Thieves in the Temple.

Action: fighting banksters, pollution, and low wages.

H.R. 10, the so-called Financial CHOICE Act, could get a vote before the full House any day now, and, as you know, under H.R. 10, the only folks getting any more "choice" are the banksters, who still demand and get welfare handouts from our government despite being approximately the most unpopular people in America. So you can use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're looking at it on a smartphone) to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to reject H.R. 10. Do not brook any hysteria about the crushing burden of regulations, as if regulations against onerous fees and interest rates hurt the crooks who peddle them than those fees and rates hurt us. And certainly don't brook any hysteria about the crushing burden of regulations on small businesses, because H.R. 10 isn't for small businesses -- it's for the big banksters who grind small businesses to dust under their $500 shoes. And certainly don't brook the unctiousness of "moderates" who think we can find a "balance" between what we want and what they want. You can find no "balance" with evil people who live to steal other people's money.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (or DEP) stands poised to enact regulations protecting good Pennsylvanians from the air pollution emanating from natural gas drilling operations. Stop me if you've heard this before: the news rules aren't a bad start, but they could be better. For example, they presently only cover new gas drilling operations, when those are the ones less likely to pollute in the first place, and the old ones are still pumping out carcinogens, toxins, and smog. Oh, and methane -- can't forget the natural gas emission that packs a climate change punch many, many times harder than coal emissions do, and thus give the lie to the gas industry's contention that more gas drilling would help ameliorate the effects of climate change. Of course, methane isn't just a pollutant -- it's a form of energy, and ventilating it into the atmosphere at will not only dirties the air, it also wastes energy, and thus also wastes money. No use telling me gas drillers just can't keep methane out of the air, because this is America, the can-do country. Both Keystone Progress and the Sierra Club help you tell the DEP to enact the most vigorous gas drilling regulations possible.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to raise the national minimum wage to $15/hour via the Raise the Wage Act, then the National Women's Law Center still helps you do that. Again: do not brook any of the hysteria coming from the right about how a $15/hour wage will destroy all small businesses -- the Raise the Wage Act would raise the minimum wage gradually, over the next eight years, and once minimum wage workers have more money in their pockets, they'll spend a lot of it at these same small businesses. Do not brook any hysteria about how it would raise unemployment, either -- if you work, like, anywhere, you already know that employers can't cut jobs any further than they already have and still get things done. And certainly do not brook slippery-slope arguments like ZOMG WHY DON'T WE JUSTZ RAISEZ TEH WAGEZ TO $40 AN HOURZ!!!!! The Raise the Wage Act would index the minimum wage to inflation; if it's ever $40/hour, you can be sure inflation will have gone up 267% in the meantime. Seriously, people who argue like that disgust me. Why not just say I got nothing? The honesty would be refreshing!

Around the table: when a pro-hearing aid bill becomes an anti-gun bill, and other absurdities.

Surprise, surprise, President Trump's boutique infrastructure plan would include tolls on existing interstate highway lanes and privatizing rest stops on those highways. One more time: the private sector doesn't do things better; it just redistributes income from workers to executives "better." And I bet Congress and the President aren't really "headed for a fight" about this matter -- one Republican Rep says "I don't like paying for a road twice," which, like, hallelujah, but then adds "(e)verything's on the table." Profile in courage!

Dean Baker calls a financial transaction tax (a.k.a. the "Robin Hood tax" or the "Wall Street sales tax") "The Best Solution to Income Inequality." Why? Because the cost will borne entirely by Wall Street, rather than Main Street. Mr. Baker also reminds us that a) folks don't care about the number of trades they make so much as the amount of money they make, and b) banksters can't argue that "more trades makes the market more efficient," as "(s)omeone would be hard pressed to argue that capital was better allocated in the housing bubble years than fifteen or twenty years earlier when volume might have been less than half of its current level."

From the "Nobody Could Have Predicted" file: Oklahoma's state budgeting problems are so awful now that a lot of kids are only going to school four days a week. The good news? Not every kid in Oklahoma likes it -- some of them, for example, don't like all the rushing around you do when you try to cram five days of work into four. Still, I worry that too many of them will remember this as some kind of Golden Age, even after they're grownups and the ill effects of their education take their toll -- how many of them will say "a four-day school week never hurt me" as they suffer through their umpteenth consecutive year without work?

Hoo boy: former Fox News punditoid recalls how that network (among other things!) made the news "like pro wrestling" and "performance art," and how they "fixed" panel debates so that right-wingers always won. Fox News punditoids getting their scripted "last word" 24 hours beforehand, a Fox News "star" telling his guests what to say -- these are, of course, the hallmarks of folks who can't win arguments on the merits. And remember, kids: if we could buy cable channels a la carte, we wouldn't have to put up with this garbage.

Finally, from the "When Do They Feel Shame?" file, gun rights groups contort bill allowing over-the-counter hearing aids into an anti-gun bill, quite likely because Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is one of its sponsors. Go ahead and try to follow their reasoning, if you dare. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) is also one of its sponsors, and has rebutted these groups' talking points, but apparently to no avail. What a shame that some gun rights groups make all gun rights supporters look bad.

Action: the Saudi arms deal, school lunch nutrition standards, and airline fees.

As you know, President Trump has announced a $100 billion-plus arms deal with Saudi Arabia, a country which beats up its protestors, doesn't let women drive alone, treats its political prisoners like dog poop, and bombs the crap out of precisely those Yemeni rebels who are actually fighting ISIS effectively. But we don't have to take that, because Congress can pass a "resolution of disapproval" under the Arms Export Control Act, and just so happens H.J.Res. 102/S.J.Res. 42 would prevent Mr. Trump from giving the Saudis munitions (though it wouldn't scuttle the whole deal). Don't listen to your Tea Party uncle when he says how dare you oppose the President in foreign policy making! Not just because the President isn't supposed to "make foreign policy" per se, but because you just know your Tea Party uncle felt differently when the President's name was Obama. So Just Foreign Policy joins with MoveOn to help you tell your Congressfolk to reject the Saudi arms deal. Don't wait, though, because Congress only has 30 days to pass that resolution once the deal's announced.

Meanwhile, because the Trump Administration apparently feels compelled to take a dump on every accomplishment of the Obama Administration, the new Secretary of Agriculture, former Georgia Governor Sonny Purdue, has announced his intention to roll back the school lunch nutrition standards that represent approximately the only positive accomplishment of Mr. Obama's USDA. Republicans have been all hot to scuttle these standards since the USDA enacted them. Why? Are they objectively pro-childhood obesity? Are they objectively anti-children's health? Perhaps they are, in fact, objectively anti-child. It's not "uncivil" to say so; it's giving them some of their own to say so. And you may consider anecdotes of kids pocketing apples and school districts having "trouble" getting their foods up to the new standards to be not merely wildly exaggerated but hysterical -- the real "issue" here is that the standards don't kowtow to junk food manufacturing corporations enough. So Moms Rising helps you tell the Department of Agriculture to keep the new school lunch nutrition standards where they are.

Finally, good Americans enjoy flying our friendly skies less and less these days; they may or may not fear being forcibly removed from their flight because their airline overbooked, but they have almost certainly dealt with hidden fees making plane rides cost more. Hence PennPIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to support S. 1037, the FAIR Fees Act, which would empower the Secretary of Transportation to keep airlines from charing fees that are "not reasonable" or insufficiently-related to airlines' costs. Bill sponsor Sen. Markey (D-MA) instructs us that at least three airlines "charge more money for the second checked bag than the first," even though you'd kind of expect it to be the other way around, given that the airline has already sunk costs into carrying checked luggage at all. Also, some airlines charge a lot more than others for things like aisle seats, carry-on bags, and flight cancellations. No use arguing that the "free" market will punish the airline corporations that heap more fees upon customers -- not when there are fewer and fewer airlines to begin with, and fewer of them flying to where folks want to go. So let's bring some sanity back to airline pricing.

Around the table: politicians who need "safe spaces," and other abject follies.

Justice Department decides not to prosecute a Mexico-based, Citigroup-owned bank on drug-laundering charges. They got a settlement instead, just like President Obama used to do! I'm not even sure the admission they broke a reporting law represents progress! Obviously this action contrasts with our Justice Department's "zero tolerance" policy toward drug users, but n.b. that the Trump Administration also fights nonviolent offenders who want to get their guns back while letting banksters launder drug money. Law and order!

While visiting Sicily on his European tour, President Trump needed a golf cart to get around the streets of Taormina, while seven other world leaders walked. I wouldn't bother with stuff like this, except that the Great Man has been yelling at us for years about how everybody but him is "low-energy." And now his votaries make excuses for him about how "exhausted" he is! Yes, doing evil is exhausting. That's just one reason to do as little evil as possible.

Here's something I hadn't considered about Mr. Trump's little "Victims of Immigration Crime" hotline: the Trump Administration can cover any PR reversals over deporting someone by saying hey, a citizen had a complaint, we gotta act! We'll see how much power citizen complaints have when some Trump crony pollutes a water table from which good Americans drink! But, as with too many Guantánamo Bay detainees, ratting out your neighbors not only isn't evidence, it isn't even probable cause. (I do love that good Americans clogged up the hotline with fake complaints about space aliens, though.)

Surprise, surprise, Fox News hacks cheer on Greg Gianforte's alleged assault of a Guardian reporter. But, seriously, they're criticizing the reporter for entering Mr. Gianforte's "safe space"? How much "safe space" do politicians "need" from the "liberal" media? And, really, who's the "snowflake" here? Right-wingers really have morphed into a twisted stereotype of everything they purport to hate about liberals. When Mr. Gianforte casts a vote in the House, I bet they give him a participation trophy.

Finally, middle school teacher in Texas gives out fake end-of-year "awards" to students, which include "Most Likely to Cry About Every Little Thing," "Most Likely to Become Homeless in Guatemala," and, of course, "Most Likely to Become a Terrorist." Adults can do this sort of thing to each other if they all agree it's funny and keep it to themselves, but adults can't do this to kids, lest they earn the "Most Likely to Think You're Hip and Ironic When You're Just Sick and Twisted" award.

Around the table: meet the Senate health care "reform" effort, same as the House health care "reform effort."

If this Bloomberg report on Senate Republicans health care "reform" efforts is true, then we're in for a world of hurt. Sen. Portman (R-OH) has expressed skepticism about a Medicaid rollback -- his state, unlike other Republican-run states, has accepted the Obamacare Medicaid expansion with vigor -- but now he's proposing a longer phase-out, which is still a phase-out. Also, their "reinsurance" idea is nothing but corporate welfare -- corporate welfare they "hope" will keep premiums down, wink-wink. And not that I really care, but how is "auto-enrollment" significantly different from the Obamacare mandate?

Greg Gianforte wins Montana U.S. House special election -- even after allegedly bodyslamming a Guardian reporter who asked him about the House's health care bill. I had high hopes for Rob Quist, and maybe I still should -- where Mr. Trump won by 20 points and Mr. Zinke won the House race by 16, Mr. Gianforte only won by 7, and if Mr. Gianforte winds up in jail soon (he may have money, but that's all he's got), I presume they'll have to do this again. The road back to relevance is going to be harder for Democrats in solidly Trumpian areas, even when Berniecrats run. Still, no way another "problem-solving" "bipartisan" milquetoast comes within 7 points of Mr. Gianforte.

Another day, another reminder that the ZOMG TEH ROBOTZ ARE TAKINGZ OURZ JOBZ!!!!! argument is pure hysteria. Folks who fall prey to hostage crises ("don't raise the minimum wage or the robots will take all the jobs!") would do well to remind themselves that though robots do replace people in particular circumstances, "particular circumstances" still doesn't equal "always." You might be able to talk me into replacing CEOs with robots, though. I mean, they'd be no less inhuman than the ones we've got!

Despite Mr. Trump's incessant posturing about guns, his Justice Department is fighting claims by former nonviolent offenders to have their gun rights restored. Wondering whether fidelity to 2nd Amendment rights would win out over Mr. Trump's bottomless hatred/exploitation of petty criminals? Well, wonder no more. And no use arguing they're just continuing the "tradition to defend federal laws in court" -- how many voting rights violation cases has Mr. Trump's Justice Department dropped like a rock?

Jeremy Mohler and Donald Cohen at The American Prospect put the central problem of privatization quite well: "(f)or decades, the corporate world has increasingly become the exemplar of good governance, and the market has come to stand for economic efficiency," but "(d)espite claims of greater efficiency, the reality is usually higher fees and costs, reduced services, lower wages, and loss of public control." And big money for corporate executives -- which is why our 46% President is America's biggest cheerleader for privatization.

Finally, Neal Gabler at Moyers and Company calls Roger Ailes "The Man Who Destroyed Objectivity." Others may argue that Jacques Derrida deserves that title, but Mr. Derrida didn't create a cancer on society like the Fox News Channel. Critical point: Mr. Ailes, who "got his start in entertainment," "turned television news into tabloid news," so that we now have a world that not only enables right-wingers to spew obnoxious filth without suffering the consequences, but we also have a world where telling the truth isn't sexy anymore because it doesn't look like TMZ.

Action: "free" trade, paid family leave, and health care.

The Trump Administration notified Congress a while back that it intends to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, also knowns as NAFTA (or, perhaps, SHIFTY) -- but Mr. Trump has also decided not to get rid of the most odious thing about NAFTA, the "investor-state tribunal" that allows corporations to nullify our laws and exact tribute from the taxpayer for having those laws in the first place. Thus we have every reason to fear that Mr. Trump would scrap NAFTA only to give us something that would be an even larger corporate welfare giveaway than NAFTA already is -- you know, just like he's planning to do with his health care "reform" plan, his tax "reform" plan, and his HARD POWER! budget. Hence Sum of Us helps you tell your Congressfolk the kind of trade deal you'd like to see in NAFTA's place -- like eliminating the "investor-state tribunal," including strong environmental and labor standards, and rules that would keep medicine costs down. Alternately, you could use the tools in the upper-right hand corner of this page (or the bottom, if you're on a cellphone) and tell your Reps and Senators what you want over the phone.

Meanwhile, former WalMart worker Jasmine Dixon has begun a petition at CREDO Mobilize which helps you tell WalMart to institute a good paid family leave policy for all its hourly-paid employees. We haven't managed to get paid family leave laws passed at the federal level (mainly because Republicans are all like this guy), and though we have managed to get some state and local initiatives passed, certainly no law prevents us from petitioning one of the nation's largest employers (particularly one of the nation's largest employers of low-paid workers) and prodding them to do the right thing -- not least because WalMart has responded to the Big Stick of Bad PR before. No use retorting that you should have to earn paid family leave; everyone needs paid family leave sooner or later, and saying you have to "earn" it is a little like saying you have to "earn" clean air and clean water. Of course, Our Glorious Elites secretly believe that as well, but given that Our Glorious Elites also believe banksters are the Greatest People Evah, they're not the folks who should be telling us what "earning things" is all about.

Finally, as you know, the CBO has scored the House's health care bill, and found it would ultimately deprive 23 million folks of insurance over the next decade, versus the 24 million figure it found for the bill's previous iteration. But you may be surprised to learn which "liberal" media outlet decided to use that 1 million uninsured difference to mislead. USA Today tweeted that "#BREAKING: CBO says House Obamacare repeal bill covers 1 million more people than prior draft." I'd have expected that kind of spin from Fox News! USA Today received a crapload of critical comments afterward, and have since issued a series of tweets that I suppose aim to "correct" their rubbish headline. But their more accurate tweets didn't get nearly as much social media play as their more Trump-friendly one, and I can't help but think that was a deliberate calculation on their part, since it gets them attention coming and going. But USA Today isn't generally a bad paper, so if you contact them using information at the above link, you can tell them they should avoid the appearance of using sensational, misleading headlines to generate drama.

Action: health care, and climate change.

Didn't think I'd forgotten about the "American Health Care Act," did you? Of course not -- though the Senate no doubt wishes we would. The Senate may be a more conservative body than the House ("conservative" as in "less likely to upend entire systems"), but don't count on them to "moderate" the House bill's ill effects. I generously count two Republican moderates in the Senate, whereas I also count three far-right Senators who've already made demands similar to or worse than the House bill; in a 52-member caucus, it ain't hard to see which group has more pull. So go ahead and call your Senators, using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (bottom if you're on a cellphone) and tell them to reject not just the American Health Care Act, but all of the assumptions underpinning it. After all, spending money on working families isn't evil, health insurance corporations don't deserve more freedom than people do, and no one should be denied skin cancer treatment because they once had eczema.

Meanwhile, the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell ExxonMobil and Chevron, who are both about to hold annual shareholder meetings, to stop blocking our efforts to curb the ill effects of climate change. Shareholder power hasn't proven to be a panacea for capitalism's ills -- too many corporate boards simply ignore their shareholders when their wills diverge now -- but at least their shareholder meetings will draw some media attention, and therefore the possibility of the people wielding the Big Stick of Bad PR against them. This has worked in getting more and more corporations to abandon the American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC) merely because of ALEC's climate change denialism, so perhaps we can make it work here as well. And chances are your pension fund is a shareholder in ExxonMobil or Chevron, so it's not like you don't "deserve" a say about what's happening. Even if I could possibly agree that one should "purchase" democracy by buying shares in a corporation, that is.

Around the table: time for another exciting round of "When's That Terrorist Attack Coming?"

Uh oh: Jonathan Chait figures out that the Trump budget assumes that $2 trillion in miraculous economic growth over the next decade will pay for both $2 trillion in tax cuts and enough growth in government revenues that the budget will balance -- but they can't both be true. The Administration's responses are even worse than I imagined they'd be, but let's not congratulate ourselves on the Administration's "$2 trillion math error," because that's exactly the kind of "mistake" evil people make when they're pretty sure circumstances (when's that terrorist attack coming again?) will cover them.

Administration Budget Director Mick Mulvaney insists that his President's multitudinous attacks on federal programs that actually help people actually show compassion for the taxpayer. Now here's why that's a pile of dung: anyone who pays taxes may, theoretically, need to avail themselves of the programs for which those taxes pay -- not just programs ensuring clean air, clean water, and working roads, but also programs like food stamps and Medicaid. In America, we should invest in each other, not redistribute income upward to the undeserving wealthy, as is Mr. Mulvaney's fervent wish.

Jesus Mary and Joseph why is anyone reporting that "Paul Ryan and the White House are barreling toward a tax reform show-down"? There will be no showdown -- only the drama they pretend to have so they can distract the people from the real evil they're about to do. We learn, at least, that the Republicans want to sell their "border tax" by saying it "ends the 'Made in America' tax," which is a pretzel of a notion to try and sell, and where were they when the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act came up for a vote? Filibustering it, of course.

Comcast sends cease-and-desist order to a pro-net neutrality website called Comcastroturf.com, saying the website's name is "confusingly similar to the (Comcast trademark) because it sounds the same, looks the same, and is spelled similarly to Comcast." The good news? If Comcast actually filed a copyright infringement suit against Comcastroturf.com, a judge would laugh it out of court in about 30 seconds. The bad news? Comcastroturf.com still couldn't sue under a federal SLAPP law, because it doesn't yet exist. Still, ain't nothing so pitiful as a big corporation that can't take a joke. Waaaaaaaah!

Finally, the Department of Labor decides it'll implement the 2016 "fiduciary rule" after all -- but activists wonder if the Trump Administration will actually enforce it. Like them, I suspect not -- but failing to protect pensioners from fund managers' selfishness (as the rule would do) would likely invite legal challenges, and trying to junk it as part of Mr. Trump's effort to randomly kill regulations would almost certainly invite more. Plus, sooner or later we'll get a President who'll enforce it, even if he's another center-right Democrat.

Action: fair budgeting, and worker rights.

I've got plenty of action alerts that'll help you tell your Congressfolk to oppose the Trump budget: from Food and Water Watch, the Sierra Club, the National Women's Law Center, Americans for Tax Fairness, Social Security Works, Student Debt Crisis, and Moms Rising. Also, the Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you write your local paper to oppose the Trump budget. But, really, this demands a phone call, using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom, if you're on a cellphone). You could tell your Congressfolk that slashing Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, anti-pollution enforcement, renewable energy funding, food stamps, public lands administration, and student loan programs is just plain evil -- or you could tell your Congressfolk that in a better budget like the People's Budget, one which would actually create jobs and advance our environment and make taxes fairer, we invest in each other, whereas in the Trump budget we invest in more corporate welfare handouts to Mr. Trump's rich friends.

Meanwhile, the city of London will review Uber's license to operate there at the very end of this month, so Sum of Us helps you ask Transport for London to reject Uber's license, and thus its ability to operate in London, unless and until it respects its drivers' rights, including the right to paid a decent wage for good work. As it happens, London is Uber's only foothold in Europe, largely due to good Europeans' agitation against it; Uber casts itself as the future of the economy, but it's very old-school in one fairly important way: it exploits the labor of its workers on its way to sky-high stock prices and executive compensation -- in short, it redistributes income from its drivers to its executives. And it doesn't have to be that way! Using cell phone apps to get rides is not at all evil in itself, nor is folks making money part-time with the resources they already own. But with its insistence on calling employees "contract workers," and thus avoiding those pesky minimum wage and safe workplace laws, Uber isn't encouraging innovation, but exploiting it. And we don't need to stand for exploitation.

Around the table: from racial gerrymandering to Republican whining.

U.S. Supreme Court upholds federal district court ruling striking down two North Carolina Congressional districts, concurring with the lower court that the state legislature deliberately sought to dilute black voting power by adding black voters to those districts. The Court highlights the utter perversity of the Republicans' argument in re the 1st district -- that the Voting Rights Act mandates that black voters get black representation, even if that means getting less representation in other districts, apparently -- and Republicans may regret arguing that they redrew the 12th district on partisan-not-racial grounds if the Court ever gets around to ruling on partisan redistricting.

Justice Gorsuch didn't participate in the above case, but he did dissent (along with Justice Thomas, who, for reasons unknown to me, joined the 5-3 majority in the North Carolina case) from the Court's decision not to hear an appeal that could have struck down McCain-Feingold bans on large contributions to political parties. One can only hope Justice Gorsuch will be writing a lot of dissents over the course of his career, but we'd be unduly optimistic to think that'll be what happens in the short term.

Mark Travant at the OurFuture blog suggests that the Trump Administration "reality show" distracts us from Republican attempts to cut Medicaid. I'll admit I've been more obsessed with protecting Medicare over the years, but Medicaid provides insurance to over 60 million Americans, whereas Medicare insures over 40 million. So between those two, we're about one-third of the way to insuring everybody. Right-wingers will respond but everybody's already paying, but I'll respond that folks with millionaire income aren't paying enough, and that we could be spending what we're spending a lot more effectively -- you know, like they do in Canada.

Forget about Jon Ossoff's run in Georgia's 6th (his ads are still marred by "cut the deficit" and "high-tech jobs" messaging, which, like, yawn) -- Rob Quist has a real shot at grabbing Montana's at-large House seat for the Democrats. Partly he's got a shot because he's an unapologetic liberal populist, but he's also got a shot because his opponent (Republican Greg Gianforte) once sued the state to keep good Montanans from fishing on public lands near his land. That pushes all of Montana's buttons, but Mr. Gianforte already lost the 2016 gubernatorial race in Montana due in large part to this controversy, so I worry that Montana voters might be tired of hearing about it. I guess we'll see.

Finally, a Mississippi state House Rep says on Facebook that folks who remove Confederate statues -- statues "erected in the loving memory of our family and fellow Southern Americans," he says -- should be "LYNCHED!" (Shouty caps in original.) Even his fellow far-right Mississippi Republicans have slammed him for it, but he's so far apologized only for using the word "lynched" (or, rather, "LYNCHED!"), not for his sentiment. I'm sure his less-than-half apology was part of the plan all along -- to create drama and get attention coming and going. Here's your attention, clown: waaaaaaaaah!

Action: net neutrality, and pregnant workers.

The FCC, as you know, voted late last week to begin the process of dismantling that agency's 2015 Open Internet Order, despite receiving almost six in 10 pro-Internet Order comments -- a number that jumps to 96 out of 100 when you discard, as you should, the "spam" comments signed by folks who had their private information stolen in a data breach. The FCC's vote begins a new public comment period, so The Consumerist helps you leave your public comment with the FCC about the 2015 Open Internet Order, which enthroned net neutrality as a legal principle. You know what the FCC did in its 2015 Open Internet Order: it used authority granted to it by Congress in law to reclassify broadband internet as a "common carrier," thus giving it the legal authority to regulate traffic over the internet. And the Open Internet Order does not, for example, make ISPs prioritize pro-government internet content over any other kind -- all it does is prevent internet service corporations from giving special treatment to some kinds of internet traffic. But if the new FCC Chair's plans gets his way, your ISP will be able to control where you can go and what you can see on the internet. Imagine having to watch some cable news jerkwads yell at each other before visiting your favorite political blog! It offends the civilized mind.

Meanwhile, H.R. 2417/S. 1101, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act -- which we've seen before in previous Congresses, shame Republicans acted like this guy and wouldn't let it come to a vote -- would, among other things, ensure that employers make "reasonable accommodations" to pregnant workers, and would prevent employers from denying jobs to pregnant folks just because they're pregnant. That latter item is especially important, for when do you need a job, money, and health insurance (since you usually get that through your job in America) more than when you're with child? What did Republicans have against this bill? You know, the usual: BIG GUMMINT HANDOUT OBAMA SOCIALISM COMMUNISM NAZISM KENYAN ANTI-COLONIALISM!!!! Today they might drop the "NAZISM" from their lazy Susan of complaints, but still, they've got nothing that would constitute a cogent argument. Not ZOMG WHAT IF WE HAVE TO HIRE ONLY TEH PREGGERS!!!!! The bill doesn't say that. And certainly not ZOMG TEH PREGGERZ WILL BE IN TEH BATHROOMZ ALL TEH DAYZ!!!! The bill doesn't say that, either -- recall the phrase "reasonable accommodations"; pregnant women use the bathroom more than you or I do, for reasons you might easily imagine, but they don't need the toilet moved from the bathroom to their desk. So both Moms Rising and the National Women's Law Center help you tell your Congressfolk to support the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

Around the table: health care, cybersecurity, cable news, celebrity candidates, and the absence of protestors.

Former health insurance corporation official says insurers have been defrauding Medicare Advantage program for years. Our taxes fund Medicare Advantage, as you may know, but private health insurance corporations deliver the service; nobody could have predicted that privatization of a part of Medicare could possibly lead to the same kind of overcharging you routinely see with Medicare! The only thing a private corporation does "better" than our government? Redistribute income from regular folks to executives.

President Trump finally delivers on a promise to revamp our cybersecurity efforts -- and his Executive Order doing so basically repeats President Obama's efforts. But they're different, you see, because now Mr. Trump can put his name on them, and thus make them YUGE and BYOOTIFUL! You'll be so cybersecure, you'll get tired of it! You'll beg President Trump for another ransomware attack, you'll be so bored with all the security! The new order is apparently better than the order his Administration tried to write in February, but let's not grade Mr. Trump on a curve.

The Fox News (sic) Channel is apparently starting to slip in the cable news ratings, thanks in part to its pronounced apathy toward all the latest Trump scandals. But I'm not sure this would be so if a certain 8 pm ratings giant were still at Fox, and I'm not going to celebrate just because other bad cable news networks are starting to win by following the sensationalism (even if it just so happens to be running in the other direction for once). And Fox has largely replaced its Trump non-coverage with even worse junk news. So, yeah, this is still fecal all the way down.

Ryan Teague Beckwith at Time tells us how "The Rock's Presidential 'Campaign' Shows We've Learned Nothing." Mr. Beckwith is of course concerned that the "liberal" media keeps giving celebrities soft coverage that tells us nothing about what they'd be like in an actual leadership role, but I read Mr. Johnson's comments (particularly about "disagreement") and I see another way for Our Glorious Elites to foist a corporate center-right Democrat upon us. Yes, the Rock is better-spoken and more sympathetic than Mr. Trump, but let's not let that be the only bar he ever has to clear.

Finally, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross praises the utter lack of protests greeting Mr. Trump in Saudi Arabia, a country that arrests, beats, and kills protestors. I was tempted to slam him for his utter cluelessness about Saudi Arabia's bad habits, too, or about the fact that his Administration demands protest every second of every hour of every day, but the worst thing about his remarks is that he seems to think the absence of people with "a bad placard" in the street is a good thing, an opinion I'm sure he held, and voiced, during all those Tea Party protests in 2009. If he likes police states so much, maybe he should stay in Saudi Arabia.

Action: soldiers' benefits yea, arming terrorists nay, and automatic voter registration yea.

Word on the street is that Congress may consider legislation to force our soldiers to pay to get Post-9.11 GI Bill benefits. Said benefits include four-year tuition-free education at a public college or university (or an equivalent tuition break at a private one) for all soldiers who a) serve three years active duty, b) serve extended active duty while on reserve, or c) get wounded while serving. If you're sitting at home wondering why it would be controversial to make soldiers pay for their benefits, please consider whether a), b), and c) might just constitute "payment." And if you're sitting at home sighing that deducting pay from a soldier's future paychecks is the kind of sacrifice they have to make to keep the Post-9.11 GI Bill program solvent, please consider why our politicians always ask the soldiers to sacrifice and never, say, defense contractors. If you fail to consider these things, please go ahead and slap yourself. The rest of us can use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) and call our Reps and Senators and tell them to do right by our troops.

Meanwhile, you've no doubt heard of the $100 billion-plus arms deal™ President Trump and the government of Saudi Arabia have planned -- but you may not have heard about H.R. 608/S. 532, the Stop Arming Terrorists Attack, which would prevent our federal government from "providing covered assistance" (i.e., money, intelligence, or weapons) to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS, Tahrir al-Sham, or groups associated with them. By the looks of it, that sure would include nations like Saudi Arabia, which most certainly provides "covered assistance" to these corporations. Now, the bill would also require the Director of National Intelligence (or DNI) to determine who, exactly, falls under the bill's proscriptions -- and you can easily imagine a DNI simply "not finding" that Saudi Arabia has funded or helped terrorist groups. But forcing a DNI to ignore the plain truth for political reasons is not without its benefits -- the DNI would have to justify his findings every six months to Congress, made up of people who, at least nominally, represent our interests. So while you've got your Reps and Senators on the phone about soldiers' benefits, you can tell them to support the Stop Arming Terrorists Act as well.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your state legislators to support automatic voting registration, then USPIRG still helps you do that. Under laws like Oregon's 2015 automatic voting registration law, your state government would register you to vote every time you interact with a state agency -- most often your state motor vehicle division -- unless you go through the effort of opting out. Oregon's law seems to have helped voters under 30, as the share of those voters voting jumped 20 percentage points from 2012 (37%) to 2016 (57%). Those who would bemoan such a state of affairs, or who would complain that automatic voter registration will simply increase the number of Democratic voters, might want to reacquaint themselves with the whole one-person-one-vote thing. And folks who call automatic voter registration TEH MANDATORY REGISTRASHUNZ!!! might want to reacquaint themselves with the term "opt-out." And folks who call it "forced voting" really just need to stop fronting. And all of the above could also just figure out how to get more folks to vote the way they do! Persuasion: it's the world's oldest profession.

Around the table: in which we hear novel interpretations of "Glass-Steagall" and "bipartisanship."

Fran Quigley at TruthOut argues that we ought to turn the pharmaceutical industry into a heavily-regulated public utility. If you're feeling a little wary about doing that, consider that Big Pharma already feeds at the trough of Big Gummint money -- in fact, they might not be able to survive without it. What we have now, ultimately, is as precise a perversion of the "free market" as you can imagine -- one where corporations take our taxpayer money, create monopolies, and then use that monopoly power to dictate prices and availability to us. That state of affairs does sound like something our Founders would want us to fight, does it not?

Drew Mitnick at the AccessNow blog explains how the WannaCry "ransomware" was able to attack so many health care computer systems. Some fairly common vulnerabilities exist -- nearly a third of folks who get "phishing" emails still open them (even if phishing didn't actually cause the WannaCry attack), and most folks using Microsoft Windows are using older, unpatched versions -- but another major problem is our government hoarding all the vulnerabilities it creates or knows about so it can conduct intelligence-gathering against other targets. Unmentioned in the article is that hospitals (WannaCry's main target) are notoriously bad at keeping up with the latest computer software, and therefore the latest in computer security. Also unmentioned: maybe Microsoft shouldn't have a near-monopoly on systems software?

Treasury Secretary/bankster Steve Mnuchin says he really, really wants a "21st Century Glass-Steagall Act," but he doesn't "support separation of banks and investment banks." In other news, Mr. Mnuchin likes Star Wars except for all the parts set on other planets, he likes Ska music except for all the Jamaican influences, and he also likes cop shows except for all the crime-solving. Is it too much to ask that everyone, and not just Sen. Warren, point out that these clowns not only lie, but they lie obviously? Tha Bush Mobb was subtle by comparison.

Former U.S. House Rep. Anthony Weiner pleads guilty to felony obscenity charge, which ends federal investigation into nasty photos and messages he sent to a 15-year-old girl last year. 15 years old! And therefore not old enough to consent to any kind of sexual relationship with an adult, including one involving "only" lewd pictures and texts. Mr. Weiner will likely get at least a year and a half in jail, so now we can finally say: let's never speak of this man again.

Finally, Eric Boehlert at MediaMatters asks "What Happened to the Press's Obsession with Bipartisan Votes" in re Trumpcare. Of course he knows why: when Democrats are in charge, the "liberal" media regards failure to get Republicans on board with their agenda as a sure sign of failure, but when Republicans are in charge, you don't hear a damn peep from them about the "importance" of everyone "getting along." Remember, kids: when you can't work with someone, you work around them -- and you never scuttle your house-rebuilding plans because the arsonist doesn't "get on board."

Action: financial predators, "conversion therapy," and national monuments.

PennPIRG helps you tell your House Reps to reject the so-called Financial CHOICE Act, which would (among other things!) cripple the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's ability to protect citizens from predatory lending. And where does a big chunk of predatory lending occur today? Why, in student loans, of course, since over 40 million Americans have them (and that's about one out of every eight of us). Earlier this year the CFPB sued the notorious Navient, America's biggest student loan servicer, for "systematically and illegally failing borrowers at every state of repayment," which sure does sound harsh. But the Financial CHOICE Act would hurt the CFPB's ability to go after bad actors, and thus leave more and more Americans open to getting ripped off. And here you thought conservatism was about cracking down on ripoff artists! I mean, that's what law and order is all about, right? Sadly, the reactionaries who call themselves "conservative" think any law restricting anything a corporation might do is itself evil. Let's not let them have all the say about everything.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 2119/S. 928, the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act, so that "conversion therapists" can't try to "convert" gay folks. The Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act would empower the Federal Trade Commission (or FTC) to go after "conversion therapy" practitioners under its mandate to prosecute "unfair or deceptive trade practices." And given that scientists don't consider homosexuality to be a disorder anymore, and don't consider it something anyone can reasonably change, you'd be hard-pressed to call "conversion therapy" anything but deceptive. And, ah, we've gone over what "conversion therapy" entails, right? Among other things, it entails "exercises" full of nudity and inappropriate touching, "role play" full of violence, and the actual re-enactment of past sexual abuses, because who doesn't just love going through that again? Don't brook any silliness from your Congressfolk claiming they can't support the bill because "they're not scientists," because you don't need a doctorate in psychology to know what a snake oil salesman looks like.

Finally, as you know, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at knocking down a bunch of National Monuments. And as you may know, the Department of the Interior has separated the commenting processes for one recently-designated monumen (Bears Ears) and for the entire national monument "review" process in general. I expect this matter to die in court, as a lot of Mr. Trump's best-laid plans seem to do, but in the meantime, duty is duty, so American Rivers helps you tell our Department of Interior to, in American Rivers's words, stop "selling off our monuments." That is what the Trump Administration intends to do, after all -- sell off our public lands to fossil fuel drillers -- and though they're less subtle about their aim than any other President we've experienced or could imagine, that's of no great comfort if he succeeds. For Mr. Trump and his votaries, everything on Earth, including the water we drink and the air we breathe, ain't worth nothin' unless it can be converted to money. But to paraphrase a famous philosopher: if money is all you want, then money is all you'll get.

Around the table: special counsels, tax "reform," health care, immigrant arrests, and net neutrality.

Dept. of Justice appoints former FBI head Robert Mueller as Special Counsel in charge of investigating matters relating to possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign and Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 Presidential election. But a special counsel isn't an independent counsel (which, sadly, doesn't exist anymore, the law authorizing it having expired in 1999), and, as smarter people than I have pointed out, appointing Mr. Mueller allows Republicans to claim they've done something and demand that we now let them get on with the important work of depriving people of health care and giving more welfare handouts to the rich.

Speaking of which, apparently the Koch Brothers are readying a massive ad campaign promoting their vision of tax "reform." Should I be heartened that "government doesn't have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem" is so 2011 already? Or that the "window" for getting something big done seems to be closing? I'd be more heartened that polls consistently show a majority of folks think the rich ought to be paying more in taxes -- if another sizable national organization would start a massive ad campaign arguing that the rich should pay more. You're not going to get that from weakling Democrats, after all.

In case you needed it, Megan Molteni at Wired reminds us that "Denying Health Care to Diabetics Makes Just About Zero Sense." Not just because overeating or eating badly is just one factor in the largely-genetic disorder that's Type 2 Diabetes or the autoimmune disorder that's Type 1 Diabetes, but also because the vast majority of the health care costs associated with diabetes come from the complications of diabetes, like heart trouble. Managing your diabetes reduces the complications and therefore the costs, but apparently the Trump Administration would "save money" by cutting off all help to folks trying to manage it. And that's why we shouldn't put assholes in charge of things!

From The Guardian we learn that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (or ICE) has arrested more undocumented immigrants during the first three months of Mr. Trump's term than they did at a similar point in 2016 -- but way fewer than ICE did at a similar point in 2013. The right sure doesn't give Barack Obama enough credit for all the arresting and deporting of undocumented immigrants he did! I wonder why. Also, under Mr. Trump's ICE, arrests of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record have more than doubled, despite the candidate's promise that he'd go after serious criminals first. Given that immigrants with no criminal records make up more than half of the difference between the 2016 and 2017 figures, I think it's pretty obvious some padding is going on. Donald Trump, padding numbers so they look more impressive -- who'da thunk it?

Finally, the FCC voted to start repealing net neutrality rules yesterday -- another public comment period will follow, with the FCC aiming to issue new rules in August -- and here we learn not only that net neutrality opponents conflate vigils and leafletting with "violent protest," but that in at least two massive anti-net neutrality bot campaigns, folks who've been hit by data breaches "wrote" at least two-thirds of the comments. No use arguing that in a smaller pro-net neutrality bot campaign folks hit by data breaches also "wrote" one-third of the comments, because all of that is evidence that the FCC currently can't or won't run a competent public commenting process, and I can't imagine this kind of incompetence is legal. What a shame it'd be if a judge had to strike down Mr. Trump's attempts to gut net neutrality, too.

Action: anti-gay bills, media consolidation, and private prisons.

Jesus Mary and Joseph when will this madness stop? Now Texas's state legislature is contemplating a slew of anti-gay bills, including one that would curb gays' right to adopt children, another taking aim at their right to get married, plus, of course, another "bathroom bill." And along with these bills (and many others, for as one activist ruefully notes, "Texas just does it bigger") comes the litany of excuses: we're protecting people's right to exercise their religious beliefs boo-hoo, we're trying to make bathrooms safe oh come on. No one has a right to use their "sincere religious beliefs" to abridge the rights of others, and if you're familiar with actual statistics on child molestation, you know that you'd be better off banning heterosexual male adults from public bathrooms than transgendered folks. Of course, we wouldn't do that, either, but hey, just saying. You may want to use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or on the bottom, if you're on a smartphone) to find and call Texas legislators and give them the spanking they deserve over this matter.

Meanwhile, we were just talking last week about the Sinclair Broadcast Group digging their tentacles even deeper into America's local TV stations, and now Free Press helps you tell the FCC to stop the proposed Sinclair-Tribune merger. The FCC, under its intrepid new chair, Ajit Pai, has lately loosened rules governing how many UHF TV stations a single corporation can own -- perhaps thinking that nobody watches UHF anymore, so who cares? -- except that, well, people do watch UHF TV stations, particularly good folks underserved by cable corporations, and if this deal goes through, Sinclair will be able to reach seven out of every 10 Americans. The problem isn't so much that Sinclair is an unregenerate right-wing network, or even that they might have colluded with the Trump campaign to get quid pro quo goodies later -- the problem is that they push cookie-cutter news content on local TV stations, thus enabling those stations to do less of the local news and analysis that is their very reason for existence. And, really, a monopoly is a monopoly, regardless of what "the rules allow." I mean, we're not blind here in America.

Finally, just as President Obama was beginning (and I do mean beginning!) to get our federal government out of the corporate-welfare-for-private-prisons business, along comes new President Trump to pull us right back in. And, you know, if you remember Mr. Trump saying, at the very first Republican debate, that he just puts out the money and the politicians do whatever he wants, you have every right to suspect that somebody, somewhere, paid for this obviously-foolish policy move, and maybe even broke the law doing so. Hence Rootstrikers helps you tell the Federal Elections Commission (or FEC) to investigate possibly illegal contributions coming from the GEO Group. The GEO Group just got a $100 million-plus contract to operate a Texas detention center for immigrants, and just so happens to have pumped six figures into a Trump-aligned SuperPAC and six figures into the Trump inaugural ceremony beforehand. And GEO, like other private prison corporations, generally takes public money to run prisons badly. You have to wonder why we, as taxpayers, would put up with that.

Around the table: in which we wonder, again, *when's that terrorist attack coming?*

Turkish President's security detail attacks protestors at the Turkish embassy in Washington, D.C. yesterday -- the same day he visited President Trump at the White House. I bet a lot of winking went on between the two Presidents. And I wouldn't put it past our President to wonder out loud, very soon, why he shouldn't be allowed to get away with doing such a thing.

Reed Richardson at FAIR chronicles the "13 Resets in 13 Months" phenomenon, where President Trump seems to get endless chances from the "liberal" media to "start over." It doesn't matter that you have to constantly start over when you constantly screw up -- the "liberal" media has no business speculating on what he "could" do to start "winning" again, and the sooner they get back to the not-titillating-but-still-vital work of giving the American people the information they actually need, rather than the horserace coverage that's only as satisfying as junk food, the sooner we can become a sane and moral society again.

Miss USA says health care is a "privilege" you get because you get a job, then backtracks after the backlash. But I won't pile on her, in either direction; I'm pretty sure she said it was a privilege merely because she thought she was describing the landscape -- in America, we assume that health insurance comes with a job, when in fact our health-insurance-through-your-employer system is actually fairly unique on the planet. What's wrong with saying you pay taxes, you get health insurance?

Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) thinks he's found "the real criminal" behind Mr. Trump's disclosure of classified information to the Russians: the person who leaked that story to the press. Mr. Risch should consider that Mr. Trump may have sent an Israeli intelligence agent to an early grave regardless of whether anyone outside the room heard it or not, and he might also want to consider the difference between a "weasel" and a whistleblower. But then, he sleepwalks his way to re-election every six years, so I doubt he'll ever consider anything very carefully again.

Finally, speaking of the Great Man, Mr. Trump instructs us that "(n)o politician in history has been treated more unfairly" by the media than he. Set aside that the "liberal" media, even if they seem a little chastened about it now, was his biggest enabler on the path to victory: what Mr. Trump is doing here is whining. And here you thought being a conservative was all about, you know, not whining. I'd say that actual conservatives have got to be tired of his whining by now, but, sadly, there aren't very many actual conservatives left in America -- they've been mostly reactionaries for some time now. So when's that terrorist attack coming?

Action: foreign wars, "smart baby monitors," and the Bears Ears National Monument.

The Trump Administration has made a deal™ with the United Arab Emirates to sell weapons for $2 billion -- this, though the UAE (like the U.S.!) has worked with Saudi Arabia in their war on Yemen, and this war has pushed that nation to the brink of famine. And, ah, over what, exactly? Over the possibility that Saudi Arabia would have less influence in Yemen, thanks to a civil war upsetting a power-sharing structure that was a house of cards to begin with? This is why they bomb funeral processions and destroy Yemeni infrastructure? Yes, al-Qaeda and ISIS have both set up shop there, but (stop me if you've heard this before!) the Saudi war aims to destroy the one group that has actually effectively fought ISIS in Yemen. And here you thought this was exactly the sort of crapshow Donald Trump would stop us from getting drawn into! Anyway, as I've suggested, he doesn't get all the say about it -- Just Foreign Policy joins with MoveOn to help you tell your Congressfolk to block the Administration's UAE arms deal at least until we can keep Yemen out of famine. Because famine is unconscionable anywhere on Earth.

Meanwhile, Mattel plans to release a "smart baby monitor" called Aristotle, one that would enable you to see what your child's doing in another room, but would also talk to your child. Why is that better than a baby monitor and parental interaction? I don't know, but Aristotle doesn't just interact with your child, but collects data about whatever it sees -- like patterns of sleep, eating, and changing -- and given that it can connect to online retailers, it might well share that data with them, so that your child's "interactive" experience can soon be cluttered with advertisements! Far too often in our sick, immoral, and decadent culture, "smart" devolves into "what makes more unearned money," but I'm so old-fashioned I only care about making parenting more efficient, which technologies like the oven, the washing machine, and the refrigerator have already done. Hence the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood helps you tell Mattel to abandon their privacy-destroying, commercial-haze-inducing Aristotle. And maybe stop giving the author of Poetics a bad name while they're at it.

Finally, we learn that the Department of the Interior has declared that all comments about Antiquities Act monuments (including the Bears Ears National Monument) must be submitted after May 12, meaning if you submitted one beforehand, you'll have to do it again. Also, for whatever reason, the comment period on Bears Ears only lasts 15 days, while the comment period on other national monuments lasts 60 days. I don't see any of that surviving a legal challenge (why single out one monument over others is but one question a lawyer would have); it's enough to make one wonder if Mr. Trump is actually trying to run our government so badly that we have no choice but to dive into the arms of whomever the Democrats nominate in 2020. But we can't get caught up in 13-dimensional chess, of course -- we have to do our duty as citizens, which is to communicate our will to our government. Hence WildEarth Guardians still helps you tell the Department of the Interior to leave the Bears Ears National Monument alone. Because drilling on public lands ain't worth more than the people's will.

Around the table: where the *real* "purity tests" come from, and other lessons.

Michael Hiltzik takes us in the wayback machine to a time when "Anti-Communist Hysteria Almost Destroyed the University of California." Long story short: UC's institution of a loyalty oath in the early 1950s drove a lot of its faculty away -- a few by choice, 30 more by firing after refusing to take the oath. At least the U.S. Supreme Court ordered them reinstated two years later; today you can more easily imagine a Justice Roberts combing through arcanities to excuse inaction, or a Justice Gorsuch openly wondering why Big Gummint should have to do anything about anything.

From Noelle Sullivan at TruthOut we're reminded of another reason U.S. health care prices are so jacked up: "the cost of health care itself." When you get to the part where "there are many other ailments that companies won't fund research for, specifically because these ailments aren't good investments," you'll be reminded of the scientist who said we'd already have an ebola vaccine if anyone thought they could make money from it. It's really not "Communism" or "socialism" to say that we shouldn't leave health care up to the "free" market. I'm happy to leave the movie industry up to the "free" market, after all.

Surprise, surprise, President Trump has appointed a bankster lawyer to head up the Office of the Comptroller of Currency (or OCC), which has the power to pre-empt state laws curbing bankster misbehavior. You know, like charging onerous ATM fees, which states often legislate against more quickly than our federal government does. And if a state passes a law about a matter our federal government doesn't address, and that law doesn't abridge our Constitutional rights, why does our federal government get to nullify it? Does that sound particularly conservative? And more to the point, why do we even have national banks again?

This is a generally good article about the rise of "the Resistance" and the Democratic Party's own resistance to that resistance -- particularly when Jeet Heer points out that "the Resistance" is born not just of anger but abandonment, and abandonment by Democrats -- but I've got a bone to pick with paragraph 26, which blithely assumes that Bernie Sanders applied an "ideological litmus test" to Jon Ossoff and thus "threatened 'to create divisions where none previously existed.'" The party of "innovation" and "entrepreneurship" applies an ideological litmus test to the rest of us all the time, mostly by declaring their pet center-right candidates the only "electable" ones, and if Mr. Heer really thinks no "divisions" "existed" before then, then he didn't read his own article.

Two more things about the story where Rep. Frelinghuysen outed a protestor as an executive at one of his big donor's banks: where does he get off in paragraph nine suggesting that people protesting Republican policies are "ma(king) it difficult for us to meet our constituent needs"? The agenda we're protesting makes it difficult for him to meet his constituents' needs! And where does he get off suggesting that "highly orchestrated" speech somehow isn't free speech? He said exactly the same thing about the Tea Party, right? (And no, "I'm not suggesting people don't have a right to speak" doesn't get you off the hook right after you suggest people don't have a right to speak. That's not how argument works. That is, however, how lying works.)

Action: EPA funding, affordable drugs, and drug policy.

Given Congress's failure to repeal methane emissions limits on public lands late last week, today's as good a day as any to let the Environmental Defense Fund help you call your Senators and tell them not to slash EPA funding as President Trump is so hot to do. But then again, why play defense? You can just as easily tell your Senators to increase EPA funding, so that the EPA can actually do more of the things our laws mandate that it do! EPA funding has, after all, been chronically short since the early 1980s, which makes it much harder to chase down the fossil fuel drillers who leak methane into the atmosphere and dangerous carcinogens into the water, for example. No one, and I mean no one, wants dirtier air and dirtier water -- even the CEOs who constantly whine about regulations preventing them from creating jobs boo-freaking-hoo won't drink the water near their drilling wells. And one more time: a CEO would never create a job if he didn't have to -- but regulations do create jobs, for all the people who have to figure out how to comply with them.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 1776/S. 771, the Improving Access to Affordable Prescription Drugs Act, then Sign Here Now still helps you do that. The bill would, as its title suggests, help good Americans get prescription drugs more affordably, partly by letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices and allowing reimportation of cheaper-and-no-less-safe-because-they-re-the-same-damn-drug drugs from Canada, but also by hiking taxes on corporations that jack up the prices of their drugs. A word about that: corporations that pull a Daraprim or an EpiPen on the American public justify it by saying that the cost of drug research causes them to jack up prices. Now, how do we know that's utter bullshit? Because research is an expense, and only profits get taxed. Revenue minus expenses equals profits. So you don't need an economics degree to be able to smell that pile of dung -- in fact, I wonder if economics degrees actually hinder such olfactory acuity.

Finally, you've heard that Trump Administration Attorney General Jeff Sessions has directed federal prosecutors to level the most serious charges possible at accused nonviolent drug offenders, and also to seek mandatory minimum sentences wherever possible. Of course, that's his prerogative, but it's also a dumb idea. Every Executive branch makes do with finite resources by deciding it'll go after some things more than other things, but what do you think causes more problems in America? People smoking weed in their living room, or banksters illegally foreclosing on homeowners? Have we heard a peep from the Trump Administration about this latter item? No, we have not -- in fact, we have at least one foreclosure fiend in Mr. Trump's own cabinet. And though politicians constantly talk like we're in a massive out-of-control crime epidemic, we're actually not -- and even if we were, wouldn't treatment for drug addiction take care of the problem more effectively? So the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell the Justice Department to rescind its memo, and thus support smarter crime prevention in America.

Around the table: another "moderate" proving his utter uselessness, and other tales.

Because you need to steel yourself for the worst, Musa al-Gharbi at Counterpunch explains "Why Trump Could Win in 2020." You might summarize it as "incumbency has its advantages," or that folks tend not to abandon bad situations quickly, but read it anyway; it's very informative. Also, too, "what matters most is not how the public feels about the incumbent, but how they feel about the most likely alternative." If Democrats serve up another cautious technocrat who worships at the altar of "innovation" and "entrepreneurship," they'll lose to Mr. Trump. (Yes, that means they've got a much better shot if they nominate Bernie Sanders next time.)

On the other hand, Rob Kall at OpEd News thinks we have a path to get rid of both the President and Vice-President and replace them with a Democrat, without impeachment. Convincing Messrs. Trump and Pence to step down because they're on the precipice of going to jail might be the sounder half of the plan -- for a Democrat to take over from them, Democrats would have to retake the House, and no one snatches defeat from the jaws of victory like a Democrat.

Robert Parry at Consortium News wonders if a "soft coup," i.e., a deep-state coup, could take down Mr. Trump over persistent concerns over his ties with Russia. His verdict: maybe, but what would we have won? The undemocratic "deep state" would win, not us, the real owners of democracy. Frankly, I wonder if the "deep state" is all that upset about Mr. Trump, since the deep state doesn't care if more than 20 million people lose their health insurance, and probably rejoices at the prospect of lower taxes on the rich, less regulation of banksters, and more corporate welfare via Mr. Trump's boutique infrastructure plan.

U.S. Supreme Court won't hear an appeal of the 4th Circuit Appeals Court's decision to strike down North Carolina's draconian Voter ID law. But that's because North Carolina's Governor and Attorney General, both now Democrats, don't want to continue the appeal, and so the Republican-held state legislature is trying to do it. If the legislature can establish standing to appeal, I'm sure the Court will hear it -- though I'm also sure swapping out the late Justice Scalia with Justice Gorsuch will have no effect on the decision, since being 30 years younger doesn't give you two more votes on individual cases.

Far-right Senate Republicans (I won't call them "conservatives," as the Wall Street Journal does, far too charitably) want to gut Medicaid even more than the House bill already does. And I'm sure that absent a lot more creativity from the American people (who barely have town halls to ventilate their anger anymore, I wonder why), they'll do it! I mean, with 52 Senators in the caucus, which Senators can you lose: the two "moderates" who only buck leadership when leadership allows it, or the three far-right nihilists demanding more cuts? (I wish it meant more that Medicaid is actually pretty popular with Trump votaries, but Trump votaries are also the kind of people who'll say if we can't get it, no one should, a sentiment for which I do not entirely blame them.)

Finally, in a truly chilling development that also further demonstrates the complete uselessness of Republican "moderates," Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) alerts one of his big donors to the presence of a "resistance" leader in his own bank's management! And she then resigned, citing the resulting harassment from her bosses as one of the reasons! If I'm Mr. Frelinghuysen's next opponent, I'm running an ad about this -- what he did likely isn't illegal, but it is the mark of a coward who can't win arguments on the merits. How do we prevent this from happening to us? Make sure our bosses know that every time they fuck with our free speech they will summon a thundercloud.

Action: better budgeting, real pension reform, and "regulatory accountability."

Of course we should let Social Security Works help us tell President Trump to keep his promise not to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid -- regardless of what his budget proposals might say, he did promise, and we should remind him of that even though he doesn't care what we think. But why only play defense? The Congressional Progressive Caucus has released the People's Budget, one that would (among other things) actually create jobs, rebuild infrastructure, and promote sustainable energy. The right-winger in your head is already no doubt yelling how're you gonna pay for it? Well, among other things, by raising tax rates on high incomes, taxing investment income at the same rate as wages, and closing corporate tax loopholes, including the one that gives corporations goodies even when they outsource jobs. Why would any of that offend anyone but corporate executives and the folks who defend them? And why do we treat them like they're the majority? Tools for calling your Congressfolk are in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom, if you're on a cellphone).

Meanwhile, you may recall Congress passing the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act in during the 2014 lame duck session of Congress, and like many bills with the word "reform" in their title, this bill was more of a "deform" bill -- it allows pension plan trustees to fill funding shortfalls by reducing pension benefits. Would it be so much to ask for someone in a position of power in America to keep a promise they make? Could a pension plan trustee fill a shortfall by, oh, I don't know, investing more wisely, or investing without the very expensive "assistance" of hedge fund managers? Every time our "betters" screw up, they make us pay, but if you've got a pension, that means you worked for it, you paid into it, you fought for it -- and, most importantly, you deserve it. Hence the Keep Our Pension Promises Act, which would give the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation more leeway to help pensions with funding shortfalls. The Pension Rights Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to roll back legislation that hurts retirees and instead give pension funds the tools they need to get back on track without benefit cuts.

Finally, the Senate might soon take up H.R. 5/S. 951, the notorious Regulatory Accountability Act, which passed the House in January. Congressfolk seem to want endless "accountability" for everyone but themselves and their big donors, and here the word "accountability" means nothing so much as "obstruction," because the bill would force federal regulatory agencies to put any proposed rule through bogus "studies" before even proposing it, and then big corporations extra opportunities to file lawsuits against the rule once proposed. Because corporations just don't get enough say in our democracy already! So, one more time: the legislative branch mandates the executive branch to formulate and issue regulations to achieve legislative aims, and the public gets a chance to comment on these regulations. And giving corporations more opportunities to put hurdles in front of regulations is, again, like the giving a losing baseball team six more innings just because they're behind. So Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Senator to reject the Regulatory Accountability Act.

Around the table: and now, for another exciting round of "When's That Terrorist Attack Coming?"

It's been a while since I've reminded everyone that the secondary reason Hillary Clinton lost (i.e., after "because centrists don't inspire anybody") was widespread voter suppression at the state level, so here's Greg Palast to write about Voter ID laws and the Interstate Crosscheck database on the occasion of Mr. Trump creating a "Voter Integrity Commission." I wonder how many folks named Kris Kobach are on voter rolls across this great land of ours. I mean, any of them could be voting twice on Election Day, right? That is the logic behind Mr. Kobach's Interstate Crosscheck, which helps unscrupulous state officials deregister folks with similar names -- and they don't even check middle names!

Janine Jackson at FAIR reminds us that "Big Media Need to Fight for the Right to Protest." Even in these times, that's a big hope, but let us contemplate not just the recent arrest of a journalist at the West Virginia courthouse for the nefarious crime of asking HHS Secretary Price the same question a couple of times, and the conviction of a Code Pink activist for laughing, but also the dozens of folks still being charged with Rioting While Wearing Black on Mr. Trump's inauguration day.

From the Economic Policy Institute we learn that wage theft deprives minimum-wage workers of $15 billion annually. That's just minimum-wage workers, too! Now right-wingers will quickly respond TAHT PROVEZ TEH MINIMUM WAGEZ DON'TZ WORKZ!!!!!, a logic they never used back when abortion was illegal. Also, too, that's $15 billion that would likely have gone right back into the economy, and kept a lot of minimum wage workers from utilizing state and federal welfare programs, meaning that preventing wage theft also saves the taxpayer money.

Surprise, surprise, the Dakota Access pipeline springs its first leak, dumping out 84 gallons of crude oil in South Dakota. And it happened over a month ago! And it's not even lugging large amounts of oil yet! And dig the state environmental scientist calling it a "release"! But then, who cares about clean drinking water for 17 million heartland Americans? President Trump demands tribute!

Finally, speaking of The Great Man, there he is suggesting that maybe we shouldn't have press conferences anymore because it's impossible for his spokeshacks to achieve "perfect accuracy." I'd be more sympathetic if the "liberal" media were hitting his Administration on rounding errors, but over the reason Mr. Trump sent his bodyguard to fire Mr. Comey? Waaaaaaah! That's our President -- so much stronger than those loser liberals, yet too weak to account to a largely pliant national press. So when's that terrorist attack coming?

Action: freedom of the press, media consolidation, and pro-pollution bills.

As you may know, West Virginia Capitol police arrested local journalist Dan Heyman on Wednesday after he repeatedly asked HHS Secretary Tom Price whether the Republican health care bill would include "being a target of domestic violence" as a "pre-existing condition." The charge? Willful disruption of state government processes. Mr. Heyman had to post $5,000 bail to get released; let's see you or I do that if we get arrested for confronting our leaders in public. This Administration demands to be disrupted by civilized Americans, but even the Capitol police can't agree on the details of the case. And dig Mr. Price saying "(t)hat gentleman was not in a press conference." Gosh, if you're going to put your ideas out there, you don't get to dictate to other people where and when and how they respond. All adults understand that, so why doesn't anyone in the Trump Administration seem to understand it? Oh, wait, that question answers itself. FAIR helps you tell West Virginia's government to drop all charges against Mr. Heyman.

Meanwhile, everyone wants me to tell Congress to investigate Russia's involvement in the recent U.S. election -- particularly now that we've learned that former FBI Director James Comey somehow isn't enough of a right-wing toady for President Trump's taste -- but I'd much rather see an investigation into how, exactly, Sinclair Broadcasting just got goodies from the FCC so they could buy up more local TV stations. I mean, yes, Mr. Trump sure is acting like a criminal every time Russia comes up, but when Mr. Trump's son-in-law tells everyone that his father-in-law's Presidential campaign "struck a deal" with Sinclair Broadcasting in order to get better news coverage, you have to wonder if they actually did something criminal. And when FCC Chair Ajit Pai lifts media consolidation restrictions that just so happen to benefit Sinclair, you have to wonder some more. Sinclair will soon reach almost 70% of American markets, and won't just be peddling right-wing ideology, but will be contributing directly to the further erosion of local media. The Justice Department's website is here.

Finally, because hamstringing clean air and clean water regulations is so wildly popular, the Pennsylvania Senate is mulling SB 561, which would (rather like the nefarious REINS Act, passed by the House earlier this year) require state House and Senate approval for any new regulation within 15 legislative days (or 90 calendar days, if the Assembly is out of session). Of course, here as elsewhere, the legislature already empowers the executive branch with the authority to issue regulations to meet legislative ends, but, you see, this particular legislature is dominated by pro-pollution Republicans and the executive branch is currently run by a relatively anti-pollution Democrat, so of course the legislative branch needs special rights in this case. Seriously, Republicans are like a bad baseball team that, after losing a game, whines that it's not fair that their opponents didn't give them six extra innings. So the Sierra Club helps you tell your Pennsylvania state Senator to reject SB 561 and protect our right not to breathe crappy air and drink crappy water.

Around the table: calling for Mr. Trump's impeachment *for the right reasons*, and other lessons.

David Swanson lists at least a dozen better reasons to impeach President Trump than the ongoing saga over Russian involvement in the 2016 elections (and in the subsequent Trump Administration). They're better reasons not only because they describe a historic animus on Mr. Trump's part toward our Constitution and our heritage, but because they're all a lot easier to prove than Russian hacking. I admit the timing of Mr. Comey's firing (and Mr. Trump's behavior during and afterward!) is suspicious, but couldn't it be that Mr. Trump wants you to think there's more to this Russia thing than there really is?

Bots apparently leave over 125,000 anti-net neutrality comments with the FCC -- at least some of them "signed" by people who deny having left them or even having strong feelings one way or the other about net neutrality. If the FCC can't (or won't!) keep fake comments off its net neutrality proceedings, I'd think that would be legal grounds for reversing any eventual anti-net neutrality order coming from the FCC, though the damage done in the meantime by a corporate junk news internet would be great. Wait, let me guess what the Trump Klan will say: there is no Constitutional right to a public comment period that actually works the way it's supposed to work.

I must admit I'm a little surprised that Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-NJ) even did a town hall meeting with constituents after writing the nefarious pre-existing conditions amendment that got it through the House, but I'm still not willing to give him an ounce of credit even for enduring five hours of hostility -- you should know when you do evil that people are going to be mad about it, and that they're going to speak out about it. This is America, after all. Great bit: Mr. MacArthur says "I’m looking at an insurance market that is collapsing," and a constituent yells, "that's because you drilled holes in it!"

Electric car-manufacturing corporation Tesla announces that it'll start selling and installing solar roof shingles this year. The price of installation is pretty up there ($65,000), but that was about the price of a system based on solar panels a dozen years ago; I expect the price will come down for the shingle-system, too. And I expect that'll be true even if no one steps up to compete with Tesla on these solar roof shingles -- I mean, there aren't that many rich people in America, and if you want to keep making money, sooner or later you'll have to sell to people who aren't rich.

Finally, in a marvelous surprise, the Senate rejects the "resolution of disapproval" aiming to repeal methane emissions limits on public lands in a 51-49 vote. Three Republicans -- Sens. McCain (AZ), Graham (SC), and Collins (ME) voted against it, and though all three have plausible reasons for doing so, David Dayen theorizes that Mr. McCain might have sunk the resolution out of anger over Mr. Comey's firing. He also says Mr. McConnell might have counted on two Democrats (Heidtkamp of North Dakota and Manchin of West Virginia) to vote for the resolution, which would have been unusually politically inept of him, but it would explain why he would have allowed Sens. Collins and Graham to vote against the resolution -- to burnish their otherwise largely-unearned "moderate" and "maverick" bona fides without sinking it. No doubt he'll let his caucus indulge in even less fake independence after this defeat.

Action: basic human rights, education, and clean water.

S. 1055, the Philippines Human Rights Accountability & Counternarcotics Act of 2017, would (among other things) stop sales of certain arms to the Philippines as long as that country can't protect basic human rights. You'll likely know why this is happening -- because Philippine President Duterte has openly encouraged the murder of Philippine citizens suspected of dealing or using drugs (due process, how quaint!), to the tune of over 7,000 deaths. So I guess that's why President Trump has such a hard-on for having Mr. Duterte over -- after all, they're both big talkers who don't really care about law and order and who prefer that other, more disposable people do their dirty work for them. But the fact that we Americans are, by nature, a people impatient with bullshit does not mean we are uncivilized, or that we tolerate uncivilized behavior anywhere. Killing people you "just know" to be drug-dealers or drug-abusers is plenty uncivilized, and demands a response from civilized people. Hence the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Congressfolk to support S. 1055, and thus support the basic human rights of Philippine citizens.

Meanwhile, H.R. 1880/S. 806, the College for All Act -- a production of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), respectively -- would end tuition and fees at community colleges for all students, and end tuition and fees at four-year public universities for those making less than $125,000 annually. It irks me that folks (including Sen. Sanders himself!) call this "free college," because it's not really free if your taxes pay for it. People very often take for granted what their tax dollars get them (what do you call a liberal? A conservative who just bottomed out over a pothole), and that's at least partly because too many weakling Democrats pretend taxes don't really exist at all, and don't fulfill a function in our society. But we need to ask whether funneling more and more of our tax money into CEO bank accounts as corporate welfare is really a better way to go than setting aside money so anyone who wants to go to college can go. The latter, certainly, seems like more of an investment in our future than the former. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the College for All Act.

Finally, as you know, the Trump Administration may have approved the Keystone XL Pipeline, but they don't get all the say about that: Keystone XL would run through the great state of Nebraska, and over the Ogalalla Aquifer that supplies clean drinking water to millions of heartland Americans, so the Nebraska Public Service Commission still has to issue the necessary permits. And, as it happens, Nebraska farmers and ranchers also aren't all that keen on a pipeline going through the land that provides for their livelihoods. You need not be worried about climate change (though you should be!) to oppose Keystone XL -- you need only be aware of TransCanada's not-exactly-sparkling pipeline safety record, and of the decades it might take to fix the damage a pipeline burst can do. And what would people who want to drink clean water do in the meantime? What would farmers and ranchers do? Food and Water Watch helps you tell the Nebraska Public Service Commission to deny permits to TransCanada for building Keystone XL. If it can't go through Nebraska, after all, it can't really go anywhere.

Action: internet freedom, money bail, and chemical safety.

The deadline for net neutrality comments to the FCC is tomorrow; and this page helps you leave a comment with the FCC via John Oliver's website, gofccyourself.com. (Battle for the Net still helps you leave your comment with both the FCC and Congress.) The FCC's Open Internet Order, as you know, forces ISPs to treat all internet traffic with equal importance -- it forbids them from slowing down or censoring websites your ISP doesn't like for whatever reason, and it forbids them from making other websites pay for the privilege of loading faster. And that is what enables innovation and freedom on the internet -- think what the Iraq War would have been like without anti-war bloggers, whom ISPs would certainly have relegated to the "slow lane" while letting corporate pro-war propaganda ride the fast lane. If the FCC votes to get rid of their net neutrality rules, then ISPs will be able to block you from websites, make your favorite websites load more slowly, and redirect you to junk news websites before you see the website you want to see -- among other things! So if that doesn't sound like the internet you want, then tell the FCC with a quickness.

Meanwhile, the great state of California is thisclose to passing a criminal justice reform bill that could end the money bail system for criminal suspects, and Color of Change helps you tell California state legislators to go ahead and end the money bail system. Money bail has been a feature of our system for so long that it seems like part of the landscape, something you just put up with if you've ever been arrested for, say, Driving While Black. But the main problem with money bail is simply this: it allows the state to detain people without proving they merits detainment (i.e., because they're a threat to flee). By setting a bail threshold above their ability to pay -- a thing that's easier and easier to do as the rich claim more and more of the wealth in our society -- states can deprive folks of their freedom without having a good reason to do so. Brook no hysteria about ZOMG TEH CRIMINULZ WILLZ RUN WILDZ ON TEH STREETZ!!!! Crime's going down, even if "liberal" media sensationalism about crime isn't. And, like payday lenders, money bail traps people in a cycle of debt from which they may not emerge.

Finally, the EPA has proposed banning three fairly dangerous chemicals used at many workplaces -- methylene chloride (or dichloromethane, or DCM), N-methylpyrrolidone (or NMP), and trichloroethylene (or TCE). You find the first two in paint strippers, the first of which is carcinogenic and lethal in confined spaces, the second of which (often used instead of the first) is merely neurotoxic and causes kidney and liver damage. The third is a degreaser used in dry cleaning services and electronics assembly, and it can cause cancer and birth defects. Of course, industries get more say than people now that Donald Trump is President, and what are they saying? They're saying that warning labels and protective gear will be enough -- though they hate our government telling people they have to wear protective gear, too, and seriously, warning labels? As in, if you use this thing you have to use to do your job, you might get sick? That would be to laugh, if I found such things amusing. So the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell the EPA to follow through and ban these poisons.

Around the table: the "liberal" media, the Voting Rights Act, the Muslim ban, racist searches, net neutrality, and "defamation" laws.

From FAIR, one of my favorite headlines ever: "Lockheed Martin-Funded Experts Agree: South Korea Needs More Lockheed Martin Missiles." Long story short: the Center for Strategic and International Studies (or CSIS) has provided glowing testimonials to the "liberal" media about a certain missile defense system at least 30 times over the past year -- and guess how many of those "liberal" media outlets even disclosed that the CSIS gets money from that missile system's manufacturer, Lockheed-Martin? If you guessed "zero," you're smarter than all the pointy-heads who love saying TEH MONEYZ DO NOT MAKEZ US CORRUPTZ!!!!!

Pema Levy at Mother Jones thinks "The Voting Rights Act May Be Coming Back from the Dead." How? In Shelby v. Holder, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act on the premise that the massive voter suppression that prompted its passage had disappeared -- but that voter suppression is now coming back, as many federal court decisions have said. Nobody Could Have Predicted That, of course (or, as Justice Ginsberg, might say, nobody could have predicted you'd get wet in a rainstorm after deciding you don't need an umbrella anymore), but for the Voting Rights Act to "come back," I'd think you'd be counting on, say, John Roberts to get up and say "I was wrong." I'm not going to hold my breath.

Trump Administration cites '70s pro-segregation ruling in asserting that courts can't divine Mr. Trump's intention in writing his Muslim ban. I'm no great fan of divining everyone's "intention" from their actions -- unless the obvious intention is, as it is here, "to deprive people of their rights," and I've often found it's not terribly difficult to divine such intentions from evil actions. Maybe Mr. Trump's lawyers will next argue that what he says on the campaign trail doesn't have a one-to-one relationship to his intentions -- an argument that would be a lot more compelling if Mr. Giuliani hadn't already told the whole world that Mr. Trump wanted to do a "Muslim ban," but "legally."

ACLU files class action lawsuit alleging that Madison County, Mississippi law enforcement officials have "placed the black community of Madison County under a permanent state of siege." With checkpoints, roadblocks, and house searches, because they just can't shake their apparent nostalgia for the Jim Crow era. It's bad enough that residents have set up a Facebook group to warn each other about checkpoints and roadblocks, and that news might convince a Justice Thomas that the people have devised a solution and no more government intervention is needed.

FCC claims that a denial-of-service attack caused problems on its website Sunday night -- and it had nothing at all to do with John Oliver's call for viewers to contact the FCC about net neutrality. And they said the same thing in 2014! I'd be a schmuck to believe that -- particularly when I recall that Tom Wheeler's FCC didn't want to issue strong net neutrality rules, either, until we, you know, made them.

Finally, Irish police are investigating comedian Stephen Fry under an anti-defamation law over his famous statements calling God "capricious, mean-minded, (and) stupid" for "creat(ing) a world that is so full of injustice and pain." I have a different take than Mr. Fry on "bone cancer in children" (why do innocent people suffer? At least in part to shame those of us who allow, create, or enable that suffering), but only dictatorships go after people like this. Besides, who can assert they're the aggrieved party here? God has, after all, never seemed particularly litigious to me.

Action: health care, and clean water on public lands.

Today would be a good day to use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) and call your Senators to tell them you oppose Republican efforts to "reform" or "repeal" Obamacare. Now, your Republican Senators might tell you what mine did last week: that any bill coming out of the Senate will be different from the House bill. Of course, they say that to trick you into thinking the Senate bill will be a good bill. So fire a pre-emptive strike, as it were, by listing exactly the things you don't want them to do: you don't want them to repeal taxes on the rich that would steal money from Medicare, you don't want them to let states start jacking up premiums for people with pre-existing conditions (and, as you can see from this list, just about everyone in America has one!), you don't want them to end or roll back the Medicaid expansion, you don't want them to change Obamacare subsidies so more working families can't afford health insurance, and (of course!) you don't want them to take health insurance from more than 20 million good Americans. When we make our demands plain, we paint our enemies into a corner. And we need to keep doing that, because you can never count a bastard out.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania residents take note: SB 624 would amend clean water laws in Pennsylvania such that corporations could pollute local streams with as long as they submit a plan to clean up the water later on. What are we supposed to do with the dirty water in the meantime, you wonder? Stop drinking, bathing, swimming, and fishing? Tough luck, good citizens of the Commonwealth -- your will to do what you want to do on your public lands and waters must take a back seat to some corporation's desire to make unearned money! And worse, actually -- the bill would apply retroactively, such that any corporation indulging in such pollution could simply whip up a "plan" to get rid of it and get off the hook. Just so happens the Consol corporation has been longwall mining in the southwestern part of Pennsylvania, and polluting public waters there, for years. Gosh, what could be the connection between the two? The Sierra Club helps you tell your Pennsylvania state legislator to oppose efforts to legalize pollution on public lands.

Around the table: an Oklahoma anti-free speech law and a French Presidential election, with chewy health care in the middle.

Oklahoma enacts a blatantly anti-free speech law which jacks up trespassing fines, as well as fines for any organization found to be "conspiring" with the trespasser. You may find judges who'll see this for what it is -- a way of stifling protests against gas and oil pipelines -- but you probably won't find such judges on the Supreme Court, at least for the foreseeable future. And of course this law takes effect immediately under an "emergency" provision, because, after all, conservatism is all about shrieking about fake emergencies. (Full disclosure: conservatism is, of course, not about that -- but the reactionaries who call themselves conservative sure seem to think so.)

Among the many other good Americans who'll get shafted if the House's Obamacare repeal bill (or something like it) becomes law: some seven million military veterans who will no longer qualify for tax credits. I foresee a million Democrat campaign ads about this matter, echoing Mr. Hayne's statement that Republicans "feign() patriotism in the form of flag pins"! I kid, of course -- these are Democrats we're talking about, who pretend all fighting is uncivil. It's not good news that Trump spokeshack Sean Spicer was ready for a question about this matter, but kudos to the Newsmax reporter (now, there's a phrase I don't say every day!) for not taking any of Mr. Spicer's guff.

Don't look now, but I think I've found the phrase Republicans will deploy to protect themselves against the political consequences of their own health care bill: "we repealed Obamacare." "Midterms are base elections, and this could energize GOP voters," one analyst says, and I suppose that's true, but we repealed Obamacare ain't nothing compared to the simple statement their Democratic opponents could deploy: they took away your health care. But, again, these are Democrats we're talking about. Republicans have had, like, 50 Obamacare repeal votes over the years; think maybe we should have seen those attack ads already?

With so many folks on both sides doing victory laps over the bill House Republicans just passed, it sure is a good thing Thom Hartmann is around to point out how the Obamacare repeal vote is "Just Part of a Sinister Long Game." Republicans are, after all, lying out their wazoos about what this bill does, and sheer repetition of lies sure does resemble truth after a while; soon they'll blame the Democrats for their Super-Awesome bill getting watered down. The solution: simply say Trumpcare is "a Big Lie, it’s really about cutting taxes on billionaires!" Which, of course, it is, since tax hikes on the rich fund Obamacare in the first place.

Then again, House Speaker Paul Ryan isn't exactly helping his cause by saying "the most recent CBO score showed that we’re perfectly in compliance with the Senate budget rules, which is what matters here." "Which is what matters here"? Most good Americans would be scratching their heads wondering how that could possibly "matter" more than you took away my healthcare. Maybe the Democrats should try to recruit Mr. Ryan for their So-Smart-We're-Dumb Caucus.

Finally, France elects center-right candidate Emmanuel Macron to the Presidency by a 65-35 margin over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. But the incoming President faces the very real possibility of actual labor unrest -- caused, of course, by government efforts to curtail workers' rights, efforts which the former banker Mr. Macron has embraced, and it's good to be reminded that labor unrest did help unseat Charles de Gaulle, who was only the face of the French resistance to the Nazis. I wish the French people luck in making their government work for them, since the very purpose of someone like Emmanuel Macron (or, for that matter, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton) is to make the citizen lose focus.

Action: net neutrality, renewable energy, and the minimum wage.

The FCC, now led by the right-wing former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai, aims not merely to gut net neutrality regulations -- the ones that let you, and not some corporation, determine where you want to go on the internet -- but to make it considerably more difficult for you to leave a public comment. Why would that be? It couldn't be because you (like nearly everyone else in America regardless of ideological stripe) want the FCC's net neutrality rules to stay exactly the way they are, could it? I kid, of course -- that's exactly why it is. But, as The Nation's latest email says, "(a)fter millions fought to ensure a level playing field, Pai would allow monopoly Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon to pick winners and losers online." Right-wing politicians constantly complain about "government picking winners and losers," not because they love freedom or even the "free" market, but because they want to pick winners and losers on behalf of their corporate paymasters, and if they get to pick here, we're all going to be losers. Hence Battle for the Net helps you tell the FCC to stop trying to destroy our internet freedom.

Meanwhile, S. 987, the 100 By 50 Act, would take steps to get America off fossil fuels entirely by 2050. The bill would (among other things!) build out zero-emission public transportation, help lower-income working families get more access to renewable energy, get fossil fuel workers more assistance as their jobs disappear, retrain workers in clean energy jobs (which sure is a better idea than trying to retrain them as computer programmers!), and end corporate welfare for fossil fuel corporations. It's an ambitious and entirely necessary bill, achieving aims of which most Americans would approve (what, you think Americans like pollution?), but be warned that hateful Republicans won't be your only obstacle to getting it passed -- Democrats addicted to "entrepreneurship" and "bipartisanship" and "the art of the possible" may be a bigger one. But ain't nothing we can't accomplish when we do it ourselves, instead of electing more Democrats and hoping against hope they'll learn some courage. CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support a real renewable energy effort by supporting the 100 by 50 Act.

Finally, CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Raise the Wage Act. I don't have bill numbers for the latest iteration of the bill, but Sen. Sanders also introduced it during the last Congress; it would raise the minimum wage from $7.25/hour now to $9.90/hour right away, and then gradually raise the minimum wage to $15/hour by 2024. That's seven years from now, for those folks in your life who constantly complain that minimum wage hikes are a "shock to the system" for small businesses. They're not, of course -- yeah, bosses have to pay workers more, but when workers have more money in their pockets, they also buy more stuff, which means a lot of that money eventually makes its way back to the businesses that are paying the higher wage. And after 100-plus days of Republicans trying to hide workplace injuries and block new overtime pay rules and block regulations keeping banksters from exploiting worker pension funds and even cutting overtime for workers, it's well past time we changed the subject. Think we'll succeed, though the politicians and the "liberal" media oppose us? We'll never know unless we try.

Around the table: more news about health care, plus the "war on terror" and an actual, terrible war.

"Why Do the North Koreans Hate Us?" asks Mehdi Hasan at The Intercept. "One Reason -- They Remember the Korean War." Mostly we experience the Korean War through M*A*S*H* reruns, but it's a little different for North Korea, since our carpet-bombing killed one in five North Koreans. Try to imagine every fifth person you know dead, or contemplate the fact that one-fifth of the American population would comprise over 60 million people, and you'll be on your way to understanding why June is "Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism Month" in North Korea -- though, obviously, you won't be closer to appreciating Korea's leaders, since they're bat-guano insane. Odd how often that happens in the wake of such destruction.

The House's Obamacare repeal may not be "DOA" in the Senate, as some have reported, but Senate Republicans are reportedly working on their own bill. And for once I think Senate Republicans are being politically stupid -- the best political move, for them, was to pass the House's bill on Friday and give Americans 18 months to get used to it before Election Day 2018. But Senate Republicans seem ready to prolong work on this monstrosity well into early 2018, by which time voters won't forget. I'd say there's no putting lipstick on this pig of a bill, but that'd be insulting to pigs.

The incomparable David Dayen calls the House Obamacare repeal bill "single-payer for dummies" and "the stupidest possible version of government-run health care." Essentially the bill blows open holes in the marketplace by allowing health insurance corporations to jack up prices based on your pre-existing conditions -- then plugs those holes with government subsidies funneled, of course, directly to insurance corporations. I expect that Republicans' response to these criticisms will be to blame Obama. But we could do worse than to whisper in Tea Partiers' ears that the Obamacare repeal bill is actually a Big Gummint bill.

Speaking of single-payer, Donald Trump gets caught saying Australia's single-payer program delivers better health care than our system. Of course he's absolutely right about that, and though Sen. Sanders was also right to pounce on Mr. Trump's hypocrisy in failing to demand a system like Australia's from Congress, you know why Mr. Trump said it, right? To make his votaries think they're getting a good health care system like Australia's, that's why. (In that light, his later statement that he thinks all countries, not just Australia, have a better health care system than we do is a bad political calculation, but one his votaries likely won't remember.)

CBS finds that President Trump got "personally involved" in finding the National Parks service employee who posted photos comparing the Trump and first Obama inaugurations on Twitter. The issue isn't that someone in the Trump Administration tried to find the employee -- every organization, including our government, gets to set rules about what you can and can't post on social media -- but that the President himself did it. So add that to the list of reasons you should blame Mr. Trump when we endure another 9.11-sized terrorist attack. (As of now, that list is: skips intelligence briefings, guts the State Department, retreats to play golf in Florida nearly every weekend, no cybersecurity plan as promised, no plan to defeat ISIS as promised, hasn't staffed very much of his government, and, of course, generally acts like an arrogant prick.)

Finally, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi not only won't back Medicare-for-All, single-payer health care, she says "the comfort level" of the American people with single-payer "is not there yet." But all the polls tell us the exact opposite -- and these polls get conducted by "liberal" media news organizations with a decided interest in proving Ms. Pelosi's right! Anyway, it doesn't matter what Nancy Pelosi wants. It only matters what we want.

Action: free speech, equal rights, and regulating banksters.

While efforts to outlaw protesting at the state level have gone nowhere, and quite deservedly so, governments hit protestors with "rioting" and "battery" charges more and more these days -- even when police batter protestors after Trump supporters attack them, as happened at an anti-war protest in Jacksonville in early April. (Wait, aren't Trump supporters supposed to be as sick of the Middle East wars as us? Not these folks, I guess!) Naturally, video and eyewitness accounts of the violence don't exactly make the police look very good, so Color of Change helps you tell the Duval County State Attorney to drop these charges against the Jacksonville protestors. Just so happens the Duval County State Attorney in question, Melissa Nelson, defeated incumbent Angela Corey in November. You may remember Ms. Corey as the prosecutor who put Marissa Alexander in jail for firing a warning shot in the direction of her abusive ex-husband (despite Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, naturally!). One would hope that turning bad prosecutors out of office would result in better prosecutions. And I'd sure like to see that here, too.

Meanwhile, H.R. 2282/S. 1006, the Equality Act, would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to explicitly include gay and transgendered folks in its protections -- resulting in a far more comprehensive bill than, say, ENDA was. Americans are considerably more sanguine toward gay rights than they used to be -- not all Americans, of course, but if we waited for all Americans to agree on legislation before we passed it, we'd no doubt still have slavery in the South -- but I suppose right-wingers will use TEH CIVIL RIGHTZ PROTECTIONZ FOR TEH TRANSVESTITEZ!!!!! as the wedge between good Americans and this bill. (Of course, I know the difference between a transvestite and a transgendered person; I mean to insinuate that right-wingers more easily confuse the two.) Here's the thing: the notion that transgendered folks molest children is utter bullshit, and the notion that transgendered folks have never before used the same bathrooms as the rest of us is also utter bullshit. So Freedom for All Americans helps you tell your Congressfolk to support civil rights for gay and transgendered folks by supporting the Equality Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject legislation that would kill regulations keeping Wall Street from destroying our economy again, then Sum of Us, Consumers Union, and PennPIRG all help you do that. The bill in question is H.R. 10, the Financial CHOICE Act of 2017, and I bet you just can't guess who will get all the choice if this bill passes -- that's right, the banksters, the same ones who blew a hole in our economy in 2008 with their casino games, and would blow another hole in our economy if Congress lifted "onerous" rules, like, you know, the ones that allow the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to find fraud artists like Wells Fargo. Have you noticed how much right-wingers complain these days about having to follow the rules? Why, it's almost like they're acting out their fantasies about what liberals are like. OK, more likely they're projecting and deflecting, but the "righteous" "anger" right-wingers spew over our government's attempts to protect people from financial predators is certainly misplaced. It's also just as certainly not conservative./p>

Around the table: describing the endless Republican trail of slime.

House Republicans pass Obamacare repeal bill, 217-213. When the "liberal" media types start clucking approvingly about what a "dealmaker" Donald Trump has just become, just remember that the House Republican leadership had to make this bill significantly more harmful to working families to get it passed. Remember, also, that when Mr. Trump tells you the bill does-so protect folks with pre-existing conditions, you're much better off assuming he's lying rather than assuming he just doesn't know.

President Trump issues Executive Order allowing churches to do more electioneering from the pulpit and offering more "unspecified 'regulatory relief'" for folks who don't want to cover contraception. It's not as bad as it could have been, but a pile of dung the flies have found isn't that much different from a pile of dung the flies haven't found yet. Anyway, let's see how many days this order survives before a federal judge slaps it down.

Earlier this week, the House also managed to pass H.R. 1180, the so-called Working Families Flexibility Act, on a near-party line vote. Of course the NBC report, in its zeal to cast this issue as a battle between Democrats and Republicans, fails to remind us of a few things: that the whole reason we have overtime pay is to force corporations to hire enough workers rather than work the few they've got to death, that having comp time doesn't guarantee you'll ever get to use it (and certainly not that when you need it!), and that letting your boss hold onto your overtime pay for an entire calendar year is rather like giving your boss a sizable interest-free loan. In short, the bill advertises flexibility for your boss, not for you.

National Resources Defense Council report finds that close to 10 percent of all Americans got their drinking water from systems that had been cited for health-based violations (not merely reporting violations) of federal law. Of course, Mr. Trump doesn't care, since this doesn't affect him or his rich friends -- and his fellow Republicans will just tell you to move somewhere where the water's clean! But people have a right to clean water wherever they are. And no, right-wingers, this is not a "right without responsibility," because we pay water bills.

Finally, that Roosevelt Institute study linking campaign contributions to pro-Wall Street legislation also found that campaign contributions could buy votes on net neutrality -- but it's generally cheaper to get a pro-net neutrality vote than an anti-net neutrality vote. Whereas a single $1,000 contribution from a relatively pro-net neutrality corporation like Google increases a Congressperson's chance of voting in their direction by 26 percent, a single $1,000 contribution from an anti-net neutrality corporation (like an ISP) only increased that Congressperson's chance of voting in their direction by 2.4 percent. Which suggests that opposing internet freedom is so stupid and unpopular it takes a lot more corporate campaign cash to move the needle!

Action: redistricting, offshore drilling, and chemical safety.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: House Bill 722 (still not up at the Pennsylvania state legislature's website at this writing, but here's a PDF of it, courtesy Common Cause) would, like SB 22, amend the state Constitution to take redistricting power from the legislature (which, as we've seen, can't do the job without protecting its own interests) and give it to a five-member commission, made up of the House and Senate Majority and Minority leaders and a fifth individual chosen by the other four. Can you imagine that going wrong? Of course you can -- you can imagine four legislators conspiring to choose someone who won't rock the boat. But you can also imagine that backfiring on those legislators, and you can perhaps more easily imagine the political parties having a hard time getting a fifth member to rubber-stamp their wishes, since each party will have two votes on the commission. Thus shifting redistricting power from the legislature to a commission gives the people a better chance at regaining control of our politics. So go here to find your state legislator, and then call them and tell them to support fair redistricting.

As you know, President Trump has issued yet more Executive Orders aiming to open up the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Oceans to offshore drilling, so Penn Environment, the Sierra Club, and the Alaska Wilderness League all help you tell Congress to stand against Mr. Trump's plan to pollute our oceans for the profit of the few. Before you think standing against Mr. Trump is just something dirty hippie environmentalists would do, remember that the shore communities in America also depend on ocean-related industries -- you wouldn't want to see the salmon trade in Alaska disappear because of offshore drilling in the Arctic, would you? And the aforementioned BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 wrecked Lousiana's shrimp trade in the years to come. Besides, if you've ever lived within two hours of an ocean, you also know that our shore communities depend on tourism. And why wouldn't they? Everybody loves the ocean. And we shouldn't pollute it just so a few oil and gas CEOs can make a few more dollars, and then gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation homes.

Finally, we were no great fan of the last Congress's chemical safety "reform" legislation, but ain't nothing so bad that President Trump can't make it worse, so of course his EPA aims to delay rule-making that would force chemical facilities to upgrade their security, so that chemical plant explosions (which are far more frequent than even news coverage would suggest) don't injure and kill people so much. But of course, for Messrs. Trump and Pruitt and their kind, regulations do nothing other than keep their friends from making unearned money -- heaven forbid our government actually tries to keep people from losing their lives and their homes. And even if your name was Scrooge McSmallgovernment, you could reasonably object to the hundreds of millions of dollars in damages chemical explosions cause annually. In any case, the EPA is taking public comments on its plan to delay chemical plant safety rule-making, and the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell the EPA not to delay efforts to make chemical plants safer.

Around the table: in which we finally say good riddance to political "moderates."

U.S. Supreme Court rules that the city of Miami can sue Wells Fargo and Bank of America under the Fair Housing Act -- but also says the city would have to prove that the increased costs of bankster lending practices directly affected city revenue. I figure Miami proves pretty easily that predatory lending to minorities led to foreclosures which led to reduced tax receipts, but they might have a tougher time drawing predatory lending to falling property values. Also, Chief Justice Roberts's opinion essentially gives Miami personhood status; not being a fan of corporate "personhood," I'd prefer a different avenue to getting the good folks of Miami the relief they deserve.

Roosevelt Institute reports on how political contributions caused specific vote changes in financial reform and net neutrality. Key finding: "for every $100,000 (a) Democratic representatives received from finance, the odds they would break with their party's majority support for the Dodd-Frank legislation increased by 13.9 percent." Considering the damage financial deregulation has always done, these votes were bought very cheaply -- as they always are, if you recall the USPIRG/CTJ report from 2012 finding that 280 Fortune 500 corporations spent $2 billion on lobbying between 2008 and 2010 and got over $220 billion in tax breaks during that time.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt asks callers to come forward about the "damage" stringent EPA regulations allegedly do, but callers instead mostly complain that EPA regulations don't protect clean air and clean water enough. Well, ask a stupid question! Paragraph 6, in which a Pittsburgh resident talks about the days you had to change your shirt at lunch because of mill smoke, should really finish any argument about whether regulations "serve a purpose." But you know the haters never stop hating, and the worshipers of mammon always need another fix.

Jesus Mary and Joseph nobody cares about what the "moderates" in both parties want to accomplish. Sometimes I think the only thing worse than an extremist lying without shame or consequence is a "moderate" droning on about "innovation" and "public-private partnerships" and "right-siz(ing) regulation," because such nattering still enables extremists. And why should we work on "the President's priorities," instead of the people's priorities? I'd been feeling a bit glum that a 2018 Democrat wave (if such a thing materializes!) would take out a Charlie Dent long before it took out a Devin Nunes, but not so much now.

Finally, woman who laughed audibly during a confirmation hearing at the suggestion that then-Attorney General Sessions had always fought for racial equality now faces up to a year in prison for "disorderly and disruptive conduct." How many times must I tell these pimps! Laughing at our elected officials is our birthright! And dig all the hair-splitting done at the trial over exactly how loud her laugh was! Gosh, what are they going to do when we're all laughing at them?

Action: health care, fossil fuel handouts, and the Bears Ears National Monument.

Congress could vote on Obamacare repeal bill as early as today, but even if they don't, use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) to call your House Reps and tell them to reject it. This bill is actually worse than the previous one, because it allows states to charge citizens more for their pre-existing conditions, which basically renders Obamacare's ban on pre-existing conditions meaningless. And the bill would still do all the horrible things it would have done if it had passed last month -- it would throw upwards of 20 million people off their health insurance, it would change Obamacare subsidies so more working families couldn't afford insurance, it would steal hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare by repealing tax hikes on higher incomes, and it would get rid of the Medicaid expansion. You know, in a sane and moral society, "moderate" Rep. Tom MacArthur, the co-author of the pre-existing conditions amendment, would lose his next election in his purple New Jersey district by 20 points. But in our sick, immoral, and decadent society, he'll probably beat whatever milquetoast the Democrats put up.

Meanwhile, in the wake of a Trump tax "plan" that would give away trillions of dollars in taxpayer money -- i.e., our money -- to himself and his rich pals, Friends of the Earth helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal billions of dollars in tax subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. I mean, if you're serious about tax reform, you'd get rid of the $4 billion or so annually in fossil fuel subsidies. That's not a whole lot of money in the context of a $4 trillion annual budget, but if you believe our government should use taxpayer money to subsidize emerging industries, then why would you support subsidizing oil, natural gas, and coal? Oh, wait, let me guess -- because they're domestic sources of energy, as if wind and solar somehow aren't. And the wind and solar industries have to pull teeth to get help from our government, whereas these ancient, far dirtier industries get handouts. And no, fossil fuel subsidies don't "protect workers," either -- these subsidies only protect the ability of CEOs to gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation home, and these are the same CEOs who'd fire all of their workers if they could.

Finally, WildEarth Guardians helps you tell Interior Secretary Zinke to preserve the recently-designated Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. President Trump has lately ordered Interior to re-evaluate all the national monuments designated over the last 21 years, and he singled out Bears Ears in his public statements; why does he have this hard-on to get rid of this monument? I mean, sure, fossil fuel corporations want to drill there, but they want to drill everywhere. I'd hate to think it was because President Obama designated it last year, and that if-it's-Obama-it-must-die. But it could also be because our government currently allows the five Native American nations for whom Bears Ears is sacred take a significant role in managing that monument. In any case, you can remind Secretary Zinke that it actually takes a couple of years to designate a national monument, and that new Secretaries don't just get to come in and do whatever they like for whatever reason they like. If they do, they tend to get sued in court, and because the process of designating national monuments is governed by laws, not men, they tend to lose.

Action: three alerts about basic human rights.

At the beginning of March, the Nevada state legislature passed the Equal Rights Amendment, becoming the 36th state to do so. Of course, the deadline for passing the Equal Rights Amendment lapsed back in 1982, but given the, ah, stated proclivities of our Commander-in-Chief, it is entirely possible our activism could get two more states to pass the ERA, which would give us 38 states, or more than the three-quarters standard set by our Constitution. All we'd have to do then is get Congress to pass legislation removing the expiration date from the original ERA -- which H.J.Res. 53 and S.J.Res. 5 would do. The Constitution doesn't mandate expiration dates on proposed amendments; that started last century with the Prohibition amendment, and our most recent Constitutional amendment actually took over 200 years to get in. You can use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or on the bottom, if you're on a cellphone) to tell your Reps and Senators to get rid of the ERA expiration date so we can one day pass it, and give women the equal rights they deserve.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell Congress to prevent the Trump Administration from selling weapons to countries that systematically and egregiously abuse fundamental human rights. The news hook here is the Trump Administration's lifting of human rights restrictions on sales of military equipment to Bahrain, restrictions the Obama Administration had put in place. Is this what Donald Trump means by "the mess he inherited"? Now, if you're prepared to say well, gosh, every country seems to abuse human rights, you'd be a bit glib: every government tries to get over on its citizens, but some countries are really into detaining and torturing people, or banning travel for citizens who criticize the government, or stripping their critics of their citizenship -- and, guess what? Bahrain does all of these things, plus they don't allow independent human rights observers across their borders. But I guess if there's a buck to be made, President Big Balls doesn't care. (Am I aware that we could justify banning arms sales to Saudi Arabia on the same basis? Of course I am! But hey, everyone has to sacrifice for the greater good.)

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Russia to investigate the kidnappings and killings of gay Chechen men, then Anmesty International helps you do that. You may remember the drill: Chechen officials abduct gay men out of their homes, detain them, torture them, even kill them -- and sometimes out them to their families and encourage "honor killings." Why your "honor" as a human being would be sullied by having a gay child I have no idea, but this is a thing in some parts of the world. The fact that it's a thing in some parts of the world doesn't make it right, though -- saying that's what Chechens do out of their sincere religious beliefs would not be an act of "cultural tolerance," but would rather be (at best!) an example of keeping your mind so open that your brains fall out. Human rights are human rights everywhere, and no "cultural relativism" can tolerate depriving folks of their rights just because of their sexual orientation. And I would very much like to believe that there aren't any good Americans cheering this monstrosity on. I'm not sure I do believe that, but I would very much like to.

Around the table: good news about government funding and net neutrality, but bad news about who's still President.

Congress apparently averts government shutdown by striking relatively non-obnoxious deal to fund our government through September. The deal (if it passes!) will preserve almost all EPA funding, increase renewable energy funding and National Institutes of Health funding, and cover a Medicaid shortfall in Puerto Rico and permanently extend retired coal miners' health benefits. How did we get this out of a unified Republican government? Because we spoke out and wouldn't quit. Make no mistake, Congress didn't "get this done" -- the American people did.

Trump Administration Chief of Staff Reince Priebus says the Administration has considered amending the Constitution, apparently to protect him from criticism. It's really not a good sign when our President thinks of criticism as a personal attack, let alone that he would change the Constitution, possibly, as Mr. Priebus all but says, by effectively abolishing the First Amendment. They say they're against "false" stories about Mr. Trump, but gosh, doesn't the President have the biggest megaphone in the country? If Mr. Trump uses his megaphone to whine incessantly, that isn't the media's fault, and good Americans sure don't need to coddle him.

Dean Baker at TruthOut reminds us that Mr. Trump didn't strike a deal on currency manipulation with China while he met with its President last month -- but he sure did get some Chinese trademarks for his daughter's clothing brand. This, again, is the kind of sickness, immorality, and decadence we ought to attack (versus, say, whatever Melania Trump's immigration status was all those years ago), because it sure looks like he sold out his votaries in order to get something for his daughter.

Speaking of the Great Man, Mr. Trump "seems unaware" that his health care plan essentially makes the pre-existing conditions ban meaningless by allowing states to "opt out" of them. No use playing the stupid-or-evil game, because of course he knows what's in his plan and what's not -- the biggest mistake we make is in assuming these assholes are just dumb, when they're actually malicious. Seriously, I've long thought this 1986 Saturday Night Live skit to be much closer to the truth about Our Glorious Leaders. (Kudos, at least, to Face the Nation for not covering the bill like it's a horserace. You know, the way Chuck Todd would.)

Finally, we have some evidence that Mr. Trump's votaries on Reddit may be breaking with the Great Man on net neutrality. Net neutrality has Actual Bipartisan Support, as you know, but I remember Tea Partiers being a lot more unified in their opposition to net neutrality -- a few said they didn't want big corporations to run the internet, but they hated their government more, particularly when run by Teh Furriner, so of course they opposed net neutrality. The good news? Most Trump votaries used to be Tea Partiers (who in turn used to be Bush Derangement Syndrome voters), so this skepticism is an improvement.

Action: net neutrality, and the Estate Tax.

As you know by now, the FCC has officially filed a "notice of proposed rulemaking" that they've got the cojones to entitle "Restoring Internet Freedom" -- by which of course they mean "restoring internet service providers' freedom to restrict your freedom" -- and during this time the FCC nominally listens to citizen feedback about their proposal. Free Press helps you express your opposition to the Trump FCC's attempts to gut-not-restore internet freedom, but I think this issue also merits a phone call to your Reps and Senators, so that they, too, might amplify our voices against the FCC's naked corporatist power grab. The FCC's current net neutrality rules require internet service providers to treat all pieces of network traffic neutrally; if ISPs had the "freedom" they want, they could make Miley Cyrus twerking videos load faster than whatever webpage you want to see, or even make you watch Miley Cyrus twerking videos before (or instead of) visiting whatever webpage you want to see. All of that means less freedom for you, so you ought to fight it.

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration released its tax "reform" plan last week, and certainly you ought to call your Reps and Senators (using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page, or on the bottom of this page, if you're viewing it on a cellphone) and tell them to oppose it, because it's pretty nefarious, but you can also sign Defend the Estate Tax's petition, because the Estate Tax deserves some special consideration. Estate Tax opponents have long called it the "death tax," and have long told sob stories about family farms going broke because of it, but both of these are utter propaganda -- it's not a "death tax" unless everyone has to pay it, and literally almost 99.9% of Americans don't have a large enough estate to pay it. Also, as David Corn told us in The Lies of George W. Bush, the American Farm Bureau, a notorious estate tax opponent, couldn't find a single family farm crushed by the tax. Estate tax repeal, like the rest of Mr. Trump's tax plan, would mainly benefit Mr. Trump and people like him. Who ain't people like us, amirite?

Around the table: Turkey's President is *even worse* than ours, and other lessons.

Turkey blocks access to Wikipedia, citing it as a "security threat." What a big baby this President Erdogan is. Waaaaaah! Wikipedia article on me has picture of cockroach instead of a picture of me! Waaaaaaaah! I sure hope Mr. Trump doesn't get any ideas -- though if he does, I expect a holy righteous fury to rise up spontaneously from the American people, at which point we'll know if this whole democratic experiment of ours works.

Reed Richardson at FAIR describes "100 Days of Media Hoping for a New, Improved Trump." Remember when the "liberal" media said he "became" President the night he addressed Congress without shouting at them, or the day he fired nearly five dozen missiles at a Syrian airbase the Syrians had already mostly cleared out? Good times! Of course, the media's job, like the citizen's job, isn't to "hope" for a better President, but to make Donald Trump be a better President.

Ho hum, Chinese workers making Ivanka Trump's very expensive clothes get paid around $1 an hour. No use complaining that Chinese workers don't make very much money generally, because Ms. Trump is sure making a big profit using cheaper workers, instead of American workers she'd have to pay at least seven times as much. In short, we're much better off making hay of this than we are of Melania Trump's immigration status, because this really tells us who the Trumps are.

Even the New York Times tells us that "Trump Tax Plan Would Shift Trillions From U.S. Coffers to the Richest." Doesn't matter that he didn't release details, because we all know who always benefits from slashing corporate taxes and estate taxes and Obamacare taxes and capital gains taxes and alternative minimum taxes, and we all remember that Tha Bush Mobb's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts didn't exactly goose up job creation or economic growth.

Finally, speaking of economic growth, guess what else Mr. Trump can take credit for? A 2017 first-quarter GDP growth rate of a mere 0.7%. Not that Mr. Obama's GDP growth rates were the cat's pajamas, but Mr. Obama didn't walk around like he had the biggest balls on Earth, either. I presume Mr. Trump will do what any ball-swinger does, and blame his predecessor (as his Commerce Secretary has already done), even though Mr. Obama was only in office for the first 20 days of the quarter.