Thieves in the Temple.

Action: fracking in New Brunswick, and antibiotic abuse everywhere.

Texas fracking company Southwestern Energy wants to drill for natural gas in the indigenous lands of the Mi'kmaq people of New Brunswick, Canada -- but the Mi'kmaq oppose it, and had been protesting peacefully (with allies) for some time, until the police raided the protest site with pepper spray and rubber bullets. The provincial government argues that we need to do this in order to create jobs as if there's only one way to create jobs, but the Canadian people by and large oppose fracking -- two-thirds of Canadians in the Atlantic region, in fact, which suggests that the provincial government of New Brunswick hasn't listened to its people very well. You know, in addition to ignoring the dangers to air, water, and climate that fracking presents. Hence Roots Action helps you tell Southwestern Energy and the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C. to get the frackers out of New Brunswick.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our government to ban antibiotic abuse, then Consumers Union still helps you do that. Warning: you'll be addressing HHS Secretary Sebelius and USDA Secretary Vilsack, and Mr. Vilsack, at least, has proven a formidable lackey of the factory farm industry that smothers its animals in antibiotics so they can get fatter and better withstand the miserable life of tiny factory farm pens. Ms. Sebelius may listen a little better on the action alert's other demand -- that we monitor doctors and hospitals who overprescribe antibiotics. But you know and I know that when four out of five antibiotics go to healthy farm animals, the bacteria they're targeting gets stronger and stronger, and then you have superbugs like MRSA, which antibiotics can't even kill. It's easy to grasp, I know -- easy for everyone but our government officials and their corporate paymasters. Let's help them understand, then.

Action: featuring, for once, three bills we can support.

Rep. Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Sen. Leahy (D-VT) have introduced the USA FREEDOM Act (no bill numbers or entries on thomas.loc.gov as of yet), and yes it features an unwieldy title shoehorned into an unlikely acronym, but it shares little else with the USA PATRIOT Act. The bill would not only curb our government's (claimed) powers to vaccum up all the phone records it can, but would also amend the nefarious FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to prevent our government from searching through all that data whenever it likes. And the USA FREEDOM Act would create a privacy advocate within the FISA Court, who would have standing to argue privacy concerns on the public's behalf before the court. Yes, we'd like the bill to do more, but this is a good start. Both Free Press and the ACLU help you support the USA FREEDOM Act. I'm interested to see what all the ZOMG TERRORISM!!!! types have to say about it. Wait, no, I'm not.

Meanwhile, H.R. 1975/S. 942, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, would keep employers from discriminating against their pregnant workers. Specifically, the bill would force employers to make "reasonable accommodations" for their pregnant workers on the job, prevent employers from denying jobs to pregnant women out of a desire not to make such accommodations, ensure that employers don't force workers to accept unreasonable workplace accommodations, and keep employers from forcing pregnant workers to go out on leave in a misguided quest to avoid making reasonable accommodations. And by "reasonable accommodations" I'm talking letting pregnant women lift less or sit down while cashiering. Do these take food out of anyone's damn mouth? Of course not. Both the ACLU and the National Women's Law Center help you support the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

Finally, Senate Majority Leader Reid plans to bring up ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, this fall. He made that promise in 2010, too, so I'm a little wary of hearing it, but lo and behold thomas.loc.gov informs us that ENDA (H.R. 1755/S. 815) has made it to the Senate legislative calendar. ENDA even has 55 co-sponsors at the moment, including two Republicans. The bill still prohibits employers from discriminating against gays just because they're gay -- which protections we need at the federal level because employers can still fire someone just for being gay in 29 states -- and the bill still specifically addresses pretty much all of the histrionic objections a right-winger could invent, because it still includes appropriate exemptions for religious organization, still won't prevent employers from enforcing dress codes, and still doesn't create affirmative action programs for gays. Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to support ENDA.

Action: Shopping While Black, plus climate change, Social Security, and Medicare.

Back in April, a 19-year-old Black college student bought a $350 designer belt at Barneys New York. And while I'd never buy such a thing, I also wouldn't swarm on him after he bought the belt, cuff him, arrest him, lock him up, and ask him where he got his money, like the NYPD did. It looks an awful lot like the NYPD just gets suspicious when Black folks buy something expensive, and it also looks an awful lot like Barneys gets antsy whenever Black folks shop there. And now, as we learn that the NYPD has made a disproportionate number of arrests outside of Barneys, others have stepped forward to tell tales of NYPD harassment for Shopping While Black. Hence Color of Change helps you demand that the NYPD fully investigate arrests made outside of Barneys, and disclose how many people of color get arrested and charged, as well as Barneys' role in the arrests. Remember that this is the same NYPD that stops-and-frisks Blacks and Hispanics at a rate well above Black and Hispanic crime rates.

Meanwhile, Public Citizen helps you tell the EPA to enact vigorous limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants. The EPA has already issued standards for new power plants, but by the middle of next year they'll propose standards for the power plants we've already got. And the corporations that own and run those power plants stand at the ready to tell us that our fossil fuel activities don't exacerbate climate change (a statement endorsed by approximately zero percent of the world's scientists), and, when that doesn't work, they'll tell us that REGULASHUNZ KILLZ TEH JOBZ!!!!, which also isn't true, since regulations require workers who can refit the plants to comply with them, and those workers will have, er, jobs doing that work. But Public Citizen reminds us that climate change cuts a wide swatch of damage: it hikes health care costs, hurts family farms, and even raises the cost of maintaining our infrastructure. That's besides, you know, eventually making the planet unlivable for most of us.

Finally, you've petitioned Sen. Durbin (D?-IL) about his clumsy statement on Fox News Sunday that Democrats will "have" to give on entitlements -- meaning any "grand bargain" with Republicans would have to include Social Security and Medicare cuts. Now CREDO helps you call Mr. Durbin and tell him to stop using Social Security and Medicare as bargaining chips -- or, as he might call them, grand bargaining chips. I bet Mr. Durbin isn't expecting people to call him in addition to writing him, so this might be a good opportunity to send a powerful message. And sure, I've also thought Mr. Durbin isn't really serious about his offer -- perhaps he thinks he can say whatever he thinks our elites want to hear, because Republicans are too stupid to take the cuts. But aren't we sick of politicians who don't say what they mean or mean what they say? And don't Democrats understand that when they "offer" up these cuts, Republicans hang it around their neck on Election Day?

Action: better wages for fast-food workers, and protecting bees from lethal pesticides.

Hard to believe, but McDonald's just bought a $35 million corporate jet, which also costs $2,400 an hour to operate. This, after the PR strafing they've been taking over paying their workers so little they need public assistance (i.e., from you and your taxes) to get by! This, after giving them budgeting "advice" like "get another job"! I know I'll hear from folks who say big corporations need big corporate jets, but they should already know how I feel about the very existence of big corporations in the first place. And, frankly, if they paid their workers fairly, they wouldn't need the biggest and baddest corporate jet to impress the biggest and baddest corporate jerks, because the workers would have their backs and the world would be a more civilized place. Daily Kos helps you tell McDonald's to stop buying these big toys until they pay their workers fairly.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the EPA to ban the pesticides that have contributed heavily to bee colony collapse, the Sierra Club still helps you do that. Bees have been dying off en masse all over the planet for several years now, and studies have found that neonicotinoid pesticides (or "neonics") have messed with bees' abilities to find their hive and to feed. And the European Union has suspended the use of neonics across the continent -- but (stop me if you've heard this one before) big corporations have thus far managed to persuade the EPA to let them keep using neonics. And on that note: H.R. 2692, the Save America's Pollinators Act of 2013, would make the EPA suspend neonic use on our lands until and unless the EPA can determine they're safe to use; the People's Email Network helps you tell your Congressfolk to support it. After all, if the EPA won't act, Congress must act -- and vice versa.

Around the table: starring the overpaid and their staunchest defenders.

Another day, another cable news punditoid sticking up for J.P. Morgan Chase as, somehow, a "victim" of Big Bad Gummint. And surprise! Said cable news punditoid, CNN's Erin Barnett, used to be a financial analyst for Goldman Sachs and a Vice President at Citigroup -- not that such experience automatically corrupts how you think, but our cable news elites sure do seem to like that kind of experience for some reason.

Citizens for Tax Justice finds Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker giving a projected $100 million budget surplus over two years to help fund local school districts -- but the aid will be permanent, even if the surplus won't be, and the aid mandates property tax cuts that most folks won't even feel. That's because the tax cuts go across the board -- big corporations get them and folks with vacation homes will get them just as much as folks who are lucky enough to own one home. That Scott Walker sure is a clever servant of corporate power.

German Bishop spends $40 million on renovating his personal residence, then gets suspended by the Vatican. Clearly Mr. Tebartz-van Elst didn't get any of the many memos Pope Francis has been leaving for Christianity lately. What's worse: German taxpayers paid for all of that. No, really -- Germans have been paying taxes to support their churches since the Middle Ages. And that is one more reason we separate church and state in America!

David Sirota instructs us further about the myth that higher state income taxes cause millionaires to flee. He cites the Princeton study in New Jersey from the middle of the last decade, of course, but also similar findings from California. And, of course, he debunks the "finding" that millionaires "fled" New York state from 2007 to 2009 -- just like in Oregon and Maryland, the bad economy didn't cause millionaires to "flee," but merely caused them to become not-millionaires. Jesus Mary and Joseph I'd like to live in a world where we're not constantly playing whack-a-mole with stupid arguments.

CBS News reports on surgeons who own their own medical device corporations -- and who may well be performing more surgeries, using these devices, than they should. Some say such corporations should be abolished; I'm more inclined toward regulating them, as Mr. Steinmann would, but of course my ideal regulatory scheme wouldn't be voluntary.

Penny rants: concerning gay rights and health care.

Holy crap does Michigan Governor Rick Snyder ever sidestep a question about whether firing someone because they're gay is discrimination -- three times, and I'm not counting "that's not a hypothetical" and "you're not going to lead" as two more only because they don't actually end with a question mark. Worse than that, though, is the House Speaker's hack telling us that "(n)o one has yet come up with a good answer on how to balance personal liberty with religious freedom." "No one"? I sure hope he means "no one" in the Michigan state legislature, because the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act has been a "good answer" for over a decade now (of course, Congress still needs to pass it). More likely, though, I think he means that the only answer he'll accept as a "good answer" is the one that allows religious bigots to enforce their bigotry on everyone else. I'm pretty sure that's their definition of a "balance" between "personal liberty" and "religious freedom," anyway.

Meanwhile, Mike Konczal asks if the disastrous-so-far rollout of healthcare.gov presents "a problem for liberalism" -- does it "discredit the core goals of a liberal project"? Short answer: no. And not merely because this is a right-wing health care plan put forth by a Democrat: just because a government does something incompetently doesn't mean a government should never do anything, and anyone who thinks so has blocked out the entire Bush Administration, which usually went out of its way to do nothing and usually did worse than nothing. Philosophically, we should always demand that our government do things right, whether we're liberals or conservatives, and certainly no liberal should feel compelled to defend incompetence because it comes from a Democrat. We might well conclude (as Mr. Konczal does) that the ACA is rolling out so badly because it's not liberal enough -- Medicare-for-all wouldn't have these problems, after all.

Action: protecting investors, small farmers, and seniors.

Who else adds forced arbitration clauses and class-action bans to their contracts? Stockbrokers and investment advisors, that's who. Imagine having a dispute with the firm handling your money and not being able to take them to court -- and instead, having to go to some arbitrator, paid by that firm, and how do you think that works out most of the time? Imagine, also, being banned from coming together with fellow investors who may also be victims of fraudulent or deceptive practices. When did this stop being America? Why must this be a land where corporations can steal your hard-earned money and never face accountability for their actions? Thankfully, H.R. 2998, the Investor Choice Act, would prohibit investment firms from forcing investors into arbitration agreements, and would explicitly ensure that investors can pursue a case in court if they so choose, even after a dispute begins. Like how the bill's sponsor -- Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), author of many worthwhile bills since he entered Congress in 2006 -- puts the word "choice" in the bill? Like how the word "choice" refers, for once, to an actual choice actual investors deserve? Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Investor Choice Act.

Meanwhile, the FDA is writing food safety rules as mandated by the Food Safety and Modernization Act (finally passed by Congress in 2010, after a long delay caused by Sen. Coburn for which I still haven't forgiven him), but they're prepared to write a rule that actually hurts small farmers: they're prepared to mandate that all farmers undergo a "Hazard Analysis and Risk-based Preventive Control plan" that could cost $20,000, and trust me, your average local organic farmer doesn't have that money just lying around. Of course the big agricultural corporations do have that money lying around, so they can undergo such testing. Perhaps you're saying: you're against a regulation that would ensure food safety? No, I'm not -- because the FDA's proposal wouldn't ensure food safety: your major food recalls over the last few years haven't come from small or local or organic farmers, but big industrial farms. If the FDA pushes this rule through, they'll slam the little guy while letting the big guy get bigger. It's almost like that's the idea! But the FDA still has to take public comments on its proposal, so the Organic Consumers Association helps you tell the FDA to level the food safety playing field for small farmers.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our President and our Congress not to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, then Keystone Progress provides one more. Sadly, it isn't just Dick Durbin who's talking about giving in to Republicans -- Virginia Sen. Mark Warner has been on the idiot box rather frequently lately, talking about how Democrats simply have to give some on entitlements. Well, we're "entitled" to Social Security and Medicare, sir, because we worked for it, we fought for it, and we paid into it -- in short, because we earned it. Now he was doing the same song and dance during the last Congress, and he was wrong then -- turns out Democrats don't have to give in on Social Security and Medicare. Turns out, oddly enough, that not "giving in" on Social Security and Medicare is a fairly popular strategy that actually makes voters like Democrats more. No, not being Republicans isn't enough to make people like Democrats -- Democrats have to do something. (Remember, as always, that we could help solve "entitlement" "problems" by passing the Harkin/Begich bills that would strengthen Social Security, and by letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices.)

Action: protecting Social Security and Medicare, and keeping toxic chemicals out of household products.

There he goes again: Richard Durbin of Illinois, the number two Democrat in the U.S. Senate, told Fox News Sunday that he'd support Social Security and Medicare cuts in a "grand bargain" with Republicans. Anybody remember any point in recent years when Republicans have proven they can be bargained with? Anyone? CREDO helps you tell Sen. Durbin not to use Social Security and Medicare as a bargaining chip in "negotiations" with Republicans. I hate to sound like a broken record -- no, wait, I don't hate to sound like a broken record, as long as nominally Democratic politicians sound like a broken record when they say ZOMG SOSHUL SECURITEEZ MEDICAREZ BANKRUPT AMERIKAZ!!!! -- but the Harkin/Begich bills in the Senate would increase Social Security benefits and revenues, and that allowing Medicare to negotiate its own drug prices would reduce Medicare costs without reducing benefits. If enough of us speak out, they'll have to listen -- or they'll at least have to make bigger fools of themselves explaining why they can't do our will, which also works to our advantage in the long run.

Meanwhile, Breast Cancer Action helps you tell your Senators to keep toxic, carcinogenic chemicals out of household products. Specifically, you'll advocate for a robust overhaul to the Toxic Substance Control Act of 1976, and you'll also advocate for making corporations ensure their products are safe before they hit the market, which sounds an awful lot like common sense, doesn't it? And 1976 was (gulp!) 37 years ago, and as you no doubt know, a lot has happened since then -- now some 80,000 chemical products find their way into our bottles and our packages and our cleaners and our toys and our furniture, and how many of them have been properly tested? Around 200. That ain't good. All the right-wing has to offer in defense of doing nothing are nostrums like REGULASHUNZ KILLZ THA JOBS!!!! Just remember -- aside from the fact that regulations don't kill jobs, and that no right-winger ever explains exactly how regulations kill jobs -- that if too many people get cancer, there'll be no one to do all the work our corporate chieftains want us to do. After all, the free market comes at a cost!

Around the table: financial service reform leaps ahead of health care reform, and other stories.

The federal health care exchanges may not be doing so well (though the state exchanges seem to be doing rather better), but Mike Konczal informs us that the derivative exchanges mandated by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law of 2010 are actually going quite swimmingly, bringing transparency to the kinds of derivatives that crashed the economy in 2008 because regulators weren't watching them very closely. They're even regulating foreign derivatives transactions, a policy for which we've advocated here. It's a shame Mr. Obama will never be able to sell the phrase "swap execution facility" as well as his opponents have sold "Obamacare."

Weren't we just saying that maybe healthcare.gov shouldn't have outsourced its building to private corporations? Well, here comes Nation of Change's Paul Buchheit, giving us "Six Reasons Why" "Public Beats Private." For-real for-real, he's got more than six -- this is a pretty comprehensive list, if also a bit scattershot. Still, I bet you didn't know the USPS's 2-day price is actually $14 cheaper than FedEx's, did you? And pay attention to reason #5, "The Private Sector Has Incentive to Fail, or No Incentive at All," which won't surprise anyone who remembers all those banksters getting bonuses for no good reason.

CNN poll finds that more than half of Americans think it's a "bad thing" that Republicans control the House, and almost two-thirds want to replace John Boehner as Speaker. But before we break open the champagne bottles, we should remember that midterms are still over a year away, and a lot can happen between now and then, as Charlie Cook's analysis reminds us. Long story short: a lot has to happen before Democrats can retake the House in 2014 -- although now just about all of it is possible.

Kelly Phillips Erb at Forbes reminds us that giving away your Social Security number is a) a bad idea and b) frequently unnecessary anyway. Read the whole thing, and remember that a little assertiveness will help you on your way to keeping identity thieves away from your personal information.

Finally, George Washington University reveals that, despite its oft-stated commitment to "need-blind" admissions, it's actually favored wealthier students in the admissions process. And THAT! IS THE MOST! SURPRISING! THING! I! HAVE EVER! HEARD!

Action: bankster settlements and debt ceilings.

Over the weekend, we learned that J.P. Morgan Chase has tentatively agreed to pay $13 billion in fines to settle mortgage lending abuse cases with the Department of Justice -- and that settlement won't allow it to escape criminal prosecution over at least some of their alleged wrongdoings. So yay Justice Department! But note well that J.P. Morgan Chase might actually get to deduct this "loss" from their taxes, such that the taxpayers -- that's you and I, dear reader -- will be on the hook for $4.5 billion of that. I know, I know, $13 billion minus $4.5 billion is still $8.5 billion, but why should we tolerate J.P. Morgan Chase getting a $4.5 billion handout for doing wrong? Fortunately, we don't have to tolerate it: the Justice Department can forbid them from deducting the penalties from their taxes, as part of the settlement. So USPIRG helps you tell the Justice Department not to let J.P. Morgan Chase deduct its penalties from its income at tax time.

Meanwhile, if you're as sick of Republican hostage-taking as I am, you might be interested in telling Congress to abolish the debt ceiling, which CREDO helps you do. Congress used to raise the debt ceiling routinely, and didn't even separate raising the debt ceiling from routine appropriations bills until Newt Gingrich became Speaker in 1995. All through the 2000s, Republicans routinely raised the debt ceiling, despite passing many fiscally-irresponsible bills -- it was only in 2011, with a Democrat President and an ongoing economic Armageddon, that Republicans suddenly "found their voice." And what a shrill voice it's been, one that conflates "fiscal responsibility" only with spending cuts, and spending cuts borne almost entirely by working families, at that! Even our current "fiscal hawk" House actually increased big corporate agricultural subsidies, while wagging their fingers at the growing number of Americans who need food stamps. So I say they don't get a "debt ceiling" to play with.

Around the table: health care imbroglios, "frivolous" lawsuits, and other stories.

ProPublica summarizes recent reporting on why healthcare.gov broke down. Themes that emerge: a lot of corporations worked on healthcare.gov and didn't talk to each other about what they were doing; many of these corporations do better at "navigating the procurement process" than they do at building a good website; and our government decided not to let people browse health care plans before creating an account. ProPublica doesn't say so, but maybe outsourcing government work to private corporations isn't always the greatest idea in the world, either.

If you recall last week's petition demanding that the New York Times make its budget reporting less susceptible to distortion, note that the Times's public editor has responded. She seems to agree with the spirit of our argument, but specific improvements will be a ways off. As an aside, I don't agree with Mr. Leonhardt that "the human mind isn’t equipped" to comprehend huge numbers -- our media outlets too often allow interested parties to brandish large numbers as scare numbers. This is kind of the thing we've been talking about, in fact.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) says "socialized medicine like Obama is trying to impose on America" would have killed him, because he would have had to wait for his open heart surgery. Mr. Inhofe hopes you don't remember that Americans routinely wait months or years for organ transplants, or that Americans can't just get a doctor's appointment (let alone a specialist's appointment, or a surgical appointment) whenever they feel like it. It's really stunning that idiocy like this actually seems persuasive in a nation where people routinely face obstacles getting health care.

RetroReport reviews the famous spilled coffee lawsuit from the early '90s, which resulted in a jury award for the plaintiff of nearly $3 million. Amid the cries of FRIVLISS LAWSUITZZ!!!!, more than a few facts got lost: that the plaintiff had tried several times to reach an agreement with McDonald's, that the plaintiff suffered burns over 16% of her body (including third-degree burns requiring skin grafts), that McDonald's own policy was to serve coffee at 180 degrees, that over 700 people had claimed to be burned by McDonald's hot coffee during the previous decade, and that the judge reduced the award to $650,000. It's nice to be reminded, I suppose, that the "liberal" media's tendency toward sensationalism isn't that new.

Finally, Johns Hopkins researchers suggest that we actually change our memories every time we remember them. They suspect we activate a slightly different set of neurons every time we revisit a particular memory, so that, ultimately, we're losing different bits of that memory (smells, sights, sounds, et cetera) -- and ultimately creating newer, fictional bits -- every time we think of it. Unfortunately, this theory does not explain why folks think the policies and programs they supported last year is Teh New Hitler now.

Action: protecting Social Security and Medicare, and paying fast-food workers decently.

The Republicans might look bad now because of their little shutdown drama, but Public Citizen reminds us that the continuing resolution Congress passed also preserved sequester budget cuts and mandated further negotiations over budget cuts -- and Republicans will almost certainly demand Social Security and Medicare cuts, and President Obama may well give in to these demands. Plus, of course, we'll almost certainly be doing the shutdown dance again in mid-January. Thus Public Citizen helps you tell President Obama to keep Social Security and Medicare off the table in these negotiations. Hell, in addition to (or instead of!) playing defense, why not tell Congress, again, to strengthen Social Security, as the Harkin/Begich bills would do? Why not demand that Congress allow Medicare to negotiate its own drug prices? That would reduce Medicare costs, which would be a lot better than reducing Medicare benefits. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Too often it does -- to everyone but our political elites.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell fast-food corporations to pay their workers a living wage, CREDO still helps you do that. If you've worked at a fast-food restaurant, you already know it's hard work, and you already know that $8/hour isn't a fair wage. If you care about stimulating the economy for-real for-real, then you know hiking up fast-food workers' wages to $15/hour would give a lot of people a lot more money to spend, and you also know that it wouldn't result in 20% unemployment or $10 Big Macs, either -- though it might result in CEOs having to pay themselves a little less. But if you know someone who hates how everybody gets to feed at the government trough but them, tell them they have every reason to support higher wages for fast-food workers, for over half of fast-food workers don't make enough to stay off food stamps and Medicaid, and that's taxpayer money -- our money -- going to fast-food workers because fast-food CEOs only care about their money. Always get mad at the right people, that's what I say.

Around the table: starring false opposites, imaginary class-action suits, and fake journalism.

Fox News hot-air dealer instructs us that "elites" believe in "mulitculturalism" and "diversity," while the Tea Party believes in "patriotism." Go to your reference book of choice and see if "multiculturalism" and "diversity" are actually antonyms of "patriotism." What's that? They're not? There might be a reason they're not. After all, how are "multiculturalism" and "diversity" not patriotic, exactly? Don't they suggest that anyone can make it in America? And aren't we supposed to be proud of our "melting pot" land?

A pair of Tea Party poobahs speculate on whether they could file a class-action lawsuit against homosexuality for the "damage" it's "caused" -- you know, given that states filed a class-action lawsuit against the tobacco companies, about which they still seem pretty sore. Short answer: you can't, unless you're willing to sue every homosexual in the country, and I'll bet even these two Tea Party clowns have gay friends. Also, I thought Tea Party doctrine held that class-action lawsuits were anti-freedom or something.

Two-time Idaho state House candidate tries to explain, at length, why he opposes any government involvement in health care but has ten children on Medicaid. And I do mean "at length" -- his screed serves, if anything, as a reminder of all the goods and services we pay our government to provide, though of course he can't put it like that, believing, as he apparently does, that Government is Evil Full Stop. But when he criticizes environmental activists who still drive cars and use oil heat, they'll be able to use his own argument against him. And who put a gun to his head and made him have 10 kids?

Eric Stern at Salon fact-checks the three families who appeared on Hannity last week to testify that they were "negatively impacted" by the Affordable Care Act -- by, you know, calling them and asking them questions and verifying their statements, like journalists would do. Spoiler alert: Mr. Stern finds that none of them had even visited healthcare.gov, nor would be caught dead doing so, and the guy who complained the most about not being able to create jobs only employs four people to begin with, and is thus exempt from most of the Affordable Care Act's mandates. In other words, a real journalist wouldn't have put these people on air to begin with.

Check out the big balls on this guy: Karl Rove says Mr. Obama wasn't "presidential" enough during the whole shutdown drama. Why? Because he didn't "make the compromises" the situation supposedly demanded, because he "deliberately withdrew from negotiations," and because "his skill is not in bringing Americans together; it is turning them against one another." He even has the nerve to say "(h)ypocrisy makes for clever politics but bad governing." I guess Mr. Rove would know a lot about all of that, wouldn't he?

John Boehner (E-OH) summarizes the shutdown debacle thusly: "We fought the good fight. We just didn't win." Clearly he's watched too many football games! As if anyone in America should care whether Republicans or Democrats "win" anything! And for whom did Republicans "fight the good fight," other than themselves and their corporate paymasters?

Action: budget reporting, land grabs, and shutdown dramas.

MoveOn helps you demand that the New York Times report on what federal budget items cost in the context of the larger budget. In other words, the Times shouldn't tell us that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting soaks up about $400 million annually without also mentioning that the federal government spent about $3.3 trillion in 2012. If the Times told you that, then you'd know that NPR takes up a little more than one one-hundredth of one percent of the federal budget -- that's right, not one percent, but one percent of one percent -- and you might then think that fiscal "hawks" who whine about spending money on NPR might be full of soup. You'd be right to ask "why just the Times?" After all, the entire "liberal" media does a lousy job of reporting on budgetary items in context. Hell, they do a lousy job reporting on anything involving numbers! But if the Times starts doing it right, other papers will have no excuse to keep doing wrong.

Meanwhile, Oxfam has reported that Coca-Cola and PepsiCo benefit rather immensely from relationships with suppliers who steal land from indigenous peoples to grow sugar. If you're inclined to think (as I am) that your sugar habit is a lot more trouble than it's worth, consider this another impetus to ditch the habit -- and if you're at all familiar with the story of how the sugar trade absolutely ruined Central America over the last few hundred years, you'll find sad, sad echoes here also. We're not talking about lands seized via eminent domain -- we're talking about big sugar suppliers forcing people off their land, without their consent, without payment, occasionally violently. Coke responds by telling us very carefully exactly whom they don't buy "directly" from, which isn't the tiniest bit suspicious, and Pepsi tells us their suppliers have assured them they're following all "applicable" laws, which must be a tremendous comfort to the subsistence farmer whose house just got burned down. Thus Sum of Us helps you tell Coke and Pepsi to ensure their supply chain is uncorrupted by suppliers who steal land.

Finally, hot on the heels of the government shutdown/debt limit deal that got nothing for Republicans other than deep knowledge about the taste of dung but sets up another shutdown/debt limit crisis at the beginning of 2014, the Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to end these artificial hostage crises and start governing like responsible adults. OK, the Sierra Club didn't actually say "start governing like responsible adults," but nothing in the world prevents you from telling them that. No, really: they need to hear it. They need to hear, from their constituents, that we're on to their games and that we hate their games, especially when their little shutdown drama allowed over 800,000 gallons of fracked natural gas to spill in North Dakota with nobody to clean it up. The Sierra Club makes a number of good suggestions -- public campaign financing, restoring the Voting Rights Act, changing rules that allow minorities to hijack our government -- and you can, of course, add to them. But don't be afraid to tell them you're angry. They need to know you're angry.

Action: carbon emissions and drones.

The Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell the EPA to enact the strongest possible carbon emissions rules. The carbon standards the EPA issued in September require new power plants to capture their emissions; by June, the EPA will propose guidelines pertaining to existing power plants. Mainly, UCS helps you tell the EPA to encourage the proliferation of renewable energy (including wind power and solar power), and avoid shifting to an energy approach dominated by natural gas, whose carbon emissions will likely be little different from coal's in the long run. I suppose the big dirty energy players stand at the ready to squeal CLEAN AIR KILLZ THA JOBZZ!!!!! What's that, you say? Big corporations aren't that obvious? Don't give them too much credit -- in these times, the big corporations care less about making sense and more about making noise, and that's as good a marker of the sickness, immorality, and decadence of our times as any other. But we also stand ready -- not just for clean air and water, but for science, for reason, for morality.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to ask President Obama to ban weaponized drones, Roots Action still helps you do that. Why do I mention it? Because the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize laureate -- Malala Yousafzai, who advocated for girls' education in Pakistan even after the frickin' Taliban shot her in the head on a school bus -- sat down in the Oval Office earlier this week with the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate (Barack Obama, you may have heard of him), and told him that his Administration's drone attacks make terrorism worse by, you know, killing innocent people for no apparent reason. If you've heard little about this exchange from the White House or the "liberal" media, there may be a reason for that -- this Administration has conducted far more drone attacks than even the last one, and the "liberal" media have largely cheered on these efforts. So we'd do a lot of good by a) highlighting what Ms. Yousafzai told Mr. Obama and b) telling the world to stop conducting drone attacks. If states want to kill people, we ought to make them do it the old-fashioned way.

Around the table: right-wingers encouraging the borrowing of money! Somebody make this madness stop!

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Paul Ryan's "bipartisan" "compromise" to "end" the government shutdown, in which he would graciously accept all of the Social Security and Medicare cuts the Obama budget offered, but none of the tax hikes the Obama budget demanded in return (though he'd give back the sequestration cuts, what a guy!). Seriously, though, I always said that the Obama budget offering Social Security and Medicare cuts would come back to bite him.

Rep. Lee "Danged Straight!" Terry (R-NE) will draw a formidable opponent for Nebraska's 2nd in 2014, an Omaha City Councillor named Pete Festersen. While I know the old saw that Nebraska actually has two Republican parties but one of them just happens to refer to themselves as Democrats, a Pete Festersen victory won't be anything to celebrate -- he's another one who calls himself "pro-business" as if those of us who won't give corporations everything they want are somehow "anti-business."

Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM) told furloughed federal workers on Facebook that if they're facing tough times, they should just take out a loan. I thought everybody had to balance their budgets, sir! How dare you encourage fiscal irresponsibility in this manner! Seriously, his district's fairly right-of-center, but a Democrat just served a term there from 2008-10, and New Mexico Democrats don't just fall down for anybody, so this could be a faux pas you see in TV ads incessantly a year from now.

Maryland state police reports depict state Attorney General Douglas Gansler (also running in the Democratic primary for governor) as the kind of guy who'd order them to hit the lights and sirens and speed and run red lights just so he could get to mundane appointments on time. Mr. Gansler, in response, concedes a certain amount of "backseat driving" and nothing else -- but if the accusations are true, they're extremely damning; a man capable of disrespecting the law that greatly is capable of doing pretty much anything to anybody, and shouldn't even be Attorney General, let alone Governor.

In case you thought racism was so over already, behold: a 7 GB map of America, with each American represented by one dot, and each dot colored to represent a person's race. You'll notice some areas are quite, well, like-colored. Some folks will say well, that just means people like to stay with their own kind, and I suppose those folks have never talked to a real estate agent even once in their lives.

Finally, seminal Tea Party group FreedomWorks has had such bad money troubles lately they've had to take out a $1 million line of credit. Fiscal responsibility! That's what they get for paying Dick Armey $8 million late last year to go away. When I think of FreedomWorks, I'm actually tempted to think more fondly of the John Birch Society ("at least they weren't total clowns!"), but I'm almost certain a little more research would cure that with a quickness.

Action: funding for Philadelphia schools, and bee-killing pesticides in garden plants.

You may have heard of Laporsha Massey, a Philadelphia sixth-grader who died last month after an asthma attack on a school day her school didn't have a nurse on duty. You remember when a nurse was at your school every day? Me too. But Philadelphia's schools are short many, many millions of dollars -- and Gov. Tom Corbett is withholding $45 million in federal funding until the Philadelphia teachers unions take a massive pay and benefits cut. What does one have to do with the other? Well, that $45 million could bring back some of the 110 nurses Philadelphia schools have lost since 2011 -- and a nurse can recognize a life-threatening condition a lot quicker than you or I can. If you're tired of our political class foisting orchestrated drama after orchestrated drama upon us, you're far from alone -- and these dramas always hurt people, people Mr. Corbett serves, I shouldn't need to add. MoveOn helps you tell Gov. Corbett to end the hostage situation -- in which our children are the real hostages -- and release the money.

Meanwhile, Friends of the Earth helps you tell Lowe's and Home Depot to pull plants treated with neonicotinoid pesticides (and the neonicotinoids themselves) from their shelves. You remember that many scientists and governmental bodies have fingered neonics (as the cool kids call them) as a major cause of bee colony collapse. Then a Friends of the Earth/Center for Food Safety study released in August found neonics on "bee-friendly" garden plants in seven of 13 plants purchased in three metropolitan garden areas. Neonics may not be the only reason bees are dying en masse, but (as one scientist remarks in the above article) it is peculiar that these "bee-friendly" plants are all basically ornamental; why would these plants need the neonics, if they're not going to bear fruit? And why shouldn't consumers at least know what they're buying? I do urge you to be civil to the CEOs of Lowe's and Home Depot, as their actions seem to stem from ignorance, not malice. I mean, these aren't Republican Congressfolk we're writing.

Action: the government shutdown drama drags on, plus an anti-"conversion" "therapy" bill in Pennsylvania.

Everyone had enough of the shutdown yet? I sure have. MoveOn, the National Priorities Project, and CREDO all help you tell Congress to end the shutdown drama, and that's that. And let's not pretend this shutdown has been about the Affordable Care Act. Of course that's what Republicans said it was about at the beginning, before they realized how stupid that sounded, but that's not what it was about. This was about Republicans doing whatever they could to serve their corporate paymasters, and nothing else. No, I don't believe Wall Street has been breathing down John Boehner's neck telling him to avoid a default -- more likely, they know forcing a government default, with all the chaos and misery it'll cause, is their last chance to get our government out of their way for all time. All that stands between them and getting their debtors' prisons back is our will. We've given our Reps their orders, and still they pretend they're helpless, so we tell them again, and again, and again, until they can ignore it no longer.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell Pennsylvania legislators to support SB 872, which would ban "conversion therapy" for minors in the state. Gov. Brown signed such a ban in California earlier this year, and Gov. Christie signed a similar ban in New Jersey last month -- a deed I'm sure won't go unpunished by Republican primary voters in 2016 -- but Pennsylvania doesn't exactly have the most forward-minded legislature or executive. I mean, what bon mot would Tom Corbett bust out in defending "conversion therapy"? Seriously, though, this isn't a case where you just let parents make this decision, because parents don't get to inflict junk science on their children. Don't take my word for it -- take the word of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association. Also note well that "conversion therapy" actually makes gay kids more depressed, even suicidal. Parents typically don't want that for their kids.

Around the table: health care lies, "free" trade lies, and other stories.

Here, at last, you may find a truly inspired takedown of an Eric Cantor whinefest op-ed in the Washington Post. I actually did read the original op-ed, and it clearly describes events occurring in some alternate universe where the "clean CR" the Republicans won't pass doesn't give them 95% of what they wanted in the first place -- and where Barack Obama doesn't bend over backwards to work with Republicans who deserve only to be worked around.

David Sirota reveals our elite overlords' "plot against pensions." Read it all, so you know what to say when some ninny says ZOMG $1.3 TRILLYUNZ IN UNFUNDED PENSIONZ!!! Namely, a) that figure represents a gap over 30 years, so it's actually a much smaller number every year and b) that figure gets even smaller when you put it next to expected revenues. I'd add that the figure gets smaller when you consider how many states, municipalities, and localities America has.

In case you were wondering how/if the "liberal" media had been covering the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" negotiations, FAIR finds an NPR flack actually comparing the nefarious "free" trade deal to a "poker game" with "a pot full of jobs." Actually, the NPR flack is about half-right: the TPP is more like a casino run by the big corporations, where the house always wins! But the "pot full of jobs"? About as likely as the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

Surprise, surprise, the Affordable Care Act actually doesn't hurt small businesses like Republicans claim, but actually helps small businesses. Not just that the employer mandate (which Mr. Obama foolishly put off another year) doesn't actually affect businesses with fewer than 50 employees (meaning most of them!), but that it also keeps insurance corporations from jacking up premiums on small businesses if only one or two employees get sick, which, as you might expect, hurts small businesses more because they don't have the bargaining power of bigger corporations.

FactCheck makes a herculean effort to disprove a John Boehner assertion that the medical device tax has shipped "tens of thousands" of American jobs overseas. Personally I think if it comes out of John Boehner's mouth you should automatically assume it's crap, but at least we learn, through FactCheck's efforts, that Stryker (one of the big medical device corporations) has actually increased its workforce by almost 2,000 since the tax went into effect.

Another day, another right-wing state legislator calling President Obama "de fuhrer" (sic), this time for enforcing the government shutdown of national parks. And of course she doubles down, saying she didn't actually use the word "Hitler" when talking about Mr. Obama (clearly she meant that other "fuhrer"!) and blaming the press for not parsing the meaning of the words "democracy" and "republic" exactly as a right-winger would, and saying it's all Obama's fault anyway, clearly for not capitulating to Republicans 120% of the time. Anybody ever heard of Brenda Barton before? Me neither. Now let's never speak of her again.

Finally, an amateur Biblical scholar claims the Romans invented Jesus to pacify the Jews. And here's a pretty good counterpoint, if you like. I don't suspect that Mr. Atwill's theory, if persuasive (and it's not even very good realpolitik, actually!), would affect the value of Jesus's teachings very much -- would "love thy neighbor" or "help the poor" suddenly become bad ideas?

Action: safety for Bangladeshi garment workers, and sunlight for corporate electioneering.

Another Bangladeshi garment factory has burned to the ground, killing at least 10 good folks and injuring over 50. And that factory supplied American garment retailers Walmart and the Gap with apparel! And Walmart and the Gap still refuse to sign on to a legally-binding Accord of Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh! The two corporations have produced a non-binding safety plan in its absence, and now we can see how well that's working. The Accord would mandate fire safety inspections, repairs, and renovations at apparel factories, and would make the brands pay for any necessary upgrades. Of course, the Walmart "director of ethical sourcing" telling a meeting of global retailers in Bangladesh in 2011 that safety improvements were "not financially feasible." Incredible, how our "best and brightest" corporate chieftains are so utterly helpless when it comes time to make sure their workers don't die making clothing! Sum of Us helps you apply the Shame Stick to Walmart and the Gap.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous action alerts about getting money out of politics, Common Cause happens to provide a few more of them. In one, Common Cause helps you support a Constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people, and thus need not be permitted to make massive campaign contributions. There is, of course, another fiction embedded in the corporate "personhood" fiction as described above -- the fiction that money equals speech. Last I looked, money equals money, and we have the right to regulate money for the common good. Also, Common Cause helps you tell the SEC to demand that publicly-held corporations disclose their campaign contributions publicly. Makes sense, doesn't it? The SEC exists to protect shareholders, and shareholders (being basically good people!) would want to know what politicians CEOs spend shareholder money supporting. But the SEC has been dragging its feet on this rule for years now; it can't be because they haven't been getting enough input from the public. Still, if they need more input, we need not refuse them.

Penny rants: BP Spillageddon fines and a conservative tax reform plan.

With the civil trial against BP (for its role in the Spillageddon in the Gulf in May 2010) underway, Public Citizen tell us what's at stake in the trial's current phase. Long story short: the fine against BP could be as low as $3 billion if the judge accepts BP's estimate of how much oil got spilled and fails to find BP "grossly negligent" -- or the fine could be as high as $18 billion if the judge accepts our government's estimate of how much oil got spilled and finds BP grossly negligent. Trouble is, of course, that our government wrote quite lax regulations on offshore drilling, so a judge might hesitate to find BP negligent if they adhered to those regulations. On the other hand, a judge could reason that big corporations had too much of a role in advocating for, or writing, those lax regulations -- and depending on BP's demonstrated role in such advocacy, a judge could well conclude that BP knew full well it was doing wrong and was only trying to evade penalties for wrongdoing. Our friends on the right would call that "judicial activism," but I'd more likely call it justice.

The American Conservative approves of Sen. Mike Lee's tax reform plan, but I'm less sanguine about it myself. Sen. Lee (R-UT) -- more famous for his shrill advocacy of government shutdown over the Affordable Care Act, and somewhat less famous for blocking Mr. Obama's nominees because he could -- would cut the current seven income tax brackets down to two, at 15% and 35%, and while that "preserves" the tax code's progressivity, it also makes it less progressive. Now, Mr. Lee's plan also expands the Child Tax Credit rather dramatically -- by $2,500 per child, which more than compensates for the loss of the 10% tax bracket -- but applying that credit to payroll taxes (which fund Social Security and Medicare for future generations) is a mistake. And while lowering the mortgage deduction cap is also a good idea, surely Mr. Lee knows as well as I do that a lot of working-class folks have homes worth over $300,000 only because they bought them during the housing bubble. Verdict: make a few changes, tack on a 90% tax bracket for millionaire income, and I might be able to settle for this plan -- but I don't see Mike Lee "settling" for a 90% tax bracket.

Action: the war in Afghanistan, and religious freedom in Mississippi.

The EPA can't clean up Superfund sites, the CDC can't help stop a salmonella outbreak, the FDA can't do food inspections -- but the war in Afghanistan just began its 13th year! Yay priorities! And I am reminded that today we have nearly twice the number of troops in Afghanistan than we did when Mr. Bush occupied the Oval Office -- some of that, no doubt, because Mr. Bush really tried to win that war on the cheap, but still it sticks in our craw. Hence Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to end the Afghanistan war right now. In your missive to your Congressfolk, you may want to mention that H.R. 200, the Responsible End to the War in Afghanistan Act, is still available for their consideration. And, also, remind them that if they say the bill would "put our troops in harm's way," they're idiots, because the bill only funds troop and contractor withdrawal. Presumably Mr. Obama, as a more competent servant of empire, would be more likely to accomplish a safe withdrawal than Mr. Bush.

Meanwhile, the Mississippi Department of Transportation apparently harassed one Jagjeet Singh, a commercial truck driver and devout Sikh, after he was pulled over for a flat tire. The officers on the scene asked him to remove his kirpan, a small sword devout Sikhs wear, but he would not, so the cops made fun of him, called him a "terrorist," and arrested him. (Punchline: Sikhism originated in India in the 15th century, and is completely unrelated to Islam.) It gets better: on his day in court (and Mr. Singh lives in California, by the way!), the judge, one Aubrey Rimes, asked Mr. Singh to remove his turban -- well, to be more precise, he asked him to remove "that rag." For only Judge Rimes is bold enough to give utterance to the thoughts of those who have deserved all of life's reversals! The ACLU helps you tell the Mississippi DOT to investigate the incident and punish its officers as necessary. The Mississippi DOT may not care what I think, but I see telling them what I think as my duty, so tough toodles for them.

Around the table: the stupid, it burns!

Massive salmonella outbreak hits at least 18 states. And where's the Centers for Disease Control during this crisis? Operating with a skeleton crew, like most of our government. It's a big deal that we don't have the CDC at full power, because much of what it can do (like deploy lab resources in cross-state investigations) can't be done by anyone else and (just like we discussed yesterday) prevents future problems from even happening. At the risk of piling on, it's also flu season.

Been hearing John Boehner whine that Barack Obama won't compromise with him? Well, the Center for American Progress reminds us that the Senate "clean" continuing resolution already represents a compromise -- the Senate CR is much closer to the Ryan budget's levels of discretionary spending than Mr. Obama's original 2009 proposal for FY 2014. In other words, some victory this will be, if indeed we get Republicans to back down -- they've won basically 95% of the battle. Had enough of that yet?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reminds us of one fairly obvious way NSA spying makes us less safe -- the NSA insists on "backdoors" to internet systems that hackers can later walk through. They also remind us, not incidentally, that then-Sen. John Ashcroft (R-MO) was once on the right side of a debate, and that, once upon a time, a Republican being on the right side of a debate actually meant something. (Fast-forward to 2004, even, when Mr. Ashcroft's opposition to warrantless wiretapping meant bupkus to George W. Bush, even though Mr. Ashcroft was, like, Attorney General of the U.S. at the time.)

Finally, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) instructs us that Mr. Obama's non-existent arm-al-Qaeda-in-Syria program proves not only that "the end times are here" but that we should "rejoice" at the prospect. To wit, as it were: "the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God’s end times history...Rather than seeing this as a negative, we need to rejoice, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, His day is at hand." And that's the sound of someone flinging feces against the wall in the hope you throw up your hands and walk away. Odd, then, that she's the one walking away at the end of her term.

Around the table: our long national nightmare continues!

Mike Konczal instructs us as to how "the non-essential parts of government that shut down are actually quite essential." Not just the parts that conduct economic research (miss that jobs report Friday? That's because there wasn't one), or the parts that clean up over 500 Superfund toxic sites, or (even) the parts that keep poor working women and children fed -- there's also the parts that invest in technological and biomedical breakthroughs. This may be why we don't have a hundred Coxie's Armies outside of the Capital right now -- the government shutdown's worst effects won't be felt for some time.

On Sunday, the House Majority PAC ran this ad, comparing John Boehner to a baby throwing a temper tantrum, in the Cincinnati area during the Bengals-Patriots game. I'd have preferred that the ad had depicted an adult in diapers thrashing about and kicking and throwing things, but it's good to see mainstream Democrat politicos finally making the argument I've been making for the last decade. I'd also have preferred they didn't run the ad during a football game -- sure, you get eyeballs out the wazoo, but a political ad is approximately the last thing football fans want to watch during a game.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms has blocked the release of a book detailing their failed "Fast and Furious" sting operation, saying it would have "a negative effect on morale" in ATF's Phoenix office. That's right, not even because it contains NASHUNUL SECURITIEZ SECRITZ!!!! Hard to believe the ATF thought that reasoning could survive the light of day -- maybe they were desperate, or they did it because they could. Memo to Rand Paul: if you're looking to actually do some good in the Senate, this might be your chance.

Finally, public universities look to become more "autonomous" from state control, by making deals in which they get less oversight in exchange for (for example) less state funding. It's like they don't understand that the "state," no matter how it acts, still belongs to the people and is subject to the people's will. Public universities would thus do much better persuading people that what they want for themselves is best for everyone. I wonder why they don't.

Action: the shutdown drama and ENDA.

The shutdown of our government continues apace, unlikely to end until we run up against the debt limit in a little over a week, so CREDO helps you tell Speaker Boehner to call for a vote on a clean continuing resolution so that our government can operate again. The fun part? CREDO also plans to give Mr. Boehner one pacifier for every person who signs on to their petition. I've been calling right-wingers crybabies for years, but this is some imaginative activism. Remember when right-wingers always called liberals crybabies just for caring about stuff? Now we can give them some of their own. I wouldn't worry about whether sending a hundred thousand pacifiers to John Boehner will "only alienate him more" -- there must be a point where such alienation sickens even him. At least, I have faith that such a point exists. And if getting there requires that he suffer more spiritual hardship in the near term, who am I to question?

Meanwhile, People for the American Way provides an outstanding toolkit with which you may tell your Congressfolk to support ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. (If you need contact info for your Congressfolk, use the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page.) I've addressed, on several occasions, the many non-reality-based objections one might have to ENDA -- that it confers "special rights" upon gays (it doesn't even confer affirmative action!), or that it would allow gays to dress flamboyantly at work without reprisals (it pointedly does not abridge a boss's right to determine a dress code for workers) -- but PFAW's toolkit summarizes five "religious" objections to ENDA, and you should brace yourself for how repugnant they are. It destroys our religious freedom! It's Jim Crow revisited! It'll put child molesters in charge of our kids! Well, as the gospel song says, sooner or later God'll cut 'em down.

Around the table: right-wing values, our values, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny.

Richard Kirsch reminds us that when Republicans vote to cut food stamps and Medicare and such, those are "statements of values." He also reminds us that right-wingers believe "it’s an infringement on a person’s freedom to be taxed to take care of someone else" -- but actual conservatives (versus the reactionaries who call themselves "conservative") don't necessarily believe that, since they also know how (for example) the interstate highway system works. (As an aside, boy am I sick of knuckledraggers calling it "free health care." Even single-payer wouldn't be free -- you'd pay for it, as a taxpayer. Is that why it's free? Because you pay for it?)

Time magazine "helps" you "understand" our ongoing cold war with Iran with a helpful graphic -- that begins in 1979. Because, of course, if it didn't directly affect us in the form of (to think of a hypothetical situation) hostage-taking at an embassy, it didn't really happen. Remember this timeline from CNN from a few years ago, which also started in 1979? It's like the "liberal" media never, ever learns. More likely, that's just what they want us to think.

Kentucky's "KYnect" health exchange -- entirely state-run, but set up with funding from, and under the authority of, the Affordable Care Act -- has a great first day, enrolling almost 3,000 individuals and families in health care coverage. Sadly, not everyone in Kentucky proves well-informed about KYnect -- one thinks it was "defunded," while another "hope(s)" "it beats Obamacare." They probably want government to keep its hands off Medicare, too.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (S-PA) thinks it was "inappropriate" for his Administration's lawyers to compare gay marriage with children marrying -- but then remarks that "a much better analogy would have been brother and sister." I've got a "much better analogy" for Tom Corbett: he's a lot like that ancient, bitter uncle who has a few too many and then thinks everything he says is funny and brilliant.

And finally, some good news: remember that 15-year-old rape victim whom the Maldives government was preparing to flog in public in March? Well, the Maldives High Court overturned the sentence last month. Note well that a global shame campaign conducted by Avaaz (in which you might have participated) just so happened to precede the High Court's decision. We might have helped save only one person, but often that's where the arc of justice starts.

Around the table: more foolish behavior from our government, plus a ray of hope for HIV treatment.

The New York Times reports that the NSA has been drawing social connections between and among Americans using the vast amount of metadata it collects. But they say they've only been using it when there's a "foreign intelligence justification," pinky swear, though of course they decided to expand this effort without any oversight in late 2010. We have two choices: trust our government, or be Americans.

Several Republican members of Congress suddenly aren't sure if furloughed government employees will get back pay resulting from the shutdown. Here's a clue: if you caused government workers to work without pay, you pay them for the work they did -- and if you caused government workers not to work because you couldn't fund the government, you pay them for the work they could have done. Really, they're writing new campaign ads for the other side every day. (Not that we'll ever see them -- after all, Democrats would have to run them, and they won't, because civility.)

Speaking of the shutdown, dig this wack quotation from Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN): "We're not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is." But why should anyone care what Republicans "get" out of this whole mess? And why should we care whether any of them feel "disrespected"? The only respect they should worry about is the respect they earn from their constituents. Really, it ain't that damn deep.

Because so many Congressfolk (including both my Senators!) have such a hard-on for abolishing the medical device tax in the Affordable Care Act, Citizens for Tax Justice explains why the tax isn't such a bad idea. Long story short: most of the medical device industry's complaints are irrelevant -- really, what's going to drive down demand for medical devices, besides large numbers of people suddenly preferring pain and misery? -- and, like, yo, it's a measly 2.3% tax, which won't even get levied on American medical devices exported overseas. They already got the weak medical device law they wanted from Congress last year; how much is enough for them?

Finally, University of Florida and University of California-San Francisco researchers have found that blood from folks with HIV can show an immune response if confronted with a protein from FIV, or feline immunodeficiency virus. Worst case scenario: we'll learn more about how to vaccinate against HIV by seeing what it has in common with FIV, or come up with a better vaccine for FIV. Cats suffer just as much as we do, after all, though they do their damndest never to let on.

Action: "zero tolerance" policies, and public land development scams.

First things first: 14-year-old Kyle Thompson, by all accounts a model student, wrote up a "hit list" of people he wanted to hit on the football field -- believe me, I came up with dumber jokes at that age! -- and then when a teacher came by and took the list from him, he went up and tried to grab it back, and a tug of war ensued. Mr. Thompson thought that tug of war was a joke, but, apparently, the teacher didn't -- and, thanks to Michigan's "zero tolerance" policy, Mr. Thompson was escorted away from the school by police in handcuffs and expelled from all Michigan schools for an entire year, for "assaulting" the teacher (though his classmates' testimony doesn't support that accusation). "Zero tolerance" policies have "zero tolerance" for ambiguity, and as such, they don't teach kids to be responsible -- they teach kids to be robots, to avoid the hard work of detecting nuance in situations, of separating genuine wrongs from stupid drama. "Zero tolerance" policies, then, are a way of avoiding responsibility. Thus the ACLU helps you tell the Michigan legislature to abandon "zero tolerance" policies.

Pennsylvania voters, take note: HB 1681, known to its supporters as the Weight-Restricted Bridge Repair Act, would open up all lands owned or managed by the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to oil and gas drilling, and dedicate the royalties earned from drilling leases to weight-restricted bridge repair. I mean, who doesn't like fixing bridges, right? But you'll recognize this scam from our discussion of H.R. 1526 in the U.S. House, which would open up national forests to logging and divert some of the royalties to fix up rural schools as if that's the only conceivable way to fix up rural schools. This is how right-wingers get to fill our air and water with crap while filling their campaign coffers with money and pleasing their corporate paymasters. Better to pay for worthwhile infrastructure projects by taxing higher incomes at a higher rate than the rest of us! After all, where will Pennsylvania's rich move? New Jersey? New York? PennEnvironment helps you tell your state Reps and Senators to oppose HB 1681 and keep our state forests for Pennsylvanians, not gas drilling corporations.

Action: the shutdown drama, Chiquita's obligations in Colombia, and paycheck fairness.

CREDO helps you call House Republican leadership and tell them to stop holding our government hostage to their ridiculous demands. You remember their little ransom note from last week, right? I mean, they've foregrounded their demand to delay the Affordable Care Act for another year (which I'm sure they'll demand, again, when some other must-pass bill must pass), but recall that they also want to roll back coal ash and climate change regulations, ratchet up oil and gas drilling on federal lands, hamstring the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and ram through the Keystone XL pipeline. Oh, almost forgot: they also wanted "fast-track" authority to "reform" the tax code, because that's just another thing they don't want to bother the American people about, I guess. If you can maintain a civil tone, then it'll be all the more effective when you tell them they look like a bunch of diaper-loaded brats. I don't know that for sure, because I rarely maintain a civil tone with these clowns. But maybe.

Meanwhile, the Chiquita banana company (not to be confused with this) paid out a $25 million fine in 2007 for its role in funding death squads in Colombia -- no, really, and they also helped overthrow the Guatemalan government in 1954 -- but now they're trying to evade a lawsuit filed by the victims of said death squads and their families, so Sum of Us helps you tell Chiquita to give those victims their due. You may well be saying, hey, they already paid a $25 million fine to the Justice Department; what more do you want from them? But the Justice Department fined them for associating with terrorists, whereas the lawsuit would make Chiquita pay for the damages it caused to the victims and their families -- all stemming from the same incidents, but different allegations, nonetheless. Incidentally, Chiquita paid the death squads $1.7 million, but have already paid over ten times that much in fines. Think maybe the next corporation will think twice about "the cost of doing business" with evil bastards? Or am I too hopeful?

Finally, the U.S. Census Bureau told us last week that women, on average, still earn only 77 cents for every dollar men earn. So Moms Rising helps you tell the Department of Labor to speed up development and deployment of its compensation data survey. What would that do? It would collect information about the wages and salaries that employees of federal contractors and subcontractors earn, which would give said employees ammunition to redress pay discrimination grievances, which would help narrow the gap between what men make and what women make. I know, I know, it sounds a bit esoteric, but sometimes -- I said sometimes, Third Way types! -- an esoteric-sounding tool can do a lot of good. Of course, S. 84/H.R. 377, the Paycheck Fairness Act, is still out there waiting for a vote; the Paycheck Fairness Act would give workers more tools with which they may fight pay discrimination, and Moms Rising helps you tell your Reps and Senators to support that, too. After all, what's wrong with giving people tools so they can get justice for themselves?

Around the table: starring a now-infamous Congressman and a relatively famous conservative with doubts about Republicans.

Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) suggests that the shutdown is "my idea of fun." You know what my idea of fun would be? Running that line in negative TV ads for eight weeks in the fall of 2014 until David Schweikert loses his re-election bid to either a dead guy or a shrub.

Now the shutdown posturing has even Rod Dreher thinking of voting Democrat, "because it has gotten to the point where they don’t unnerve me like the Republicans." And he throws Russell Kirk at the Republicans, just like any sane and normal person would do -- even declares Republicans are not conservatives, but radicals, and yes I got there seven years before he did, but I take the Parable of the Prodigal Son seriously. Still, he gives Rand Paul too much credit -- Mr. Paul's "leadership" on foreign policy and civil liberties has given us bupkus so far, and that may be by design.

Meanwhile, Mother Jones instructs us in re who the shutdown screws the hardest. Really, suppress the urge to say yeah, poor people, what else is new and read the whole thing, lest you miss the part where 94 percent of the EPA gets furloughed. Or the part where OSHA won't be able to inspect factories. Or the part where GIPSA won't be able to do food inspections. But, yeah, WIC funding drying up is still bad for poor people.

Finally, the New York Times reports about the growing textile and apparel manufacturing industry in the U.S. Yes, that's right, as foreign textile factories burn to the ground and corporations suddenly remember the considerable advantages of keeping the manufacturing process relatively local, this sort of manufacturing is coming back -- but the workers aren't there, having been, you know, outsourced to foreign lands many years ago. At least some organizations (like the Makers Coalition in Minnesota) are trying to train these workers again. But it is kinda sad to hear a corporate president say "if we want good workers we know we have to train them and bring them in ourselves," because every corporation should do that.