Thieves in the Temple.

but in the back of my head I heard distant feet/Che Guevara and DeBussy to a disco beat.

United for Peace and Justice also plans events around the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war -- a bunch of them, in fact, all over the damn country. Bay Area readers may like the March 19 noon event in front of Nancy Pelosi's office, featuring former Green Party gubernatorial candidate (and 2004 Ralph Nader running mate) Peter Camejo, as well as Justin Raimondo of AntiWar.com.

MoveOn notes that a second aircraft carrier has now arrived in the Persian Gulf (I'd assumed it was already there, which was wrong), and thus has prepared a petition asking that Congress require Mr. Bush to seek their authorization before taking military action against Iran. Even Mrs. Clinton has recently said Mr. Bush better come to Congress first before he goes a-bombing, and I doubt there's very much enthusiasm on the Republican side, either -- unless Mr. Bush can fake a convincing "Persian Gulf incident." Though if he could do that, why couldn't he fake a convincing WMD program in Iraq?

Senators Boxer and Sanders have introduced S. 309, the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act of 2007, which would require America to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050. Got that? The bill reminds us (in evoking the necessity of reducing emissions below past levels) that Mr. Bush has long proposed reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in relation to the size of the American economy -- which, under ideal conditions, is always growing. As David Corn once pointed out, this would be excellent policy if the planet were also growing at the same rate as the American economy. I think we can do a whole hell of a lot better than that, but signaling your support for this bill couldn't hurt.

going on the offensive, part 222.

Impeach07 is now your one-stop shop for impeachment activities, though other useful one-stop shops may pop up between now and Mr. Bush's disastrous attempt to bomb Iran -- which, I'm happy to report, does not appear to have the support of some in the military's upper echelons (as well as, surprisingly, Secretary of Defense not-Don Rumsfeld). Maybe Mr. Bush thinks he's Lincoln and they're McClellan, but if so he'd be wise not to use Civil War metaphors, since his own party might be fighting one soon. Impeach07 will mobilize a march on the Pentagon on March 17, the fourth (!) anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, and will help organize, with After Downing Street, local events for peace and impeachment on the three days following. Last but certainly not least, look for the "Make Hip Hop, Not War" bus tour from March 19 to April 21. More details as time goes on.

The EPA decided to roll back the reporting requirements in the Toxics Release Inventory, because forcing corporations to tell communities what evil potions they might be releasing into their air and soil and drinking water makes it too hard for them to steal money boo-freakin'-hoo. But Sens. Lautenberg, Boxer, and Menendez have introduced S. 595, which would restore the Toxics Release Inventory, and forbid the EPA from fooling with it in the future. The companion bill in the House, H.R. 1055, currently has 49 sponsors. Tools are in the upper-left-hand corner; it's time to get cracking. If this bill gets "cooled" in the Senate, it's perfectly reasonable to ask Senators how good they'd feel about themselves if they went on record as preventing communities from learning that something dangerous got dumped into their immediate environment.

Also via our friends at OMB Watch: Sen. Dorgan (D-ND) has introduced S. 606, the Honest Leadership and Accountability in Contracting Act, which would take on the government contracting process. Remember when Mr. Cheney's former company, Halliburton, got all those no-bid contracts right before the Iraq War started? And you know the Iraqis still, after four long years, have less water and power than they did before the war, right? And you also know Halliburton charges a hundred bucks to do a bag of laundry? We won't even get into Katrina "reconstruction." Tools are, again, in the upper-left-hand corner.

penny rants for the day of February 24, 2007: it's not made by great men/it's not made by great men/it's not made by great men/it's not made by great me-en.

Jonah Goldberg suggests that maybe Democrats should win the White House in 2008, because that'll learn 'em about how difficult and important Mr. Bush's war on terror is. Where do I begin shoveling out this particular Augean stable? By secretly hoping Democrats gain power and screw up, Mr. Goldberg seems to want more American soldiers and civilians to die -- not that he has the courage to spell that out, nor even the courage to accept the hypothesis he squeezes out fourteen paragraphs defending. Mr. Goldberg forgets to state a few other closely-held beliefs -- that the war is/can be going much better than most Americans (indeed, most sentient beings) think, that leaving Iraq will multiply terror against Americans a hundredfold, that if a few Muslims hate Americans enough to kill them then a great many Muslims must therefore automatically have the wherewithal to bring down the American government. Really, this noxious little thought-experiment shows why Americans are suspicious of smart people. And, er, why are we waiting for the politicians to save us from terror again? I fight terror every day merely by putting a good eight hours in at my job and treating people better and choosing what I eat and what power I use with a little more of an eye toward not getting America embroiled in more foreign-policy quagmires. History -- it's not made by great men.

"The lawyer for a former Baptist church leader who had spoken out against homosexuality said Thursday the minister has a constitutional right to solicit sex from an undercover policeman." My, that is the single most absurd lead I've ever read in an AP report. I had to read it three times before I finally accepted that I really was reading what I thought I was reading. What an irony it would be if a gay-hating preacher managed to get prostitution legalized in America because he was trying to get out of going to jail for having oral sex with a male undercover cop. When will folks learn that repressing your urges often makes them blow up in your face, so to speak?

Finally, the D.C. federal Court of Appeals has decided that, to be treated like a terrorist, you don't actually have to commit any terrorism; you just have to be a friend, or a friend of a friend, of someone the executive branch designates as a terrorist. On February 13, the D.C. Court upheld a lower court decision permitting a branch of the Treasury Department to freeze the assets of a Missouri Islamic charity because it was affiliated with a Sudanese group designated as a terrorist organization in 2004. No one has filed criminal charges against the Islamic American Relief Agency, nor has anyone produced a "finding" that said group has funded terrorist activities. Anybody else think it's a good idea to punish people who commit crimes, get warrants to investigate people you think might have committed crimes, and leave the rest of us the hell alone? Oh, I forgot -- that's not the bold, brilliant thinking Tha Bush Mobb is famous for. Just you wait, you small-grower organic-broccoli eaters, until the Monsanto- and WalMart-funded political parties come for you.

an inconvenient request.

You may have heard that Mr. Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, received two Oscar nominations (best feature documentary and original song, in case you were wondering). Act for Change seizes this opportunity to suggest that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences purchase carbon offsets to compensate for the 4,000-odd tons of carbon dioxide the ceremony will produce, and perhaps you ought to, as well. A "carbon offset" is what it sounds like -- you donate money to offset your driving around and other fossil-fuel energy usage, and the money gets used to plant trees and invest in renewable energy and such. Hollywood folks may love to drive around in their hybrid cars, but often they need someone to remind them of the big picture. So to speak. That's what we're here for.

MoveOn hosts a petition asking the Nevada Democratic Party to drop Pravda TV as its "partner" for an upcoming Presidential primary debate, and yes, I think it's time to do that, and not just so we're spared on-screen crawls suggesting that Democrats hate America. I know that quite a few Democrats think going on Fox News gives you necessary exposure and/or shows you're not afraid to confront your enemies, but all of that gives them a legitimacy they don't deserve. I think it's time to treat Fox News the way a healthy society treats any bunch of liars and screamers -- with shame and shunning until they right their behavior. So to speak. I also think any state Republican party that partners with Fox News ought to get hit with the same petition, and that anyone who buys cable should do whatever it takes to make their cable company drop Fox News, and that all of Fox News's advertisers should be hit with a similar campaign of shame. I'm not interested in reaching their viewers, because their viewers don't have a clue. And yes, after Fox News, we ought to target all the other cable news organs (and I most certainly intend a double entendre by saying "organ").

SemBioSys Genetics, Inc., a Canadian company, has applied with the FDA to grow 1,000 acres of genetically engineered, drug-producing safflower in Washington State, ostensibly to produce a drug that would boost the immune systems of farmed shrimp. Those shrimp probably need the boost because the farming process tends to favor meaty shrimp over healthy shrimp, but you don't need that shrimp. And do you know what happens when you introduce genetically-engineered safflower into the environment? Neither do I, and neither does the FDA, but they don't care if a corporation can be made happy and profitable. That is, unless you and I remind them that their obligation is to serve the people.

Finally, word on the street is that the House will vote on H.R. 800, the Employee Free Choice Act, within 10 days. Since a majority of House members (including more Republicans than you'd think) have signed on as co-sponsors, I don't know what they're waiting for, but here is the relevant contact tool.

readings for the day of February 22, 2007.

Philadelphia Daily News correspondent Will Bunch, whose blog is called "Attytood," has been doing a better job keeping up with Tha Bush Mobb's impending attack on Iran than I have, and here's a possibility I should have thought of: that an attack on American soldiers in Iraq could be "traced" back to Iran and provide the pretext for a Bush Mobb campaign. Unfortunately, Mr. Bunch's blog entry quickly got swamped by a bunch of comments ranting about how it's not that unusual for the U.S. to draw up "contingency" plans (the BBC's term) to attack countries. We've drawn up contingency plans to attack Canada, for Ford's sake! Why doesn't Will Bunch know that? But I wonder how many "contingency" plans come with actual aircraft carriers sailing over to the Persian Gulf.

Werther's latest, "How to Be a Washington Expert," is not a how-to so much as it's a demolition of Scooter Libby apologists. Well, one apologist in particular, one Victoria Toensing, who gets to write for the Washington Post a lot, possibly as part of some sort of affirmative-action plan for right-wing noisebags. Be aware that plenty of said noisebags are at this moment pretending that Libby is on trial for leaking secrets, when he's not: he's on trial for perjury. Be aware, also, that when Libby is convicted, plenty of right-wing noisebags will whine that it's only a perjury charge. As I recall, they were trying to impeach Bill Clinton on a perjury charge.

Cheap airfare will be a thing of the past, so says Gregory Lamb at the Christian Science Monitor. I love flying to other places, so I feel a bit sad and a bit guilty about all of that. But please read as many of the AlterNet comments as you can; like the folks who write in on Wired's blogs, these are really smart people I'd like to know in real life. Like the engineer who writes that maybe solar panels on an airplane wouldn't be such a good idea, because they might fly off and such. I wonder if any companies are still investing in LED paint.

Finally, Philadelphia's other local free weekly has a green issue, except this one isn't concerned so much with food as it is with home design. Actually, it'd be more accurate to say their annual home design issue has gone green. From the link above, you'll find four more links, including this North Philly low-income/environmentally-friendly housing project. Ever driven around North Philly? Then you know there are many houses in need of refurbishment, and why not environmentally-friendly refurbishment? I find myself jealous that I don't have more disposable income. Maybe I should have sold my soul to some corporation long ago, just to hoard the cash I'd need to parachute into a sustainable life. Nah!

information! information!

Congress is off this week -- party up! party up! party up! party up! -- but we're not. Here's the roundup:

AT&T and Verizon were two of Mr. Bush's main enablers in his warrantless wiretapping adventure, and now their shareholders want information from them. And, naturally, both companies are trying to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to block their shareholders' efforts. If you're a shareholder in either AT&T or Verizon, the ACLU can help you send a letter to the CEO of either company. If you're not a shareholder, you can still write said CEOs using the same tool. Their shareholders, whose courage dwarfs mine, will almost certainly appreciate it.

Meanwhile, the FCC's nefarious plan to loosen media ownership rules so even more Leviathans can gobble more media outlets continues apace! The FCC plans a public hearing in Harrisburg, PA this Friday during the day. Neither the short notice nor the middle-of-the-workday scheduling are accidental: they really, really don't want you to come out and tell them how stupid they're being about all of this. If you want to go anyway, find more information here. You will be pleased to learn that George Jones, the great country singer, hates media consolidation, too, and said so at the Nashville meeting. Kevin Martin really needs to keep up with the times, before he's surprised to learn that Merle Haggard don't much like him, either.

The Employee Free Choice Act got through the House Education and Labor Committee last week, and a majority of House Reps have signed on as co-sponsors. Mr. Bush doesn't care about any of that, but most people don't care about Mr. Bush anymore, either. As always, email your Reps here.

penny rants for the day of February 18, 2007.

So Karl Rove suggests that Bush-style immigration reform is important because "I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas." Ha ha ha ha! Karl Rove is such a card. Karl Rove's bias against foreigners and/or folks with dark skin ("here's a list of jobs that ain't good enough for Americans/white folk") is not exactly news, but his bias against work ought to be bigger news than it's been. What, exactly, is wrong with picking tomatoes or making beds? Are you really a small and worthless human being if you do that for a living? How disgusting. I would only object to picking tomatoes or making beds for a living because, in this economy, you'd probably be doing it so some fat cat can gild his plumbing. But we all ought to be picking tomatoes -- preferably after we grow them and before we eat them. And we all ought to be making our own beds, preferably after we lie in them. I shouldn't expect good advices about life from Tha Bush Mobb, of course -- these are the folks who think the Parable of the Talents proves that God loves stockbrokers more than he loves you and I.

Meanwhile, Pravda TV debuts its "answer" to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart tonight at 8 pm; it's called The Half-Hour News Hour, and if this review by one of our local TV critics is any indication, then the funniest thing about this show is going to be the title. (Fox has apparently ordered two episodes, which, as our local TV critic suggests, doesn't exactly bespeak confidence in the show.) Now, I'm an unregenerate tax-and-spend liberal, and I've felt a little like I've been under attack for a few years now, and I've still cracked a few jokes, because what else can you do? But it's still really, really hard to imagine right-wingers doing comedy these days. Possibly it's hard to make good jokes after you yell "traitor" at everyone who disagrees with you and then you turn out to be wrong. Possibly it's hard to make good jokes if your sense of being oppressed is something you've made up. Probably it's both.

so which is the better in-love-with-your-inflatable-doll song, "Electric Barbarella" or "In Every Dream Home a Heartache"?

Mr. Bush says he'll veto the Employee Free Choice Act if both House and Senate pass it. Excuse me, I got confused: actually, Mr. Cheney says Bush will veto the Employee Free Choice Act, out of concern for protecting the rights of workers. Yes, you read that right -- though of course he means only to protect workers from harassment by unions, not by corporations. Quick quiz: can a union fire you? Can a union make you scared that you'll get fired? Can a union compel you to attend "informational" meetings about unions? Can a union reassign you to difficult tasks in an attempt to intimidate you? Bosses can, and do, do all of these things. The majority of House members, including more Republicans than you might think, have signed on as co-sponsors. Let's try to get a two-thirds out of this. The relevant contact tool, if you haven't used it already, is right here.

Closer to home -- er, someone's home, that is -- the New Jersey State Senate plans to vote on S. 2438, the 2007 Clean Elections Act, which would establish a (voluntary) public financing program in three legislative districts for the 2007 general election, after the model of the highly-successful clean financing programs in Maine and Arizona. This system, if passed, would be a bit harder for independent candidates than those programs in Maine and Arizona, as I said here over a year ago, but it would also improve upon the Clean Elections Pilot programs that failed in Monmouth and Camden counties. If you're a New Jersey resident, you can find contact info for your State Senator here and then express yourself.

If you missed the ACLU contact tool in re Senator Dodd's bill fixing the Military Commissions Act -- well, hell, this is the internet, so here it is again. And here's another one, which also contains a link to a YouTube video of Senator Dodd explaining the bill.

UPDATE. Parallel construction error fixed in paragraph one, so that it doesn't imply that bosses can "compel" you to attend pro-union meetings. Normally, bosses compel workers to attend anti-union meetings. I'm going to leave the non-sensical post title the way it is, though.

the most important thing you'll read at that precise moment you're reading it.

James Howard Kunstler begins this ten-point primer on how to survive the coming post-oil era thusly: "Out in the public arena, people frequently twang on me for being 'Mister Gloom'n'doom,' or for 'not offering any solutions' to our looming energy crisis. So, for those of you who are tired of wringing your hands, who would like to do something useful, or focus your attention in a purposeful way, here are my suggestions..." And these include a lot of suggestions I'm quite familiar with -- you know, go local, make stuff, grow stuff, think beyond the car, get used to the idea that listening to Saint Etienne on your iPod is one day going to be a memory and not an activity. It's curmudgeonly, too -- "get busy," "get off your ass," etc., though back in the day he might have said bust a move -- which means it's after my own heart. If you read only one thing on the internet this year, read this thing, too.

Mind you, I think it's important to fight at all levels -- we have to think within the car as well as beyond it, which is to say fight for more fuel-efficient cars at the same time we fight for a world that doesn't need cars. But Mr. Kunstler's primer is a good thing to give to your subconscious.

I had to prove that I could make it alone now/but that's not me.

Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) has reintroduced the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act with 168 cosponsors. Holt's bill got a lot of support from the last Republican-led House, so I can't imagine that'll change with this House. Of course, I would prefer paper ballots to paper trails, but Mr. Holt's bill will still make a better voting system -- even Mr. Holt's home state relies on optical scanning machines bereft of paper trails. You can encourage the Democratic leadership to move the bill forward at this location.

I shouldn't be spending any time defending John Edwards, but media coverage against two Edwards campaign bloggers for alleged bigotry against religious types neglected to mention that their accuser, William Donohue, himself suffers from a pot-kettle-black problem. Like many right-wing nutjobs, Mr. Donohue complains about Jewish "control" of Hollywood and compares the "persecution" of Christians to South African apartheid, presumably because good Americans won't allow Mr. Donohue to bully all other voices out of the public square. You can sign on to the American Campaign to Defend the Constitution's petition to demand that "liberal" media outlets highlight Mr. Donohue's own history of hate right here. Yes, it is always the media's job to "consider the source," let alone provide context without worrying about the backlash from people who really ought to be too ashamed of themselves to speak.

Mr. Bush's budget, by the way, tries to slash funding for NPR and PBS. This was an unpopular move even with the last two Republican Houses, but that's no reason to sit on our hands. NPR and PBS ain't perfect, but they are ours. MoveOn has the relevant petition, which calls for "permanent funding and independence from partisan meddling." FAIR's October 2005 call for an independent trust replacing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is worth repeating here

If you're a family farmer, or a citizen affected by factory farms, you may want to consider testifying before the National Commisson on Industrial Farm Animal Production, an independent entity launched by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Commission aims to examine factory farming's impact on the environment, public health, rural areas, and animal welfare. I've passed along at least a dozen action alerts relating to these areas, most of which say some variation of "factory farms suck," but if you want to speak more thoughtfully than that to folks who may be more thoughtful than I, visit this site to find hearing locations and dates.

UPDATE. I just realized that "Thieves in the Temple" has been handing out the beatdowns for two years as of today. Light a candle for us. But it's also Abe Lincoln's birthday, so light a candle for him first.

penny rants for the day of February 10, 2007.

FAIR suggests that the mainstream media is giving Tha Bush Mobb a pass on Iran, just like they did on Iraq. Specifically, the media demonstrate an unfortunate tendency to pass along official statements as fact, as well as an equally unfortunate tendency to avoid quoting sources who might challenge the official line. You hear faint pleas of skepticism from these media, and maybe they think that absolves them from doing hard work, but it doesn't. Next time, after thousands more die, perhaps they'll write less tortured apologies for getting it wrong.

Meanwhile, MoveOn does wrong in its ad opposing the Republican filibuster of the Warner/Levin nonbinding resolution in the Senate. The ad shows the word "escalate" under the photos of several Republican Senators, but many of these -- Warner, Smith, Brownback, and Voinovich definitely, Specter probably, Gregg and Sununu maybe, Dole and McConnell definitely not -- actually oppose escalation. MoveOn correctly notes that Senator Warner voted to block debate on his own resolution, but Mr. Warner will tell you that he blocked debate because the Democrats blocked debate on other, related resolutions, and though that falls under the category of "the Senate talks too much," Mr. Warner takes it seriously. Probably some of the aforementioned others don't, but MoveOn could easily have taken another tack. They took this tack, I suspect, because six of the nine Senators MoveOn's ad targets face some kind of election in 2008 (Warner, Smith, Sununu, Dole, and McConnell are up in the Senate, and Brownback is making a Presidential bid). That's crass, and MoveOn should know better and do better.

San Francisco voters passed a law this past November requiring all businesses in the municipality to offer paid sick leave, and that law went into effect this past Monday. Businesses complain that between the relatively high minimum wage and the health insurance requirement and now this they just can't make it. One more time: higher-paid employees, with better benefits, are happier and do better work. Happier employees and better work means more productivity, and more productivity means more profit. At least, that's how it still works at the small-business level, and this is why we like small businesses -- at the multinational corporate level, the economy really does work like a casino, and the house always wins. Still, I think businesses that can't handle new challenges, like giving their workers the rights they deserve, don't themselves deserve to survive. Maybe that's the genius of capitalism, in fact. I'm certainly sick of governments treating businesses like they're the ones that always need the handout.

shame of the nation.

Tha Bush Mobb budget came out Monday, this time hiding its cruelty behind the banner of "fiscal responsibility." It's gonna balance the budget all right, as long as Iraq war costs don't exceed expectations, which they already have, and as long as the Alternative Minimum Tax doesn't get fixed by then, which it will if the Democrats know what's good for them. And no congratulations for Mr. Bush finally including Iraq war costs in a budget, because that's how you're supposed to budget. You know, if you spend money, it's an expense. It's money you don't have. Et cetera. OMB Watch has several analyses available here, and the Coalition on Human Needs also provides a report. I'm sure I'll have action alerts relating to the budget shortly, but in the meantime, you can find contact info for your Reps and Senators using the tools in the upper left-hand corner.

The Employee Free Choice Act was re-introduced in Congress this week, and many if not most House Reps will sign on as co-sponsors if they haven't already. The Employee Free Choice Act would stiffen penalties for companies that hurt workers who try to form a union, establish mediation and arbitration when employer and employees cannot agree on a first contract, and would enable workers to form unions when a majority signs union authorization cards. Some pro-business groups have seized on the last item as anti-democratic -- they're not secret ballots, essentially. Unions used to oppose card-checks back when a third of workers were unionized, and it's true that bosses could use the card check process to retaliate against workers. It's also true that the rest of the world uses card checks, that the Employee Free Choice Act penalizes bosses who act against workers, and that, really, the risks of card checks aren't worse than workers getting intimidated, harassed, threatened, or fired before they start a union. Sign on here.

In case you didn't know, Tha Bush Mobb has been busy privatizing the Internal Revenue Service. Sounds like a great idea, doesn't it? Some private corporation getting overpaid to do the work your government should be doing on its own. Some private corporation getting access to all of your financial information, and possibly selling it to interested third parties. Yep, sounds like another Bush Mobb miracle. Thankfully, a pair of bills, one in each House, would stop and/or end this process. H.R. 695, a Van Hollen/Rothman production, would repeal Congress's authority to privatize the I.R.S.; the Senate bill, a Dorgan/Murray production, would suspend the use of private collectors and block funding for the process. Tools are still in the upper left-hand corner.

(As I said before: just like New Order songs, the title is the last thing that goes on. This post's title happens to be a New Order song title.)

race among the ruins.

This is a bit of a shock: Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) plans to introduce a bill that would fix the bad bits in the Military Commissions Act bad old Congress passed last October. Mr. Dodd's bill would enforce the Geneva Conventions (which we must honor as treaty signatories, "foreign" law or not), and it would also strike the part that gives the President (sic) the ability take away the writ of habeus corpus even from American citizens if he decides, all by his lonesome because that's how he likes it, that they're enemy combatants. Y'all remember habeus corpus, don't you? That would be the right to contest the legality of your imprisonment, which has been around for at least nine hundred years. You may encourage your Senators to co-sponsor Mr. Dodd's bill from this undisclosed location.

Also to my surprise, Reps. Mike Thompson (D-CA) and Patrick Murphy (D-PA) and Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) have introduced actual binding legislation that would cap the number of troops in Iraq at January 10, 2007 levels, thus thwarting (at least in theory) Mr. Bush's "surge." Use this tool and I won't be mad at ya, but I'm a bit suspicious of the whole thing -- it sets a bunch more benchmarks, and Mr. Obama's speech (to which the above email tool links) still stinks of saying this is somehow all the Iraqis' fault ("someone else's civil war" indeed?). I still believe the best solution is to relieve Mr. Bush of his authorization to use military force, and then impeach, convict, and remove the whole lot of them. It's a bit of a bummer when even Russ Feingold, America's next President, sounds like he doesn't have the stomach for that.

Meanwhile, as David Sirota has noted, Mr. Bush still wants an extension of his "fast-track" authority to negotiate trade deals with other countries. You know, because trade deals are so urgent, too, just like the Social Security "crisis" and the judicial appointment "crisis" et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What's worse, of course, is that the Democratic leadership in Congress seems to want to give in to Mr. Bush. Well, surprise, pimps! 39 first-term Democratic House members have written House Ways and Means Chair Charles Rangel saying they won't back down, and the unions have their backs. We ought to have their backs, too. Tools for writing your House Rep are, as usual, in the upper-left-hand corner. The above-linked Sirota blog entries provide a lot of useful information -- like, about the Clinton Administration's tendency to stifle evidence that NAFTA wasn't going so well. If we're going to be mad at Tha Bush Mobb for smothering its scientists about global warming, we ought to be just as mad at Club Clinton for telling lies about "free trade." Remember, gang: it ain't free trade unless we're all free to trade.

The energy bill that would remove a bunch of tax breaks for Big Oil now moves on to the Senate, though the Senate is starting to look like the place where decent bills go to die. Still, it wouldn't hurt to remind them that they live to serve, and not to "work their will" or whatever. Also, if you're a New Jersey resident, like someone I know, you may encourage your Assemblyperson to become a co-sponsor of Energy Efficient Buildings legislation A3595. Making buildings 15-20% more efficient isn't the way Big Power wants to do it -- they only want to build more power plants -- but it's a better way to do it. Even if Big Building doesn't think so, either.

diamond rings/and all those things/they never sparkle like your smile.

The ACLU faces off against the NSA in a Cincinnati federal steel cage, er, court room, which is hearing Tha Bush Mobb's appeal of the Michigan decision declaring Tha Bush Mobb's warrantless wiretapping program illegal. Apparently, Tha Bush Mobb now argues that the courts should throw out the ACLU's suit, because -- dig this -- since the warrantless wiretapping is now overseen by the FISA court, the ACLU's case is moot. Do they think there's a one-minute statute of limitations in effect here? That might be enough for a judge who desperately wants to rule in Tha Bush Mobb's favor, but it is not enough for good Americans. You may have noticed that Congress has changed hands over the last few months. They have suggested that they're more willing to oversee what Mr. Bush has been doing, particularly in the area of warrantless wiretapping in violation of the 4th Amendment. It's an Augean job. But with your encouragement, they might have more steel for it.

No, I'm not going to shut up about the Republicans holding the minimum wage hostage to another $8 billion or so in tax breaks for businesses. This new round of tax breaks comes on top of some $300 billion in tax breaks for busineses (per American Rights at Work) since the last minimum wage increase in 1996. That's on top of the hundreds of billions in corporate welfare the government hands out every damn year. The relevant email tool is still here. You will have to amend its text in order to reflect the fact that the Senate has already passed the minimum wage hike plus tax breaks by a vote of 94 to 3, and that the bill is now going to a House/Senate conference. Sometimes you have to tell a Senator something twenty times before he or she gets it. You might have to tell House Ways and Means Chair Charles Rangel twenty times, too.

Meanwhile, the USDA may weaken mad cow regulations in order to allow imports of older Canadian cattle into the U.S. But, hey, you didn't need that life you were living as much as some corporation needed that money from the deathburger you ate. Give the USDA hell at this convenient location.

take this war and shove it.

Senate Republicans, plus Joe Lieberman, have filibustered the Warner/Levin non-binding resolution criticizing Mr. Bush's troop surge, but I ain't mad at them. Joe Lieberman has a point: if you want to end the war, you ought to try and end the war, and bear the consequences of your actions. And John Sununu has a point: most Americans think the Senate talks too damn much. And these are points I've always held to be self-evident: though the few warmongers left in America aren't willing to stand up and say they screwed up by supporting Mr. Bush's war, I've long been willing to stand up and bear the consequences of bringing the troops home. Which, I'm convinced, will not be another terrorist attack or the emboldening of terrorists everywhere. What did our pulling out of Vietnam do for the Soviets, exactly? You can also stand up, right here, by calling for a binding resolution to bring the troops home. You might want to mention, in your letter, that Senator Feingold has introduced legislation that would help do just that. Or that revoking the AUMF passed right after 9.11 would be a good idea.

Meanwhile, Voices for Creative Violence has begun an eight-week campaign of occupations and civil disobedience at various Senators' offices across the country, aimed at forcing Senators to stop funding the war; find more information here. And some 20 states have introduced resolutions in their legislatures opposing the Iraq escalations; here's where to find out if your state's one of them -- or to encourage your state to become one of them.

I've let my inbox become quite full, so there might be more than one alert today. Stay tuned.

penny rants for the day of February 3, 2004.

Defense Secretary not-Don Rumsfeld says "we are not planning for a war with Iran." Ha ha ha! They think we are stupid. Now, when Iran attacks, or should I say "attacks," Tha Bush Mobb can say they weren't lying when they said they weren't planning. Very nuanced of othem. And don't be comforted that the new National Intelligence Estimate downplays Iranian involvement in Iraq. Tha Bush Mobb always tries to turn disadvantage into advantage -- they can use their little Tonkin Gulf episode to discredit the intelligence community further, since so many Americans still think it's the CIA's fault Tha Bush Mobb ignored or cherrypicked their reports. By the way, arguing that Iran must be helping Iraqi death squads because a) there are Shi'ite militias in Iraq and b) Iran is predominantly Shi'ite is rather like saying "all Arabs look alike." But this was, I'm sorry to say, the underpinning assumption behind the American tendency to link two men who hated each others' guts, the secular nutjob Saddam Hussein and the religious nutjob Osama bin Laden.

Senator Russ Feingold suggests that the Warner-Levin resolution might actually do more harm than good. Specifically, Mr. Feingold says that while the Biden-Hagel resolution "didn’t go nearly far enough" but "was a small step in the right direction," "the Warner-Levin resolution signs off on the President continuing indefinite military operations in Iraq that will not address the fundamental political challenges in Iraq, and that continue to distract us from developing a comprehensive and global approach to the threats that face our nation." Thus Mr. Feingold has sponsored legislation that would cut off funds for the war within six months of its enactment. And while I think that doesn't go far enough -- I've been saying for a while now that we ought to rescind Mr. Bush's authority to use force as part of the "war on terror" -- it certainly gives the lie to people who say that cutting off funding for the troops would "put them in harm's way." As if Congress would refuse or forget to fund their withdrawal! Anyway, aren't our troops already "in harm's way" because of the cowardice of the 2002 Congress and the ignorance and recklessness of their commander-in-chief?

Speaking of which, I still find John Edwards -- known to many liberals in 2004 as "the Breck girl" -- difficult to forgive. Yes, his speech at the DNC Winter Meeting had some good bits in it, like the mother who folds her dishtowel before she answers the door. But the man looked damn uncomfortable speaking it, and (as Doug Ireland reminded us back in 2004) his record doesn't match his rhetoric. And back in 2002 he was on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, with access to the same knowledge that led Committee Chair Bob Graham to denounce Tha Bush Mobb's case for war -- yet Mr. Edwards voted in favor of war. Now he says "I was wrong," a statement which I'm sure comforts the mothers of the dead.

These short statements of varying import were brought to you by the words "impeach," "convict," and "remove."