Thieves in the Temple.

penny rants for the day of April 29, 2007: don't trust the stars.

Why does it matter that Gonzales v. Carhart (i.e. the decision upholding the federal "partial birth abortion" ban) forgets that any abortion restriction must have an exception not just for the life of the woman, but for her health? Partly because the decision ignores precedent, partly because it assumes that the judges know the science better than doctors. But mainly it matters because, as a male, I have no Constitutional impediment toward being as healthy as I can be. Now women have one. Tha Bush Mobb must be proud to have helped make a Court which can contort reality so easily.

From the "how do they always find someone even worse?" file: I was never too impressed with Tony Snow, whose moral compass always started twittering when he had to defend something Mr. Bush had done that Mr. Clinton had also done, but imagine Mr. Snow with less intelligence and a lot more arrogance and you've got his stand-in, Dana Perino. Not long after snidely suggesting Pat Leahy wasn't an "IT expert," when even a non-IT expert like myself could see that millions of emails can't just vanish, Ms. Perino claimed that the kind of "team-building" exercises Lurita Doan couldn't defend before the Senate were "not unlawful" because Bush Mobb employess were merely talking about the "political landscape in which they are trying to advance the president's agenda." No: we "talk about the political landscape" here at this blog. But if I'd said in October of 2006, "dear reader, maybe you should walk around Don Sherwood's district and knock on doors for Chris Carney on Election Day," I wouldn't have been merely "talking about the political landscape" any more, but actively trying to change it. Which, if you're in the executive branch, in charge of executing the laws and not "the President's agenda," isn't your job.

Memo after watching that MSNBC Democratic Presidential debate: is it so much to ask that someone running for President be able to speak extemporaneously? I exclude Chris Dodd and Joe Biden from this criticism, though not others. But I'm tired of hearing what terrific speakers Barack Obama and John Edwards are, because they're not -- especially Edwards, whose enjoy-the-silence answer to that admittedly obtuse "moral leader" question should end his campaign. Mike Gravel, who had the night's best two lines no matter what Joe Biden fans think, could be more of a threat if (and I can't believe I'm saying this) he focused his anger a little more effectively. Republicans go next week; I'm almost afraid of what I'll learn.

alphabet st.

Sorry for the late notice -- comments on the following item are due April 30, which is Monday -- but the FDA plans to issue a "guidance" suggesting that alternative therapies are actually regular old "medicines," meaning that if you use them, you could be "practicing medicine without a license." Clever, eh? The smackdown starts here. Why do I oppose this effort to expand the FDA's role, given that I've advocated expanding their role elsewhere? Because this "guidance" is bad government -- it doesn't parse the good from the bad from the indifferent among alternative therapies, which is the FDA's function, but uses legal trickery to scare everyone away from using any alternative therapies. The FDA's current solution -- that alternative therapies be clearly labeled as unevaluated for their usefulness by the FDA -- is far better. It's almost like the FDA thinks alternative therapies are a serious threat to products developed by pharmaceuticals. As I've often said, so many parts of the executive branch are run by bold thinkers under Mr. Bush.

Speaking of which, the EPA continues its campaign to be the worst federal agency under Mr. Bush, with its continuing effort to weaken Toxics Release Inventories. TRIs help good citizens find out what frankencrap big corporations dump into their land and water, and even helps change corporate behavior, but the EPA apparently believes, like its Fearless Leader, that corporate profits are more important than your well-being. Luckily, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) has introduced H.R. 1055, the "Toxic Right-to-Know Protection Act." If you're a New Jersey resident, you can ask your Rep to cosponsor this act right here.

UPDATE. I've been writing for over 30 years, so the grammatical mistake in paragraph one, sentence six (i.e. referred to a plural with "its") is really quite inexcusable, especially since I now read posts out loud before they go up. I've now fixed it. I've also made paragraph one, sentence five a little clearer.

welcome tomorrow.

As the Senate contemplates a "no confidence" vote in Alberto Gonzales, the People's Email Network provides a contact tool to call for his resignation. You know, for espousing torture of terror suspects, permitting warrantless snooping on American citizens, "forgetting" how closely he supervised the political firing of eight U.S. attorneys, that stuff. Oh, almost forgot -- he also said there's no "express" right to habeus corpus in the U.S. Constitution. Which is, like, brain dead.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 said we gotta pay women the same we pay men for work that's "substantially equal," but studies still find that women make around 75 cents for every dollar a man makes. Said studies often just add up what all women make and what all men make and then divide, meaning they don't adjust for qualifying factors like similar duties and similar competence and similar supervisory experience, but the last study I saw that did adjust for these matters said women made around 90 cents on the dollar. Which, guess what, still ain't a dollar on the dollar. You may support more legislative remedies, such as stiffer penalties for wage discriminators, here.

12 U. of Vermont students have decided to forgo food until the college Administration agrees to give its workers a living wage. Who says college kids don't have guts? And all you and I have to do is write to the college President and express your support, both for the striking students and a living wage for its workers.

You remember how Merck knew Vioxx might cause serious heart problems but didn't tell anyone? And how GlaxoSmithKline hid research suggesting that Paxil caused increased suicidal ideations in minors? The current version of S. 1082 aims to fix these problems. It gives the FDA more authority to force drug labeling changes, makes the drug approval process more transparent, and requires public disclosure of Phase II trial results. But that doesn't mean some Senators won't try to weaken these provisions through amendments. Let 'em know you're watching. The stakes are not philosophical, you know -- drug companies like to say this bill will slow the flow of life-saving medicines to the public. I like to say it will slow the flow of life-damaging or life-ending medicines to the public.

(Love and Rockets, this time. I don't plan to make it a trend.)

experiment one.

George McGovern strikes back against Dick Cheney.

How will the right-wingers respond? Wait, let me guess: with personal attacks, irrelevant "gotchas," and "how can you attack a sitting Vice-President (sic) in wartime?"

Europe after the rain.

Mr. Bush may not be the most popular Oval Office occupant of all time, but he's still at his little executive-branch shenanigans. Recently he's nominated Michael Baroody to head the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC). Mr. Baroody has spent the last decade-plus as an executive with the National Association of Manufacturers, where he has lobbied against, among other things, anti-asbestos lawsuits, the release of corporate documents regarding unsafe products, and prosecution of corporations and CEOs for wrongdoing. But he's not just against things, he's for things -- like, he's for more arsenic in your drinking water. All he needs now is a lame nickname from Mr. Bush. Read even more about him here, and then take action here.

The Department of Homeland Security is soliciting comments regarding its implementation of the REAL ID law, but only because it has to; the ACLU helps you leave said comments, but only because it wants to. REAL ID, as you may recall, will invade your privacy while making it no harder for identity thieves to steal your identity. Five states have already said they won't implement REAL ID, which isn't empty protest, since REAL ID relies on state databases.

Meanwhile, a town hall forum in Kentucky at the end of March exposed Toyota's shoddy treatment of its workers -- cutting injured workers loose before they've recovered and replacing full-time workers with temps at half-pay, despite receiving over $300 million in state and local tax breaks from the state of Kentucky since 1986. That'll teach me to drive Toyotas. Here's how to tell Toyota's North America President how you feel about these revolting developments.

Apparently, the campaign to get Exxon to stop lying about global warming has started to grab their attention. Now's no time to break open a bottle of good Australian red, however; now's the time to keep the pressure up.

(After today's post, we will abandon our efforts to use John Foxx-related post titles. "Europe After the Rain" is his most famous song as a solo artist, but it really has nothing to do with any of our action alerts today.)

the quiet men.

The Senate Intelligence Committee begins hearings on illegal government surveillance today. It's not like they won't have a lot to talk about: NSA warrantless wiretapping and the FBI's misuse of National Security Letters under the PATRIOT Act, just for starters. Word on the street is that Mr. Bush has proposed even more legislation giving him the right to snoop on whomever he pleases, but the Senate ain't Bill Frist's saloon anymore. You can tell your Congressfolk you want thorough investigation into all of the executive branch's surveillance activities; courtesy EFF, here's the relevant contact tool.

Have you heard about all the debt Americans are carrying? Chances are, you don't have to hear about it -- you're already carrying it. And, no, if you've bought a house at an insane price recently (or, rather, if you've bought a house recently), you don't have, as some nimrods say, more savings, but more debt. Sorry. In any case, if you have heard about American debt from Big Media, you've likely heard about it from the perspective of financial institutions collapsing, and not from the perspective of, just to pull an example out of the air now, American lives ruined. As many as two million Americans could be losing their homes real damn soon. Our favorite News Dissector, Danny Schecter, has an eight-point plan ready for you to discuss with U.S. media outlets; MediaChannel provides the contact tool. In the meantime, I'll contribute to media coverage of the growing debt crisis by linking to this Mike Whitney article. Beware: it's a long read, with lots of detail, and it doesn't end well.

Speaking of the media, FreePress's Bob McChesney informs us that the Post Office has, without soliciting any public comment, without bowing to any Congressional oversight, approved a radical reformulation of its rate schedule for magazines that -- I bet you can't guess -- favors large magazines over small magazines. And guess who wrote this rate schedule? Time-Warner did! It must be a breeze to work in Mr. Bush's government; all you have to do is let corporations write all your laws. Large magazines will see an approximate rate hike of 10 percent, which they'll probably just shake down from editorial, but smaller magazines will get slammed with 30 percent rate hikes that'll probably finish a lot of them. I guess the Post Office will point to meaningless statistics like total rate hike in dollars, but they'll neglect to mention that, since they're a monopoly, they're supposed to keep the playing field level. Administer a well-deserved beatdown to the Post Office here. The new rate schedule goes into effect on July 15, and I think calling your Congressperson is also in order. A lot of these new Democrats want to make a mark, you know, and a lot of these old Democrats have waited a long time to be relevant again.

(We're relying a bit heavily on the early Ultravox for our John Foxx-related post titles, I'll admit, but give a man a break! Even in the U.K, who heard of John Foxx first?)

endlessly.

A28.org -- whose site can be found, oddly enough, right here -- plans a nationwide day of action on Saturday, April 28, calling for the impeachments of Messrs. Bush and Cheney. On that day, closer to home, the North Jersey Impeach Group plans to spell out the word "impeach" with living breathing humans, possibly including you, in Trenton, the capital of New Jersey. In the meantime, the People's Email Network provides another opportunity to tell your Congressfolk and your local paper that you want to see the Bush Administration end now. This desire, as I noted earlier, is now a centrist position. It's amazing how many of my positions have migrated from the far left to the mainstream over the last few years.

Don Imus may be gone, for now, but folks like Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, et cetera still draw outlandish salaries to spew forth their hate, and so FreePress helps you tell the FCC to abandon its obvious desire to loosen media-conglomeration rules. The problem goes well beyond minority representation in media ownership, of course. Conglomeration is the problem -- when media outlets get big enough, they're accountable to no one but their advertisers, meaning they're really not accountable to anyone, since advertisers tend to let big media do whatever it wants in order to keep their ads running. The people, meanwhile, are supposed to sit back and enjoy hours of "coverage" of whatshisname being the father of whatshername's child. If I suddenly started putting up junk news, I know I'd hear it from people I know and respect, and that would keep me in line. And that's the way it ought to be.

I've put up at least one alert relating to Verizon's refusal to let Verizon Business workers unionize, and here's another contact tool from American Rights at Work. With this tool, however, you write to Verizon Business President John Killian. I guess the CEO was too busy counting his $90 million-plus in compensation and his company's 26 percent increase in revenues to read our letters.

(I could use John Foxx-related post titles at least 80 more times if I wanted. Consider that a warning! I have a magnificent seven-plus minute remix of today's post title playing right now. Call it the "endless mix" of "Endlessly.")

penny rants for the day of April 15, 2007: Ha ha ha!

Kia Gregory's cover story for one of our local free weeklies profiles the Unity Fellowship Church of Philadelphia, which strives to "bring black, gay and God under one roof," and I wish them the best. In my experience, working-class whites are just as homophobic as working-class blacks, but not everyone wants to acknowledge when blacks are homophobic, so Ms. Gregory has a lot of steel in her spine to write this article. Don't forget to check out the article's eighth section for a few (more) arguments you might use against those who base their bigotry on Leviticus 18:22.

Whether through pesticides, viruses, fungi, poor nutrition, the bad life they're forced to live, or some combination of the above, honeybees around the country seem to be dying off in droves. And, as if to prove my point that the real bias of big media isn't "liberal" or "conservative" but corporate, around 80% of the article (plus the headline!) deals directly with damage to business, versus, say, the ecosystem bees and humans depend upon. I will grant that the article's second-half focus on the changes in the beekeeping industry since the 1980s doesn't exactly amount to an endorsement of the New Economy, which values profit above all else. But saying the Times is some sort of "liberal mouthpiece" is just another way of saying it's absolutely intolerable that you ever hear something you don't want to hear. Why should I respect anyone who feels that way?

File this under the heading "I shouldn't be spending any time defending": I spend five minutes on the phone Thursday morning explaining to the Barack Obama campaign exactly why I'm not giving the man any money, and then Katie Couric throws a right-wing bomb into the Obama campaign on my local 12:00 news broadcast. No, Ms. Couric, the "counterpoint" is not that "his campaign denied" the rumor that he studied at a "radical madrassa" as a youth, but that CNN hauled out to Indonesia and debunked the rumor. And that "friend" of little Barack Obama got all cloudy about his "we prayed together" story after the Chicago Tribune pressed him on it. And is it too much to ask that the local news give some time to a local commentator instead of the national news anchor the network tries so desperately to promote? I mean, everyone has an opinion, and most people even have opinions worth hearing -- more than you'll find on TV today, in fact.

Finally, no matter how much rubbish comes from the right wing about long-ineffective satirist Don Imus: the First Amendment protects you from the government. It doesn't protect you from your boss, it doesn't protect you from your advertisers, and it certainly doesn't protect you from people who want to exercise their own First Amendment rights in protesting your actions. Mr. Imus has the inalienable right to avoid imprisonment for his routines, but he doesn't have an inalienable right to go on as a bitter, bloated shell of a man enjoying several hours of media exposure every day at an absurd salary. Some may fear "the brutality of the mob," or others may think rap music's worse, but that's all irrelevant. Anyone who wants to silence me can apply the same method the culture applied, not because of big media (whose pundits love going on Mr. Imus's show) but in spite of it: shame me, get me fired from my job, or pressure my advertisers. You may have some trouble in these aims, however -- I actually learned shame when I was young, for one. And this isn't my job. And I don't have any advertisers. Possibly these facts help provide a blueprint for a truly independent media.

UPDATE. The U.K. Independent suggests that cell phone usage may be causing the massive bee death described above, by interfering with the bees' ability to navigate back to their hives. Evidence is inconclusive, of course. Paragraph eight says: "Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, 'man would have only four years of life left.'" So it isn't just businesses that will be hurt! I anxiously await the Cato Institute report saying that bee-death isn't so bad, because some other insect -- or "market player," perhaps -- will start pollinating crops.

ANOTHER UPDATE. The Palmyra Sliver tells me (in a comment below) she can't verify that the "four years" quotation the Independent attributes to Einstein actually came from Einstein -- and it turns out that the quotation more likely originates with European beekeepers in the mid-'90s. Yikes, I have to be more careful than that!

lifting sky.

The Coalition on Human Needs provides a "tax day message to Congress" with which you may tell Congress to include the "pay-as-you-go" rule in budget resolutions so we can stop Mr. Bush from doing his favorite thing, which is bloat the deficit with more tax cuts for the rich. The rich have done quite well under Mr. Bush -- as Harold Meyerson reported in the April 11 Washington Post, American income rose 9 percent from 2004 to 2005, but the top tenth of income earners made just about all of it. Do they need more tax cuts? Do they need right-wingers bloviating about "tax cuts for everybody" when they don't care about anybody but themselves and their paymasters? Every minute I have to put up with right-wing lies about taxes is a minute of my life I'm never getting back.

Some high-speed internet companies have started to do what cell-phone companies like to do -- charge "early termination" fees if you want to switch providers. Yes, this is an anti-competitive practice -- arguing "just sign up with someone who doesn't do that" means nothing if there's only one provider in your town, or if every provider rushes to implement early termination fees -- and if you put it like that to the FCC, they might actually listen.

The European Parliament will vote on IPRED2, the Second Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive, in less than 2 weeks. IPRED2 will make "aiding, abetting, or inciting" copyright infringement "on a commercial scale" a crime in the European Union, and guess which two quoted phrases above are left pretty much undefined in IPRED2. "Inciting" might describe anyone who makes software with legitimate purposes like iTunes, or might not; "commercial scale" might be someone who downloads three songs to make sure they want to buy the whole album, or might not. CopyCrime provides a petition opposing IPRED2 which they'll deliver to the European Parliament.

In a shocking development, the FDA plans to let food manufacturers drop the "irradiated" label and radiation symbol from foods that have been treated with radiation, except in the most extreme circumstances, and will even let some irradiated foods be labeled "pasteurized." Yum, yum! They must be out to prove right-wingers right when they say the FDA is not worth a damn. Thankfully, you, good citizen, want government to work well whether you think it should be big or small. You can administer the requisite beatdown, er, comment, at this location. The docket ID is FDA-2007-0189-0001; click either one of the "views" icons to read more about the regulation, and click on the yellow balloon to add your comment.

(Our hero continues to amaze the crowd, and by "amaze the crowd" I mean "bore the crowd," with his encyclopedic knowledge of oddball Brit popsters! "Lifting Sky" is a B-side, no less, and it does so have to do with the action alerts contained herein.)

slow motion.

H.R. 1257, the Shareholder Vote on Executive Compensation Act, would (as its title suggests) force public companies to submit executive pay plans to a nonbinding shareholder vote. The bill aims to fix several real problems -- CEOs "earning" severance packages in the hundreds of millions of dollars when they've actually lost their company money, and CEOs backdating stock options so they can pilfer more of their shareholders' wealth at whatever time they feel like it. Unionvoice has the relevant contact tool. Conservatives should have no trouble supporting this bill -- true conservatives care more about shareholders than bosses anyway, and those who worry about the big hand of government should note that under this bill the CEO can still decide to pay himself what he wants regardless of the vote. My impulse is to tell CEOs what to do, but I'm willing to give "shame by the shareholders" a try.

The Union of Concerned Scientists says a bill will soon be introduced in the Senate (doesn't say by whom) that would require utilities to produce at least 15 percent of their power with renewable sources by 2020. A few states (perhaps most famously Colorado in 2004) have already adopted similar standards. 15 percent by 2020 doesn't sound like much, and I'm always shooting for 100 percent by yesterday, but it's forward progress that'll be hard for the right-wingers in the Senate to ignore (and might be heartily embraced by a few, like Sam Brownback). Besides, this mandate will actually create jobs, as federal mandates often do. Here's the contact tool.

The Senate at last takes up the bill that would permit Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices for seniors. Don't think the Senate is that attuned to the popular will in this case -- too many of them still sling around the phrase "let the Senate work its will" as if our will should give a damn, and Big Pharma will spend big money to push back against our will. Let your Senator explain why he/she opposes a bill because (at worst) Medicare might pay the same prices for drugs they're paying now. Find your Senator's phone number using the tools in the upper left-hand corner.

(How long can our hero keep the John Foxx-related post titles going? Tune in next time and find out!)

miles away.

Sens. Feingold (D-WI) and Reid (D-NV) have proposed legislation aiming to end the American occupation of Iraq by about this time next year. The bill, if it became law, would require Mr. Bush to begin safe redeployment of troops 120 days from its enactment and would end funding for the war on March 31, 2008. Very narrow aims in Iraq could still be funded after that. Does it matter that Mr. Bush will veto this bill, too, if it gets through Congress? Of course not. Let him continue to be the worst President (sic) of the last ninety years if that's what he likes. Act for Change provides the contact tool.

In January, the House again passed a bill repealing Mr. Bush's ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research; the Senate plans to take it up when they get back from our well-deserved rest from them. Needless to say, we have a better chance of overriding a veto this time, though Mr. Bush's resourcefulness in evading the popular will seems to be his only area of competence. The Campaign to Defend the Constitution provides the contact tool.

penny rants for the day of April 7, 2007.

It's not "news" that CNN reporter Michael Ware "heckled" Senator McCain in Baghdad. It's not "news" because the original April 1 Drudge report (sic) contains one assertion from one source and no corroborating evidence. When you have one source and no corroborating evidence, you have a rumor. (Perhaps not coincidentally, the Drudge piece quickly does a bait-and-switch starting in paragraph three, piling additional charges relating to Mr. Ware's anti-war "bias," but the charge is not that Mr. Ware doesn't like the Iraq war or Mr. McCain, but that he heckled Mr. McCain.) Truth, rumor, no matter -- the Washington Times regurgitated the original Drudge story (sic) on April 2, adding, no, not corroborating evidence, but a paragraph of "analysis" from PowerLine's John Hindraker that's probably been on the launching pad for months if not years. But later, PowerLine called on Drudge to explain or apologize for the lack of corroborating evidence (while also suggesting the truth of the charge really wasn't all that important, which is quite nuanced of them). In fact, most right-wing bloggers were distancing themselves from the story by April 3. Why? Because Raw Story provided video footage of the McCain conference in question, in which no one appears to heckle anybody. If video footage of the same conference showing actual heckling existed, you'd think someone would have, at the very least, slipped it on YouTube by now. Anyway, that's a damn lot of dung-shoveling to make one simple point: Matt Drudge and his right-wing media buddies need to stop acting like a bunch of damn high-schoolers, and more reputable news outlets need to stop enabling them. And, in any case, I'll go on record as openly mocking John McCain for trying to tell us Iraq is safer than the media says it is while he's accompanied by a hundred armed soldiers and three helicopters flying overhead. There. No second source required for that one.

Flash mobbers dance like no one's watching at London's Victoria station, to the amusement of a planet and the chagrin of commuters. Meanwhile, this humble servant wonders: why vigils and marches and demonstrations and not "flash mobs"? Why aren't we flash-mobbing every time Mr. Bush does something stupid? I know that'd be four or five times per hour, but why not? Don't young people think an anti-Bush flash mob would be cool enough? Or have we failed to include them in our great undertaking?

Newt Gingrich says he didn't mean to offend anyone when he suggested Spanish was "the language of living in a ghetto." You know, I can interpret his argument either way -- maybe he doesn't really think "the common language of the country" and "the language of prosperity" are equivalent propositions and then again maybe he does. But why doesn't he just shut up if he can't make himself understood? On top of that, now we learn that he's been taking Spanish language lessons "for some time now"! And that he gave his non-apology in Spanish as well as English! As hard as it is to believe that he's exposed his Achilles heel (i.e., that he thinks he's so much smarter than we are) so soon, it's even harder to believe he'd pander to his critics by saying he's learning Spanish! It was like a breath of fresh Mitt Romney, or Trent Lott, or Bill Clinton. Don't forget to visit the Newt Gingrich Presidential campaign website at www.nochance2008.org.

no-one driving.

Though some 57% of Verizon Business workers in New York and New England signed union authorization cards, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg still won't recognize their expressed will. Those Verizon Business workers, by the way, used to be MCI workers; Verizon Communications, which acquired MCI, has about 85,000 union workers, but you have to wonder if they acquired MCI just to have a workforce they can slash and burn whenever they want. Which, natch, they've already done to their 2003-era workforce: 21,000 layoffs, putatively because of the "unpredictability" of the communications business, but not one dime laid off from Mr. Seidenberg's $90 million package. Which, incidentally, caused me to dump their service and go with Working Assets for all my phoning needs. Unionvoice provides the requisite contact tool -- to contact Mr. Seidenberg, that is. He doesn't care what I think, but he's going to hear from me anyway.

Tha Bush Mobb has proposed to list polar bears as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act, but without identifying global warming as the cause of their troubles, even though global warming is almost certainly the culprit behind the melting of the ice chunks polar bears live on for months out of the year. Tha Bush Mobb also fails to designate critical habitat areas, though doing so would, you know, like, give guidance to federal agencies trying to help polar bears. Even when Tha Bush Mobb does something right, it does it wrong -- and it wouldn't have been doing anything right without public pressure in the first place. Act for Change provides the requisite contact tool.

The Second Chance Act of 2007 (H.R. 1593 and S. 1060) have been moving quickly, with bipartisan support, through the House and Senate. The Act would essentially provide federal funding to support a prisoner as he/she moves from prison to society; it would fund, among other things, housing needs, mental health and substance abuse needs, and assistance in employment and reconnecting to their communities. Hard-hearted would be the small-government fool who opposes this Act (I typically think of Sam Brownback as fairly hard-hearted, but he's a co-sponsor here, and has long taken a keen interest in the redemption of prisoners). Read more at FAMM's site, and then find your Congressfolks' contact information using the tools upper-left.

Not too much to say to Congress this week, since they're in their home districts far away from their ability to do damage with legislation, but CEOs inflict damage with every breath in and every breath out, so Union for Concerned Scientists provides a contact tool telling Wall Street CEOs to withhold funding for more than 150 new coal-fired plants. Burning coal is a big part of the global warming problem, and a big part of the pollution problem, too. Better they invested their money in solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol, handcranks, hamsters in wheels, anything.

UPDATE. Paragraph one changed so you don't think Verizon laid off 21,000 MCI workers in 2004. And also as an excuse to use the word "putatively," again.

talking World War III blues.

Just in case Tha Bush Mobb thought I wasn't paying attention: I note that the Jerusalem Post reported on April 1 that Mr. Bush plans to attack Iran tomorrow, Good Friday -- or, more to the point, on a day when most media outlets are already thinking about the weekend. Wouldn't that be something -- a war timed to provoke minimum media coverage? Mr. Bush must not be very confident that the American people will circle the wagons around him.

However, the Arab Times reports that an attack on Iran could come closer to the end of the month, after a major address by Mr. Bush in which he lays out the "evidence" and "justification" for war (quotation marks in the original). Also, another India eNews report indicates that foreign embassies in Iran are still operating as normal, whereas in March of 2003 Tha Bush Mobb warned foreign embassies in Iraq to get out of the way of an imminent attack.

One of the many rage-addled commenters to the Attytood link in the first paragraph holds forth thusly:

So when this WW3 doesn't happen this week or this year, does your credibility go in the crapper or is it already there.(sic)

I just love the suggestion that, if the U.S. doesn't attack Iran, I'll somehow be upset at some imagined loss of credibility -- and, conversely, if the U.S. does attack Iran, then I'll be jumping for joy at some imagined gain in credibility. No, the only thing that'll make me happy is if the U.S. doesn't attack Iran -- which is to say, the only thing that'll make me happy is that I'm wrong about the future. And I post about these things so that more people will know about them; the more people know about them, the more likely it is that they won't happen. I shudder to contemplate the misery of someone who'd think I'd be so shallow as to care about my "credibility" in these matters.

the meat of the matter.

Congress is off for two weeks, which is cause for joy and celebration in the land, but, unfortunately, the federal government is still at work, so here's the latest:

Council for a Livable World provides a petition calling on Mr. Bush not to veto whatever Supplemental Appropriations bill comes out of the House-Senate conference. Mr. Bush has pledged to veto any bill containing withdrawal language, and he doesn't care what you and I think, but we're going to tell him anyway, because we, at least, will do our duty to our country. Don't believe Mr. Bush's scare tactics in re "our troops will run out of money," either: per the Congressional Research Service, money already appropriated ought to last through July.

If you missed the last action alert about the Employee Free Choice Act, here's another one, courtesy Unionvoice. No, the bill still doesn't "outlaw" secret ballots -- if workers would prefer a secret ballot, one in which they can be bullied and intimidated by their bosses, they can simply refuse to sign cards. Presumably, if this bill passes, mandatory employee "education" about card checks will be the new frontier in managerial intimidation.

The FDA has extended their comment period on their plan not to require labels on cloned food -- which must mean they've received a slew of comments from people who fear eating cloned food without knowing about it, and so are adding time on the clock so that all those corporations, er, people who favor eating cloned food without knowing about it can send their comments. If you haven't commented yet, Consumers Union continues to provide a petition calling for a moratorium on meat and milk from clones or their offspring.

penny rants for the day of April 1, 2007: lies, damn lies, and CNN's "reality checks."

Everybody knows I like Bob Novak, right, even though I don't agree with him a whole lot? So I can say this with all due respect: Bob Novak is absolutely full of soup on taxes. I mean, did you know Senator Conrad was, horror of horrors, a tax collector for 12 years? But I'm more annoyed that Mr. Novak describes the tax cut rollbacks in recent Democratic budget resolutions as "the largest tax increase in history." That's true only if you don't adjust for inflation, a fairly crucial step in understanding taxation, or money. Anyway, I'd sooner nominate the WWI-era tax increases as "the largest in history" -- the top bracket jumped from 15% to 67% in 1921, for Ford's sake. Or how about the WWII tax hikes, which saw government revenues increase almost sixfold between 1941 and 1945? As if that isn't bad enough, Mr. Novak goes on about this "historic" tax increase in terms of, you guessed it, averages. Did you enjoy that "average" $1,800 boon Sean Hannity wouldn't shut up about in 2001? Then you won't feel the "average" $1,500 pinch in 2007, either. The good news? Average Americans don't get worked up by arguments like Mr. Novak's any more, just as they don't bust out the torches and pitchforks to abolish "the death tax."

Meanwhile, alleged "liberal" news network CNN suggests that discussions about impeaching Mr. Bush require a "reality check." Worse, alleged reporter Carol Costello says "(t)he Constitution makes it clear, you can dislike a president all you want (sic), but the only way a president can be impeached is if he is found guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors." Apparently Ms. Costello thinks it's just not possible that we "dislike" Mr. Bush because we think he's committed high crimes and misdemeanors! You know, like, wiretapping without warrants, which seems to me a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution Mr. Bush has sworn to uphold. Or lying our way into a quagmire in Iraq, which seems to me very much a "high crime." The "liberal" media's cowardice is a persistent annoyance. If only folks were paid by their good works, and not by their ability to suck up to the establishment.

Rush Limbaugh, who once advised a black caller to "take that bone out of your nose," suggests that folks who think Alberto Gonzales is a lousy Attorney General are themselves racist. But I worry, actually, that Tha Bush Mobb promotes folks like Mr. Gonzales so that Republicans can continue to court the angry white-guy constituency -- "why oh why did they promote a Hispanic over a more-qualified white person?" the angry white-guy constituency says, right before they go vote for the Republicans who are now lining up to call for Mr. Gonzales's head. But maybe this theory assumes too much competence on Tha Bush Mobb's part.