessing your right-wing Senator is doing similarly desperate verbal gymnastics.

Meanwhile, AT&T -- the corporation that most happily handed over your call records to Tha Bush Mobb without a warrant -- now does the same for law enforcement organs all over America. And even if you're not an AT&T customer, you probably talk to AT&T customers, which means you're caught up in the dragnet, too. Of course AT&T is more famous these days for saying they won't "sell your personal information to anyone, for any purpose," but they're not selling it to law enforcement! I know getting warrants is quaint and all -- no, I will never let Alberto Gonzales live that down -- but the whole notion of convincing a judge you have a better-than-even chance of securing a conviction before you can investigate someone further protects us from abuse by the state. The Founders were quite keen on not getting abused by the state, you know. Hence Access Now helps you tell AT&T to stop selling our your privacy.

Finally, you won't be surprised to learn that the FDA has decided to delay rules that would revamp food labeling so that restaurants would have to give more nutritional information on the meals they serve, and food processing corporations would have to note such items as added sugar. Why? Oh, you know, BIG GUBMINT BAD!!!!! Or, as the FDA puts it, "(n)umerous stakeholders have informed us that they have significant concerns about their ability to update all their labels by the compliance date due to issues regarding (among other things) the need for upgrades to labeling software, getting nutrition information from suppliers, the number of products that would need new labels and a limited time for the reformulation of products." Gosh, where's their American can-do spirit? And what about the most important "stakeholder" of all, the American citizen, who generally wants more information about what they're eating? Moms Rising helps you tell the FDA to give us the food labeling we deserve.

Action: government spying, and Congressional corruption.

S. 1297 would permanently reauthorize Section 702 of the nefarious FISA Amendments Act -- the bill Congress passed in 2008, with the support of then-Senator Obama, who cited, of course, "the grave threats we face" as a reason to unconstitutionally spy on Americans. You may recall from Edward Snowden's whistleblowing that Section 702 specifically authorizes our government to collect emails, texts, and phone calls in bulk, without getting a warrant, and therefore without establishing probable cause before a judge. So let's get this straight: lone wolf terrorists and terrorist organizations are not "grave" or "existential threats." You know what an "existential threat" is? Nazi Germany in 1939 -- not al-Qaeda, not ISIS, and not the Orlando shooter, whom ISIS disowned upon learning he might have been in the closet. Terrorists aim to paralyze us in fear so that we make our societies less free, thus the only moral response is to stay free. So Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect American freedoms by rejecting S. 1297.

Meanwhile, S. 1189, the Close the Revolving Door Act, would ban Congressfolk from ever lobbying Congress on someone else's behalf after they leave office. That'd be a big deal, as too many Reps and Senators from both parties become lobbyists after retiring or getting defeated for re-election. The bill would also extend the ban on Congressional staff becoming lobbyists from one year after leaving their Congressional jobs to six. Does this restrict their free speech rights after they leave office? No, it does not -- the Constitution can't prevent you from redressing grievances with your Congressfolk, but the Constitution doesn't guarantee a "right" to make money doing that, either. Former Congressfolk who become lobbyists aren't "redressing grievances" so much as they're exploiting connections, and while the First Amendment also guarantees a right of free association, it doesn't guarantee a right to make money off your "free associations," either. If Congressfolk don't like any of that, I suppose they can always work for a living. So Rootstrikers helps you tell your Congressfolk to fight corruption by supporting S. 1189.

Around the table: notes on the "war on terror" and political divides.

Patrick Cockburn at Counterpunch explains why the British seem to get counterterrorism wrong. Long story short: Western adventures in the Middle East cause more terrorism than the internet does. Long story somewhat longer: folks actually about to commit terrorism can't seem to shut up about it, but the British government puts way too much effort into investigating and harassing foreigners obviously not about to commit terrorism. There may be no better writer about terrorism on Earth than Patrick Cockburn.

Speaking of warrantless wiretapping, our own NSA now says it's not going to tell us how many good Americans get swept up in their surveillance dragnet. Because it's too hard, of course -- which seems to be what all big talkers say when their mouths write checks their asses can't cash. Even Sen. Graham, no great fan of getting warrants before spying on people, suggests he might not reauthorize the NSA's spying authority because of this development, though I'm sure he'll back down. But if you get swamped in information about potential "terrorists," you make it that much harder to find real ones.

And now the New York Times wrings its hands over the growing "divide" in the Democratic party between the rank-and-file and the establishment, possibly "disrupt(ing) the party's path to a majority" in the 2018 midterms. Right -- just like the Tea Party's spirited inflexibility scuttled Republican attempts to retake the House in 2010. I kid, of course -- the "liberal" media only ever allows Republicans to make demands in America, while labeling the rest of us "extremists" if we want someone better than a center-right corporatist to represent us.

Billionaire hedge-fund manager takes to LinkedIn to criticize President Trump for choosing "conflict" over "harmony" and the good of the "part" over the "whole." I often hesitate to criticize folks for coming to the party late (you know, Parable of the Prodigal Son and all), but, frankly, what this guy's saying has been obvious to everyone who doesn't treat politics like a sporting event, and for a while now. Plus, he's a little New Age-y for my taste -- was there no other phrase to describe how Mr. Trump would stimulate the economy besides "ignite animal spirits"?

Finally, regarding the upcoming special election in Georgia's 6th U.S. House district, and Stuart Rothenberg calls the race "almost a must-win" for Democrats, because "it would have a significant impact on the political narrative of the summer and early fall" if they lost. Beware people who make a living "shaping the narrative" telling you that wins or losses will "shape the narrative." Also beware people who pretend that "narratives" shape elections, and democracy, more than people do. That New Age-y hedge fund manager already looks better.

Around the table: Labor nominee down, drug prices up.

Fast food CEO Andrew Puzder withdraws his nomination as Labor Secretary. I would not underestimate your agitation against his confirmation, though the "liberal" media does -- though I also wouldn't underestimate that decades-old Oprah video. Republican Senators are already doing too much complaining about "Democrat obstruction," though Democrats can't even filibuster these nominees! And, ah, "new thinking," "smear campaign," "the plight of businesses," "experience creating jobs"? We're gonna need a lot more shovels before all this is over.

Reed Richardson at FAIR notes that even as the "liberal" media has reported extensively on the Trump Muslim ban's faults, it still "parachutes into red-state diners, barbershops and grocery store parking lots to seek out Trump voters—and only Trump voters—to gauge their support for the ban." I would hate to think the "liberal" media panders to the most rage-addled Trump votaries out of fear these votaries will kill somebody if their fee-fees get hurt. And, as Mr. Richardson points out (it's a really exhaustive analysis), the "liberal" media has trouble finding Trump supporters who don't support the ban, though you don't need to be a quantum physicist to realize they must exist.

Kaléo Pharmaceuticals jacks up the price of an opioid OD-reversal drug by a little over 650 percent. Because what are you going to do if you need it, try something else? Folks who are tempted to say who cares, they're just drug addicts should more carefully consider the nature of addiction, which robs you not just of your ability to make good decisions, but also robs you of your God-given and Constitutional freedoms. And why should the "free market" dictate that some folks can afford live-saving medication and others can't?

In a related note, Marathon Pharmaceuticals -- which recently applied for, and received, approval to market an anti-muscular dystrophy drug -- has hiked the price of that drug, previously only available overseas and thus by import, over 7,000 percent. But don't worry: after you get all the rebates and discounts you can get for the drug, the price will drop from $89,000 annually to a mere $54,000! And since we were also just speaking of the "free" market, note well that Marathon didn't do any of the research or development on this life-preserving drug. So, other than being in the right place at the right time, what, exactly, did they do to "earn" all this money?

Finally, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, says the real story about Mr. Flynn's resignation is "you have an American citizen who had his phone calls recorded." Hoo boy. Of course Mr. Nunes voted for the FISA Amendments Act, and more recently excoriated Rep. Amash (R-MI) as "al-Qaeda's best friend in Congress" because of Mr. Amash's opposition government surveillance. I found both those data points in less than 30 seconds. Don't they know this is the future?

Around the table: racists are the whiniest cowards, and other truths.

U.S. intelligence agencies will comply with a request from 11 bipartisan House Judiciary Committee members to disclose how many Americans have been caught up in our government's online surveillance of foreigners. This would amount to warrantless wiretapping, which violates our Constitution even if doesn't violate some of our laws. I'm not expecting the number of Americans spied upon to be particularly small (though I am expecting our government to lowball it). Would it be too much to ask for President Obama to give us an actual legacy, rather than the one he keeps nattering on about?

America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, summarizes his findings after investigating recounts in Michigan and Wisconsin. Long story short: uncounted ballots in both states just-so-happened to be concentrated in black areas; Michigan's "emergency managers" failed to fund better optical scanners in those areas; Michigan actively interfered with the recount in fairly obvious and suspicious ways; Wisconsin's recount consisted of feeding ballots back through the same machines that may have missed votes the first time. Another dose of Interstate Crosscheck provided at no extra charge, making this Mr. Palast's most comprehensive report on the matter yet.

Josmar Trujillo at TruthOut asks if "community groups" can properly "replace police." Most folks who want to get rid of police (because of racist brutality) don't have an answer when you ask what they'll replace them with; at least Mr. Trujillo has that, and the violence-intervention and de-escalation groups he mentions have done some good work and promise to do more. Still, once the law gets broken, you're going to need police to enforce it. And Umi Selah deserves the last word here that he got after confronting Spike Lee over Chiraq: "How many lives you gon' save without creating jobs for those people in Chicago?"

Louisiana state legislature candidate says he'll boycott any business that employs Muslims, and also says that Muslims don't "deserve peace of our culture or the continued fruits of our society while following this religion." He can shop where he likes, I suppose, but he can't close down businesses just because they employ Muslims, which is what he's calling for without having the guts to spell it out, because that's discrimination. And I'm tired of people whining about "PC culture" while arguing for their "right" to discriminate. So I'm gonna "call it the way I see it": this guy's an asshole.

Finally, speaking of assholes, a white supremacist website publishes contact information for Jews in the small Montana town where infamous racist Richard Spencer's mother lives, because she's suffering "backlash" for her son's views. What whiny cowardice, and how unexpected! Racist demand to be called "alt-right" and want "safe spaces" for their racism, and then tell you where Jews live in the sincere hope you'll do something about it, so they don't have to. All racists are, fundamentally, cowards and whiners. I'll say it again: all racists are, fundamentally, cowards and whiners. Or is it not politically correct to say so?

Around the table: zombie myths on poverty and voter fraud, among other follies.

Justin Miller at The American Prospect reminds us that voters in four states will consider minimum wage hikes on Election Day. Ballot measures are the wave of the present here, since anti-minimum wage Republicans dominate state legislatures just as surely as they dominate our Congress. And in 2014, you may recall, state-level minimum-wage hikes did pretty well in four dark-red states, despite the Republican wave, and despite the onslaught of Henny-Penny-the-sky-is-falling from rich corporate groups and their lackeys in Congress.

Neil deMause at FAIR catches New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof calling for more government intervention on poverty, but still bemoaning the amount of big-screen TVs poor people seem to have. Why is it dumb to do that? Partly because a lot of poor folks these days have only been poor since the banksters crashed the economy in 2008, partly because "the stresses of poverty," not a lack of "financial literacy," leave poor folk with nothing but bad and less-bad financial decisions to choose from -- and partly because the major costs folks have these days are constant. A big-screen TV can be a one-time cost, but your electric bill, your rent or mortgage, and your health care are all ongoing.

Seen that video supposedly depicting ballot box-stuffing by Democrats in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Arizona? Turns out that video actually uses footage from also-easily-found-on-YouTube clips showing ballot box stuffing in Russian elections. Of course, when you're watching a video supposedly depicting ballot box fraud and the video has no sound, you ought to be a bit suspicious right there. Then again, our paper of record apparently had no suspicions about that first James O'Keefe video from 2009 despite the video's obvious edits, so maybe all that training a lot of journalists get in post-structuralist literary theory isn't as useful as we're supposed to think.

This sure seems like good news: McDonald's will settle a labor-law violations lawsuit employees at a California franchise brought against the parent company. Which would give you the impression that McDonald's has accepted the NLRB's declaration that plaintiffs can hold McDonald's liable for abuses committed by its franchises -- except that McDonald's has not admitted to any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, meaning its efforts to fight the NLRB's declaration (and a subsequent court ruling saying employees can hold McDonald's liable if they believe McDonald's is their employer) will no doubt continue.

Finally, the incomparable Digby reminds us that FBI Director James Comey, who informed Congress last Friday that the FBI had begun investigating a series of emails that might relate to Mrs. Clinton's use of a private email server, has always been a "partisan hack." The avalanche of details is quite impressive, but I had actually forgotten that his "heroism" in fighting Tha Bush Mobb's warrantless wiretapping program wasn't actually heroism, and I'm glad to be reminded of that. And again: would a President Hillary Clinton finally realize, unlike her two Democratic predecessors, that "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" is actually very bad advice?

Action: the proposed AT&T/Time-Warner merger, and PayPal's refusal to work in Palestine.

AT&T has lately announced that it will try to buy Time-Warner, which no longer owns Time-Warner Cable (that belongs to Charter now, thanks to federal government inaction) but which still owns HBO, TBS, and TNT, among other properties. How is it that the 13th Amendment prohibits slavery and the 14th Amendment supposedly permits corporate "personhood" but somehow neither amendment prohibits one corporation from owning another? If I ever find out, I'll be sure to let you know. In the meantime, the proposed AT&T/Time-Warner merger would make yet another already too-big corporation even bigger, and would result in fewer jobs, less competition, higher prices, worse customer services, and all the other things that always result from mergers. At the risk of piling on, you should remember that AT&T was the one big telecom that was always happiest to comply with Tha Bush Mobb's warrantless wiretapping program -- and that AT&T fights net neutrality just as hard as every other big telecom that wants to keep you from going where you want to go on the internet, rather than where they want you to go. Hence Free Press helps you tell your federal government to fight the proposed AT&T/Time-Warner merger.

Meanwhile, you may not know that PayPal, despite being the default internet payment option for millions of folks in over 200 countries across the planet, doesn't provide any service to Palestinians in the Gaza strip and the West Bank. PayPal, for its part, has been unusually tight-lipped as to why, referring only to a supposed inability of Palestinians in these areas to meet "regulatory requirements" -- which you could be excused for thinking is bunk, considering that PayPal serves the Israeli settlers in these areas, and considering that, well, Israel is occupying Palestine and folks often seem to bow to Israeli pressure a lot more quickly than almost any other kind. It's not like PayPal is the only game in town as far as payment processing services, even in the Middle East, but Palestinian businesses start out way behind by not being able to accept PayPal, and for those of you who are quick to dismiss Palestine as just one of those places where terrorists live, you should consider whether helping to build Palestinian businesses out is a far better way to fight terrorism than all that bombing and wallbuilding and checkpointing we usually do. Hence Sum of Us helps you tell PayPal to do right by its potential Palestinian customers.

Action: 9.11 families, government spying, and bankster loopholes.

On Friday, President Obama vetoed H.R. 3815/S. 2040, the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which would have allowed families of 9.11 victims to sue the Saudi Arabian government over its alleged role in the attacks -- and might well have the happy effect of showing more Americans how damaging our blind alliance with Saudi Arabia is. The bill doesn't actually claim the government of Saudi Arabia did the deed, but merely allows 9.11 families to have their day in court over the issue. Mr. Obama vetoed the bill, apparently out of concern for the concept of "sovereign immunity" (an ancient legal doctrine which generally prevents states from being sued), but other laws (the Federal Tort Claims Act and the Tucker Act, to name two) have already modified the concept over the years, and anyway that's a bit rich coming from the guy who's still pressing a "free" trade deal that would vastly expand corporations' ability to sue governments and extort bailouts from taxpayers. So Just Foreign Policy joins with MoveOn in helping you tell your Congressfolk to override the veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act.

Meanwhile, you know the police use "Stingray" devices (which tricks cell phones into giving up all their info by pretending to be cell phone towers) to conduct all sorts of surveillance they're not authorized by a warrant to get. But you may not know that the Stingray's effects can be even worse -- they can keep protestors from reaching each other, and they can also keep folks from making 911 calls, which could mean the difference between life and death. Police could also use stingrays to spoof messages from other people's phones, a power that could not possibly be abused by the unscrupulous. Hate to pile on, but the FBI routinely makes local police sign agreements that prevent them from telling judges about their use. Folks still unconvinced can answer this question: if you know a technology will cause considerably more harm than good, why would you use it? Forgive me if I sound a bit conservative about this matter. Decide the Future helps you tell the FCC to prohibit local police from using stingrays. (The FCC has jurisdiction over the frequencies Stingrays use, which are the same frequencies that phones use.)

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to close the "carried interest loophole" that allows hedge fund managers to pay a lower rate on their taxes than many working families, then Sign Here Now still helps you do that. Hedge fund managers can make millions of dollars a day and still pay a lower rate than folks who work for a living! How is that conducive to freedom? A right-winger might argue that freedom thrives whenever we allow individuals to get the most freedom for themselves, but if those individuals can get enough freedom to dictate our lives to the rest of us, how are we then more free? And that's what tax loopholes for the rich do: they give the rich more power to run roughshod over the rest of us. And if you're having trouble figuring out what exactly a hedge fund manager does to earn all that money, you're not stupid or uneducated, you're just awake. Too many banksters make bajillions of dollars not by helping people make better products or processes, but by moving properties around in a giant shell game. As Americans, we deserve a lot better than that, and we must demand it.

Around the table: tabulating more election-related absurdities, plus bonus good news about another for-profit college closing down.

Kennesaw State University Dean of Students sends memo warning of "unauthorized individuals are walking around with clipboards claiming they are registering students to vote," some of whom "are targeting particular student populations." An unnamed student at the college -- Georgia's third-largest public university -- says the scam basically pretends to register black students so they can't vote on Election Day. But please, right-wingers, keep complaining about how voter fraud always comes from liberals.

ITT Technical Institute closes all of its campuses around the country, mere weeks after the Department of Education bans it from enrolling students using federal student loans. Current ITT students with federal loans, as well as those who've left ITT within the last 120 days, will be able to have their loans forgiven, and California students with private loans can apply for relief from the state, which news makes the ITT spokeshack's whining -- "(t)he damage done to our students and employees, as well as to our shareholders and the American taxpayers, is irrevocable" -- particularly inappropriate.

You've heard that charter schools are a black family's only way out of failing public schools? Well, Jeff Bryant at the OurFuture blog informs us that that isn't true, either. When even your biggest charter school boosters tell you flatly that it's very hard for black kids to get into these schools, you know it's all a crock. Anyone else think the real solution would be to fund public schools properly, thus giving our schools the resources they need to produce top-notch students? Or is that quaint?

Judge issues arrest warrant for Riverside County (CA) district attorney who oversaw a surveillance operation so vast that it accounted, at one point, for almost one out of every five wiretapping warrants in America. The warrants were almost all drug-related, resulting in a lot of arrests and property seizures (though the article doesn't say much about convictions!) ranging as far east as Virginia. But, seriously: America has over 3,000 counties; how does one county account for close to 20% of all surveillance warrants? And no, we shouldn't applaud him because at least he got the warrants, unlike two recent U.S. Presidents I can name. Last I looked, America is not the land of lowered expectations.

Alec MacGillis at ProPublica wonders, quite reasonably, why so many hedge fund managers are still donating to Hillary Clinton's campaign, when Mrs. Clinton has made so many promises to rein in hedge fund excesses. It's easy to blame Donald Trump for the shift, but I still suspect elite opposition to Mr. Trump is a false flag operation, and it's more likely that hedge fund managers are putting all their chips on Mrs. Clinton because they expect something in return -- like continued inaction on the carried interest loophole. I mean, it's one thing to make a promise, and another thing entirely to keep it.

Finally, Donald Trump says the way keep ISIS from rising again after he defeats them is to go into Iraq and "take the oil." Well, it's not like "taking the oil" has been the cause of all our Middle East problems or anything. Seriously, was Mr. Trump asleep whenever Ron Paul went on about American culpability in the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh after Mr. Mossadegh nationalized BP oil fields? Apparently he also doesn't remember that ISIS came together in Tha Bush Mobb's detainment camps in Iraq. Please, Americans, do not vote for this clown. Vote for Gary Johnson if you have to.

Action: clean water, and government spying.

The Army Corps of Engineers has approved -- via the notorious "Nationwide Permit 12" process, which allows the Corps to approve small segments of pipelines without the environmental review a big pipeline would get -- the Dakota Access pipeline, which would transport nearly half a million barrels of crude oil daily. But the Standing Rock Sioux have protested the pipeline, with increasing intensity over the last several weeks, since it would disturb sacred sites and put their water at risk of pollution. And they're not the only ones in danger, since Dakota Access would also run through Illinois and Iowa, in addition to both Dakotas. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell the Obama Administration to revoke permits for the Dakota Access pipeline. The Army does have the legal right to revoke a project's permits if they find that said project will cause undue damage to local water, and the law also permits anyone to suggest to the Army Corps of Engineers that it should revoke a project's permit -- and I presume "anyone" includes our President. So let's get cracking.

Meanwhile, Color of Change helps you tell the FCC to restrict law enforcement's ability to use cell-phone simulators, popularly known as "stingrays." Stingrays, as you know, pretend to be cell phone towers so as to force nearby cell phones to connect to it and give up all their information, so that police can track your location and intercept your communications. Generally, police use these devices without a warrant -- because you don't ask a judge for a warrant to spy on every phone in the vicinity so you can spy on one or two people, unless you want the judge to laugh at you. Don't be the one who says if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear, when our government will happily redefine "protesting your government's actions" as "wrong," and they'll use these devices to shut down your phone, too, if you happen to be recording their misconduct. And police officers under pressure to produce arrests and close cases will use stingrays to disproportionately harass folks of color. Of course, government that actually serves its owners, the people, really doesn't have to worry about any of these things.

Action: protecting Social Security, and promoting freedom online.

Even the farthest-right Republicans know they can't privatize Social Security -- Mr. Bush tried it, with huge majorities in House and Senate, and couldn't even get a bill considered. But the far right has other ways to hurt the Social Security system we've fought for and paid for, and one of them is to cut the Social Security Administration's budget. Their proposed cuts would furlough employees, close offices, and prevent them from processing claims and fixing problems -- all so they can point to how badly Social Security is working and declare that the markets can do better. Anyone who can remember as far back as 2009, when the stock market crashed to about half its value the previous year, knows that's utter bunk. Hell, anyone who's watched any private corporation take over a government's function and line their pockets at the expense of the taxpayer knows that. But it's never enough to win -- we also must defend our victories, day in and day out, from the forces of evil. So Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop trying to cripple the Social Security Administration.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the FCC to prevent cable corporations from selling your private info willy-nilly and end the cable corporations' monopoly on set-top boxes, then Free Press still helps you do that. What could possibly be the right's objection to good Americans getting to buy their own set-top boxes, instead of being chained to Comcast's or Charter's set-top box? And what could possibly be the right's objection to preventing cable corporations from misusing your personal information? We may sum up their objection to both thusly: cable corporations are big donors, and they're paying for our re-election. Sure, they tell you that the FCC proposals amount to Big Gummint Run Amok, but sometimes government has to step in to allow freedom to flourish. And these right-wingers have nothing to say about warrantless wiretapping or NSA data-vacuuming -- because it doesn't cost their biggest donors any money. The bad news: word on the street is that the right's empty and desperate arguments are working on at least two FCC Commissioners. But we can be the steel in their spine -- again.

Action: torture, internet privacy, and gay rights.

The CIA has apparently "accidentally" destroyed its copy of the Senate Intelligence Committee torture report from the last Congress. No, it wasn't the only copy in the whole world, but understand that the torture report actually had little chance of seeing the light of day to begin with -- so far our government has only released the report's 700-page executive summary, and a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel has lately ruled that the Freedom of Information Act can't compel disclosure of the other 6,200-plus pages, since the FOIA doesn't apply to "Congressional documents." Hence the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the Defending Dissent Foundation help you tell President Obama to declassify the Senate torture report and ensure that the National Archives and Record Administration preserve it. Let's not pretend that other countries learning that we torture "compromises national security," nor let us suppose the National Archives should only record the good we do -- if we can't accept, and learn from, the evil we do, we have no business aspiring to be the greatest country on Earth.

Meanwhile, the FCC has proposed rules that would give consumers more control over how information internet service providers use, share, or sell their private information. I've heard a lot of reasonable folks say things like you should get used to not having any privacy on the internet, and while they mean to remind you not to be a blithering idiot in public or to avoid scams that sound too good to be true -- both worthwhile reminders no matter how often we get them! -- we should be able to have some privacy on the internet, and we should certainly be able to make big telecom corporations get our permission before doing anything with our private information, and we should get notifications from those corporations whenever that information gets stolen. Of course, big telecoms don't want to do any of this, supposedly because it would "confuse" consumers -- which certainly betrays their very, very low opinion of the people whose money makes their businesses possible. Don't we tend toward believing in folks' capabilities in a free country? Demand Progress helps you tell the FCC to mandate the most vigorous privacy protections possible for consumers on the internet.

Finally, in case you were wondering if the struggle for gay rights is over now that the Supreme Court has legalized gay marriage across the land, recall that many state legislatures have made foster care systems a battleground in their attempts to enshrine a "right" to discriminate against people who offend your "religious" "conscience." Some politicians think that if you don't want LGBTQ parents to foster kids because cooties, you should be allowed to prevent them from doing that -- and if foster parents don't want to foster LGBTQ kids, they should be allowed to do that. Just to make things clear: you have a right to be a bigot -- but you don't have a right to abridge other people's rights with your bigotry, or because of your bigotry. How strange, that folks pass up all the character-building opportunities meeting people unlike them can provide. Hence Moms Rising helps you tell HHS Secretary Burwell to forbid foster care services receiving federal funding from discriminating against LGBTQ kids or parents. I know, the right will call that Big Gummint, just like they never called the PATRIOT Act or warrantless wiretapping Big Gummint, but haters gonna hate, and we don't pander to hate, even if it carries a cross.

Around the table: warrantless wiretapping receives a challenge, and other stories.

The FISA Amendments Act, which codified Tha Bush Mobb's warrantless wiretapping program into law, may finally receive a Constitutional challenge. Our government has notified at least 10 terror suspects that some of the evidence against them came from warrantless wiretapping -- and a lawyer for two of them says he'll try to get that evidence thrown out. You have to wonder why our government suddenly started notifying suspects they're being warrantlessly wiretapped. If you're an eternal optimist, you might conclude that this is Barack Obama's way of finally killing the program dead, by getting judges to do it for him. Entertaining as that notion is, I'm not sure I'm that much an optimist.

At least two Oklahoma courts assert in a criminal case that if a girl gives oral sex while unconscious, it's not "forcible sodomy." under the law. Apparently, state law does not list "incapacitation due to the victim drinking alcohol" as one of the ways to put the force in "forcible sodomy." "We will not, in order to justify prosecution of a person for an offense, enlarge a statute beyond the fair meaning of its language," the appeals court said. Left unanswered is how an incapacitated person could possibly consent to sex, or how the "fair meaning" (not the "literal meaning," you notice) of "forcible sodomy" fails to include, well, forcing yourself on someone who's too drunk to fight you off.

Bill Scher, writing at Politico, offers Minnesota Sen. Al Franken as the best choice for Democratic Vice President. I'm by and large impressed with Sen. Franken -- he's written a lot of great bills that haven't become law mainly because Republicans hate good government -- but the idea that he's somehow "politically incorrect" in the manner of Donald Trump is as ludicrous as the idea that Rachel Maddow is a "liberal version of Sean Hannity." And the "liberal" media won't back off on this alleged "political incorrectness" just because they've given Mr. Trump a pass to say far worse things -- they'll report on them like they're "just as bad," because that's what's "fair." But yes, he's more liberal than Mrs. Clinton, Democrats don't have very many great choices, et cetera.

Consultant working for Sen. John McCain's re-election campaign gets busted after police find a meth lab, one within the reach of small children no less, in her home. Emily Pitha has, apparently, been a mainstay of Arizona Republican politics for many years, having also worked for former Sen. Jon Kyl and his successor, current Sen. Jeff Flake; the McCain campaign, of course, terminated its relationship with her after the arrest. None of this will surprise you if you watch House of Cards, and I don't expect this will be an issue in his re-election campaign, but if something this bizarre happens to him, say, two more times, that might be a sign he's done.

Finally, Donald Trump delivers an allegedly substantial foreign policy address that, in the words of BBC reporter Anthony Zurcher, is "essentially a calmly intoned reprise of the views he has expressed throughout the campaign." Mr. Trump may have figured out what Republican establishment-types have really been telling him: that if you say what's in the hearts of angry white dudes without sounding like an angry white dude, you'll do a lot better. He even read from a teleprompter this time, I understand. Of course, when Mr. Trump says he won't tell ISIS how he's going to beat them, he forgets -- just like they all do! -- that he's supposed to account to us, the American people, about things like that.

Action: GMO crop regulation, FBI whistleblower protection, and food menu labeling.

This U.S. Department of Agriculture may be as slavish a servant of big agricultural corporations as we have ever seen, but it still has lawfully-mandated duties, and luckily these include taking public comments on their proposed changes to the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service's new genetically-modified crop approval process. And their proposal -- surprise, surprise! -- stinks pretty awful, in that it seems to have been formulated by folks who don't understand that corporations don't create GMO crops to increase yields or promote healthier food, but to withstand ever-higher doses of their own proprietary pesticides. The APHIS proposal doesn't consider a lot of the ill effects of GMO crops, including increased weed resistance to ever-expanding use of pesticides, and GMO seed propensity to drift into fields that don't grow GMO crops. Food and Water Watch helps you tell the USDA to put health-related issues front and center when considering whether to approve GMO crops.

Meanwhile, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously advanced S. 2390, the FBI Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, and the full Senate will soon consider it. S. 2390 would prevent the FBI from retaliating against whistleblowers, and would give whistleblowers the right to have their case reviewed by an Inspector General, the Attorney General, or a federal court. If you're aware of the Obama Administration's "war on whistleblowers" -- a war that has not only claimed good Americans blowing the whistle on medical device problems, CIA torture, and warrantless wiretapping, but also many good FBI officers -- then you probably see that FBI whistleblowers need more protection. And the Senate, at least, also seems to see this need -- S. 2390 has 11 sponsors, including lead sponsor Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, and 10 other Senators evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. Hence the National Whistleblower Center helps you tell your Senator to help government workers who want to expose corruption and wrongdoing by supporting S. 2390.

Finally, the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services (or HHS) have been working on restaurant menu labeling guidelines since 2010 -- which would, among other things, include information about calories, fat, sodium, and sugar -- but they still haven't finished the job, so Moms Rising helps you tell the FDA and HHS to enact the most vigorous restaurant menu food labeling guidelines possible. This isn't some outrageous Big Gummint mandate, as evidenced by the fact that a lot of big food corporations (including Starbucks and Panera) have voluntarily started such labeling, and that some states and municipalities have enacted their own mandates. I suppose the more resourceful troublemakers among us will complain that people aren't literate enough about these things generally so-what's-the-point, but naturally the more scientific studies tell us that folks actually do make better choices with better information. Giving folks stuff to read promotes literacy, who'da thunk it? And, of course, we don't abide folks trying to convince us to let the perfect murder the good.

Around the table: horrible truths about taxes, college endowments, and Democrat weakness.

Just in time for Tax Day (April 18 this year), Citizens for Tax Justice reports that, once you add in all the taxes everyone pays, most folks' tax bills approximate their share of income. Sadly, this won't satisfy your Tea Party uncle, who will insist that the higher tax rates on federal income taxes are the only ones that matter (as if you pay sales taxes, payroll taxes, and gas taxes with Monopoly money or something!) -- but it also shouldn't satisfy you, if you know 19% is a much, much bigger bite out of $15,000 than 33% is out of a million bucks, when you look at what's left and what it'll pay for.

Some politicians have mooted the possibility of taxing universities rather harder than we do now. This is in a world where Ivy League endowments run in the tens of billions and may grow by a billion dollars annually, where Yale actually spends more on fund managers than it spends on students, where folks call Ivy League colleges "hedge funds with universities attached." These schools will tell you they're already spending a lot of students via free tuition for students whose families make less than a certain amount -- but that amount tends to be quite low (two parents making $75,000 annually ain't doing as well as they used to!) and these colleges are not only holding onto billions of dollars, but they tend to own a lot of property that doesn't get taxed.

6th Circuit Court of Appeals rules that law enforcement can collect cellphone metadata without a warrant. How on Earth? Because the metadata in question -- in this particular criminal case, location data -- "say nothing about the content of any calls." Even those of you who did not train with structuralist literary theorists will find that statement a bit narrow. But if the FBI got all those cellphone numbers from a suspect who had already confessed and was cooperating with them, I don't understand how they could have failed to convince a judge to issue a warrant.

From the "I'm glad someone (else) is saying it" file: Lisa Graves, writing at The Hill, cites that famous LuntzGlobal survey finding widespread support among business leaders for minimum wage hikes, paid sick leaves, and the like, and wonders how state Chambers of Commerce can claim to represent their members. You know, since state Chambers of Commerce (and, of course, the reactionary U.S. Chamber of Commerce) tend to fight all of those things tooth and nail. Of course, the Chambers don't represent business owners -- they represent mammon. And we all know where mammon-worship gets you.

Finally, Seth Abramson says "The Democrats Are Flawlessly Executing a 10-Point Plan to Lose the 2016 Presidential Election." Mr. Abramson, too, is more enamored of John Kasich's chops than most folks, and I've long said Hillary Clinton's support is a mile wide and a foot deep, and taking a chance on Bernie Sanders has political benefits the party doesn't seem wired to understand, and, of course, one should generally avoid underestimating the ability of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But I also think Donald Trump is more resilient than Mr. Abramson thinks, I don't think Hillary Clinton's ambiguous relationship with the truth is even comparable to Mr. Trump's, and I don't think another round of Republicans churning out the same Clinton-hate they've been churning out for literally a quarter century will play particularly well with voters.

Action: the "war on terror," wage theft, and corporate tax avoidance.

Did you know our Department of Defense has been supporting Syrian Kurds fighting ISIS -- but our CIA has been supporting groups that have attacked those Kurds? It'd be funny, if it weren't murderously incompetent. (No, whether it's malicious or not, it's still incompetent.) Hence Just Foreign Policy joins with MoveOn to help you tell Congress to stop funding groups that attack Syrian Kurds. Even with a Republican-held Congress determined to do nothing until after the election, this is not as tall an order as it sounds -- CIA spending on jihadist attacks on Kurds is, as it happens, not a tremendously popular idea in Congress, and even the establishment "paper of record," the New York Times, now sounds open to the idea of Kurdish self-rule within Syria. It's hard to underestimate the significance of that pronouncement, even if the Times is pretty sure nothing will come of it -- when have they ever complained, for example, about how European powers drew African borders during the colonial era? So let's make this tall order into the people's order.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 4763/S. 2697, the Wage Theft Prevention and Wage Recovery Act, then Fight for 15 helps you do that. Most employees experience wage theft in dribs and drabs -- tips not distributed, overtime hours counted as straight time, straight time hours disappearing from paychecks. But these dribs and drabs add up to real money for the corporate CEOs who put pressure on managers to get the work done "any way they can," rather than putting managers in position to do the best job they can, as is a CEO's duty. And they also add up to real money for workers weighing how much they can get away with not paying on their electric bill so they can pay their water bill. Sadly, our laws currently let corporations reimbursing workers they've stolen from at minimum wage, no matter what workers actually make -- and that's virtually an incentive to cheat. As any good conservative would tell you, we don't need our government giving corporations an incentive to bad behavior.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Obama's Treasury Department to close the loophole that allows corporations to become "foreign" corporations and evade their fair share of taxes, then Sign for Good still helps you do that. How did the Treasury Department get this power, you ask? Shouldn't Congress fix this loophole? Of course Congress should fix this loophole, but they have little enthusiasm for such tasks even when Democrats are running things. And Treasury got this power to make corporate inversion rules the same way the Executive branch always gets power from Congress: because Congress delegated it to the Executive branch through legislation. So if President Obama actually uses that power, that doesn't make him an AMURIKAN CAESAR!!!!! like Republicans always say he is. And where were they when George W. Bush was warrantlessly wiretapping American citizens? Cheering him on and calling his critics traitors, like always. Apparently Presidents are only "dictators" when they do something for the American people.

Around the table: the Malheur "militia" is a corporate tool, and other horrible truths.

In re the Oregon "militia" that has occupied the Malheur wildlife refuge, John Nichols asks, "What Do the Bundy Brothers Have Against Wildlife?" And their real complaint isn't about Gubmint Gone Wild, or even mandatory minimum laws affecting Dwight and Steven Hammond -- it's about our federal government failing to relinquish all federal lands to ranchers and miners (and corporations, though of course they won't say so). Our federal government protects federal land for our benefit, or at least does so with enough of our oversight, but these "militia" folk seem to think "our government" means a government that does only the things they want it to do.

But there's good news: social media users have pointed out en masse that if the Oregon "militia" members were black or Muslim, Our Glorious Elites would be calling them "terrorists." As a friend of mine reminded me yesterday, the "militia" members haven't done anything violent yet, and may not. Still, "y'all Qaeda" and "Vanilla ISIS" is chickens-coming-home-to-roost territory for the American right. The right will never cop to understanding that, irony (like science) being a thing to be hated whenever it doesn't give you the answers you want.

Glenn Greenwald reminds us that Our Glorious Elites only care about "privacy" when the NSA spies on them. As per usual, his demolition of Rep. Hoekstra's hypocrisy is worth experiencing in full, and I'm pleased to be reminded that former Rep. Harman, Tha Bush Mobb's favorite Democrat this side of Joe Lieberman, also seemed shocked, shocked! back in 2009 after discovering that the NSA listened in on her phone conversations (and the NSA actually had a warrant that time!). But these revelations won't spark soul-searching any more than all that David Petraeus drama did in 2012. And Our Glorious Elites will tell you soul-searching is for little people like us. I wish I were kidding about that.

Congress is actually talking corporate tax reform again, and The Hill finds liberals in Washington, such as there are, playing offense. A little more aggressiveness from liberals would be good to see -- I've had more than enough of the "bipartisanship" that means "Democrats and Republicans coming together to do whatever Republicans want" -- and yes our corporate tax code needs to bring in more money, not less, not least because corporate power needs to be reined in as surely as wealthy individuals' power needs to be reined in. We will provide the steel for our Congressfolk's spines whenever we can.

Finally, Jake Kilroy, writing at Take Part, describes one non-profit's efforts to distribute oral-swab self-tests for HIV to folks in Africa. AIDS is a big problem in Africa, not least because so many African elites deny it's a problem and so many others deny it's a problem "good" people have, and giving good Africans the ability to test themselves could do a lot to help solve the problem -- but sadly I can also imagine bigots beating up anyone who they think is carrying around test kits, or describing anyone who uses one as gay or a prostitute.

Around the table: from dystopian crime-fighting to the latest thing that should end Donald Trump's campaign.

You may recognize it from Philip K. Dick's peerless dystopianism, but "pre-crime mapping tools" are here now, prodding police to, ah, expand their notion of probable cause beyond the boundaries we have long accepted. A conservative would remind us that we've accepted such boundaries for so long for good reason, but a "tough-on crime" reactionary wouldn't, despite the vast potential for abusing Software That Tells the Future, which certainly widens the palette of excuses law enforcement could use to detain whomever whenever. And not just because inductive reasoning has its limits -- too often, the data such software uses just isn't very good.

Corey Robin, writing at FAIR, finds a putative liberal declaring that "(s)ome of the most potent threats to free speech these days come not from our government or corporations, but from our citizenry" -- specifically, college kids protesting racism on college campuses. Of course warrantless wiretapping and NSA data vacuuming are more "potent" threats to free speech, but too many folks forget that the First Amendment doesn't run in one direction at a time -- folks who don't like what protestors say can speak out in response. And though I don't think the First Amendment protects you from your employer the way it protects you from your government, corporations are still a bigger threat to free speech than being scolded by a college kid.

Dean Baker catches Tom Friedman bashing one of the few things anyone should like about Donald Trump, his support for taxpayer-funded universal health care. Naturally he doesn't like Mr. Trump, and even more naturally he goes out of his way to mention his health care stance, as if the average of any two opinions equals "the middle." Mr. Friedman also complains that raising the top tax bracket to 50 percent would "only" cover about a quarter of the deficit, which rather inadvertently makes the argument that a 91% tax bracket would wipe out a lot more of the deficit. File under "The Uselessness of Moderates."

The Union of Concerned Scientists treats us to a video (run time: 2 minutes, 18 seconds) countering some of the propaganda against electric vehicles and their advantages in combatting pollution. So when your Tea Party uncle lists the reasons you're stupid for wanting an electric car, you can remind him that, yes, manufacturing batteries is slightly more carbon-intensive than manufacturing internal combustion engines, but using electricity to run your car still pollutes much less than using gasoline -- unless you live in places like West Virginia or Kentucky, which depend almost entirely on coal for their electricity, and guess what? Most people don't, and even fewer people will in the future.

Finally, Pamela Engel at Business Insider catches something you might have missed from the last Republican debate: Donald Trump complaining that "wages are too high." That's the kind of statement that would have finished a campaign back in the day -- and his subtle suggestion that higher wages discourage work wouldn't have played too well with voters, either. Still, while Trump supporters would hate being told they make too much money just as much as anyone else would, they're as likely to presume that their hero was really talking about Those Other People Who Make Too Much Money, not them.

Around the table: starring Ben Carson and Alan Simpson as "Goofus and Gallant."

Boy, I really thought we were done with this "War on Christmas" crap, but apparently we're not: right-wing evangelicals say that coffee corporation Starbucks has, in handing out red coffeecups with no snowflakes, reindeer, or Santas on them, "REMOVED CHRISTMAS from their cups because they hate Jesus" (caps in original). My memory of the stations of the cross isn't airtight, but I don't remember seeing snowflakes, reindeer, or Santa Claus at any of them. 'Tis the season, apparently, for folks to throw tantrums so they can get attention.

Robert Reich reveals "What I Learned on My Red State Book Tour." Spoiler alert: "many of the conservative Republicans and Tea Partiers I met agreed with much of what I had to say, and I agreed with them," which will only surprise folks who believe in "liberal" media stereotypes. Yes, "crony capitalism," "factory farms," "'free' trade," and "too big to fail banks" all meet with broad bipartisan opposition, and this is the precise opposite of what the "liberal" media tells you when they talk about "bipartisanship."

Elias Isquith at Salon interviews New York Times journalist Charlie Savage about how President Obama seemed to change his mind about the "security (sic) state." Mr. Savage points to two main factors: one, Mr. Obama objected to Mr. Bush's warrantless wiretapping because he felt they were lawless, but when Congress rewrote the laws to conform to what Mr. Bush was doing, that objection disappeared. Two, the "underwear bomber" seemed to have put a scare into Mr. Obama. A potential third factor, the "deep state" described by Michael Glennon among others, gets some mention at the end.

Julia Angwin at ProPublica tells us that Vizio "Smart TVs" can "track your viewing habits and share (them) with advertisers," who can then target you on your smartphone. You can opt out, but why should you have to opt out? Really, they should give you the option of opting in, like Samsung and LG smart TVs. Apparently a loophole in the law (specifically, the Video Privacy Protection Act) allows smart TV makers to do this. Don't worry, though -- Congress is always looking out for the consumer and will offer a fix post-haste. I kid, of course.

Ben Carson actually blames "political correctness" for drug addiction. No, that really is the way to read his answer to an admittedly vague John Dickerson question on Face the Nation: people get addicted to drugs because they "lack something," and what do they lack? Contact with other people, as very bright folks have lately said? Well, no -- they lack "the values and principles" that make America great, and since people have apparently replaced that with "political correctness," then political correctness causes drug addiction. Political correctness is an evil, but right-wingers indulge in it all the time (see first paragraph above), and folks who treat it as the worst evil in America are themselves "lacking something."

Finally, former Wyoming Republican Senator Alan Simpson offers an extraordinarily lucid description of some of the real moral crises plaguing this nation. He likes college kids, but says they're being conditioned to be "consumers" rather than citizens, and he uses "class warfare" the way it should be used, against the forces that would make everyone work for less money. I'll admit I never liked Mr. Simpson as a youth -- I thought he was as out there as Newt Gingrich, and maybe he sounds better now because Out There 2015 is hardly visible from Out There 1987. But maybe, just maybe, I wasn't listening to him as well as I should have back then.

Around the table: possible homes for refugees, stolen health care for retirees, and other stories.

An Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development study concludes that using computers in the classroom hurts student performance instead of improving it. I wish I heard more from conservatives about things like this -- after all, wouldn't they be the ones preferring classics to moderns, novels to television, and Tennyson to Twitter? Then again, I don't hear much from conservatives at all these days -- and I hear more than enough from the reactionaries who claim to be conservative, who seem down for whatever makes their corporate paymasters more money, which computerized classrooms certainly do.

Michelle Goldberg asks if child protective services have "gone too far" -- a question the "liberal" media seems more eager to ask, Ms. Goldberg notes, now that relatively affluent white folks (not just working poor minority folks) are getting caught up in CPS webs. It may seem ironic that, as we've allowed governments to abandon responsibility for keeping the rich from running roughshod over the rest of us, that we've gone mad over keeping children supervised at all times -- ironic, that is, until you remember that Tha Bush Mobb couldn't save New Orleans from drowning but could wiretap your phones.

Alec MacGillis at ProPublica describes how over 200 Indiana miners and families "with no direct connection to Patriot Coal" somehow lost their retirement health care benefits as a result of the Patriot Coal bankruptcy in 2013. Their employer passed on the responsibility for their health care years ago to a subsidiary that may well have been "set up to fail." This is why we shouldn't let corporations own other corporations, and it's also why we shouldn't let the bankster economy rule our lives.

Beenish Ahmed at Think Progress wonders if abandoned European villages could help house the world's refugees. Villages are dying out all over the continent, after all -- a lot of hamlets sell so cheaply that you or I could almost buy one -- and an influx of refugees could boost flagging economies. But you would hope European corporations wouldn't take advantage of these refugees and pay them in dung pellets, because that would be cruel (and, as it happens, doing so wouldn't stimulate local economies very much, either).

Finally, FAIR catches a Washington Post writer "analyzing" Bernie Sanders's platform. Read the whole thing and digest all the ignorance, scare numbers and the unspoken hypocrisy of the Sanders haters, but note well also: "government control" is your control, because this is your government, regardless of who's President or which party controls Congress. Why do I have this nagging feeling that you acting like your government belongs to you is what the "liberal" media really fears?

Around the table: paid sick leave, media posturing, an embarrassing video, a law-bomb, and another "religious freedom" suit that should fail.

President Obama signs executive order mandating corporations that contract with our government give its workers at least seven paid sick leave days. Cue the Republicans shouting AMURIKAN CAESURZZZ!!!!!, though they led the cheering for warrantless wiretapping and NSA spying. And if they want to claim that he's "circumvented the legislative process," they'll have to show, exactly, where Congress hasn't already delegated authority to the Executive branch to set such standards for federal contracts. Bet they don't.

Ho hum, Fox News punditoids denounce Mr. Obama for ignoring the shooting of a police officer who was just filling up his damn gas tank -- for several days after Mr. Obama condemned the shooting. He even called the officer's widow, but apparently living in the modern world means that if you're a media punditoid, you never have to admit you're wrong.

Conservative party candidate/appliance technician in Canada bows out of Toronto-area parliamentary race after video of him urinating in a customer's coffee cup surfaces. In America, you could get away with this, because plenty of punditoids would happily go on TV afterward and say, well, maybe the customer deserved it, and we've all wanted to do that to a customer, amirite? -- as if peeing into someone's mug is ever acceptable behavior, from anyone.

And now, for more from the government-is-incompetent-and-we're-gonna-prove-it-by-being-incompetent crowd in Kansas: the state's entire court system will be defunded, per a 2014 law restricting some state Supreme Court powers. How? The law states that if any court struck it down, the whole state court system will be defunded as a result -- and a district judge just did that. What do we call that, kids? A hostage situation. We also call it petty. And if any liberal ever attached the legislative equivalent of an IED to a law, the "liberal" media would suddenly see it exactly as I do.

Muslim flight attendant files suit after being suspended by her employer for refusing to serve alcohol to her customers, because of her "religious beliefs." I find folks who fervently oppose alcohol fairly sympathetic, and the co-worker who filed the complaint against her may be a better target for a lawsuit than her employer, but the same logic holds for this situation as it does for pharmacists who won't fill birth control scripts and county clerks who won't issue gay marriage licenses: consuming alcohol is legal (if you're over 21), consuming alcohol generally doesn't violate the religious beliefs of your customers, and if your "conscience" leads you to oppose doing that part of your job, you need to find another job.

Around the table: Birthers Gone Wild! And other stories.

SEC Chair Mary Jo White admits, under questioning from Sen. Baldwin (D-WI), that the SEC isn't monitoring stock buybacks. Corporate executives used to avoid buying back their own stock out of fear they'd be punished for trying to manipulate the market -- since stock buybacks tend to drive up stock prices -- but today executives buy back their own stock instead of investing in facilities or paying their workers more, and they call that the "free market," when it's actually income redistribution.

U.S. Justice Department admits that it uses "predictive assessments," rather than evidence of terrorist activity, to put folks on their "no-fly" lists. since you can "predict" pretty much anything. Using a formula even more complex than the NFL quarterback-rating system, right? The Obama Administration won't say, because of the potential (say it with me now) "damage to national security." But our Constitutional freedoms either mean something or they don't.

ProPublica chronicles the long-standing "partnership" between the NSA and AT&T. If you remember how eager AT&T was to give Tha Bush Mobb customer info after 9.11, you won't be surprised. I had forgotten, though, that AT&T used to be a monopoly, which of course made it a natural ally with our government against the people. (And yet folks still promulgate the myth of the "beneficial monopoly." But maybe fewer folks will do that after reading ProPublica's article.)

Group led by Gaza physician develops 3D-printed stethoscope that apparently outperforms a $200 stethoscope and costs a mere 30 cents to produce. Of course the 3D printer itself costs a lot, but that's a one-time cost, and the process could work for other medical equipment (like EKG machines) that developing nations need and lack. Peer-review is still to come, but I wish Dr. Loubani and his team the best.

Finally, now the "birther" crowd suspects four Republican Presidential candidates might not be Americans, either. And three out of four of these candidates (Messrs. Jindal, Rubio, and Cruz) just so happen to be nonwhite -- and they would have called the fourth (Italian-American Rick Santorum) nonwhite a mere half-century ago. Just in case you thought birthers were being fair, or clever, or "zealous." (Read the article; it'll demonstrate how far some folks will go just to defend fervent beliefs that don't hold up to critical scrutiny.)

Around the table: the source of greed, revealed! And other stories.

A mere three days after the New York Times revealed the existence of Tha Bush Mobb's warrantless wiretapping program, our government released an assessment of the "damage" the Times report supposedly did to our intelligence efforts. Their conclusion? That now terrorists would try to "evade detection" -- an effort to which they apparently devoted no effort before!

Erica Hellerstein at Think Progress reveals how the abstinence-only crowd is trying to sell their snake oil these days. None of it will surprise you -- they call it "not just abstinence," they call it "research-based," they link to official-sounding right-wing medical organizations. And our government funds this silliness! Can you say "corporate welfare handouts," boys and girls?

Buried in an NPR ombudsman's response to FAIR's analysis of a quite unbalanced "free" trade report is this nugget: the reporter's assignment, apparently, was "to explain how the business lobby had turned an apparent defeat into a win for its side," like that can't be explained in three words (psst: they bought it), and that the story was sort-of "a counterpoint to an earlier report...on organized labor’s success in temporarily derailing the administration’s trade agenda" -- a report which just so happened to ensure that pro-"free" trade forces got quoted! Our "liberal" media!

The city of Chicago expands existing taxes to include online streaming services like Netflix and Spotify and database services like LexisNexis. Lost in the debate over whether this is fair or unfair to the internet (which has always had the advantage of building up without very much taxation) is the real problem, which is that we don't tax the wealthy enough and wouldn't have to resort to regressive taxes like these if we did.

Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb announces his run for the Democratic nomination for President, and Max Rosenthal summarizes some of his positions. Naturally he elides over Mr. Webb's economic populism, makes too much of Mr. Webb only being a Democrat since 2006, and spends too much time on controversies from his books (though Mr. Webb's statements about the Confederate flag on Facebook will probably doom his campaign. As commenter number one says, "this should be low-hanging fruit for you to be on the right side of.")

Finally, an upstate New York farmer decides to buy her town's struggling Post Office in order to save it and preserve what had long been community space. I note this article mainly for this quotation, which works in or out of context: "The key to happiness, and a major component for sustainability, is to recognize abundance when it presents itself, rather than fixating on scarcity. A scarcity mentality makes people greedy. It makes them frightened. An abundance mentality makes people feel secure, and that leads to generosity. We need more of that." Indeed, we do.

Action: government spying, campaign finance disclosure, and uranium mining in the Grand Canyon area.

And just like that, the House passed the USA FREEDOM Act, now watered down beyond our ability to tolerate it as free people, now a bill that actually makes certain intelligence practices a court just struck down legal again, a bill that makes it all but impossible to challenge unconstitutional surveillance in the courts, a bill that (like the nefarious FISA Amendments Act!) grants not just immunity but compensation to the corporations that help our government spy on us. Hence CREDO helps you tell Congress to let critical parts of the PATRIOT Act expire in early June, and Roots Action still helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the far superior H.R. 1466, the Surveillance State Repeal Act, instead of the USA FREEDOM Act. H.R. 1466 would repeal both the PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act -- meaning our government would have to get a warrant from a judge to investigate Americans for alleged terrorism -- and even makes it a little easier for whistleblowers from within the ranks of intelligence agencies or their contractors to submit complaints about our government's wrongdoing. President Obama won't like that, but he doesn't get all the say around here.

Meanwhile, the SEC still hasn't issued rules mandating that publicly-traded corporations reveal their political contributions, despite receiving hundreds of thousands of public comments supporting the notion, despite the fact that these corporations are really spending someone else's money -- their shareholders' money -- to elect candidates who support more unearned tax breaks for large corporations. And when we say "shareholders," we don't just mean people who invest directly in corporations, go to shareholder meetings to vote on resolutions, and the like -- we mean just about anyone who has invested in a 401(k) or a pension fund, since those funds also invest in corporations. So justifying the public interest in such campaign finance disclosure is quite easy, whereas justifying the corporate interest becomes increasingly difficult -- while even our right-wing Supreme Court Justices wonder aloud why disclosure isn't enough, Senate Majority Leader McConnell likens disclosure to bullying. Both Roots Action and Public Citizen help you tell our government to support campaign finance disclosure for publicly-traded corporations.

Finally, Sum of Us helps you tell our government to close uranium mines in the Grand Canyon region. Didn't we do this already, you may be wondering? And the answer is yes: thanks in part to our pressure, former Interior Secretary Salazar issued a moratorium putting the Grand Canyon region off-limits to new uranium mines for the next 20 years. Trouble is, that order apparently didn't assess the possibility that corporations would re-open old mines and start up again, and Energy Fuels Resources, Inc., plans to do just that in mid-June, which would make its mine the first operating uranium mine within six miles of the Grand Canyon in 20 years. Now, it isn't just that, hey, this is the Grand Freaking Canyon we're talking about here -- uranium mining contaminates groundwater, and this mine not only threatens the basins that provide the indigenous Havasupai people with their one and only source of clean drinking water, but all the water in the Colorado River Basin, which supplies drinking water to over one out of every eight Americans. A little short-term profit doesn't justify that.

Action: free trade, government spying in France, and GMO salmon.

A "free" trade "fast-track" bill will hit the Senate floor this week, so both Public Citizen and Jewish Voice for Peace help you tell your Congressfolk to reject it. Do not accept any BS that "fast-tracking" or "free" trade is "bipartisan," when the exact opposite is true, at least among the American people whose paychecks don't depend on doing whatever their corporate paymasters want. Do not accept President Obama's claim that he's fought for working families his whole Presidency (very badly, by the evidence!), when that statement ignores the very specific criticisms we've brought against "free" trade bills. Do not accept his assertion that "free" trade critics are "dishonest" for suggesting the TPP negotiations have been "secret," when our representatives in Congress haven't been allowed to see it until after hundreds of corporate lobbyists have had their mitts on it, and they're still not allowed to say what's in it. And remember that when Barack Obama calls Elizabeth Warren "dishonest" for giving your opinions a voice, it's because he doesn't have the guts to call you "dishonest."

Meanwhile, the French Parliament plans a vote this week on an "Information Bill" that would give the French Executive branch unprecedented power to spy on good French citizens without due process. The bill would allow the French government to trick users' mobile devices into thinking they're connecting to a cell tower when they're actually connecting to a device that sucks up all their data. The bill would also force internet service providers to suction up user data and let the government read emails and tap phones without a warrant. You don't need to be an expert in French Constitutional law to see how dangerous all of this would be -- it would give the French government more tools to oppress its citizenry whenever it feels like it, under the guise of "investigating terrorism," much as the USA PATRIOT Act has done in America. We all know that the Charlie Hebdo massacre was awful, but that's no reason to make every French citizen a government target, so Access Now helps you tell the French Parliament to reject violating French citizens' freedom and privacy in the name of counterterrorism.

Finally, Food and Water Watch helps you tell the FDA to reject the GMO salmon. Yes, that's still up for debate at the FDA, after all these years. But the GMO salmon wouldn't be labeled as such in stores, and the only scientific study thus far done on the GMO salmon was conducted by AquaBounty, who judged it safe after reviewing exactly six salmon. (Admittedly, what other answer would one expect? This thing, that we've spent a lot of time and money on, and upon which we stand to make a lot of money, turned out to be unsafe, so sorry!) And what makes this particular salmon different is that AquaBounty has jacked up their reproductive process so that they grow up (to "market size") a lot faster than non-modified salmon, thus causing problems in the ecosystems in which they live as well as elevated hormone levels in food. And now apparently the FDA is now trying to approve the GMO salmon as an animal drug, where the scientific evaluation process will be a bit less rigorous. But come on, FDA, we're not schmucks. This whole process has, we could say, strained our credulity.

Action: government spying, climate change, and paid family medical leave.

H.R. 1466, the Surveillance State Repeal Act, would, as its title suggests, repeal both the USA PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 -- because you might as well go big, and the aforementioned laws are two of the worst humiliations ever visited upon the American people by the Congress that purports to represent them. These two bills have birthed (or sanctioned) the massive surveillance state begun by George W. Bush and expanded by Barack Obama, which latter development should not have surprised anyone who watched Barack Obama the Candidate rail against warrantless wiretapping only to see Barack Obama the Senator vote for the FISA Amendments Act because of "the grave threats we face." And thanks to Edward Snowden's revelations, we also know that sunsetting the most controversial PATRIOT Act provisions hasn't delivered the oversight its supporters promised -- or else our government's spying upon us wouldn't have gotten so much worse over the years. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Surveillance State Repeal Act.

Meanwhile, the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell oil corporation Royal Dutch Shell to sever ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Why? Well, mainly because ALEC has given us some of the most anti-freedom state legislation ever, which includes Voter ID laws, "Show Your Papers" laws, ag-gag laws, "three strikes" laws, tort "reform" laws, tax-cuts-for-the-rich laws, anti-community broadband laws -- need I continue? And Shell's CEO has said that climate change is an actual, real thing that we can and should fight, whereas ALEC says it's not, and with other corporations (now including British Petroleum!) lately cutting ties with ALEC for its climate change denialism, Shell is also feeling the pressure. And ALEC has also been supporting efforts to make home solar power users pay a "sun tax" out of the absurd belief that solar power users are "free riders" on the electric grid. No oil corporation should want to be caught up in any of ALEC's madness -- people are already suspicious enough of oil corporation motives, after all.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support paid family medical leave, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. Most of us get 12 weeks of unpaid family medical leave, thanks to the Family Medical Leave Act, but try not getting paid for three months so you can take care of a newborn baby or a sick parent, or so you can get that surgery you've been putting off. You'll find yourself behind on your bills and with creditors knocking at your door, if you're lucky enough to still have a place to live. But the FAMILY Act (H.R. 1439) would allow you to make up to two-thirds of your salary while you're out taking care of business, and despite the squeals of the WE'RE BROKE!!!!! crowd, a .2% tax (that's one-tenth of two percent, "liberal" media, not "2 percent") would fund the entire thing, and then finally we could be like the 177 nations on Earth that have, for example, paid family leave for new mothers. Really, do you want to let your can-do pride put you in the poorhouse? Why not avail yourself of an insurance program that you pay into?

Action: tax relief for working families, strong dietary guidelines, and shareholder transparency.

Various Congressfolk have lately introduced bills to expand and make permanent the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit, as well as reform the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit. If you don't think about these things when you hear about "tax reform," there's good reason for that -- our "liberal" media seems to agree with Republicans that the only permissible policy prescriptions for tax reform are those that cut corporate taxes and wealthy folks' taxes. But neither of these actually put money back into the pockets of working families, like the EITC, CTC, et al do -- and working families, as you know, are far more likely to put that money back into our economy, whereas wealthy and corporate types tend to hoard their windfalls. Hence NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you tell Congress to focus on tax relief for people who work, rather than people who don't. Yes, the divide is now that great -- the wealthy don't actually work, or even enable work, so much as they redistribute income upward to themselves.

Meanwhile, the FDA's new labeling guidelines would mandate that corporations tell you how much sugar they've added to the product -- and this is no small thing. But the USDA has recommended updating Americans' dietary guidelines, and these guidelines would suggest that added sugar shouldn't comprise more than 10% of our caloric intake. Which might actually be a bit high -- 200 calories (10% of 2,000) is a little more than 13 teaspoons of sugar daily -- but naturally the big food corporations oppose the notion anyway. And if your right-wing uncle says ZOMG TEH GUBMINT CONTROLZ TEH DIETZ!!!!, feel free to tell him he should be more concerned about warrantless wiretapping and NSA data-vacuuming, which are actual injuries our government does us. You may want him to consider, also, that sugar corporations might be behind whatever "source" is telling him that the Obamas want to control what he eats. In the meantime, the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell the USDA to issue the most vigorous Dietary Guidelines possible, especially in re added sugar intake.

Finally, you may remember that Antonio Weiss stood to gain a $21 million bonus from his employer if he was able to get that Treasury Undersecretary job in our government. This and similar developments have, perhaps not surprisingly, made shareholders quite angry, and some of them have petitioned for disclosure of those bonuses once they're made. Bankster CEOs, naturally, oppose such transparency to their shareholders, and why not? It's not like they pay those bonuses out with shareholder money or anything. Oh, wait, yes, they do. It's like being a CEO means never having to be accountable to anyone, even the people who pay you. And it's also like moving from the private sector to our government means never having to be accountable to anyone, even the people who pay you -- those people being taxpayers, meaning you and I. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell three big banking corporations to drop their opposition to shareholder transparency resolutions. What are they afraid of? That people will think banksters only care about money? Sorry, banksters -- all of America already thinks that.

Around the table: community broadband, a basic income, bankster handouts, the "zombie cookie," living wages, and a citizen-no-more's whinefest.

President Obama tells the FCC to pre-empt state laws prohibiting community broadband. Which act will make the right squeal AMURIKAN CAESAR!!!! more than NSA data-vacuuming, invasions without Congressional approval, or warrantless wiretapping have ever done, and thus make me more sympathetic to Mr. Obama's initiative than I otherwise might be. Even if federal law does give the FCC the authority to pre-empt state laws that are, I think, plainly harmful to the community, I'd rather we fought pitched battles at the state and local levels. I don't accept that corporate PR hacks are simply better at fighting than we are, because I read their arguments.

Nathan Schneider at Vice notes that the notion of a "basic income" -- a guaranteed income for all citizens, whether they're working or not -- has captured the imagination of Libertarians as well as leftists. Trouble is, Libertarians would pay for a basic income not by taxing the rich, but by diverting money from Big Gummint programs into the basic income, but giving someone a pile of money to maybe buy health insurance, for example, doesn't replace Medicaid -- for one thing, you're in a pool with some leverage in Medicaid. In short, "(t)here's still no substitute for organizing more power in more communities."

Harold Meyerson explains why Republicans are so quick to push pro-bankster bills. Long story short: sucking up to Wall Street early increases the possibility voters will forget in approximately 20 months' time. Still, given that Wall Street is approximately the least popular sector of the economy, they'd be committing political suicide in a sane and moral society. At least we get to read the phrase "unless the mega-rich are compelled to give back what they’ve taken from their countrymen" in a major newspaper.

ProPublica describes a "zombie cookie," a piece of tracking software that you can't erase from your smartphone or tablet after it's put there. It gets better: like a teenage boy who doesn't understand the meaning of "no," Turn doesn't consider the act of erasing all the cookies on your smartphone or tablet an indication that you really want the cookie gone. Instead, you have to install another cookie to properly erase the first cookie -- and the new cookie doesn't stop tracking you. Got that? And yes, the NSA can look at your info, too.

Two ALEC-affiliated hotel trade associations have filed suit to stop Los Angeles's coming minimum wage for hotel workers. Other big corporate front groups have taken similar actions against rising municipal wage floors all over the country, but their efforts show a dearth of imagination -- they say these wages benefit unions when the workers don't have to join unions to get the wages, and they repeat the word "extreme" over and over again, in a land where no one considers $15.37/hour an "extreme" wage. Most folks would think executive wages are extreme, though. In short, this is typical right-wing projection.

Finally, a somewhat famous investor and bitcoin supporter who renounced his American citizenship because he didn't like paying taxes is having trouble getting a visa to re-enter his former country. Naturally he calls the government officials who won't let him back in "tyrants," but I bet he calls pretty much everyone who disagrees with him a tyrant. Anyway, if government officials are right to fear that Mr. Ver has no intention of going back to St. Kitts once he's done doing whatever he's going to do in America, I presume folks on the right will soon be enraged at the thought of Mr. Ver staying in this country illegally, taking work from good American citizens. Nah, just kidding.

Around the table: featuring a Republican anti-jobs bill and a litany of Republican squealing about President Obama.

Juan Cole instructs us that the attack on Charlie Hebdo was "an attempt to provoke European society into pogroms against French Muslims, at which point al-Qaeda recruitment would suddenly exhibit some successes instead of faltering in the face of lively Beur youth culture." Whether al-Qaeda itself was behind it I couldn't say with certainty, but the results of the attack would certainly benefit their efforts. Note well that when "liberal" media personalities like Chuck Todd won't ask the rich and powerful tough questions on TV out of fear that they won't come on his show again, the end result is that folks who actually have something to say, like Juan Cole, still can't get on TV.

Another day, another hostage situation forced upon the American people by Republicans, as they attach yet another pro-bankster amendment to a must-pass terrorism insurance bill. Sooner or later, simply as a matter of their own survival, Democrats will have to stand up to these hostage situations, and force the "liberal" media to listen to them. I shudder to think that they'd actually prefer Republicans to screw up the country in this manner, under the not-a-sure-shot assumption that they'll benefit on Election Day 2016. They do remember which party the current President belongs to, don't they?

Michael Hiltzik describes why the McConnell/Boehner effort to raise the Affordable Care Act's definition of "full-time" from 30 hours weekly to 40 will actually hurt American workers. Long story short: corporations that were already cutting their workers' hours to 29 just so they wouldn't have to provide health insurance to those workers would now have a much larger pool of workers (including me, and maybe you, too) whose hours they could cut to 39, who would then also no longer have health insurance. Also, the alleged spike in part-time jobs supposedly caused by the ACA simply isn't happening.

As the battle over the Keystone XL comes to a possible end, the battle over a 550-mile natural gas pipeline running through three mid-Atlantic coast states is just beginning. On one side, some familiar players -- Duke Energy, Dominion Resources of Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio frackers -- while on the other, we have all-too-unfamiliar players in the persons of the homeowners presently refusing to let pipeline developers even survey their land, on whose behalf one pro bono lawyer says, "(i)f this were for a hospital or some truly public purpose, we could turn the other cheek, but this is a Fortune 500 company trying to make a profit." Best of luck to the landowners, who would, in a sane and moral society, have plenty of conservative defenders.

Ford Motor Co. sues a third-party auto repair diagnostics corporation, alleging that it violated Ford's copyright on a list of car parts and specifications. I'm stunned that anyone thinks they can copyright a list, which in theory anyone can compile, with minimal creativity. Ford says it included some totally made-up parts and specs in its list, to which I can only say: how post-modern our corporations have become.

Finally, Daily Kos diarist SemDem lists some of the outrageous lies people seem to believe about President Obama -- like that he's "disbanded the Marine Corps," "banned donuts," and "personally funded a Muslim Museum." This, when a lot of the things Mr. Obama has done (invading Libya, Iraq, and Syria without Congressional authorization, continuing warrantless wiretapping, ramping up drone strikes, vacuuming up cell phone data, and that's just what comes to the mind immediately) are bad enough. Democrats pretending to be like Republicans may work for Democrats in the short term, but it doesn't work for us -- if they actually were the liberals Republicans always say they are anyway, the American people wouldn't be served these ever-higher plates of bullshit.

Action: restraining the NSA, war in the Middle East, and executive pay.

Incredibly, the Senate actually plans a vote soon on S. 2685, the USA FREEDOM Act. S. 2685 would amend Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act so the NSA can't just collect all your phone records willy-nilly. S. 2685 would also require law enforcement to produce an actual search term when they're trying to collect massive amounts of records, would create a special advocate to argue on behalf of civil liberties before the FISA court, and would mandate that the NSA report how many folks they're watching without a warrant. That's certainly not everything we would want -- where's the bill outlawing warrantless wiretapping, for example? -- but it's been decades since our government passed a law actually taking away some power of the National Security Agency, so S. 2685's passage would represent progress. Of course, no law of physics prevents you from demanding more progress, so the Electronic Frontier Foundation helps you tell your Senators to enact the most vigorous government spying reforms possible.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration has asked for another $5 billion for its air-strike war in Iraq and Syria, but Congress has not voted, or even debated, on an authorization for the air strikes the Administration has already conducted. And why does the Defense Department need another $5 billion? Perhaps, instead, it can track down some of the $8.5 trillion it can't account for since 1996, or cut spending on weapons systems that either don't work or don't respond to the changing face of war. Hence Just Foreign Policy joins with MoveOn to help you demand that Congress cut off Iraq/Syria war funding until it has voted on a new Authorization to Use Military Force and until the Pentagon can justify its sudden need for more money. Spoiler alert: once Congress starts debating, we'll press them to vote against any new AUMF for Iraq and Syria and stop the bombing. But I'm appalled when Congressfolk yammer on about their love for the Constitution and then neglect their Constitutionally-mandated duty.

Finally, though the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill became law in 2010, the relevant federal agencies have been a little slow writing vigorous rules to implement its reforms. Such is the case with Section 956 of the bill, which requires financial service corporations to disclose executive pay to shareholders so those shareholders can decide if that pay is excessive -- and also prohibits executive compensation arrangements that reward reckless behavior like that we witnessed in 2008. This is the shareholders' money that pays these executives, so what could be the problem with that? That big corporate executives want to keep redistributing wealth upward to themselves, that's what. So Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell our government to finalize vigorous rules enforcing Section 956 of Dodd-Frank. Of course, the best incentive for banksters to pay themselves less is the return of the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income, which would keep banksters from paying themselves like no one else on Earth matters a damn. But short that, we'll take Dodd-Frank's mandates, vigorously enforced.

UPDATE. My apologies -- S. 2685 fell to a filibuster last night, at around 7.30 pm; the cloture vote failed 58-42, meaning, of course, that "only" 58 Senators voted in favor of ending debate and proceeding to a vote on the bill. That fraud, Sen. Rand Paul, joined the filibuster, which also means that Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) outclassed him by voting to actually do something about runaway NSA spying. Anyway, I should have been on top of that development, and I have no excuse for that; I'll do better in the future. I suppose there's no harm in calling your Senators anyway and telling them you still support S. 2685 -- just because they want to be done with government spying doesn't mean we're done with government spying.

Around the table: starring lazy Republicans and lazy lit-crits.

Allie Yee at the Institute for Southern Studies asks, "How Will Newcomers Affect Tight Senate Races in the South?" Judging by the chart, the short answer would be that newcomers give the Democratic incumbent a better chance in North Carolina (and, to a lesser extent, in Georgia) than in Arkansas or Louisiana -- but that's if we accept that emigration from the West Coast and the Northeast automatically means a liberal influx, which would fit existing patterns in Virginia and Florida but which would not, alone, establish a causal relationship. Arizona enjoys a lot of emigration from the West Coast and the Northeast, too, but it didn't put Richard Carmona over the top in the 2012 U.S. Senate race.

Ho hum, Crossroads GPS-affiliated (and thus Karl Rove-affiliated) group attacks Kentucky Senate Democratic candidate for a stance on immigration that Crossroads GPS itself supported in ads just a year earlier. Perhaps Crossroads will say they're not really responsible for what the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition does, but you and I typically don't tell other people to do things we don't want them to do. Hypocrisy is all in a day's work for folks like Karl Rove, for whom winning is all that matters, good ideas or good policy be damned.

Kate Aronoff dispatches a couple of left-wing critics who claim that teen Dystopian novels like The Hunger Games "promote capitalism." Positing the existence of a society so screwed up that it needs a Katniss Everdeen to "save" it, according to these critics, amounts to little more than "propaganda for the ethos of individualism," which is the "the central ideology of consumer capitalism." And here you thought Ms. Everdeen inspired others to act! Anyway, it's a damn long walk from Dystopia to consumer-capitalism, particularly when most of the folks you meet in that Dystopia don't have a pot to piss in. Some of our liberal brethren need to leave their ivory towers and breathe real-people air.

House Speaker John Boehner (E-OH) suggests to a right-wing audience that the unemployed would "rather just sit around." He helpfully adds that this idea has been "born" "out of the economy over the last couple years," even though his kind have been whining about imaginary lazy people for much, much longer than that. Anyway, we demolished this myth here just last week -- Ms. Clawson helpfully adds that we still have more than two unemployed folks for every job opening. But the facts find John Boehner's mind an impenetrable fortress.

Finally, President Obama announces 14 Executive Orders that aim to promote solar power and reduce carbon emissions. Those who would squeal AMURKIAN CAESAR!!!!! are welcome to point out a) how this is more egregious than the NSA spying and warrantless wiretapping they largely ignored when Mr. Bush did it and b) exactly where Mr. Obama has abused his authority in these orders -- I can't imagine, for example, that he has to run to Congress to get more permission to promote energy efficiency in HUD projects. They are also welcome to advocate for expanded Congressional involvement when a President Scott Walker issues Executive Orders in the face of a Democratic Congress.

Around the table: more fallout from the *Hobby Lobby* ruling and our ongoing Republican hostage crisis.

Arkansas U.S. Senate candidate Tom Cotton (R), discussing the Hobby Lobby ruling, says his Democratic opponent, Sen. Mark Pryor, "thinks that faith is something that only happens on Sunday mornings." That'll surprise most Arkansans, who are well-acquainted with Mr. Pryor's demonstrated religiosity, on repeated display in Bill Maher's film Religulous, for example. Mr. Cotton hasn't apologized, but now says Mr. Pryor "is a man of faith and practices it with commendable openness." C'mon, Mr. Cotton, which is it?

Speaking of having and practicing faith, certain UUA and UUC pastors have protested the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby ruling by handing out condoms in front of Illinois-area Hobby Lobby stores. But I suspect it won't be many more Roberts Court decisions before such actions don't enjoy First Amendment protections anymore, but instead become terrorist acts toward a corporate "person" enjoying the "inalienable" right to make profits.

Obama advisor contends that the Republican lawsuit against the President's Executive orders will backfire against them, as it will "remind() the American people that unlike congressional Republicans, he is actually doing something to help them." But not as long as the "liberal" media treat Mr. Obama's minimum-wage and equal-pay orders the way they should have treated Mr. Bush's unlawful warrantless-wiretapping scheme.

Another day, another prominent Republican politician caught on video pounding the myth that 47% of Americans are freeloaders. These "freeloaders" pay payroll taxes, state income taxes, and sales taxes, and their number includes a lot of seniors who now collect the benefits they worked for and paid into all their lives, but why are we listening to Bob Beauprez, anyway? He couldn't get elected Governor in 2006, either, and was one of the few enthusiastic supporters Mr. Bush ever had for his failed Social Security-privatization plan. In short, the man is (as Mario Cuomo might say) a walnut in the batter of eternity.

Finally, President Obama tells Marketplace that he thinks that "over time the Republican Party will move back to the center, mainly because if they don't, they'll never win the presidency again." Ah, no: the Republican Party could continue to move rightward, with hapless Democrats rushing after them to the new "center" -- or they could simply pretend to be centrists, which worked for George W. Bush in 2000, and could easily work again for Scott Walker in 2016 (as, hate to pile on, it already worked for Scott Walker in 2010!). How could Mr. Obama be blind to these two possibilities -- particularly after fighting these very same Republicans tooth-and-nail for six-plus years?

Around the table: just another Manic Monday for the Supreme Court! And other stories.

One hand gives, the other takes away: Supreme Court rules that "closely-held" corporations can opt out of the Obama Administration's mandate that they cover birth control for their employees. In a closely-held corporation, five folks or fewer hold over half the stock -- perhaps we'll see a lot of consolidation of stock in right-wing corporations soon! -- and I suppose being "closely-held" would make a corporation's "views" easier to ascertain, if I thought corporations were people. But corporations are not people. And while Hobby Lobby's employees are likely quite fine with how things turned out, I still insist that people have religious beliefs, not corporations -- and that bosses shouldn't have more rights than employees do, as the Court has essentially mandated.

That wasn't all for the Supreme Court's Manic Monday: they also ruled that unions can't compel Illinois home health-care workers to pay dues if they don't want to, though they declined to take up the larger point of whether unions can compel any of their workers to pay dues. The Court ruled, essentially, that the workers in question weren't really public employees and thus didn't really have to pay dues. But I'm sure the Court's just waiting for the right case to come along so they can put the dagger in the union's heart.

Remember telling the Obama Administration to make health insurance corporation's proposed rate hikes public before they go into effect? Well, apparently the Department of Health and Human Services just made last year's rate hikes public. They have five more months before the next open enrollment for the federal health exchanges, but you have to wonder if they're innovating on the definition of "before."

Jeff Bryant at Campaign for America's Future writes a lengthy op-ed criticizing our federal government for continuing to shovel money at charter schools without asking them to do a good job educating students. Why folks think it's moral to shovel money at charter schools and then specifically exempt them from regulations that would actually make sure kids get an education is beyond me. I mean, I know the "parent power" crowd is corrupt, but even folks paying less attention should know better.

Much has been said about Hillary Clinton's recent comments about her finances, but Citizens for Tax Justice instructs us that the real story about her remarks is that it's become painfully easy to avoid the Estate Tax. Did you know you could put your home into a Qualified Personal Residence Trust and pay fewer taxes on it when you die? Neither did I, because I'm not spending all of my time figuring out how to cheat our government. Since, you know, that would be cheating us.

Finally, when I heard that Karl Rove called President Obama an "imperial President" and said he was "George III," my initial reaction was, "well, check out the cojones on this guy." Then I considered his argument and, well, check out the cojones on this guy. Yep, this is about Mr. Boehner's lawsuit against Mr. Obama's Executive orders, but remember that Mr. Rove had nothing to say when Mr. Bush wiretapped Americans without a warrant, a far more lawless act than any of the Executive orders Mr. Rove cites. Why does any news outlet talk to Karl Rove again -- particularly Fox News, the location of Mr. Rove's election night tantrum?

Around the table: IZ FRANK LUCAS TEH ROBOTZ ITZ A SERIUZ KWESTCHUN!!!!! and other follies.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner says he'll sue President Obama over the latter's Executive Orders. Mr. Obama has issued fewer Executive orders than 11 of the last 12 Presidents, yet Mr. Boehner will charge ahead with a frivolous lawsuit. And I have not heard anyone in the "liberal" media say exactly which of Mr. Obama's Executive orders does not derive its authority from the laws Congress has passed -- out of stupidity or laziness, I couldn't care less -- nor have I heard anyone in the "liberal" media note that Mr. Boehner had absolutely nothing to say when Bush the Lesser wiretapped American citizens' phone calls without a warrant, which was worse than an Executive order in that it was an unlawful Executive branch power grab.

Maine Governor Paul LePage (R), in an apparent attempt to explain why he thinks Maine's economy is doing much better than the Bureau of Economic Analysis says it is, calls Social Security and Medicare "welfare, pure and simple." Of course he's wrong -- people pay into Social Security and Medicare all their lives, so they don't actually "get" it for free; in fact, a better way of putting it would be that they earn it. And he needs to get over saying "liberal" like it's a bad thing. I'm a liberal, and I don't say "conservative" like it's a bad thing -- I only say "right-winger" and "reactionary" like they're bad things, and only because they are.

The Guardian's Heidi Moore reports that our elites still don't seem to understand why ordinary Americans like ourselves think the stock market is a rigged game. You'll also learn that the New York Stock Exchange, in yet another wealth-redistribution-upward scheme, has actually begun to collect fees for a kind of fast lane that certain investors can use to trade even faster. I wonder if any of the big corporations complaining pitching a fit about that will see a certain parallel with our attempts to preserve net neutrality. I kid, of course. My only criticism: that the article doesn't mention the benefits of a financial speculation tax.

Tesco stores in London actually put spikes in front of their shop windows -- nominally to discourage "antisocial behavior," but actually to discourage homeless folks from sleeping there -- but has removed them after a public outcry. Oh, and after the London Black Revolutionaries cemented over the spikes. Let the record show that Tesco has been outclassed in the area of homeless relations by the state of Utah.

Rep. Frank Lucas's challenger in the Oklahoma's 3rd District Republican House primary claims Mr. Lucas is in fact dead and has been replaced by a body double, and thus claims he (the putatively living candidate, that is) should get all of Mr. Lucas's primary votes. Setting aside the challenger's quite possibly unprecedented ineptitude at the art of persuasion, Mr. Lucas did respond that he's never been accused of "being a robot" before -- but his challenger didn't say anything specifically about Mr. Lucas being a robot. Did Mr. Lucas say too much?

Finally, British researchers appear to have made a major breakthrough in manufacturing solar panels. Long story short: their panels would use magnesium chloride, commonly found in sea water, rather than cadmium chloride, which is considerably more toxic and tougher to make. If costs keep dropping, maybe not even a Koch brothers-style sun tax can stop solar power from proliferating.

Action: repealing the AUMF, getting Frankenfood out of WalMart, and better nutrition labeling.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you tell your House Rep to repeal the post-9.11 Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF. Both Bush and Obama Administrations have used the AUMF -- intended to give the President the ability to go after those who attacked us on 9.11 -- to justify new wars, warrantless wiretapping, drone strikes in countries with whom we're not currently at war, and indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay. But the Schiff Amendment to the last Defense Authorization bill fell a mere 27 votes short of passage; that amendment would have repealed the AUMF. It could be for the best that the amendment failed -- how disheartening would it have been to see the amendment pass the House and maybe even pass the Senate but then see the amendment get "conferenced out" just because Mr. Obama threatened a veto? And besides, we're better off putting the matter directly to Congress and getting their answers through their votes -- and we're also better off putting the matter directly to Mr. Obama.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club helps you tell WalMart not to sell unlabeled, genetically-modified seafood. The FDA has received almost two million comments protesting their approval of genetically-modified salmon, but they've only been a moderately more stalwart defendant of the public good since Mr. Obama took over from Mr. Bush, which is really saying something. Still, if you can't get government to do its job, you can get big grocers to do theirs -- and Target, Safety, Kroger, and Whole Foods have already committed to keeping the Frankensalmon out of their stores. But America's biggest grocer, WalMart (and who'd have thought we'd ever have said that twenty years ago?), has not committed either way, and that's not to say they'll automatically do the wrong thing just because they've wreaked so much destruction on our economy. Certainly they're no less susceptible to the Awesome Power of Bad PR than anyone else. No, really: huge amounts of money only insulate you so much from bad PR, and frankly I think corporations generally overreact to bad PR, which is all the better for us.

Finally, the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell the FDA to mandate that food corporations include information about added sugar in their food labels, if you haven't done so already. As you may recall, the FDA hasn't updated food labeling requirements in decades, but its current proposal does a lot of things right, and mandating "added sugar" information is one of them. Currently labels tell you how much sugar is in your food, but not how much sugar got added to the food, and that's a big deal -- folks are far too used to colas that have three times the sugar they need to have in order to taste good, and corporations can hide added sugars in fruit- and milk-based drinks more easily, since both fruit and milk already have sugar in them naturally. Thankfully, the FDA's proposal includes making corporations note added sugars in food (as well as noting amounts of Vitamin D and potassium and basing calorie counts on more realistic serving sizes), but the OBAMAZ TELLZ TEH PEEPULZ WHATZ TO EATZ!!!! crowd will be their usual emptiest-wagon-makes-the-loudest-noise selves, so the FDA will need all the support they can get.

Around the table: a near-truth about the Tea Party, a disappointed mentor, a sad comment on journalistic cowardice, and other items.

House Speaker John Boehner says "there is not that much, not that big a difference between what you call the tea party and your average conservative Republican." Strike the word "conservative" from that statement and I'd totally agree -- the "liberal" media has always overplayed the ideological differences between teabaggers and other Republicans, but we'd be better off describing both groups as "reactionary" rather than "conservative."

Former Republican U.S. Senator Marlow Cook, who first hired Mitch McConnell as a legislative aide, now says Mr. McConnell is "not looking out for his own constituency" by opposing the Affordable Care Act (which has been, after all, wildly effective in Kentucky thanks to the state health exchange, Kynect). Mr. Cook -- who served one term, helping shepherd the Equal Rights Amendment through the Senate, before losing to Wendell Ford in the 1974 anti-Watergate wave -- also says he doesn't understand Mr. McConnell's shift to the right. I'd say money explains it, but I presume Mr. Cook is too polite to say so.

David Sirota asks, "Is Journalism Losing Its Nerve?" Noting that less than six in ten journalists think it's OK to publish "confidential business or government documents without authorization" (n.b. the question does not ask about breaking the law), versus nine of ten just 20 years ago, he concludes they are. Which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's ever read a journalism textbook and learned how much of your job is rewriting PR releases. As with Mitch McConnell's rightward slide, of course, it's also about the money -- if corporations (and the politicians they buy) threaten you or co-opt you, you're much less likely to break the next Pentagon Papers or warrantless wiretapping story.

And another one gone, and another one gone: Pennslvania Middle District Court Judge John E. Jones III strikes down Pennsylvania's gay marriage ban. You may recall Judge Jones as the same judge who struck down the Dover Area School District's "intelligent design" curriculum in 2005. And what dirty hippie flag-burning baby-killing terrorist-loving welfare-handout-grabbing President put him on the federal bench? Hint: Mr. Jones received his appointment in 2002.

Surprise, surprise: A&E's show Duck Dynasty, a show during which the characters refer to themselves as "rednecks" approximately once per breath, is a big recipient of Louisiana state subsidies. I already don't think Phil Robertson's entitled to a high-profile TV job despite spewing his racist and heterosexist filth, but I certainly don't think the good folks of Louisiana should subsidize all of that. (As an aside: I'm old enough to remember when A&E broadcast highbrow stuff.)

Finally, the Richmond, VA Homeschool Prom kicks a 17-year-old girl because the fathers in attendance felt her dress and her dancing was leading the boys to "impure thoughts." I'm no great fan of the increasing sexualization of American culture, but I'm far less a fan of folks blaming it all on women, particularly a girl who actually followed the rules the adults laid down (i.e., the "fingertip" dress-length requirement). I mean, don't these idiots know that teenage boys don't need to be led to impure thoughts?

Action: restoring the Voting Rights Act, and ending dragnet government surveillance.

As we noted late last week, H.R. 3899/S. 1945, the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014, would amend the Voting Rights Act so that our government can still keep states and municipalities from placing undue burdens on good folks' right to vote -- a duty circumscribed by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder last year. The Voting Rights Amendment Act answers the Court's objection to Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (long story short, that it used outdated criteria to deny states the right to change their own laws) by setting new criteria that could apply to any state, and not just the nine Southern states originally covered under Section 4. Ari Berman summarizes the bill's changes here; the main change is that states and municipalities which have broken federal election law five times in the past 15 years would be covered under Section 4, and the bill also makes legal challenges under Section 3 easier. Both Common Cause and People for the American Way help you support the Voting Rights Amendment Act.

Meanwhile, President Obama gave yet another well-received speech last Friday, this one about proposed changes to the NSA's dragnet surveillance program, and his proposals contain some concessions to the American people, which I suppose is welcome after eight years of Mr. Bush claiming unconstitutional Executive surveillance powers and Mr. Obama expanding them. But now is not the time to accept half-measures -- Mr. Obama did not say, at any point, that he'd end the NSA practice of collecting the phone metadata of all citizens, whether they're suspected of a crime or not. And H.R. 3361/S. 1599, the USA FREEDOM Act, would actually prohibit the NSA from collecting phone data from Americans except under certain circumstances (like, you know, getting a warrant), and would roll back National Security Letter authority to its pre-PATRIOT Act state, among other absolutely necessary checks on Executive power. Thus the ACLU helps you tell your Reps and Senators to end the NSA's data-vacuuming program.

Uh oh: Bradley Manning's military judge will allow the prosecution to try to convict Mr. Manning of "aiding the enemy." It's not outlandish to fear that, in time, any government will attempt to convict anyone of exercising free speech rights because of the "aid" it might provide to some "enemy." Against whom, exactly, did Congress declare war?

You've heard about the "advice" Visa and McDonald's gave to McDonald's workers about how to budget? The "advice" that blithely assumed that those workers would get a second job and not pay for healthcare or heat? Well, some people tried that, and came up with a "daily spending money goal" in the negative numbers. As we all know, only the big banks can spend negative amounts of money.

FEMA uses outdated data to encourage (or, oftentimes, require) homeowners to buy flood insurance -- which costs homeowners a lot of time and money to contest. I presume many of them don't contest it because buying flood insurance is easier, which would indicate the kind of corruption we have governments to fix, not perpetuate. Perhaps not coincidentally, FEMA's floodmap funding has been cut in half since 2010.

Citizens for Tax Justice tells us that right-wingers are wrong to want to cut the IRS budget (further). Going after the IRS always seems popular -- until you remind people that cutting the IRS means less money for finding tax cheats, who are, themselves, not as popular as the used to be.

The New York Times reports on the "bipartisan" backlash against domestic surveillance. While I recognize that many of my friends on the right oppose the scope of domestic surveillance as I do, and that many of them also opposed Mr. Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, I don't remember the "liberal" media reporting the backlash against Mr. Bush's program as "bipartisan," despite then-Republican Sen. Arlen Specter being, at several points, the Senate's main representative of the backlash.