Thieves in the Temple.

Action: endless, reckless war nay, protecting voting rights yea.

Just Foreign Policy joins with MoveOn to help you tell President Obama and Congress to adhere to our Constitution and our laws when considering whether to go to war in Iraq and/or Syria. In sighing, you'd ask for specific Congressional and U.N. authorization, diplomacy before bombs, and limits to the time and geographic scope of any resolution authorizing action. The House did pass H.Con.Res. 105 in July, a resolution that would require Mr. Obama to come to Congress before beginning any military shenanigans in Iraq, by a staggering 370-40 margin, but the Senate hasn't taken up that resolution, and I wouldn't be surprised if Harry Reid doesn't want to take it up out of fear that it would pass and then Democrats would get the blame for whatever happened afterward right before a midterm. But service in Congress should require courage, and it's appalling that we've accepted that it doesn't. And Democrats need to be taught, again, not to lean on the "safe" strategy before midterms. And such a strategy isn't exactly "safe" for Iraqis and Syrians in America's crosshairs anyway.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan collection of House Reps and Senators have introduced the Voting Rights Amendment Act in both houses of Congress, but the bills can't seem to gain any traction. Think maybe we should tie passage of spending bills to the passage of the Voting Rights Amendment Act? If we tried that, the "liberal" media would call us obstructionists and worse, this while pretending that tying cruel immigration "reforms" to continuing resolutions is perfectly reasonable and proper. We're better than that anyway -- we need only tell our Congressfolk, as often as is necessary, that the Supreme Court's ruling in Shelby County v. Holder hamstrings our government's ability to work on our behalf to protect the rights of all voters, and that the Voting Rights Amendment Act would restore our government's ability to do that, by replacing the formula the Court found unfairly targeted Southern states with a new formula that would target any state or municipality demonstrating a clear pattern of voting rights violations. So CREDO helps you tell Congress to pass the Voting Rights Amendment Act.

Around the table: the Affordable Care Act limits health insurance CEO pay! And other things you may not know.

Burger King plans to buy the Canadian donut/coffee chain Tim Hortons -- so it can reincorporate as a Canadian corporation and pay less money in U.S. taxes. The move already has American customers declaring they'll never buy a Whopper again, but I feel compelled to ask: if corporations have the "rights of personhood," how then do corporations get to buy one another, given that people have the right not to be bought by other people?

I didn't know this, either, but apparently an obscure section of the Affordable Care Act prevents health insurance corporations from deducting more than $500,000 of a CEO's salary from their tax bill. Whether it's "performance pay" or not, no less. The writer hopes this'll spread to all corporations -- I'm more a fan of the 91% tax bracket myself, but if closing the performance pay loophole has the same effect, I'll be happy to say I was wrong.

The state of Pennsylvania strikes a deal with the Obama Administration to expand Medicaid to 500,000 residents. Pennsylvania will get to charge premiums to these residents, who probably thought their taxes were already paying for it, but the state can charge only 2% of a resident's income, and only if that resident makes from 100 and 133 percent of the federal poverty line. So Tom Corbett can tell the voters he got the expansion done, which won't placate the liberals who've been telling him to do that for years -- and explaining that his big win was getting to charge people for it will only excite those who are already voting for him.

Vanity Fair notes that Time-Warner's massive internet outage on Wednesday, affecting most of their customers, reminds us that monopolists can't be trusted to deliver even decent service. And it comes at a perfect time -- when Comcast wants to buy Time-Warner and create one even bigger corporations controlling even more of America's broadband. Comcast is no doubt preparing PR releases saying see? Let us buy them so we can improve their customer service! But as we know, that would be a little like asking the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers to buy the 2008 Detroit Lions so the former can "improve" the latter.

Finally, Mitch McConnell says who, me? at charges that he's willing to risk a government shutdown to get what he wants if Republicans win the Senate. He even said "I am the guy that gets us out of shutdowns," a claim which no doubt caused Paul Ryan to lift an eyebrow. But if he's just signaled his willingness to fold like a house of cards if Mr. Obama dares him to, I don't know why I should look upon him more kindly.

Around the table: the world is a beautiful place with a lot of ugly people in it, part 232.

Uh oh: Mitch McConnell is on tape describing his nefarious plan to stop anything good from ever happening again if Republicans retake the Senate, this time to a room full of rich donors. "We’re going to go after them on healthcare, on financial services, on the Environmental Protection Agency," he says, and if that doesn't give Alison Grimes enough fodder for killer ads -- with the Affordable Care Act working pretty well in Kentucky, banksters being very unpopular, and clean air and water being very popular, respectively -- then I don't know what will.

Jonah Engle at Mother Jones reports on the biggest obstacle to shutting down meth labs -- the big pharmaceutical corporations that block states from making pseudoephinedrine, meth's main ingredient, a prescription drug again. Oregon and Mississippi have enacted laws making drugs like Claritin unavailable without prescription, but Big Pharma has adapted, at least partly via Astroturf lobbying groups who mobilize citizens against the bills via robocalls. Clever, I suppose. The Mississippi legislature, I'm happy to report, was cleverer in 2010.

MIT scholar suggests that the robots won't take all our jobs after all, because, in his words, "the tasks that have proved most vexing to automate are those demanding flexibility, judgment, and common sense — skills that we understand only tacitly." That's the key: we understand our own subtler processes little enough that we could hardly teach them to machines that don't have brains like we do. All of which you already suspected, if you've ever ridden a bicycle or played piano -- or used automated grocery store checkout machines. Some are better than others, but I vastly prefer a human checkout clerk.

Recently unsealed court documents suggest that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker coordinated certain campaign messaging and contributions during his 2012 recall battle, possibly in violation of state campaign finance law. Most telling bit: Mr. Walker apparently wanted "issue advocacy efforts run thru one group to ensure correct messaging" because of "past problems with multiple groups doing work on 'behalf' of Gov. Walker," meaning his one great strength as a politician -- his discipline -- might also be his Achilles' heel.

Finally, ESPN reports, such as they do, that an "anonymous Rams player" said openly gay linebacker Michael Sam is "respecting our space" as far as showering with teammates. At least three other Rams players (with names and everything!) dismissed the importance of reporting upon Mr. Sam's showering habits, but why would anyone think a gay man is always salivating at other naked men? Possibly because they confuse homosexuality with promiscuity, though they are two different things.

Action: Ronald McDonald in your kids' classrooms, and the minimum wage.

So McDonald's CEO said something interesting about his corporation's marketing to children back at its 2014 annual shareholder's meeting: "we have been marketing responsibly...We don't put Ronald out in schools." That would be a big deal, since fast-food marketing to children is a bit exploitive, to say the least -- except that Ronald McDonald avatars appear regularly at schools all over America, as well as in Australia, China, and the Netherlands. That's "putting Ronald out in schools," and so what if they "put Ronald out" to promote reading and living healthy as if no one else could deliver that message? You know what those kids are thinking of when he shows up: a Big Mac with a side of embalmed fries, that's what. I'd be happier if they were contemplating how Mayor McCheese might be lining his pockets with taxpayer money. Seriously, these kids are a captive audience, and they need a lot less commercialism in their lives, especially at school. Hence the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood helps you tell McDonald's to keep its clown out of our schools.

Meanwhile, we haven't forgotten about raising the minimum wage, which four in five Americans including Mitt Freaking Romney! now support, hence the Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to raise the minimum wage to $10.10/hour. What did my state's junior Senator tell me last I wrote him on this matter? He noted that the Congressional Budget Office said the $10.10/hour wage "could cost America 500,000 jobs," though not that this job loss would occur over 10 years, meaning 50,000 jobs annually, meaning a little over 4,000 jobs monthly -- in an economy creating nearly 200,000 jobs a month! And that CBO study also happened to find that the $10.10/hour minimum wage would lift nearly 1,000,000 Americans out of poverty, which really is kind of the point. He also said that "(w)e must enable the private sector to create good-paying jobs for Pennsylvanians." But, frankly, you don't "enable" the private sector to do that -- you force the private sector do that, since the private sector generally finds workers an impediment to profits and acts accordingly.

Around the table: more stories about solar power, unemployment, and bad trade practices.

The Coalition on Human Needs reminds us that some 7.5 million part-time workers are still looking for full-time work. The U6 unemployment rate -- which counts, among other folks, these part-time workers -- still stands at 12.2% (the official unemployment rate is 6.2%); that's down from 17.1% at its recent peak (achieved, so to speak, from October through December of 2009 and again in April 2010), and that's also down from 13.9% just a year ago, but it's still higher than it ever was between January 1994 and October 2008, and the new jobs replacing the old ones, as you probably remember, don't pay as well.

Here's a news story from the Alaska primaries you may have missed: a ballot measure that would have repealed a huge tax cut for big oil corporations came fairly close to succeeding. Why celebrate a tax cut repeal failing at the ballot box? Consider that they held the vote during the primaries, which would have drawn even more right-wing voters in a state such as Alaska (particularly one with a heated Senate race up top). Consider, also, that the anti-repeal forces outspent pro-repeal forces by about 20 to 1. Yet this measure still lost by less than five points. If they'd held the repeal vote during a general election, or a Presidential election, it might have won.

MIT researchers figure out how to recycle car battery lead for use in solar panels -- as in, one car battery contains enough lead to make solar panels that could power 30 houses. And they've made the lead-based photovoltaics almost as energy-efficient as silicon-based ones in a short two years. The development could keep the lead from 200 million car batteries out of landfills and prevent manufacturers from having to harvest lead -- and both of these processes cause a lot of lead poisoning in America (not to mention the developing world) these days. So this discovery could be revolutionary -- unless certain mining interests spend millions of dollars lying to people about it, which I wouldn't put past them.

In other solar power news, Ari Phillips at Think Progress tells us how homeowners' associations often prevent homes from putting up solar panels. Mr. Phillips negotiates the attendant issues more patiently than I would -- homeowners' associations aren't "serving the community" or "preserving the neighborhood" by disallowing solar panels ostensibly because they're an "eyesore," and though I think it's a little too far to say that one day we might regard covenants against solar panels the way we now regard covenants against Blacks owning houses in your neighborhood (the latter item is considerably more odious), there is a point where your home is your castle.

Finally, Federal Trade Commission settles with Infant Learning Company over false advertising charges concerning its Your Baby Can Read program. Finding that ILC misrepresented scientific studies supposedly buttressing the program's claims that babies could read by their ninth month, the FTC levied a six-figure fine against ILC, which also won't be able to use the phrase "Your Baby Can Read" on its products. As happens more egregiously with banksters, the settlement doesn't include an actual admission of guilt -- though you could be excused for thinking that agreeing to stop using the name Your Baby Can Read sure sounds like one.

Action: history vs. mining corporations, and big grocers vs. Frankensalmon.

The Sierra Club helps you tell the Army Corps of Engineers to preserve Blair Mountain from corporations that want to use the nefarious, water-polluting method of mining known as mountaintop removal mining from destroying the area. Why? Because Blair Mountain is a tourist attraction in West Virginia, the site of one of the most famous labor marches in American history, where 7,000 coal miners battled coal overlords over low pay and hazardous working conditions back in 1921; they didn't win, but their struggle made future labor struggles a lot easier, and helped secure working folks a better position in American society. As a historical site, of course, Blair Mountain holds a lot of choice archaeological evidence -- entrenchments, buried objects, shell casings, even human remains. Anyway, why the Army Corps of Engineers? Because both the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 and the Clean Water Act give the Army Corps some statutory authority over Blair Mountain, including the authority to stop mining on historical sites. That power is our power, and we should use it wisely, to protect both our heritage and our drinking water.

Meanwhile, more than 60 grocery corporations -- including two of the biggest, Kroger and Safeway -- have committed to banning genetically-modified salmon from their stores, but Costco, which is no slouch as far as grocery sales, has not done so; hence Friends of the Earth helps you tell Costco to refuse to put GMO salmon on their shelves. Why do this, when the FDA hasn't even approved GMO salmon yet? Because the FDA might still approve GMO salmon, despite the attendant problems -- including the salmon being the first-ever genetically-modified animal approved for human consumption -- and getting all the big grocers to say no to the salmon will help ensure that people don't eat it, and demand doesn't rise for it, and we don't one day see GMO chickens and pigs in the supermarket. There really is no benefit from GMO animals other than making big agricultural corporate CEOs rich -- anyone who tells you it's for feeding hungry people isn't telling you that we grow food to be sold more than we grow it to be eaten, and growing food to be sold kinda makes it harder to feed the hungry, since their main obstacle toward eating better is poverty.

Around the table: tax issues, solar mirrors, mortgage interest deductions -- we're bringing sexy back!

Citizens for Tax Justice covers tax issues in Pennsylvania's upcoming gubernatorial election. I did not know, incidentally, that Pennsylvania's constitution bars a progressive income tax, which is largely why the state income tax rate is a flat 3%. Mr. Wolf, the Democratic nominee, has suggested raising the rate to 5% but exempting the first $30,000 of income, which would have a more progressive effect than the flat rate currently does; he also supports a 5% severance tax on gas drillers, which, as you may recall, the incumbent Gov. Corbett once called "un-American," which is what politicians like to call a lot of popular stuff.

Alex Ulam at The American Prospect notes that the mortgage interest deduction is rather more popular with the people than it is useful. It's actually fairly popular in my household, too, but when I think about it relatively objectively I can see no good reason to dump it -- I might lower the cap a bit more than Rep. Ellison would (he'd lower it from $1.1 million in mortgages to $500,000), but being mindful that a lot of middle-class folks are paying mortgages on housing bubble-priced homes, I wouldn't lower it that much more.

Another day, another story about birds catching fire as they fly over a solar plant, another time I feel compelled to add that we've read about this before, and it's not about the kind of solar panels you'd put on your roof, but a "solar plant" where mirrors reflect sunlight onto water boilers -- which, as I've said before, seems a rather roundabout way of creating "solar power." Why mirrors and not solar panels in one of the sunniest areas on Earth? A real solar farm would be harder to build, perhaps, but doing the right thing is always harder.

Arthur Delaney and Sam Stein catch Paul Ryan writing in his book calling the 2013 government shutdown over the Affordable Care Act a "suicide mission," without mentioning that he wanted to attach all kinds of other conditions to continued government funding at the time. In other words, he thought shutting down the government over health care was a bad idea, but shutting down the government in order to force more austerity on the American people was a good idea. Remember that when they try to shut down the government again before Election Day.

Finally, Kentucky blogger shows up at a town hall meeting with Sen. McConnell advertised to be open to the public, only to find that it's actually not open to the public. I'd say that's the kind of blunder that ends campaigns, but it didn't take down the aforementioned Mr. Ryan or Rep. Barletta (R-PA) when they charged admission fees to their town hall meetings back in 2011, and Uncle Mitch does have lots of campaign free speech money to play with. Still, Alison Grimes should make sure this arrow's in her quiver.

Action: the nefarious Comcast/Time-Warner merger, and help for refugee children.

You didn't think I forgot about the Comcast/Time-Warner merger, did you? Of course not! Turns out the deadline for comments to the FCC is today, so if you haven't left comments with the FCC opposing the merger, well, time to get cracking. Luckily, both Free Press and CREDO still help you do that. If Comcast buys Time-Warner, they will control the cable in 60% of American households -- and in the communities where they are now, and the communities where they hope to be if the merger goes through, they will be the only cable provider in town. There is absolutely no benefit to the consumer under such an arrangement. Who will make Comcast deliver TV channels a la carte or deliver internet content neutrally or lower prices or provide better customer service if no one is around to push them? No one, that's who. Comcast likes to jaw about how their real "competition" is wireless broadband, which is sneeze-out-your-coffee laughable to anyone who's ever actually used wireless broadband. They already own NBC and Universal Studios. How much is enough?

I didn't forget about immigrant refugee children, either, though Congress undoubtedly hopes we forget, lest we harp on, say, "citizen legislator" Ron Johnson's novel solution for dealing with the problem: just find cheap plane tickets on Orbitz and send them back! Sleeping at night knowing you just sent an innocent child back to be hacked to death by drug squads must be a lot easier if you're an airhead. But most Americans are not airheads, however disproportionately airheads may be represented in Congress, so the Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop their strutting and/or laziness and/or cowardice and pass a bill that would help us deal with the problem adequately. CHN advocates for a bill totaling $2.7 billion, some $1.2 billion of which would go directly to Health and Human Services for emergency housing and the like; let the deficit peacocks posture about spending less than $3 billion on this matter, when peacocks in the House just passed a bill extending a corporate tax cut that will cost almost $30 billion. Strange, how good policy seems to cost so much less than bad policy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Penny rants: a hostage crisis, a campaign promise, a bad review, and an app for our divided times.

The New York Times informs us that ISIS wanted a ransom of over $100 million in exchange for the life of James Foley, the journalist they just brutally executed -- and the United States wouldn't pay it. Apparently our government did try (and fail) to rescue Mr. Foley and other hostages. But why do I get the feeling that Mr. Obama's stark refusal to pay this sizable ransom won't actually soothe right-wingers who constantly squeal that liberals always negotiate with terrorists? It couldn't have anything to do with Mr. Obama's partisan affiliation, could it? And I eagerly await the first right-winger to tell me that BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA JUST KILLED TEH HOSTAGEZ!!!! just so I can remind them that ISIS killed the hostages. I mean, conservatives hate liberals for blaming the wrong people all the time, right? So you may comfortably conclude that folks who would accuse Mr. Obama of "killing hostages" are not conservative, regardless of what they say they are, or how loudly they say it.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (E-KY) laid out his plans for bringing President Obama back in line if Republicans take the Senate in November. And the very first thing he said to Politico was that his main concern was the good citizens of Kentucky, whom he represents and before whom he must account himself in the upcoming elections. Ha ha, I kid, of course -- this is the man who famously said in 2010 that his "number-one job" in the Senate was ensuring Mr. Obama was a one-term President, and not, say, representing the will of those who elected him to do so. The "plan," such as it is, is to pass spending bills that place "a lot of restrictions on the activities of the bureaucracy" -- particularly the EPA, the one halfway-decent Obama alphabet agency -- and then dare the President to veto them, risking a government shutdown if he does. Right, because shutdowns always work so well for Republicans. If Alison Lundergan Grimes can't run ads about Mitch McConnell's "plans" being more important than the will of good Kentuckians, she deserves to lose this race.

Here's a bolt from the blue in Nevada's Attorney General race: Republican nominee Adam Laxalt -- grandson of former Nevada Governor/U.S. Senator Paul Laxalt -- received a bad first review from the law firm that employed him. Among the chestnuts: "He has horrible client service toward his partners," "His work is sloppy," "Jorgenson (his supervisor) said he had to babysit the cases more than he expected," "He doesn't even have the basic skill set," "He is a train wreck," "he ought to look into attending some legal writing CLE seminars and other CLEs that address basic legal principles" -- and, also, "his self-assessment is glowing," and has "typos." His now-former employer has since asserted that "the review documents being discussed in the media do not represent the current view of Lewis Roca Rothgerber LLP about Adam," plus they weren't for the public to know anyway. But Mr. Laxalt sure does sound like someone who counted on his pedigree (he is also the son of former New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici) to do his work for him.

Finally, the Washington Post seems very, very upset about the release of an app called BuyPartisan, which allows you to scan product barcodes and learn what percentage the product's manufacturer gives to Democratic or Republican campaigns. The Post "hope(s) BuyPartisan fails," because folks already "refuse to marry, socialize and live near people who disagree with their partisan affiliation. If the app succeeds, it would be a sign that Democrats and Republicans aren’t even willing to do business with one another any longer." They say that like it's a bad thing. We have the right, as Americans, to associate with whom we like -- as long as we're not actively depriving others of their rights -- and to shun those whom we think deserve shunning. But the Post seems afraid that Americans will have more tools with which they may shun and shame other Americans. Why? Because they couldn't peddle their Democrats-and-Republicans-coming-together-to-do-whatever-Republicans-want brand of "bipartisanship" as easily?

Around the table: good news for renewable energy producers! Plus difficult reading about humanity's inhumanity.

Desmond Tutu offers "My Plea to the People of Israel: Liberate Yourselves by Liberating Palestine." He says it'll only happen through nonviolent means, which makes sense, since violent means haven't exactly been working well for either side. Note well, also, that some elites are beginning to divest from Israel, which was also the death-blow in South Africa. As for telling Israelis and Palestinians to "look beyond their leaders," well, seems like we all have to do at least some of that to get anything done.

Carl Gibson at occupy.com wonders if the '60s civil rights movement could have worked its will against a heavily-militarized police force like those we often find today. While we should absolutely stop the flow of military weapons to local police, I still think Dr. King would have done well against today's police: beyond a certain point, and our police forces are well beyond it, military force backfires on those who use it -- think what the PR hit would have been if Bull Connor had used rubber bullets on civil rights marchers in their Sunday best.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar instructs us that focusing on race when thinking about the Ferguson protests can distract us from focusing on the real issue: class. It's a wide-ranging and intensely intelligent piece, and note well how Mr. Abdul-Jabbar even concedes points from a position of strength -- if there is "just as much black-on-white racism as there is white-on-black," for example, then "white-against-black economically impacts the future of the black community" while "(b)lack-against-white has almost no measurable social impact."

D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals affirms an order from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission making it much easier for folks to feed the renewable energy they produce into the grid. The 2011 order, among other things, eliminates utilities' right to block independent energy transmission projects if they wanted to build such projects; this "right" sounds like corporate welfare to me, but I bet its elimination elicits more cries of TEH JOB TERRORIZTZ!!!! from right-wingers.

Finally, reality show star Michelle Duggar, she of the 19 Kids and Counting, promulgates a lot of slippery-slope BS about an anti-gay discrimination bill in Arkansas, including the notion that the bill would protect transgendered folks when they "prey" on children. Actually the bill is about preventing landlords from not renting to gays just because they don't like them and such, but you just have to say: what imaginings folks like Michelle Duggar have. They have so many of them you wonder if they secretly enjoy them.

Action: privacy invasions, and fracking on public lands.

As you may know, Facebook is making smartphone users install Facebook Messenger, which acts like it needs access to your phone camera and your audio-recording software whether you want that or not, and which also acts like it should be able to send messages and calls and send info about you and your contacts to third parties, all without your consent. Did not the U.S. Supreme Court just unanimously rule that law enforcement needs a warrant to get to the information on your cellphone, on the basis that the cellphone carries an unprecedented amount of private information about its owner? This isn't substantially different, though corporations appear to believe that if we want to use their services, we have to follow their rules, when actually we have an inalienable right to demand better from them, and to stop using their services and/or embarrass the hell out of them before our assembled civilization if they don't comply. Hence Sum of Us helps you tell Facebook to stop ramming privacy-invading features down our throats.

Meanwhile, Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Congressfolk to introduce legislation banning fracking on public lands. Our previous action alerts targeted various Executive branch agencies, which, as you know, pretty much dropped the ball, possibly out of a misguided belief that because fracking one time isn't likely to upset the water table fracking must be safe (though what gas drilling corporation fracks once?), or a mania for "weaning ourselves off of foreign oil" (which, as we know, can only be done one way!), or even out of a severely misguided sense that actually pursuing that "all-of-the-above" energy policy Republicans say they want will actually get Republicans on board. Anyway, I suppose it would be an act of courage for one of our Congressfolk to defy their campaign contributors and sponsor legislation banning fracking on public lands -- the most courage we've seen from Congress so far is the Casey/DeGette bill that would have forced public disclosure of fracking chemicals, and you saw where that got in the 2009-10 Congress. But the first act of courage is the mother of many others.

Around the table: in which we are reminded that this is a beautiful world, with a lot of bad people in it.

USA Today reports that 20 corporations paying zero dollars in taxes during this year's second quarter (despite making $4.4 billion in profits!) paid their CEOs $240 million during that time. That averages out to $12 million per CEO, for three months' work, and since corporations get to deduct corporate salaries from taxes, some call that a "public subsidy." I don't -- salaries are expenses, and legislative efforts to cap deductions for CEO salaries only expose the weak wills of our political class. Politicians with real courage would advocate for the return of the 91% tax bracket for millionaire income, which would solve the corporate tax evasion issue and the overpaid CEO issue all at once.

The Center for American Progress reports on how the Koch brothers fight for their preferred legislative initiatives at every level of government -- state, federal, and local. Just in case you were thinking, you know, that the Kochs prefer small governments to make the most important decisions, as real conservatives do. They don't -- they want to make all the decisions, for everyone, which is not conservative.

ProPublica advises us "What to Look for in Dueling Autopsies of Michael Brown," the 18-year-old Black man shot by Ferguson, MO police earlier this month, a shooting that has, to say the least, exposed tensions between the police and the Black community there. You'll note that the man who the Brown family hired to do an autopsy didn't find a whole lot of evidence that would exonerate the policeman who shot Mr. Brown.

The New York Times laments that "Web Trolls" are "Winning as Incivility Increases," despite paragraph two's admission that "trolling is "a problem whose scope is not clear." But really, is the internet worse than, say, cable news channels or talk radio, where members of our political and media elites shout at/over each other all the time, virtually without consequences? Or do our elites prefer that only their assholes get incessant coverage? In any case, incivility on the internet is a mere symptom of our elites' ongoing destruction of civilization, but good luck getting that viewpoint from the New York Times.

Finally, another day, another right-winger whining that laws preventing discrimination against gays "criminalize free speech." Er, no: these laws criminalize bad actions, as any sentient life form would know. Is it really too much to ask that far right-wingers understand they live in a society with other people in it?

Action: oil rail car safety, and smarter federal drug sentencing.

The federal Department of Transportation, having declared trains shipping oil an "imminent hazard" to the general public, has decided to issue new regulations governing their safety -- but, ho hum, oil and rail corporations oppose them, because money I mean big gummint overreach I mean JOBZ!!!!! But I bet the good citizens of Lynchburg, Virginia -- who had their drinking water fouled by 15 derailed oil cars in April -- would feel differently, as would those who've had their lives disrupted by the four other serious oil train-related accidents in America since the beginning of 2013. So the Sierra Club helps you tell the Department of Transportation to adopt the most vigorous rules possible. The DOT plan isn't perfect, and the Sierra Club action alert makes it easy for you to ask them to do better, but their plan does mandate that oil transport corporations notify the public and local first responders when one of their trains rolls through. Oil and rail corporations who squeal SOSHULIZM!!!!!! or TEH JOBZ TERRORIZTZ!!!! need to explain how corporations telling folks they'll be moving dangerous stuff through their neighborhood is "socialist" or "terrorist," as opposed to some other adjective one might use, like "reasonable."

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to support S. 1410, the Smarter Sentencing Act, then Families Against Mandatory Minimums still helps you do that. S. 1410 has 32 Senate sponsors, including six Republicans, four of whom you'd expect (Lee of Utah, Paul of Kentucky, Flake of Arizona, Cruz of Texas) and two you wouldn't (Johnny Isaakson? Ron Freaking Johnson?); its House companion, H.R. 3382, has 50 sponsors, including Paul Ryan and 13 other Republicans, and these days that's about as bipartisan as things get. The Smarter Sentencing Act doesn't end mandatory minimum sentences, but does reduce a lot of mandatory drug sentences, and also allows judges to sentence lowest-level drug offenders below mandatory minimums -- plus it makes the crack cocaine sentencing reforms enacted by the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 retroactive. The die-hard tough-on-crime crowd may be soothed by the fact that the bill only affects non-violent drug offenders. They may also be soothed by the fact that the bill reduces the amount of taxpayer money we waste locking up people who aren't that much of a threat to society. Of course, many of these die-harders are just haters, but no one ever said fishing for souls would be easy.

Action: fighting discrimination against gays and the Social Security Administration's idea of "progress."

Pennsylvania residents, take note: SB 300/HB 300 (now that's a statistical oddity!) would amend Pennsylvania's 1955 law outlawing discrimination on basis of race, religion, ancestry, or age so that gays and lesbians can enjoy its protections as well. The 1955 law mainly treats matters of employment, loans, and real estate, but, as you know, more than half of America's states still don't prevent employers from discriminating against gays and lesbians -- and with several national organizations' (short-sighted, I believe) withdrawal of support for ENDA in the wake of the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision, this is our way of getting gays and lesbians the protections they deserve in Pennsylvania. And why should gays be shut out of renting or buying a house in a particular area? Wouldn't it be nice to turn the conversation for once away from people's supposed "right" to discriminate against whoever they don't like based on their "sincere religious beliefs"? So Keystone Progress helps you tell your Pennsylvania state legislator to support SB 300/HB 300. Because, last I looked, everyone had rights in America.

Meanwhile, if you missed previous opportunities to tell the Senate to pass S. 2742, which would mandate future Social Security Administration office closures go before the public, then the Campaign for America's Future still helps you do that. The Social Security Administration has nearly blank-check power to do this now, and they're planning on closing a dozen field offices in the near future, saying it's not such a big deal because seniors can just use laptops and smartphones to contact the SSA. That'll greatly comfort the seniors who have arthritis and vision problems preventing them from using laptops and computers well enough to accomodate the SSA's "progressive" vision! And while we should be careful not to think of seniors as folks who can't adapt to new technology, many of them would rather have people help them through problems. And what's wrong with that? It is how most people relate, after all, not just seniors. And keeping offices open keeps people employed, which means what? Saving good jobs, that's what. Getting rid of government employees really isn't a very good "job creation" program.

Around the table: served with a larger dollop of optimism than yesterday.

Kelly Phillips Erb at Forbes warns us about a large-scale phone scam in which people pretending to be IRS collectors tell folks they owe the IRS money and demand they pay up via pre-paid debit cards or wire transfers. IRS collectors have a bad rap, but generally they don't call folks over the phone and threaten them. Actually, they don't call folks very much at all, plus they also have their own payment processing system. Over a thousand good folks have fallen victim to this scam; no need for you to be another one.

Government of Rochelle, GA finally agrees to replace sewer pipes that have leaked raw sewage into good folks' homes and yards for decades. That's right, several times a year, residents find feces and toilet paper and the like on their floors or in their grass; oddly enough, the city seems to have been more lax about pipe repair on the side of town that's mostly Black. The bad news is: residents had to sue under the Clean Water Act to get it done. The good news? We have a Clean Water Act that can get it done.

Stanford University researchers find gas drilling corporations fracking at a rather shallower depth than previously believed -- occasionally in underground sources of drinking water. Their research didn't find any direct contamination of drinking water, mainly because the aforementioned sources of drinking water are deep enough themselves that folks probably aren't using them, but all that sounds like a matter of time. Anyone else thankful that the "job terrorists" at the EPA have gone through the trouble of finding those underground water sources in the first place?

Noting low turnouts for local elections, the Los Angeles city Ethics Commission suggests offering a chance at a cash prize to voters who go to the polls, essentially making a ballot a lottery ticket. Local elections do get dismal turnout, but I actually think that'll get better over time, without such shenanigans. Moving municipal elections to even-numbered years would also help, though I'd prefer not to imagine the turf-war selfishness standing in the way of that.

Finally, Laura Flanders profiles the largest worker-owned co-op in America, Cooperative Home Care Associates of New York. CHCA workers make $16/hour plus benefits, in a field where workers are notoriously underpaid (and usually make half that), but their turnover is a quarter of the field's average, because people are less likely to leave a job they have a significant say in running. Co-ops still face a lot of challenges, most of them financial, but they give us hope that capitalism doesn't have to be all about selfishness.

Action: police violence, and campaign finance.

I have several action alerts relating to the violence in Ferguson, MO, where a police offier shot Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, on August 9, and where local police have overreacted to protestors with rubber bullets, tear gas, and stun grenades. Amnesty International helps you tell Ferguson's Police Chief to investigate police abuses and make his officers adhere to international human rights standards. Also, both the ACLU and the Friends Committee on National Legislation help you tell Congress to keep military weapons out of the hands of local police officers. I'm not one of those folks who hates cops -- I believe, simply, that a civilized society has a duty to ensure that its law enforcement officers act in a civilized manner, and I suspect most cops would rather get to know the communities they're sworn to protect than hide behind military weapons. And personal to those who think of Michael Brown as a crook because of that convenience-store videotape: does anyone deserve to be shot to death while unarmed?

Meanwhile, the Senate will vote early next month on S.J.Res. 19, the Constitutional amendment allowing our state and federal governments to make campaign finance laws, including contribution limits, and Common Cause helps you tell your Senators to vote in the amendment's favor. I've argued against the bogus "concerns" amendment opponents have offered -- It'll silence pastors! It'll ban books! It'll allow one side to prevent the other from running ads! -- but I should also have noted that these "concerns" never materialized under the McCain-Feingold regime that Citizens United and McCutcheon have largely eviscerated. S.J.Res. 19, as reported to the Senate, has changed for the better, as Section 2 now explicitly permits governments to "distinguish between natural persons and corporations or other artificial entities created by law, including by prohibiting such entities from spending money to influence elections." So let our elites defend corporate "personhood. Let them call big money drowning out citizens' voices "freedom."

Around the table: some evangelicals feel left out of the Republican Party, boo hoo! And other follies.

"Some Evangelicals in Republican Party Are Feeling Left Out," the Washington Post reports. Do they mean the whiners, the ones who think anything less than everything is nothing? Who cares what whiners think? Regardless of Americans' slow embrace of gay marriage or some sham "libertarian" movement within the GOP, the whiners will one day defend President Scott Walker to the death just like they did President George W. Bush, and they won't hesitate to smear reasonable folk as traitors again.

Get your surprised face ready: a U.S. Conference of Mayors report suggests that though the jobs have come back, the wages haven't. Specifically, the Conference found that jobs recovered specifically in the areas hardest hit by the 2008 recession -- manufacturing and construction -- now pay, on average, about 23% less than they did before. I guess more Free Market Fairy Dust will solve that problem -- after all, how could giving big corporations even more room to outsource manufacturing jobs, for example, possibly go wrong?

Don't put your surprised face away yet: the Environmental Integrity Project found that over 30 gas drilling corporations had illegally used diesel fuel in fracking operations, and had falsified documents relating to that use. The EIP combed through FracFocus, a database of chemicals used in fracking, and if they found 30 corporations breaking the law merely by looking through an industry-supported database with mere voluntary reporting requirements, then you could be excused for thinking the problem's actually much worse.

Remember that $276 billion (over 10 years) "bonus depreciation" corporate tax break the House passed last month? A Bloomberg BNA survey of 100 corporate leaders finds that the vast majority of them don't think the bonus depreciation tax break actually does what supporters say it does -- which is spur short- or long-term investments in machinery and other infrastructure. You probably agree, if you've noticed that giving corporations more money mostly leads to corporations hoarding more money.

Another day, another ad blaming the Affordable Care Act for for something it didn't actually do. The Crossroads GPS ad depicts a woman claiming she had to get a job to get health care because of "Obamacare," but who has since admitted she chose to get another job three years before the Affordable Care Act health care exchanges even came online -- though she still insists that the ad "captured the heart of my message," which was, apparently, MAKINGZ TEH PEEPULZ BUY TEH HEALTH INSURANCEZ IZ BAD FER TEH SMALL BIZNIZZEZ!!!!!, even though the ACA's employer mandate -- still not in effect, I feel compelled to add -- actually excludes 96 percent of all businesses. One more question for Crossroads GPS: why criticize a law for inducing someone to get a job, after criticizing that same law for being a "job-killer"?

Finally, PR Watch informs us that while over 70 corporations have ended their association with ALEC -- the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization that churns out right-wing legislative initiatives mostly at the state level -- but many corporations remain, namely big pharmaceutical corporations, big tobacco corporations, and, well, Big Koch. The Koch Brothers are a lost cause, but surely big tobacco and big pharma are always in need of a PR boost -- or, more precisely, should always live in mortal fear of a PR disaster. Perhaps that should be the next frontier in anti-ALEC activism.

Around the table: good news about community broadband, plus some pretty dumb Republicans.

The city of Rockport, Maine, population 3,321, has built a community broadband network that's 20 times faster than any offered by a big corporation. They built it with about $60,000, half of that coming from "unused town tax funds," which, yes, still exist in These Interesting Times -- largely in places that haven't handed out very much corporate welfare, I bet. Teabaggers may want to note that Rockport contracts with private corporations to provide the broadband service to -- nah, never mind. Haters gonna hate.

ProPublica notes that the Obama Adminstration's SEC Chair, Mary Jo White, hasn't done very much good. Some of that has to do with a hostile House in a defunding mood, and some of that has to do with the workload mandated by Dodd-Frank, but still, to have alienated the SEC's most liberal Commissioner to the point where she votes with Republicans against your rules takes a special talent. This is the agency, after all, which will either prevent the next economic armageddon or won't.

Colorado Republican U.S. Senate candidate claims that "Obamacare" pushed him off his health insurance -- but that's not very likely, since Mr. Gardner actually declined the health care coverage offered to Congressfolk before the Affordable Care Act's exchanges even came online, and then bought rather expensive coverage in its place. And the "335,000 Coloradans had their plans cancelled" bit is just a scare number -- since at least 300,000 of them were actually able to keep their plans.

I gotta hand it to David Sirota; he really breaks it down, here asking, in re campaign finance, "Is Corruption a Constitutional Right?" His article mostly concerns Wall Street managers of state pension funds making campaign contributions (which actually violates federal law), but we could well call any opponent of campaign finance reform "objectively pro-corruption." Also, money isn't speech.

Alaska Senate candidate Joe "I've got my own police force!" Miller, currently running third of three in most Republican primary polls right now, apparently hopes to rectify that with this incredibly racist mailer, which includes plenty of images of tattooed brown-skinned men, so he can come off as the "100% pro-gun, 100% against amnesty" candidate. I shudder to think how "100% pro-gun" relates to immigration law, but if I were Democratic Sen. Begich, I'd be making sure this mailer gets into the hands of every Republican voter in Alaska, because that'd be my best shot of facing Joe Miller in the general election.

Finally, the Republican National Committee denounced the College Board's new AP History exam framework, because it's not positive enough. I sure wouldn't want any of these idiots in my foxhole -- what whiners and weaklings they must be, apparently unable to accept that Americans have ever done anything bad, or that a reasonable person could find patriotism in speaking out and fighting for change.

Around the table: progress for working folk.

Two Jimmy John's employees sue the corporation for wage theft, alleging that the corporations has created a culture within its multitudinous franchises that encourages or forces managers to clock folks out before they can get overtime even if they haven't finished their work, among other things. McDonald's workers have hit their corporate employer with the same charge, and the NLRB has ruled that workers can hold the parent corporation responsible for the actions of its franchisees -- particularly if the corporation has essentially made the franchise owners commit wage theft, I would think.

Gar Alperovitz observes the Market Basket situation in New England -- where workers have defended a good CEO against the bad corporate owners who forced him out -- and wonders if the worker-owned corporation model could solve the problem. The main problem I foresee is that too many CEOs are too greedy or too co-opted by Wall Street to let their corporations go, but n.b. that though the number of worker-owned corporations declined from 2002 to 2011, the number of employee owners actually increased over that time, from 10 million to 13.5 million.

The FCC still might whiff on net neutrality, but the FCC might actually expand its 2012 rule mandating online public disclosure of political campaign spending on the traditional "over-the-air" TV stations to cable, satellite, and radio stations. The effort's supporters note the quickness with which the FCC responded to their petition, as well as the FCC's inclusion of radio, which the petitioners did not include. I'm as much an optimist as anyone, but I'll be happier when I see results. (If I get action alerts that could help produce those results, of course I'll pass them along.)

David Morris at On the Commons describes how labor solidarity thwarted the U.S. Postal Service's plan to essentially privatize some of its more common functions at "retail partners" like Staples. Postal unions were able to get Staples to shut down its plan by getting other unions -- including the American Federation of Teachers, because you know how much teachers need writing supplies -- to boycott Staples as long as it participated in the USPS plan to outsource basic postal services to low-paid workers, and it worked. It'll have to work again and again and again, but it's a fight worth fighting.

Finally, I've long warned that Rand Paul is not the independent thinker his father is, but I didn't even know that he said he "would not rule out" supporting air strikes in Iraq back in June, explaining that -- just kidding, he didn't actually explain very much of anything, but just changed the subject to how disappointed he is that Iraqi soldiers are shedding their uniforms and running and wondering why we have to do their fighting for them, which he's nonetheless apparently willing to continue to do. The article lists other recent and no less telling sins as well.

Action: war in Iraq, farmworkers' health, and mandatory minimums.

NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you tell President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry to resolve the ongoing clusterfrack in Iraq through peaceful means. "Peaceful means" excludes air strikes, by the way. War hawks may lament that the American people don't have the stomach to put boots on the ground in Iraq, but that recommends us, frankly, and who among those war hawks would ever have clean drawers if we deployed them to Iraq? (They certainly wouldn't have clean drawers with Halliburton doing their laundry, amirite?) So what are "peaceful means"? Oh, gosh, just what are the alternatives to bombing the stuffing out of everything? Well, just for starters, how about working with the U.N. and NGOs to get humanitarian aid to the oppressed populations of Iraq? Or negotiating with all the region's nations, not just the ones we like, for a political solution? More guns and more bombs ain't gonna do the job, though -- just so happens that ISIS is inflicting its pain on good Iraqis with, guess what, American weapons stolen (or, perhaps, "stolen") from the Iraqi government. I sure hope that wasn't part of the plan.

Meanwhile, the EPA has proposed updating rules aiming to protect farmworkers from pesticide exposure -- which sickens thousands of them annually -- and CREDO helps you tell the EPA to protect farmworkers with the most vigorous rules possible. Specifically, you'll ask the EPA to provide more access to personal protective equipment for farmers, to mandate more safety training, to restrict farmworkers from pesticide-treated fields until they're safe, and to enact a minimum age of 16 for farmworkers. That last item, believe it or not, would be a first -- farmworkers are, sad to say, the red-headed stepchildren of the American workforce, partly due to their exclusion from the National Labor Relations Act. The big agricultural corporations -- who have already cowed the EPA into rubber-stamping harmful pesticides -- oppose further restrictions, of course, but let them defend their position. Let them argue that safety training harms workers, or that respiratory masks just make workers uppity, or that kids under 16 learn character from ingesting carcinogens. Hell, let them explain how their alleged "right to farm" trumps farm workers' real right not to be poisoned by their work.

Finally, a change.org petition helps you petition Attorney General Eric Holder for clemency for one Roderick "Rudd" Walker, currently serving life in prison for conspiracy to sell LSD. You have no need to act because of your shared admiration for the Grateful Dead or jewelry-makers, for while no one disputes that LSD is yet another drug that you shouldn't abuse lest you find yourself unable to function in society, a judge sentenced Mr. Walker to life in prison without parole for conspiracy to sell LSD. Hardly a drug kingpin actively depriving other folks of their freedom, he wasn't even caught with any LSD on him, and got put behind bars almost entirely on the testimony of others who were themselves trying to ratchet down their own jail time, which all sounds like a big bowl of CYA to me. Giving this man life in prison without parole (and he's already served 12 years of that sentence) is like trying to kill an ant with a sledgehammer, and then missing the ant. Mr. Walker may be yet another victim of the mandatory minimum sentence, but as a non-violent drug offender, he may yet receive clemency from the Obama Administration. But only if we say something.

Around the table: how do the fools survive?

Patrick Cockburn sees, in ISIS, "the Birth of a Terrifying New State" and a "counter-revolutionary caliphate," one that could take over all of Iraq and Syria. Not because "we didn't do enough to stop it," but because, frankly, we did too much -- when foreign nations interfere in your affairs for decades on end (and that includes helping install the hated Saddam Hussein), the locals remember forever, and so would we, if it were us. Bush's Folly could wind up allying us with Iran against ISIS -- which irony wouldn't be unprecedented in human history, I suppose.

International Franchise Association sues Seattle over its phased-in $15/hour minimum wage, claiming unfair treatment because the law classifies franchises as big businesses and thus requires them to phase in the money faster. Maybe Mr. Clement's assertion that the law violates the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause could work in the IFA's favor, but folks who think we should treat big businesses exactly as we'd treat small businesses confuse symmetry with fairness, and no reasonable person should think the nearest McDonald's is a "small business" just because its owners have driven a Mack truck through a loophole in the law.

The great-granchildren of Anna Short Harrington, who played Aunt Jemima in Quaker Oats promotional materials for decades, have filed a class-action lawsuit against Quaker Oats and three affiliated corporations, saying they exploited Ms. Harrington and thus cheated her descendents of royalties for over 60 years. Good luck to them -- you know Quaker's going to lose (though maybe not pay $2 billion plus punitives) because all their PR hacks can think of to say is "(p)eople associate The Aunt Jemima Brand with warmth, hospitality and comfort, and we stand by this heritage as well as the ways in which we do business." Warmth, hospitality, and comfort -- all things we associate with wage theft.

Federal investigators find a "a systematic breakdown" in how two Virginia schools "employed restraints and seclusions" -- as in, one of them used "last-resort" disciplinary tactics on nearly 40 percent of its students. Those ready to squeal that TODAYZ KIDZ ARE OUTZ UV TEH CONTROLZ!!!!! would need to explain how using "last-resort" tactics nearly half the time isn't an indication that the school has no idea how to keep its students focused and in line.

Finally, Standard and Poor's becomes the second national ratings agency to downgrade the Kansas's credit (from AA+ to AA). They follow Moody's, which downgraded Kansas in April. Both agencies cite the Kansas government's unwillingness to cut spending as well as its mania for cutting taxes, noting that Kansas's tax cuts will actually become steeper after 2015. While it's tempting to dump on Sam Brownback some more -- after all, these tax cuts are all part of his big "experiment" -- I doubt future Kansas Republicans will abandon their tax-cutting mania; they'll just argue that Mr. Brownback somehow did it wrong, because of his Brownbacky Brownbackness, I guess, and then try it again once they get the chance. I'd be happy to be wrong about that. But I doubt I am.

Action: oil refinery emissions, and corporate interference in Congressional staffing.

The EPA, which has been rather busy under President Obama, plans to take on oil refinery emissions, and since oil refineries do put a rather nasty cloud of carcinogens, metals, and neurotoxins into our air every day, that's not a bad thing -- unless, I suppose, you're an oil corporation CEO anxious to gild the plumbing in your seventh vacation home, in which case you may view oil emissions standards as a Communist Socialist Nazi Kenyan anti-colonialist job-killing terrorist plot. Oil corporation CEOs would do well to remember that they have to breathe the air, too -- gated communities haven't quite advanced to become "bubble communities." Oh, my, that's not only a dystopian novel waiting to happen, it's a dystopia waiting to happen. But here's one way to forestall it: by telling the EPA to adopt the strongest possible emissions standards for oil refineries, as the Environmental Defense Fund helps you do. There'll be less gilded plumbing in the world, what a shame, but more breathable air, and less asthma and less cancer as well. I ask you: do civilized people deserve less?

Meanwhile, new House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana got some negative ink late last month for failing to whip a decent immigration bill through the House, but here's something about which we should have heard more: that Mr. Scalise used a corporate lobbyist to assist with interviews for his staff. You may say, big deal, they're just staffers, but I sure hope you're not saying that, because workers anywhere are important, and also, headline: Congressfolk don't read all the bills that cross their desk. I know we think they should, but even this no-work-doing Congress has introduced over 9,500 bills this session, some of them admirably short, many others less so, many worth your time and many not worth the space they occupy on Congressional servers, but who sifts through that morass to highlight what their Reps and Senators need to know? Hell, who writes these bills in the first place? Congressional staffers, that's who -- meaning maybe corporations shouldn't be picking them. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to condemn corporate meddling in Congressional staff hirings.

Around the table: technology vs. music, monopolies vs. customers, corporations vs. communities, welfare vs. welfare, earmarks vs. gridlock, and science vs. Alzheimer's.

Scott Timburg and Kathleen Sharp wonder if music-streaming services like Spotify are "killing music." "Never in the history of rock and roll has it been as tough for a musician to make a living as it is today," they say, and when you see the royalty rates Spotify pays, you might be convinced as well -- if haven't already noticed that music streaming has now made it possible to "own" entire albums without really owning them.

If some right-winger is in your ear saying WHY DOEZNT TEH LIBRULZ JUST BOYCOTTZ TEH EVERYTHINGZ HA HA FREE MARKETZ!!!!!, the Consumerist comes to the rescue with "5 Reasons Why People Still Buy Stuff From Companies They Hate." Cheapness figures in, especially with real middle-class incomes going nowhere fast, and convenience figures in, which the rural and urban poor know more acutely than I, but the main problems seem to be a) monopolies every-damn-where and b) no one seems to have gotten the bright idea lately that superior customer service might actually make them rich enough.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation makes the case for community broadband, especially in a world where a handful of internet service providers control everything and have no incentive to do anything better. Sadly, community broadband -- which I feel compelled to remind right-wingers constantly going on about big government would be locally-controlled and belong to the citizenry -- faces a lot of obstacles, like the laws banning it in 20 states. If the big corporations are so afraid of community broadband, they could try, you know, doing better at what they're supposedly good at.

Mike Konczal explains why the Cato Institute's case for a "basic income guarantee" replacing current welfare programs is, to say the least, problematic. Mr. Konczal cites plenty of problems -- welfare programs aren't as inefficient as Cato says, and counting Medicaid and Social Security as "welfare" isn't particularly accurate, since they help specific populations. But the math isn't on Cato's side, either -- if, indeed, the federal government spends $660 billion on welfare programs, dividing that by 300 million Americans only nets us $2,200 each, which may pay for a month or two of rent and then again may not. That's not much of a "guarantee."

It had to happen sooner or later: folks are beginning to call for the return of earmarks, noting that compromise and progress were a whole heck of a lot easier when some horse-trading could go on. I agree that it was easier back in the day, but not necessarily that it was better, and while today's legislative constipation certainly hurts our efforts at making America better, at least the Republicans have made their reactionary philosophies about as manifest as they can be made without actually trying to return to the era of one-white-male-landowner-one-vote. All we have to do is get the "liberal" media to notice.

Finally, Yale University researchers have found a drug compound that appears to reverse the effects of Alzheimer's disease in mice. Which isn't the same as reversing those effects in people, but it's still a ray of hope. In the meantime, you might be better off eating one serving of baked or broiled (but not fried!) fish weekly. (And no, tuna out of a can doesn't count, or I'd be doing that as we speak.)

Action: justice for Darren Rainey, and Arctic drilling.

First things first. Two years ago, Miami-Dade County prison guards punished a 50-year-old mentally ill prisoner named Darren Rainey for pooping in his cell by locking him in a shower pouring out 180 degree water. The Burn Foundation advises us that tap water can cause third-degree burns in a mere five seconds once it reaches 140 degrees, but Mr. Rainey spent two hours in that shower, and while the water couldn't have stayed that hot for two hours, Mr. Rainey's skin had come off his body by that time, and then the guards sent in another prisoner to clean up the mess. They must have decided that was a teachable moment. But we can give Miami-Dade County a teachable moment of our own, by demanding that the U.S. Department of Justice investigate Mr. Rainey's death, as local and state officials have had two years to do, and have failed to do. Personal to the fools who tell us that too many prisoners get cable TV and internet: civilized people do not burn prisoners to death. No, really, I've gotten this kind of comment before, from people who obviously have a lot of rage they can't deal with.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Obama Administration's Department of the Interior to reject further oil and gas drilling in the Arctic, CREDO still helps you do that. If the sight of oily seals don't move you, if the fact that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet doesn't move you, if the resulting disappearance of polar bear habitats doesn't move you -- well, actually, I don't know what would move you at that point. But our political chattering classes want to drill offshore everywhere in the name of energy independence. What a bunch of goofballs -- if energy independence were the reason to drill in the Arctic, why isn't it a reason to build more wind and solar farms? They might then change the subject to "high consumer prices," but as we know from breathing 12 times a minute, prices come down once technologies become widespread, and anyway it's not all about high consumer prices for our glorious fossil-fuel chieftains, but CEO salaries. With no 91% millionaire tax bracket to discourage them, they only make decisions that benefit themselves -- delicate ecosystems be damned, difficult oil spill cleanups in frigid water be damned.

Around the table: coated with hope, but with a chewy center of folly.

Good news, everyone -- the government of Germany is having second thoughts about joining the latest "free" trade agreements, largely due to the pacts' odious "investor-state tribunals," which allow corporations to essentially nullify a nation's laws if they interfere with those corporations' profits. That's a real concern, as evidenced by the more-than-fivefold increase in lawsuits corporations have filed under NAFTA just in the last dozen years.

The Los Angeles Times tells us that many states with lots of sunshine won't let their citizens put solar panels on their roofs -- thanks to scaredy-cat utility corporations and the politicians they own. "We want to bring on more renewables, but we also want to make sure the cost of electricity stays reasonable," says one Duke Energy spokeshack, and there you have the problem -- corporations not wanting to risk sacrificing short-term profits for long-term stability, despite their reputation as "risk-takers." And, ah, fellas? The price will come down as you invest in it and as more people use it.

Gas drilling corporation owner gets 28 months in prison for telling employees to dump fracking waste in a Mahoning River tributary and then lie about it. The Mahoning River takes in a lot of agricultural and coal waste from Ohio and Pennsylvania, enough that Ohio has advised against swimming or eating fish caught in some sections, but the river still provides drinking water for several Ohio towns. Attorneys for Mr. Lupo cited his bad health as a reason not to send him to jail, but maybe he should have thought of that before he polluted our water.

The New York Times has finally decided to describe torture as "torture" in its pages. But approximately no one is impressed, and why should we be? To FAIR's complaints I'd add that the Times also waited until the "liberal" media essentially disappeared George W. Bush's entire Administration from the conversation about why things are so messed up in America right now.

Finally, folks in Berlin, Germany plan to build a "House of One," which would house a mosque, synagogue, and Christian church all under one roof. Each religion would have their own space to pray, but (unlike the Tri-Faith Initiative slated to come to fruition in Omaha, NE next year) the House of One would also have a common space where Muslims, Jews, and Christians could sit together. Once it's built, visiting the House of One will definitely be on my bucket list.

Action: opposing war in Iraq, protecting Pacific islands, and ending government spying.

President Obama begun launching airstrikes in Iraq on Friday morning, presumably to counter ISIS militants. Did you hear anything about Congressional authorization for this action? Me neither. It's like Mr. Obama is desperate to be outclassed by Mr. Bush at everything. Maybe he'll even create his very own economy-breaking bailout toward the end of his term, gift-wrapping the Presidency to Scott Walker in 2016! One good turn deserves another, right? Seriously, Congress gets to declare war, while the President commands the military; the Founders had a reason to divide these tasks among the separate branches of government. And what, exactly, will air strikes do against guerillas, besides demonstrate some "resolve" or other, besides "insulate" Mr. Obama against charges of weakness or whatever? Better to get the good folks of Iraq some humanitarian aid. Hence Council for a Livable World helps you tell Mr. Obama to stop making war in Iraq, while Peace Action West helps you tell your Congressfolk to stand up for their right to declare war, and the Friends Committee for National Legislation helps you tell both the President and Congress to do the right thing.

Meanwhile, the Pew Charitable Trusts helps you tell President Obama to expand the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument as far as his powers allow. Remember back in the day when right-wingers complained about all the national monuments President Clinton created? Good times, eh? I suppose they'll whine about Mr. Obama's efforts to expand the Monument, complaining that only a liberal President would do that, just ike the liberal President who created the monument on his way out of office, what was his name? Oh, yes: George W. Bush. If we're really lucky, they'll complain that Mr. Obama didn't the feelings of the locals into account, even though the islands are home to exactly zero indigenous people and less than 200 U.S. military and government workers. At least three of the seven islands in the Monument currently don't have so much as an airstrip. What these islands do have are animal and plant species found nowhere else on Earth, and thus opportunities for scientific study unparalleled in the world. Or do we only care about where we can drill for oil and gas?

Finally, S. 2685, Sen. Leahy's latest version of the USA FREEDOM Act, would actually limit NSA spying by ending the data-vacuuming of good Americans' phone records, creating a panel of advocates to argue citizen's privacy rights before the FISA court, and mandating that the NSA report their activities more stringently. The bill would have some wiggle room, unfortunately, but unlike the House version of the USA FREEDOM Act (which, I'm sorry to say, really fell down on the job), S. 2685 would take some steps forward, and sometimes that's what we're fighting for -- steps forward. It may seem frustrating, especially if you've been fighting the PATRIOT Act since its inception almost 13 years ago, but think of how the national conversation has shifted from how we're going to protect ourselves from terrorists to how we're going to protect ourselves from our government. That's actually a good sign that the electorate, never that fond of overarching government spying, is ahead of the politicians, as usual. The Electronic Freedom Foundation helps you tell your Senators to support S. 2685 and fight big government surveillance.

Around the table: ebola as the "great attitude adjustment"! And other follies.

Greg Palast, America's Last Journalist, tells us President Obama could save Argentina from its "vulture capitalist" creditor, Paul Singer, merely by declaring that Mr. Singer is interfering with his Constitutional right to conduct foreign policy. How do we know this? Because George W. Bush has already done it, to the same Paul Singer, though Mr. Singer is a big Republican donor. You'd think that would make a similar Obama move a no-brainer, but he is perhaps thinking too much about all the squealing that would come from Republicans. I always say, let them squeal -- and let them defend doing the wrong thing.

ProPublica describes, at some length, how banksters turned tobacco settlements into big money for them and big debt for states. Long story perhaps too short: they gave states big up-front payouts which have turned into massive repayments, in some cases over 70 times larger than the original up-front payout. When right-wingers go on about the "free market" curing all ills, please remind them that this kind of stuff, which isn't "work" and which creates nothing of value to civilization, is what they're talking about. And when they blame the states for being dumb, ask them when they're going to blame a bankster for being unscrupulous.

Senate Republicans are filibustering various appropriations bills because Harry Reid won't let them vote on pretty odious amendments, but tucked in one of those bills is a $41 million grant that would help state and local governments process rape kits. State and local governments have quite a backlog of rape kits, as you may know, and getting them done could, you know, help catch rapists. Mr. Reid withdrew the spending bills because he didn't want votes on some odious amendments, but gosh, maybe he should just let the Senate vote on them -- or allow the rape kit grant to come up as a separate bill. Republicans could filibuster that, I suppose -- if they want to be called objectively pro-rape.

Paul Waldman instructs us that the Tea Party "win(s) at the polls even when it loses," partly because its losses fuel their unquenchable outrage, and partly because their challenges move establishment Republicans to the right. Just as the establishment Republicans wanted all along! I'd add, but it is noteworthy, I suppose, that Mr. Waldman's theory appears in the Washington Post, usually a platform for those constantly moving the center rightward in the name of "bipartisanship."

Finally, allegedly Christian radio host Rick Wiles says the ebola virus could become "the great attitude adjustment" that "solve(s) America’s problems with atheism, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, pornography, and abortion." My first reaction was, if you approve of some calamity you think Barack Obama is about to let loose, how do you expect to blame him afterward? But the day before he told his listeners that Mr. Obama might use an ebola breakout as an excuse to invoke martial law, so I guess either he doesn't think people listen to his show from one day to the next, or he's just another nihilist. I vote the latter. Now let's never speak of him again.

Action: sexual assault, overseas workers, and fracking chemical disclosure.

Did you know that, in Tunisia and Algeria, a rapist can escape charges simply by marrying his victim if she's under 18? And did you know that, while Morocco no longer allows men to escape justice in precisely this manner, rapists can still get lighter sentences if their victim wasn't a virgin? These intolerable realities often spur women trapped in marriages of terror to kill themselves. You know what that means -- it's time for the shame gun! Amnesty International helps you tell the governments of Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco to drag some of their laws into the 21st century, or at least the late 20th. You will not only be asking these governments to repeal the offending laws -- you'll also ask them to make rape with a marriage a crime, to get rid of laws that criminalize sex between consenting adults who happen not to be married (since folks won't come forward with sexual abuse allegations if they think they're going to jail for having sex-without-marriage), and to train their law enforcement officers, judicial officials, and health-care workers to treat rape with the sensitivity of civilized people. It's not that damn much to ask.

Meanwhile, iPhone supplier NXP Philippines fired two dozen workers, officially for "not working on public holidays," but I bet you can guess the real reason: they were trying to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions. You can take heart, I suppose, that "(t)he decision was not made lightly," being made, as it were, during contract negotiations. You'd be well within your rights to suppose that firing the other side's leaders during such negotiations might be a little bit unfair, perhaps even intimidating. And, ah, why is Apple contracting work out to a corporation in the Philippines in the first place? Because they'll pay their workers in dung pellets and Apple's executives will make more money, of course. You'd think Apple would learn by now, having taken so many PR hits over the Foxconn workers who killed themselves rather than get roused out of bed in the middle of the night because Steve Jobs had another idea that had to be implemented right away. But if they haven't, we're always ready with more lessons: Sum of Us helps you tell Apple to ensure that the NXP reinstates its workers and treats all of its workers fairly.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the EPA to mandate that gas drilling corporations disclose the chemicals they use in practicing hydrofracturing, or fracking, then Food and Water Watch still helps you do that. You wouldn't want to wait, after all, until your drinking water becomes brackish, or gelatinous, or flammable, and with fracking operations exploding (occasionally literally!) all over America, more of our clean water is at risk than ever before. What is the problem with disclosure, after all? The authors of the 2005 energy bill that permitted gas drillers to keep their fracking chemicals secret no doubt want you to believe that such chemicals are "trade secrets" that fracking corporations must keep in order to get ahead. Think about that for a second, though: they can't make money unless they keep their chemicals out of the public eye? More like the public would be disgusted to find carcinogens and other toxins in the water they drink, bathe in, and wash clothes in! With chemical spills on the rise, with more fracking making poisonous drinking water more likely, the time to act is now.

Around the table: the people are to blame! And other follies.

Matt Bai says small money donors are the real problem with politics. Does he prove this is the case? Of course not -- that would require more than anecdotes about breathless fundraising emails and "most shared" lists. It would require, for example, Mr. Bai to demonstrate that small money outraises big money (which he can't, because it doesn't). And never does Mr. Bai consider the more obvious explanation: that establishment politicians use extremists to get things done they could never get done on their own. If he did that, he'd have a much harder time telling us it's all our fault.

The Intercept reveals that some 40% of Americans on our government's "Terrorist Screening Database" have "no recognized terrorist group association." We also learn that our government's no-fly list has expanded greatly under President Obama, that the city with the "second-highest concentration" of folks in the database just so happens to have the largest Arab-American population in the country, and that folks often find their way to the database through a sort of gateway database, if you will, that fingers folks for suspicion based on even less evidence than the TSD does. It should go without saying that a putative terrorist-watching database with so much fat would have problems catching real terrorists.

Citizens for Tax Justice explains the problem with using the principle of "dynamic scoring" to argue that tax cuts raise revenues. If the words "dynamic scoring" don't already pin your BS detector to the red, you will learn that the right's argument for "dynamic scoring" is based on the premise that tax cuts will lead to better behavior, which will in turn lead to more revenue. But does "better behavior" explain the lower revenue and massive cuts to public services good Kansans are experiencing right now at the hands of Gov. Brownback's tax cut "experiment"?

Another day, another dilemma with horns sharp enough to impale Rand Paul and his Presidential ambitions: Republicans can't go all Libertarian on gay marriage, he says, because look at all the Republicans who signed up for the party based on social issues, and you can't just ignore them. The GOP can't just "completely flip," he says, but you're either for gay marriage or against it; he seems to want the Party to be both and neither.

Finally, some bad news: Missouri's "right to farm befoul your water and let Frankenfood seeds blow over onto organic farms and spray carcinogens on your food" has, apparently, passed, albeit narrowly. And who puts a state constitutional amendment to a vote during a primary, versus a general election? Someone who wants to stack the vote, that's who. Take heart in the fact that they stacked the vote and still damn near lost.

Action: voting rights, and refugee children.

CREDO helps you tell Congress to pass the Voting Rights Amendment Act already. I know, I know, they're off this month -- hell, they're off every month -- but they're supposed to be listening to constituents while they're home, so we may as well tell them what they need to hear. As you know, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the "preclearance" formula -- the formula by which our government determines where to pay extra attention to voting rights violations -- in Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act. But the Voting Rights Amendment Act would essentially insert a new preclearance formula into 4(b), one that would give extra scrutiny to states, counties, and municipalities that have demonstrated a pattern of violating its voters' rights -- for states, five voting rights violations in the previous 15 years, and for counties and municipalities, three such violations over the same period, or one such violation coupled with persistently low minority voter turnout. That would answer the Supreme Court's concern that the Voting Rights Act unfairly singled out Southern states. I know, I know, but if we can come up with a preclearance formula that answers their objections and actually improves the Voting Rights Act, why not do it?

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to do something constructive about the mass of children seeking refuge in America at our border, then we've got action alerts: from the Friends Committee on National Legislation, from NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, and from Moms Rising. No one on the side of justice has advocated that the United States find a home somewhere for every single child massed at the border right now; we have only advocated that we do the job that civilized people do, to determine whom we can reasonably help and whom we have to send back. Of course, our vaunted House of Representatives can't even be bothered to do that much -- they passed an underfunded bill that actually made it easier to send kids back without a proper hearing by a judge. They call themselves "conservatives," yet they flinch at the work that comes with being civilized, let alone treating the rule of law like it means a damn. The good news? They're also representatives -- at some point, they have to represent their constituents and the civilization to which we all belong and which we all work to maintain and improve, or else they won't be representatives anymore.

Around the table: featuring plenty of corporate misbehavior (and one example of a corporation correcting its behavior under pressure).

PPP poll finds 75% of North Carolinians think their state legislature hasn't done enough about the recent coal ash spill into the Dan River by Duke Energy. It wouldn't be the first time the people were ahead of their nominal leaders, though admittedly getting ahead of the corporatist, reactionary crowd isn't a Herculean task. What a shame that asking Duke to pay for the cleanup is even a question -- I mean, you didn't tell your parents you couldn't clean up your mess because it would kill jobs, did you?

Surprise, surprise: a Tea Party-aligned, putatively "pro-troop" organization Move America Forward funnels an awful lot of donation money away from helping soldiers and toward gilding the wallets of political consultants. Other alarm bells: the organization hasn't had an executive director for over 18 months, uses testimonials out of context and without permission, uses stock photos instead of actual photos (or uses others' photos without permission), and claims nonexistent partnerships with Department of Defense-run hospitals. As an aside, the article's comments are mostly pretty good.

Mike Konczal and Bryce Covert claim that "The Real Solution to Wealth Inequality" isn't necessarily helping working families build more income, but "taking basic needs off the market altogether," in ways like expanding Medicare to cover everyone. I also disapprove of how Democratic and Republican programs "further discredit() the state’s role in regulating markets and providing public social insurance," but I'd rather we look at Social Security and Medicare not so much as programs that take care of us (or even as programs that insure against calamity, which is better), but as programs we build to care for our civilization.

A North Carolina restaurant apparently gives a 15% discount if a worker sees you praying. The owner claims it's a "spiritual" thing, not a "religious" thing, and that if they see you "having a moment" you might get a discount. But in the very same chapter where Jesus tells us what He thinks of people who pray in public, He also tells us what He thinks of people who give alms in public, and I'm not seeing the requisite embarrassment on the restaurant management's part.

Finally, Walgreens' CEO has announced he won't try to reincorporate Walgreens as a foreign corporation, though Walgreens has still bought the rest of the Alliance Boots corporation that would have facilitated Walgreens' "move" to Switzerland. And yes, Walgreens was "mindful of the ongoing public reaction to a potential inversion and Walgreens' unique role as an iconic American consumer retail company with a major portion of its revenues derived from government-funded reimbursement programs," per a company statement. Other corporations still rush ahead with their plans to avoid taxes, but you did good, folks.

Action: oil traffic in Puget Sound, and corporate taxes.

Friends of the Earth helps you tell the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stop British Petroleum from expanding its presence in Puget Sound. You may or may not think it worthwhile to preserve the many species of plants and animals unique to the Sound, you may or may not think it worthwhile to preserve the areas Native Americans depend on, you may or may not regard BP as an evil behemoth which befouls everything it touches -- but the decision to oppose BP's efforts to build another dock at their Washington state refinery comes down to this: it would bring in far more oil tanker traffic than the law permits. The law (specifically, the late Sen. Magnuson's amendment to the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act) permits 125 tanker calls at this dock annually, but BP plans to bring in many, many more calls than that, with every additional tanker increasing the possibility of a spill that would ruin the water. BP did take a big dump in the Gulf of Mexico, after all -- after which the British Prime Minister suggested that if you criticize BP, you're putting BP's pensioners in danger. That's how you know you've won -- when your opponents can do nothing but create a hostage crisis.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Walgreen's not to pretend it's a "foreign" corporation just so it can evade American taxes, then both the Campaign for America's Future and CREDO help you do that. Please understand: all that will change about Walgreen's will be the address. Their executives will still be here in America, their pharmacists and clerks will still be here in America, and I bet Walgreen's CEO uses the exact same reasoning in pushing his plan that I do in opposing it, but the loss of billions of dollars in tax revenue -- while us American suckers are still providing the roads they ship on, the courts they sue in, and the police and firefighting services they might one day need God forbid -- is a big, big difference. Walgreen's also gets about 25% of its sales from which two Big Gummint programs? Medicare and Medicaid, of course -- meaning that they'll be taking even more from the American taxpayer than they already do, if we permit them to "move" overseas. Personal to those who say corporations "have" to move (or, in this case, "move") overseas to avoid the crushing burden of the American 35% corporate tax rate: you mean the 12% tax rate American corporations pay on average after we factor in all their tax breaks?

Around the table: Republican politicians say the darndest things! And other items.

It had to happen sooner or later: an Indiana U.S. House Rep worries that undocumented immigrant children might bring the ebola virus with them. I give the Times of Northwest Indiana a lot of credit for body-slamming Mr. Rokita's claim to the floor without mercy, but I feel compelled to add that, by his logic, no one should ever be allowed to enter or leave the country, ever. Good thing ebola, horrible as it is, doesn't actually infect that many people -- Africa has seen about 375 deaths from malaria this year for every death from ebola, and when was the last time you got malaria?

U.S. Patent Office paralegals got away with collecting $60,000 to $80,000 annually for doing approximately no work -- they watched TV, read books, and did chores around the house (if they were telecommuting), and also received glowing performance reviews and large bonuses. I mention this not to say GUBMINT IZ BAD!!!!, but to remind us that we need to watch the public sector for corruption and fraud just as we need to watch the private sector. Thankfully, the Commerce Department's Inspector General was watching the Patent Office.

The Consumerist blasts a slab of Forbes hackery alleging that there are five reasons to "admire Comcast", providing a good education in spotting the B.S. routinely handed out by business writers in the process -- but it is a little depressing to click through to the original Forbes piece and find that it's even worse! Worse than the writer's inability to cite an actual example of Comcast "always trying out new and innovative ways" to serve customers, and worse, even, than his ignorance of the small cable companies that bridged the gap between only-ten-channels-boo-hoo and 557-channels-and-nothing-on, is his taking Comcast workers hostage, like so: "Let’s not forget that when you hate on Comcast you’re also hating on a lot of good people who are doing good work." In a world where good folks level very specific and trenchant criticisms against Comcast and its executives, only a moron would believe that.

Scientists use their growing understanding of prairie dog "social networks" to improve our ability to save them from a plague that can kill 9 out of 10 of them. After all, if you're going to move groups of prairie dogs to a safe area, you're much better off knowing which of them get along with which of the others -- revealed, apparently, in "greet kisses," which could lead to a fight if the prairie dogs discover, while locking teeth, that they don't actually know each other.

Finally, Political Wire's Taegan Goddard catches Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) saying that we shouldn't "giv(e) free money or welfare to a wealthy nation" like Israel in 2011, then denying he ever supported cutting off aid to Israel three years later. He can hide behind whether he actually proposed legislation all he wants, but it's moments like these that will doom a Rand Paul Presidential run, no matter how many successful internet money bombs he does or how much U.S. Chamber of Commerce money he gets.

Action: firing John Brennan, and fighting "free" trade.

Not long ago, CIA director John Brennan -- yet another Bush Mobber failing upward in President Obama's administration -- said that Sen. Feinstein's allegations of CIA spying on Senate committee workers researching the CIA's Bush-era torture program would be proven wrong. Well, not exactly: the CIA totally spied on the committee charged with its oversight on our behalf, and whether Mr. Brennan knew about it or didn't know about it, he doesn't exactly come out looking like the model executive -- unless, of course, his model is George W. Bush. Hence CREDO helps you tell Mr. Obama to fire Mr. Brennan and get the Justice Department to investigate the CIA's actions. After all, the Senate's job is to represent our interests, not the CIA's, and the American people have a most precise interest in being better than the fool who tortures foreigners because it's too much work to do the right thing. And the American people also have a precise interest in intelligence policy that actually keeps America safe -- which torturing foreigners doesn't do, since they tell us what they think we want to hear, not what we need to hear. I often don't think our elites really appreciate the difference.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject the Trans-Pacific "Trade" "Partnership" that would allow big corporations to run roughshod over our laws, then the Organic Consumers Association provides one more. What interest does the Organic Consumers Association have? You know, besides that they're made up of good Americans, and good Americans would rather not have corporations nullify our nation's laws at their own whim? The OCA reminds us that we know the TPP's negotiators have worked entirely in secret -- since, as our own U.S. Trade Representative said for some reason, most Americans would vehemently oppose the TPP if they knew what was in it -- and the OCA also reminds us that we know from leaks that the TPP aims to force countries to lower their food safety standards to that of the country from which they're importing the food, lest it face a lawsuit from a corporation to be decided, no, not in an American court, but in an "investor-state tribunal" which sure won't have your best interests at heart. No reasonable American thinks food poisoning is just the price you have to pay for a "free market."

Around the table: the horrible truth about superior military strength! And other stories.

Good news, everyone -- Congress passes, and the President signs, a law permitting good folks to "unlock" their cell phones, that is, use their cell phone with a different service provider than the one who sold them the phone. The bill reverses the U.S. Copyright Office's ruling that cell phone unlocking violates the Digital Millenium Copyright Act -- but it doesn't reverse that ruling permanently, meaning that the Copyright Office will determine whether to extend the repeal in three years. Still, it's more freedom for the consumer in the meantime, and if you told the President and Congress to get it done, good job.

Patrick Cockburn notes that Israel's offensive against Palestine actually weakens Israel and strengthens Hamas. He is not the first to note the irony that greater military superiority, and the will to deploy it, is too often antithetical to real political superiority, but having invaded Iraq and spilled so much blood and treasure there over the last decade-plus, Americans should be particularly attuned to this message. And despite the "liberal" media remembering its pro-Israel bias, the shock of Israeli teenagers murdering Palestinian ones may be hard to shake.

Meanwhile, Toledo, Ohio residents can't drink the tap water, and Emily Atkins at Think Progress explains why. Long story short: a massive algae bloom in Lake Erie, where Toledo residents get most of their drinking water, has infested the water with a bacterium called microcystis, which can cause serious liver and digestive tract problems. Toledo residents couldn't drink the water until yesterday, and residents with liver issues couldn't wash in it. We're making it even worse, of course -- the main culprit, phosphorus runoff, is a major by-product of the massive amounts of fertilizers and pesticides in corporate farming.

ProPublica provides a timeline of the Senate's efforts to investigate CIA torture. It will remind you that the wheels of justice grind slowly, but they do grind on, as the charges that CIA Director Brennan called "spurious allegations about CIA actions that are wholly unsupported by the facts" turned out to be a) not terribly spurious and b) rather well-supported by the facts. Of course, being CIA Director means never having to say you're sorry, even (or especially?) under a Democratic President.

Finally, Tracie McMillian at National Geographic explains how it could be that so many Americans with so many middle-class trappings could still go hungry. Those who poke fun at obese folks needing food stamps may find their minds opened a bit by the reporting herein, where average Americans' declining wages force them to "pit one bill against another" even as easy credit allows them to get cell phones and flat-panel TVs, while our government's corn subsidies make eating fast food an all-too-easy choice for overworked and underpaid Americans.

Action: undocumented immigrant children, and the Israel/Palestine conflict.

House Republicans sure did a great job taking care of that undocumented immigrant child issue before leaving for recess, passing a bill that actually takes away hearings for these children and just ships them back before they can make their case. What do Republicans have to offer besides rage and hatred anymore? So NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you tell your Congressfolk to handle this issue with more compassion and thought. They'll have to deal with it again, since the Senate won't take up the House bill, and even if by some miracle the Senate did take up the House bill, President Obama would veto it. Mr. Obama will no doubt also issue some executive orders on his own, which House Republicans will find more intolerable than they found Mr. Bush's unilateral warrantless wiretapping. All this fracas will energize the Republicans' hard-right wedge, and it may also energize nominal Democratic voters -- but in the meantime, tens of thousands of children will have no idea whether they're going to get a fair hearing to stay in the U.S. with family already here, or go back to whatever fresh hell their home countries are serving up. A civilized person would call that intolerable.

Meanwhile, if you're still hoping against hope for some good to come out of the current iteration of the Israel/Palestine conflict, then MoveOn still helps you tell Secretary of State Kerry to push for a more lasting ceasefire and an end to Israel's ongoing economic blockade of Palestine, while the Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you write a letter-to-the-editor in which you urge Congress to do the same. Are we being anti-Semitic if we don't tell our government to pressure Palestine to stop their attacks? No: we condemn all violence, and all death from violence, but who has leverage over a people who have been occupied for decades on end and herded onto ever smaller scraps of land and kept from food and water and humanitarian aid? No one, that's who. But we have leverage over Israel, loathe as we've been to use it, because we give them plenty of military aid, aid they're using to attack Palestinians as we speak. And it must have occurred to someone in the Obama Administration that America would have more leverage over Hamas's actions if Palestine had a secure and vibrant state of its own. Hasn't it? These people are supposed to be smart, after all. That may even be why we elected them, at least the first time.

Around the table: another corporate "right" free of responsibilities! And other stories.

The Missouri state legislature mulls a constitutional amendment ensuring the "right to farm" -- not so much the right to grow your own food in your own yard as the right to pen up your animals in inhumane conditions and use antibiotics liberally and use genetically-modified organisms. In other words, it's another "right" that's not really for farmers, but for big corporations. Don't they know their Russell Kirk? With rights come responsibilities -- including the responsibility not to poison your customers and their planet so that you can make a few more bucks today.

Speaking of GMOs, Neil deGrasse Tyson has weighed in on their side, telling anti-GMO folks like myself to "chill out." His reasoning? That we've been "genetically modifying" organisms for thousands of years, and doing it in the lab is no different. But doing it in the lab is a lot different, because you can do it a lot more quickly, before you've had a chance to think out all the consequences -- something nature helped us do before we took it into the lab. Also, corporations do too much genetic modifying not to increase yields or make more nutritious food, but to withstand corporate pesticides, which is very short-sighted.

Josh Barro looks at "pension smoothing." What is "pension smoothing"? Pension smoothing is when Congress allows corporations to delay payments into their pension plans, which induces corporations to report more profits and pay more taxes -- well, at least in theory, given the ease with which corporations can evade taxes -- and since Congress only looks at the next decade when measuring the cost of legislation, they never count the true cost of the lost revenue from corporations having to make up lost ground with larger pension payments years down the line. Meaning it doesn't raise income tax rates, hurts workers, and raises revenue at-least-on-paper -- it's a perfect Congressional trifecta!

Don't look now, but Americans for Prosperity has set up a branch in South Dakota, where there just so happens to be a four-way race for U.S. Senator in 2014. Will they protect the favorite, Republican ex-Governor Mike Rounds? Or will they support his challenger from the right, one Gordon Howie? Just kidding; if I were a betting man, I'd lay money on the former proposition, which won't be tough, because Mr. Rounds is no "moderate" (though Mr. Howie, at least, seems to have a sense of humor). I'm surprised that both Democrat Rick Weiland and independent Larry Pressler both want them to stay out -- seems that running against AFP might be a boon to either one of them.

Finally, American Family Association personality says she thinks Congress should impeach President Obama, in part, over the release of a Guantánamo detainee implicated in the Benghazi attack, except that Mr. Bush actually released said detainee. But remember, kids: Barack Obama has whipped up all of this impeachment talk by himself! Will right-wingers tell us next that Sandy Rios is actually an undercover Democratic operative? If so, we won't discuss it here, because we'll never speak of her again.

Around the table: it's *your* fault you're losing your jobs, factory workers! And other follies.

Good news, everyone! Uganda's Constitutional Court overturns the Parliament's recent anti-gay legislation, making it "dead as a doornail," in the words of one of the bill's challengers. Of course, the Court overturned the law because Parliament didn't have a quorum of legislators when the bill passed, and not because it felt gay folks' rights were being trampled, but the more gay-friendly members of Parliament could derail future attempts to pass it by being "unavailable" to vote, and in Uganda, that may be the most courageous thing they can do. And if you're one of those who pressured Uganda, you did good.

Connecticut Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley suggests to paper mill workers that it's actually their fault their factory is closing. But of course he can't defend this thesis -- met with the factory worker who says he and his coworkers "work their butts off," Mr. Foley can but meekly agree. It gets better: investment firm OpenGate Financial owns the factory, which is actually doing quite well, but is closing the factory so it can sell off the factory's equipment, which will make OpenGate some money, but which actually kills jobs. For everybody but folks like Tom Foley, this demonstrates how our economy actually opposes work.

Daily Kos diarist asserts that "Obama Has Rope-a-Doped-These-GOP-Clowns-Hard." Which may be true, but I still wish more would come of it than a few decent ideas moderate Republicans would have proposed back in the day. The author does stock some choice slabs of prose in his rant, like when he wonders if "the GOP is so amazingly incompetent that they have become a Sideshow Bob trapped in a field full of rakes that they have set there themselves."

Utah-based language learning center fires worker for blogging about "homophones," saying he'd given the impression his employer espoused a "gay agenda." As usually happens in These Interesting Times, reality outruns satire, and it's not nearly as funny. Well, OK, hearing the boss try to defend his move by saying that a lot of his corporation's customers aren't ready for "complicated concepts" like homophones was kinda funny, if not Kids-in-the-Hall funny. But what will he do when it's time to teach homonyms?

Finally, a Royal College of Art graduate has created a synthetic "leaf" that can turn water, light, and carbon dioxide into oxygen. The article seems more excited that it could help us explore and colonize space than that it could help us clean the air right here on Earth. For better and for worse, I bet most of us are more concerned about that.

Around the table: the franchise fiction revealed! And other stories.

The National Labor Relations Board's general counsel rules that McDonald's can be held accountable for the anti-worker behavior of its franchises. No one is fooled by the argument that McDonald's doesn't really employ people at McDonald's -- did I miss the part where people call these restaurants by some other name? -- but the hacks at McDonald's act predictably, saying the decision hurts small businesses, though a McDonald's franchise is a small business in name only.

In a peripherally-related note, the U.S. Commerce Department released data revealing that worker compensation was down a good bit from earlier projections for 2011-2013. Furthermore, Commerce also informs us that compensation from financial assets, like stocks, was rather higher than projected. You might almost think those two things are related.

Ho hum, Senate Republicans filibuster a bill that would have prohibited American corporations from deducting the cost of moving to a foreign country from their tax bill. Republicans offered the usual excuses, such as "it's an election-year stunt" though it's not a "stunt" if you vote for the bill, fellas and that Congress should lower corporate taxes by which you mean "lower them even more," right, gang? Plus they complained that Harry Reid is a big bully, now that's some pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps behavior! I don't know if I can put it more simply than this: "Republicans put tax cheats ahead of hard-working Americans." You're welcome, Democrats who are actually trying to win elections in 2014.

Alabama Public Service Commissioner says that God created coal in Alabama and thus our federal government has no "right to take what God's given a state." Of course the EPA's carbon emissions standards will not actually "take" coal away from a "state," just hamper the ability of coal industry CEOs to gild the plumbing in their seventh vacation home, but I guess he doesn't believe God created our federal government, either -- or, rather, he only believes it when Republicans are running things.

Finally, the Pro-Life Action Ministries has been protesting a Planned Parenthood clinic since it opened in Richfield, MN in June, though this particular clinic doesn't perform abortions. It's like they don't know the difference between family planning and abortion; I wonder why that could be. Or perhaps the PLAM believed Sen. Kyl (E-AZ) when he said that abortion is "well over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does," even though the Senator's office later revealed that "his remark was not intended to be a factual statement."