Thieves in the Temple.

I'm wearing out my shoes, but I'm walking the blues away.

The Employee Free Choice Act comes before the Senate soon; here is the contact tool. The Senate tends to temper the House's enthusiasm, but the House's enthusiasm matters less than the people's enthusiasm. Right-wingers are spending plenty of money to try to defeat the bill; all we've got are our voices. But if I didn't think our voices were better than their money, I wouldn't be here.

The federal government (specifically, the Copyright Royalty Board of the Library of Congress) has raised royalties that web-based broadcasters must pay when they stream a song online. I can't imagine why they'd do such a thing. It couldn't possibly be because they're trying to protect Clear Channel and their ilk, or AOL and their ilk. Not this federal government, no sir. Did I forget to put on the Horns of Irony when I said all that? Free Press is ready with a petition.

Act for Change calls for the impeachment of Alberto Gonzales for, you know, just about everything he's ever done. But Mike Whitney in Counterpunch suggests that Karl Rove is the real lynchpin in the U.S. Attorney mess -- and taking down Mr. Gonzalez may even be what Tha Bush Mobb wants us to do. But who says we can only do one thing? Mr. Leahy's contact information can be found using any of the tools in the upper left-hand corner; you may want to ask him why he's waiting to serve Mr. Rove with his subpoena.

President Reagan President Reagan President Reagan ha ha ha/President Reagan President Reagan President Reagan ha ha ha.

Even new Secretary of Defense not-Don Rumsfeld wants to close Guantanamo Bay, so sayeth the New York Times, and Senator McCain will close Guantanamo Bay and expedite justice for its detainees if he's elected President, so sayeth Senator McCain. But why wait? The ACLU now has a contact tool with which you may ask your members of Congress to close Guantanamo Bay. Don't go thinking that Guantanamo Bay is A-OK because an Australian fellow pleaded guilty to whatever would get him out of that hellhole this week. There are still 400 men who've been held there for as long as five years; if Tha Bush Mobb really had something on them, you'd think we'd see more convictions. Hell, you'd think we'd see more bogus convictions. How did these incompetent boobs get to be so feared?

Meanwhile, said boobs plan to resume U.S. commercial reprocessing, which would essentially help make new nukes from spent fuel from nuclear power reactors. You trust Tha Bush Mobb to be able to secure nuclear power plants from terrorists, or discourage other countries from beginning their own little reprocessing programs? Neither do I. Here's where to write the Department of Energy, courtesy the Union of Concerned Scientists. Remember when the Department of Energy was supposed to deal with, you know, energy and stuff? Since President Reagan, it's dealt with nothing but nukes. Which is, you know, sort of energy, just like ketchup is sort of a vegetable.

Meanwhile, hot on the heels of Bernie Sanders's National Priorities Act of 2007, Rep. Lynn Woolsey reintroduces the Common Sense Budget Act, which would, in short, divert $60 billion in Pentagon spending toward on education, health care, and other basic human needs. The bill would not divert any cash from troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, though it would divert cash from obsolete Cold War weapons and excessive nukes, so says President Reagan's former Assistant Secretary of Defense, Lawrence Kolb. Show your support for these ends here.

apropos of nothing.

Check out this fresh dude -- 81 years old, rich, bikes to work, lives in a small house, buys his clothes second-hand, gives a lot of his money away, tries to narrow the gap between rich and poor. I want to be like him when I grow up.

let it ride.

Act for Change has collected over 36,000 signatures on a petition they say they'll deliver to Karl Rove's house, demanding that he testify before Congress under oath about his role in firing eight U.S. Attorneys, and I just made it one more. Yeah, I know he doesn't care about the little people, but all that means is that the little people should remind him anyway, until he starts having dreams of being attacked by the little people just like E.G. Marshall got attacked by all those cockroaches in Creepshow. (It shouldn't be a stretch for Rove, as I'm sure he already thinks of us as cockroaches.) The Senate approved a subpoena but didn't issue it, which is absurd -- why do they think they can bargain with a Bush Mobb that doesn't even want a transcript of any non-sworn testimony he might provide? Tha Bush Mobb can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop.

The Employee Free Choice Act, which does not outlaw the secret ballot for union elections like the fat cats say it does, goes to the Senate, where good laws wait and wait and wait. This bill will have a shorter wait if you can get your Senators to sign on as co-sponsors. Remind them that a bunch of pro-business groups are masquerading as pro-worker groups in order to persuade them not to pass the bill.

penny rants for the day of March 25, 2007.

Friday's document dump from the Whitehaus indicates that Mr. Gonzalez was decisively more "hands-on" in re politically-motivated U.S. Attorney firings than he's previously suggested. I guess Tha Bush Mobb wants to pre-empt former Gonzalez Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson's sworn testimony before Congress, scheduled for next week if memory serves. Why do Bush Mobbers still think a large part of the population sympathizes with arguments like "the boss doesn't know everything that goes on under him"? I know why they sympathize with such arguments -- they're all clueless bosses themselves. But every moment I have to hear it is a moment of my life I'm never getting back.

The Justice Department also administers a $25 million slap-on-the-wrist to the Chiquita corporation for funding terrorists in Colombia. The paper trail looks a bit stronger here than it does for, just to pull an example out of the air now, the Islamic American Relief Agency, and freezing assets does more damage to a charity than an eight-digit fine does to an American multinational. Chiquita, by the way, is the company that long ago helped topple the democratically-elected government of Guatemala. Back when it was the United Fruit Corporation. Back when one of its lawyers was U.S. Secretary of State, and his brother was head of the CIA. The Eisenhower years ain't all they're cracked up to be, you know.

What exactly about my homey Jim Webb does the Chicago Tribune think is "centrist"? If a Democrat fights wars or chews tobacco or collects guns, he's not automatically a "centrist." That's the kind of high-school level stereotyping pundits and politicians settle for when they don't feel like thinking, which is usually. In the reality-based community, a "centrist" would be someone who, for example, buys into the DLC "incremental economic change" line, or opposes raising taxes on the rich because "everyone wants to be rich." Does Jim Webb sound like that when he harps on the growing income gap between CEO and worker bee? And do Democrats tolerate effete-liberal stereotyping as a possum game? I guess I've just become impatient with games in my old age.

Oh, and, er, yeah, I did notice that Iran arrested 15 U.K. soldiers and brought them back to Teheran, where they have allegedly confessed to trespassing into Iranian waters. It would be pretty dumb to prompt a Tonkin Gulf-style incident on a Friday, when creators and consumers of news content are all focused on getting out of town for the weekend, but stupidity alone doesn't obviate the possibility of Bush Mobb involvement. It's hard out there for a pimp.

maximum action.

Breaking news: Senator Kyl can't stop trying to cut the Estate Tax. The FY 08 budget resolution amendment he offered yesterday is a lot better than what he tried to do last year -- yesterday's amendment would increase the estate-tax exemption to $5 million (or $10 million per couple) and lower the estate-tax rate to 35 percent -- but there's still no need to do it, especially since the Senate has already passed an amendment (courtesy Senator Baucus) that would freeze the Estate Tax at 2009 levels ($3.5 mil/$7 mil, 45%), which means approximately 3 in 1,000 estates would owe any Estate Tax. How much greedier can certain Republicans be? How much more deficit spending do they want? The toll-free number to tell your Senators not to abide this insanity is 1.800.459.1887. Remind them that this is not now never was and never will be a "middle-class tax cut" or whatever filthy lie right-wingers tell. The vote on the Kyl Amendment is 11.00 this morning, so hurry.

I don't know how you feel about the Iraq supplemental appropriations bill the House will vote upon today -- I know a lot of progressives who feel both ways about it -- but you can use this phone number, 1.888.851.1879, forwarded to me by United for Peace and Justice. The supplemental bill sets withdrawal dates, which is good, but gives Mr. Bush a lot of leeway in deciding exactly when to withdraw. The bill also doesn't instruct Mr. Bush to come to Congress before attacking Iran, which was a stupid concession to right-wing Democrats, and it has some pork in it unrelated to Iraq. The bill also seems to think that spending money to bring the troops home somehow "puts them in harm's way," which fallacy I still find quite offensive. Despite these multitudinous flaws, I'm thinking of telling my Rep to vote for it -- in addition to telling him why the bill is flawed. It isn't as good as the Harry Reid resolution that failed by one vote a while back, but it still might do some good. And it's not like we're going to stop bringing it up.

United for a Fair Economy has posted their 2006 tax cut calculator, whereby you may figure out how much Tha Bush Mobb tax cuts have saved you this year, so you can spend your savings on groups that do good works. But (as I said last year) if you oppose any part of your Bush Mobb tax cuts going back into the economy in any way (which is the lonely road I walk), you can donate your share of Tha Bush Mobb's tax cuts to the Bureau of the Public Debt (scroll to the bottom of the page for the address to send your check). Of course (as I also said last year), in a bizarro economy that mostly creates custodial and waitering jobs and thinks inflated housing prices equal "savings," chances are you're just trying to feed the kids and pay the heating bill, and you can't make either of these protest statements against Tha Bush Mobb tax cuts. It's almost like that's the idea.

If you missed yesterday's Common Cause petition for the Durbin/Specter bill creating public campaign financing for Senate Elections (not all Congressional elections, as I said yesterday), you can sign MoveOn's petition if you like. Don't sign both, though, because that muddies the data. And here's a detail I didn't know about in the Durbin/Specter bill: if one candidate in a race opts out so he can raise gigundis cash, then the system would compensate other publicly-financed candidates so they can match the privately-funded candidate dollar for dollar. That's a major improvement from previous public campaign-financing efforts.

Finally, if you're in Newark, NJ early tomorrow afternoon, New Jersey Citizens Action sponsors a People's Rally for Peace and Justice at noon in the Essex County College Gymnasium at 303 University Avenue. Use the gym's West Market Street entrance. The rally will feature several speakers of local import (Revs. William Howard and Perry Simmons, Irvington Mayor Wayne Smith, Assemblyman Craig Stanley, others) and will also feature a "speak out," during which rally attendees will be able to speak from the floor.

I let my email box fill up again, meaning we'll probably have action alerts Saturday and Sunday too. I will be more efficient in the future.

I walk along darkened corridors/and I walk along darkened corridors.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has introduced S. 818, the National Priorities Act of 2007, which would a) repeal tax breaks for Americans making over $400,000; b) expand funding for (among other things) children's health care, Pell Grants, energy efficiency, and public transportation; c) instruct the Pentagon to cut $60 billion in spending by targeting waste, fraud, and outdated weapons, and not by targeting health care and pay increases for military personnel; and d) dedicate $30 billion toward reducing the deficit. That all sounds like a good start. Here is the text of the bill; tools are in the upper-left-hand corner.

The ACLU has just sent me another action alert regarding the Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007 (H.R. 1415 in the House, S. 576 in the Senate), and what with all of Mr. Bush's self-inflicted wounds these past few weeks, this might be a good time to get it done. The Act restores due process and habeus corpus rights for detainees and enforces the Geneva conventions -- in other words, it reverses some of the most egregious offenses of last year's Military Commissions Act. It doesn't matter if Mr. Bush thinks that the Geneva conventions are too vague or too Frenchy; the Senate ratified them, so they're the law of the land.

The Freedom of Information Act also gets an update from H.R. 1309 (which has passed the House) and S. 849, if it passes the Senate. Generally the bill provides for freer flow of information and more oversight over how government agencies manage that flow -- and, of course, penalties for government agencies that stonewall, because that's what a true conservative would want. And by "true conservative" I do not mean fellows like Tony Snow, who thinks Mr. Clinton was wrong to assert executive privilege to block his impeachment over fellatio (which of course he was) but Mr. Bush is right to assert executive privilege to block Congressional probing his politically-motivated U.S. Attorney firings (which of course he's not). Freedom of information is nice, isn't it? Keeps a President accountable to the people, just like Tony Snow wanted back in 1998. Anyway, here is the contact tool.

Finally, Senators Durbin (D-IL) and Specter (R-PA) have introduced the Fair Elections Now Act, which would provide public campaign funding for Congressional candidates who agree to strict spending limits and accept small contributions from individuals. The problem is not, as many observers claim, that someone eventually comes along and says, "well I'm not going to play by those rules, I'll raise my own pile of cash"; the problem is that we don't put such people on notice enough, and whenever we pass these laws, voluntary though they may be, we put the politicians on notice. Common Cause has the relevant petition.

penny rants for the day of March 18, 2007.

Last week in this space I suggested that evangelicals were too busy keeping women from enjoying sex to attend to serious moral matters, but apparently I was wrong about some of them. The National Association of Evangelicals, some 45,000 churches strong, declared their opposition to torturing detainees in the "War on Terror", though Rev. Richard Cizik incongruously said this declaration wasn't intended as a criticism of Tha Bush Mobb. Then the NAE refused to cow to pressure from religious-right poobahs and permitted the same Rev. Cizik to put his apparently non-right-wing views on global warming before the group. Most media reports trumpet these developments as evidence of "breaches with Bush," but I think they're evidence that the religious right is confident enough of their power that they can disagree with each other. Whatever. These are developments that might produce good works.

Democratic "consultant" Bob Shrum says he pushed John Edwards into voting for the Iraq War resolution back in 2002. And of course, everyone now regrets it, "if I knew now what I knew then," ad nauseum. The only relevant question is: who should I hate more? The hack who said it was too politically dangerous to oppose an immoral act that would lead to the death of (at the very least) tens of thousands? Or the Senator who apparently knew he was about to do a grievous wrong so that he wouldn't endanger his own political ambitions in the near future? Mr. Edwards, for his part, denies Mr. Shrum's story, and repeats the line that he based his decision on the intelligence he had at the time. Which, at the risk of beating a dead horse, isn't likely.

whole lotta shakin' et cetera.

The ACLU takes the opportunity of the Justice Department Inspector General's scathing report on FBI misuse of National Security Letters to call for PATRIOT Act reform. As I said earlier, we almost had PATRIOT Act reform in 2004, so this ought to be a no-brainer. Congress plans to hold three hearings in the coming weeks to investigate the Inspector General's findings, but your Congressfolk may require more persuasion.

You may have heard that the fourth anniversary of this godawful war is approaching. United for Peace and Justice posts a list of anti-war events in New York City this weekend, including a massive march on Sunday, which will assemble on 35th through 39th streets, east of 6th Ave., at 1 pm. To find other events, use these calendars provided by MoveOn and Declaration of Peace.

meet the new war, same as the old war.

Early drafts of the new Iraq supplemental funding resolution contained language that would make it a lot more difficult for Mr. Bush to bomb Iran, but current drafts don't. Is this another way for Democrats to reach out to Republicans in order to get something done? If so, they're dumb -- the only folks Democrats should be negotiating with are the people, who either want us out now or out later. Hand out a beatdown, er, I mean, gently remind your Rep to reinsert said language about Iran using either this TrueMajority contact tool or by calling the Capitol switchboard at 1.800.903.0682.

Closer to home, the New Jersey Senate votes on S. 2438, the Fair and Clean Elections Pilot Project Act, which would expand New Jersey's public financing pilot program to three legislative districts and for the 2007 Senate and Assembly races. S. 2438 would also make the program's thresholds (i.e. the number of small donations a candidate must collect before he/she can receive public funds) a bit less draconian than in the pilot programs that failed in Monmouth and Camden counties. The bill passed overwhelmingly in the Assembly, but the vote should be closer in the Senate -- unless you give your Senator a holler.

Two more alerts, both courtesy the Union of Concerned Scientists: one, in which you instruct the USDA to ban outdoor production of rice engineered with human genes, and two, in which you support the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2007 (S. 549, H.R. 962) by calling your Rep and Senator. The first item is more urgent, since the USDA plans to green-light just such a rice-growing project in Kansas as we speak. The second measure has bipartisan support, and, really, how will Mr. Bush explain his veto? By saying he cares more about factory farm profits than he cares about germs building resistance to overused antibiotics, or overused antibiotics helping make animals weaker and weaker over generations? Actually, it's pretty easy to imagine him saying all of that.

endgame.

As reported nearly everywhere on the planet, a Justice Department investigator found that the FBI abused the PATRIOT Act to spy on Americans' phone and internet records. EFF provides a contact tool to ask your Congressfolk for a thorough investigation of Tha Bush Mobb's surveillance activities. You'll also be asking to reform the PATRIOT Act in general and repeal the PATRIOT Act's expansion of National Security Letter use in particular. This is a good time -- you may recall that in 2004, during what was most emphatically not a good time, the House could only forestall PATRIOT Act reform by breaking House rules and holding the vote open until Tha Bush Mobb got the result it wanted. Mr. Bush is not nearly as impregnable now.

There may be light at the end of the tunnel in re the Iraq war as well. S.J. Res. 9 would require Mr. Bush to begin a troop withdrawal from Iraq within 120 days of the legislation's passage, and would also establish a goal of pulling out virtually all combat troops from Iraq by March 31, 2008. Read more here; the toll-free number is 866-340-9281. I've been loath to support much recent Congressional legislation involving the war, but regardless of a Mr. Bush veto, this might actually do some good. But-wait-there's-more: candlelight vigils on March 19 organized by MoveOn; direct action in D.C. organized by CodePink; and, of course, the Occupation Project.

The Department of Energy announced a week or so ago that it has selected a design for the Reliable Replacement Warhead, the first nuke the U.S. will develop in two decades -- and, says the Government Accountability Office, Energy is lowballing how much they're going to cost. Not to mention we've got plenty of nukes already. Council for a Livable World has the relevant petition. You may well be asking: isn't deterrence important? Of course deterrence is important. But if anything, 6,000 operational nuclear weapons which by many independent accounts will be reliable for another half-century might be too much deterrence.

penny rants for the day of March 11, 2007: got to crack this ice and fly.

Surprise, surprise: according to Justice Department Investigator Glen Fine, the federal government has abused the PATRIOT Act, just like the far-right wingers said it would when Lyndon Johnson rammed it down the throats of a reluctant Senate after Tonkin Gulf. Only Ernest Gruening (D-AK) and Wayne Morse (D-OR) voted against the 1964 PATRIOT Act, as far as I remember. Oops, sorry -- forgot which evil alternate universe this was for a moment. Seriously, though this Mobb has greased the skids toward a police state like no other, future administrations will no doubt do better at reining in these pesky independent federal investigators -- while, of course, maintaining that patina of independence, since any good fascist state can't look like a fascist state. Otherwise even the rageheads get suspicious after a while.

Senate passes bill permitting limited bargaining rights to airport screeners, i.e. they can't bargain for better wages. That's what's wrong with liberals today in a nutshell -- we bargain for what we can get rather than what we should try to get, and Mr. Bush is going to veto the entire bill anyway rather than give airport screeners a smidgen of control over their workplace. Rather annoyed, also, with far-rightists claiming that giving airport screeners any bargaining rights at all hurts national security. So that's how we lost World War II!

Nevada Democratic Caucus drops Fox News as partner for Democratic Party Presidential debate; Fox News lashes out by describing good Americans like myself as being part of a "radical fringe, out-of-state in interest (group)." It could have been worse, I suppose, because I hate being lumped in with all those "mainstream fringe" interest groups, or worse, the "radical mainstream" interest groups. But that's what Fox News thinks of people who shun and shame them in exactly the way they deserve: we're not good Americans demanding better behavior from a news organ that needs a diaper change, but part of a "fringe." It's going to be hard, hard work, making Fox News a functioning part of society.

You may have heard that there's a burgeoning futures market on Scooter Libby's pardon. Remember all those times I said the economy was like a casino? Well, scratch that: it's worse -- a casino is a far healthier place to spend the day than the New Economy. And where are all the religious rightists who would denounce the immorality of placing bets on whether a sitting President pardons a man who might have perjured himself in order to protect him? Oh, right: they're more worried about the possibility that, somehow, somewhere, a woman might be enjoying sex.

On a more serious note, Boston lead singer Brad Delp has just died at the age of 55. Now he'll hit all those freaking high notes in heaven. Boston is not a case study in corporate shallowness, as even a brief perusal of their hits will reveal. No, it ain't Shakespeare, and a lot of the romantic stuff is stuck at the age of 17, but, really, lots of people do have to make believe they're living. And what the hell are our minds into?

living on a thin line.

Mr. Bush plans to ask Congress for another supplemental (i.e. off-budget, therefore fiscally irresponsible) funding bill for the occupation of Iraq; Act for Change provides a contact tool to request that your Congressperson only appropriate funds for a safe and speedy withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. There. No right-wingers can now whine about how we want to "cut off funds" and thus put our troops "in harm's way." We're calling for the specific allocation of funds to get our troops out of harm's way, specifically the harm's way that Mr. Bush has put them in.

The Department of Homeland Security (sic) has issued draft regulations of REAL ID implementation. Bruce Schneier says REAL ID won't do what it says it'll do -- in short, national ID utilizing a patchwork of databases will provide too many points of entry for hackers, and will still get forged. Oh, and a national ID card probably wouldn't have stopped at least two 9.11 bombers who had valid Virginia drivers' licenses (which, under DHS rules, would become a valid national ID). The state of Maine has already rejected REAL ID; you may also reject REAL ID at this location. (And read the third comment down on Schneier's page, by one Mike Sherwood, along the theme of someone "tak(ing) an active role in their own security.")

Finally, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) has introduced the Cloned Food Labeling Act (S. 414), which would require corporations to label food from cloned animals or their offspring to be labeled as, well, food from cloned animals or their offspring. Read the text of S. 414 here, and use the tools in the upper left-hand corner. Don't get too put off by right-wingers claiming that there's no need for a law because producing cloned food is far from cost-effective at this point. The law makes corporations accountable for what they do. The law gives citizens tools to make good decisions. These are adequate reasons to make laws.

"Dylan Hears a Who."

I don't know who's responsible for this, but it's damn funny.

Possibly not as funny as the songs from Tim Robbins's mock-doc Bob Roberts, but you may never find those.

(Hat tip to Counterpunch.)

"excessive CEO pay shows moral decline."

So says this Republican House Rep, the senior Republican on the House Financial Services Committee.

I know, he's the same fellow who dropped the T-word on Bill Maher in 2005. I demanded his resignation back then. Perhaps he'll yet redeem himself.

Libby guilty on four of five counts of perjury, lying, obstruction.

Hallelujah!

Think he'll sing?

penny rants for the day of March 4, 2007.

Somehow nearly coincidental with his Oscar win for An Inconvenient Truth, right-wingers play "gotcha!" with Al Gore's thousand-dollar electric bill. They must be real afraid of the guy becoming President or something. But I have a real question: why does Al Gore need such a big house? Is he providing shelter to thirty family members, or refugees, or something? Has he earned it through good works? I won't criticize Al Gore for flying around the world to show his slides, because that's like criticizing him for not having a transmat beam. But why does he need a mansion? Why does anyone?

"Two Months, and Not Much Accomplished for the Democrats" is the headline hinessight.com, the liberal news gateway, has (as of this moment) chosen for the AP report Yahoo! has entitled "Measuring Democrats' Impact on Congress," i.e. "not much impact." But here's a little perspective, courtesy some loud-mouthed left-wing blogger writing back in September: "...if you put Nancy Pelosi in the Speaker's chair, what can you realistically expect?  An end to these bills designed exclusively to pander to religious bigots and corporate greedheads, and rather little else..." Wow, what a gifted visionary that guy was -- though he also said "hate is not a rational emotion," which, like, duh. And here's a little more perspective: recall that Gingrich's comrades didn't get any of their Contract with America passed, more because of the Senate's saucer effect than Bill Clinton's putative intransigence. And the Republicans held an eight-seat majority in that Senate. I really can't blame hinessight.com for failing to note that parallel, because the AP report doesn't note it either.

the old account was settled long ago.

Much can be said about Jack Murtha -- like, that he's slow getting on the ethics train, or that he's against the war now mainly because we're losing and that he got to that point three years after I did. Or (on the other hand) that he paid the appropriate respect to the wisdom of the American people upon his conversion, and that he was approximately the first Democrat ever to stand up to Dick Cheney (and, thus, the first Democrat ever to make Dick Cheney look like a fool). But Rep. Murtha is right to propose that we limit the length of troop deployments and provide for adequate time between deployments, and not just because that's compassionate to our soldiers, but because none of Mr. Bush's little back-door drafts have done a thing for the war effort. Yet right-wingers, who still seem to have a monopoly on airtime in the "liberal" media, suggest that this proposal is somehow insufficiently supportive of the troops. Really? Is that because the only way to "support the troops" is to demand that we pursue a bad policy all the way to an unachievable "victory," no matter how many shells of men it sends back to us? It's enough to make a man demand a draft just for right-wing pundits. MoveOn provides the requisite letter-to-the-editor smackdown tool.

At last, I have (courtesy of Consumers' Union) a contact tool regarding the FDA's wish to allow milk and meat from cloned livestock to appear on your supermarket shelves, unlabeled. It's not like you'd want to decide for yourself whether you wanted to buy such items. It's not like you'd be worried that cloning (like factory farming) would produce animals that can't even survive the sniffles. Bold thinkers seem to have as much of a stranglehold in the FDA as they do in the executive branch and the "liberal" media. But Americans will get tired of them, and then they will count the cost. Maybe they'll have to pick tomatoes for a living.

extreme ways.

The House votes today on the Employee Free Choice Act; here's one more contact tool to remind your Rep that you're watching. One more thing about right-wing complaints that the Employee Free Choice Act would abrogate the workers' right to a secret ballot: actually, it wouldn't. The Employee Free Choice Act wouldn't outlaw secret ballots at all, but would give employees the choice to organize using a secret ballot or using a card-check system. So what do you suppose the problem really is?

At last Congress begins to act like "digital rights management" means someone other than big corporations might have the "right" to "manage": Reps. Boucher (D-VA) and Doolittle (R-CA) have introduced the FAIR Use Act, which would, among other things, codify the Supreme Court's "Betamax doctrine" and add a dozen common-sense exemptions (like research, commentary, and criticism) to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act's rather draconian definition of copyright violation. If that sounds like your cup of tea, drink up here -- before the saucer of the Senate cools it too dramatically.