Thieves in the Temple.

health insurance records, Florida farmworkers, school vouchers, and Goldbergian flatus.

The Department of Health and Human Services will write regulations governing the conversion of paper health records into electronic records. Sounds absolutely stimulating, doesn't it? Well, here's the thing: the health insurance industry has been lobbying against giving patients control over their medical records. I hope the HHS understands that the health insurance industry is easily the most popular industry in the country by now, and that you, as a patient (and one day you will be a patient) should have the right to see who's viewing your records, block access to people with no need to see your records, and correct false information in those records. So the ACLU helps you communicate your desires to HHS.

The battle over exploited Florida farmworkers now moves to Chipotle -- which, oddly enough, has been sponsoring screenings of Food, Inc., while failing to join other corporations in paying tomato pickers a fairer wage. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has tried to get Chipotle to agree to the same sort of improved conditions to which McDonald's and Burger King (among others) have agreed, but to no avail. Or, rather, to indifferent avail -- Chipotle has agreed to pay an extra penny a pound for tomatoes, but not to pay farmworkers an extra penny a pound. Maybe this is all just a big misunderstanding -- or maybe it's standard corporate PR spin. Either way, American Rights at Work provides a relatively respectful contact tool.

Sens. Lieberman (I-CT), Collins (R-ME), Voinovich (R-OH), Byrd (D-WV), Feinstein (D-CA) and Ensign (R-NV) have reintroduced legislation to extend the D.C. school voucher program. (I can't get a text for the bill from thomas.loc.gov yet; the bill number is S. 1552.) I remember when the school voucher initiative was just Bush the Better's effort to convince the evangelical right he wasn't their enemy, but since then it's taken on a life of its own, and dadgummit it just doesn't work the way it's supposed to. The way it's supposed to work? It's supposed to provide better results than public schools, which it doesn't. It's supposed to provide a much broader range of private school choices, rather than just be a way of funneling taxpayer funds to religious schools. We have reasons for separating church and state -- you don't want churches beholden to the government for their survival, for one. You don't want some churches becoming more politically powerful than others for reasons other than merit, for another. Need I add that the public school system is ours, and private schools, really, are theirs? Tools for contacting your Senator are in the upper left-hand corner. They'll never see it coming.

Finally, holy moly Jonah Goldberg is dumb to suggest that we have more to fear from an asteroid hitting Earth than from global warming. The source of his fear: that no one but an amateur astronomer saw a big rock hit Jupiter "the other week." Hey, pimp? Jupiter is almost 500 million miles away -- not even the Washington Times has a bureau out that far. In classic Goldbergian fashion, he destroys his own argument within four paragraphs: turns out an asteroid did come within 45,000 miles of hitting Earth in March, and we did spot that one beforehand, and behold! We are all still here. For added flavor, he actually labors at a racist joke, makes fun of Senator Dodd's weight (!), and suggests that you can't blame Mr. Bush for our failure to seek and destroy asteroid invaders four paragraphs before suggesting that, actually, you can (the date stamp of the Easterbrook alarmism Mr. Goldberg cites to support his argument? 2008, of course.). Of course Mr. Goldberg will say it's all just satire. But that won't make it good satire.

now with 30% more fury!

Public Citizen urges a massive Senate overhaul of the climate/energy legislation passed by the House last month -- you know, an overhaul that would protect people, not corporations. The House bill (which Mr. Obama supports, and which I don't) gave away 85% of the pollution credits that were supposed to raise federal revenues, and gave some corporations rate reductions that they don't have to pass on to consumers. And that's the House bill! Normally we count on the Senate to weaken House bills. This time we're counting on them to make a House bill better. Seems like an uphill fight, but right is right and wrong is wrong -- the House bill makes people pay, not polluters. Polluters should pay.

The House may vote on the Tierney/Holt amendment to the FY 2010 Defense Authorization bill this week; said amendment would cut missile defense funding, and the Council for a Livable World helps you support it. We've beaten back every attempt to shovel more taxpayer money down this particular rabbit hole so far, and that's good, but we need to step up to the plate again. Missile "defense" doesn't defend, as I've said a bajillion times -- it just builds more missiles that can be easily fooled by incoming missiles. Those who think sucking at the government's teat is some kind of birthright, who think they have no obligation to the people, need to be smacked down until we die. Hopefully we'll have trained future generations to continue the smackdowns before then.

Meanwhile, the we're-doing-all-we-can-really act from Mr. Obama on the Honduras coup continues, despite our best efforts. President Zelaya has been out of office for a month; his term expires in a few months anyway, so maybe everyone's just trying to wait it out. You know, this sort of thing happens in Latin America all the time, right? Rubbish. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-NM) now leads efforts to pressure the Obama Administration to increase U.S. pressure on the "interim" government of Honduras, and Just Foreign Policy helps you encourage your Rep to sign on to this effort. By golly sometimes I wish I had the power to do all of this myself! Then I remember that, if I did, I might become a monster -- you know, like someone who would overthrow a democratically-elected government.

Finally, the Senate marked up their whistleblower protection bill (S. 372) yesterday -- and, as expected, it's weaker than the House bill (H.R. 1507), which lets federal whistleblowers have jury trials. So the National Whistleblowers Center helps you remind your Senator of his or her duty. Which is to, like, their constituents, and not anyone who might get their shorts in a bunch over the possibility that someone might try to expose waste and corruption in the federal government one day. After all, we did pass a huge stimulus bill just a few months ago, and it would be a shame if anyone trying to make sure that money got spent on the right things felt afraid of doing the right thing.

starring the usual heroes: Scott Ritter, Merle Haggard, Jon Stewart.

Mr. Obama has told us that continued Israeli settlements in Gaza and Israel's rigid control of Gaza's borders aren't in the U.S. interest. But Presidents have been raising and dashing our hopes for better Israeli/Palestinian relations at least since Reagan; when will we be (as Scott Ritter might say) a true friend of Israel and demand less self-destructive behavior from them in exchange for all our billions? Jewish Voice for Peace helps you call your Congressfolk and demand that we only aid Israel further if they a) stop new settlements in Gaza and b) allow the free flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. I don't think it's much to ask. I also don't think the Six-Day War ushered in a new era of peace, prosperity, and security. And I ain't the only one who thinks that, either here or in Israel.

The Senate is marking up S. 372, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2009, as we speak, so the National Whistleblower Center helps you demand that federal employees, even national security employees, gain access to jury trials. Right-wingers will no doubt respond that adding jury trials for federal employees would clog up our court system with frivolous lawsuits. Never mind that most frivolous lawsuits get filed by corporations -- just think about what that would say about Americans: that, given any power to redress grievances and right wrongs, we'd squander it all in pettiness. Right-wingers might also respond that national security is just too important for any part of it to be left to the courts. Think about what that would say about us, too -- are we that weak a nation? These right-wingers sure do bring out the fightin' side of me.

Finally, let's call these "birthers" (who believe, all evidence to the contrary, that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is therefore ineligible to be President) what they are: racists. Did any of these idiots ask to see George W. Bush's birth certificate? Of course not. Why is that? Because George W. Bush is white and Barack Obama is black and has what sounds like a funny name to them. It's that damn simple. I'm a little depressed, admittedly, that racists keep being resourceful -- they know that dropping N-bombs on Barack Obama would alienate even those who drop N-bombs on most of the African-Americans they know, and they also know that the guilt-by-association games that worked on Jesse Jackson didn't work on Mr. Obama, so they've seized on Mr. Obama's incomprehensible refusal to knock on each and every one of their doors and show them his birth certificate, though if he did they'd no doubt call it a forgery. The Book of Ecclesiastes instructs us there is a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. Guess which time this is.

and now, a reading from the Book of Rorschach.

Those dadgum Congressfolk are really screwing things up. I'm getting too many email alerts supporting H.R. 3200 which, though somewhat estimable now, the Blue Dog "Democrats" will be destroying any minute, while the Senate seems to think "co-ops" are good enough and taxing "Cadillac" health benefits populist enough. It's long past time to think clearly and demand single-payer health care -- it'll be cheaper and better for all of us. I've pushed along a few "public option" alerts, always from respectable organizations, but no more. So here's the People's Email Network's single-payer action page. I am getting so sick of this mess.

Meanwhile, those non-liberals at factcheck.org instruct us that we shouldn't be too impressed with polls indicating that huge majorities really like their current health care plan. For one thing, the same poll the big HMOs are pushing to support that argument just also happens to find huge majorities in favor of Mr. Obama's public option. For another thing, Kaiser Family Foundation data suggested that folks who used their health insurance the least liked it best. It sounds like the more you try to solve your health problems, the more you hate the whole process of trying to solve them. That's certainly been my experience.

long as I can see the light.

Apparently the coup government in Honduras has been talking with the Zelaya government they deposed late last month. I don't know what there is to talk about -- the coup broke the law, and everyone in the world (except Newt Gingrich, who is always wrong) wants the democratically-elected government of Honduras back in power. But those talks apparently broke down Sunday, and the Associated Press speculates that Mr. Obama might not have the energy to deal with Honduras, what with everything else on his plate. Well, it ain't just his plate, it's ours, so Just Foreign Policy suggests you call Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Counselor/Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills at 202-647-5548. In your call (during which you will almost certainly leave a message), you may advocate for suspending U.S. visas and freezing bank accounts for coup leaders. Hell, I'd add "suspending non-humanitarian aid" to Honduras to that list, too, since it's, like, against the law for us not to. As an aside: I see the head of the Honduran Council of Private Business, who's apparently pro-coup, warns that "(t)he world would look very bad if it takes out its wrath on this country." You mean the world that's unanimously against the coup? So to whom would we look bad, then? The Ice Warriors?

Google plans an expansion of its Book Search service, so that you can browse, read or buy millions of books online -- but has devised minimal or non-existent privacy protections for consumers, according to the Electronic Freedom Foundation. That means Google could collect all your reading/browsing history and turn it over to some third party -- some private corporation, or the government. Luckily, Google has a history of not cooperating with the government on its fishing expeditions, but it also has a history of caving to Chinese censorship demands. All you can be sure of is this: you can demand that Google protect your freedom to read privately, and they either will or they won't, and if they won't, you'll go to Congress. I'd like to think they'd want to avoid that, as they've become the bitter enemy of Congressional right-wingers for some reason.

H.R. 3245, the Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2009, would equalize sentences for crack and powder cocaine and eliminate the mandatory minimum sentences for possession of five grams or more of crack. Longer sentences for crack tend to disproportionately affect blacks, and anyone who's ever had, you know, an urge or an impulse knows that mandatory sentences don't deter wrongdoers -- they just make politicians look tough to miserable voters, who may or may not compose a swing voting block in a particular election. But the crack/powder sentencing disparity is so unpopular in Congress now that even Sen. Sessions seems to want to fix it (in this, for once, unfairly-panned video). The bill goes to the House Judiciary Committee soon; you can contact your House Rep if they're on Judiciary (which this page can tell you), or you can just call your House Rep, using the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page, to alert them to the bill's existence. They ought to know we're watching.

Meanwhile, what do we make of this putative manifesto? Is it treason, since it calls for the removal of the President, Vice-President, and every member of Congress from office through some vague "recall" procedure that doesn't exist in the Constitution? Of course not -- though I've been called a traitor for far, far less, Article III, Section 3 remains crystal clear to me. But, again, a brother has to ask: what is setting him off now? Turns out that, like many of his ilk, so many things set him off: abortion, Social Security, Medicare, federal parks, illegal immigrants, popularly-elected Senators, any and all income taxes -- but not, apparently, warrantless wiretapping, signing statements, the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, or the "Authorization to Use Military Force." It's not that I don't empathize with the fellow on some level -- I've often said that the Bush years should have produced a Coxey's Army on the White House steps every week. It's that he seems to come from some Bizarro world where a three-percentage-point increase in taxes on the well-to-do is the most heinous crime conceivable.

health care yea, gun control nay.

Both Common Cause and NETWORK offer contact tools supporting the public national health insurance option. I still don't see why we're shooting so low -- large majorities support a single-payer system, too -- but I don't think there's any hypocrisy in signing on to a public option. I don't think there's any hypocrisy in calling your Reps and Senators and expressing your preference for a single-payer system, either. Or in reviewing this article describing changes the House Blue Dogs want and voting yea or nay on them to your Rep. (I vote nay on Mr. Stupak's first and third proposals, and yea on the second, for example.)

Meanwhile, I've been passing along a lot of Keystone Progress email alerts, because they're generally very good, but I can't get with this one at all. Keystone Progress opposes S. 845, which would allow citizens with concealed-carry firearm permits in their home state to carry said firearms to another state that permits concealed firearms, as long as said citizen complies with that state's firearm laws. The action page is quite terse, but the email I got from Keystone Progress positively howls -- "loaded guns hidden from view being carried almost anywhere. In your grocery store, your child's playground, your neighborhood restaurant." Yikes, that's exactly the sort of hysteria that gives us liberals a bad name. All S. 845 does is cut out a layer of paperwork for people who are already allowed to carry concealed firearms; it doesn't even trample on states' rights. And, for-real for-real? Guns don't kill people -- a government that abandons its obligations to its least fortunate citizens kills people. That latter item? That's what we try to change here. As for the former item, I know eight years of Tha Bush Mobb certainly clarified my thinking about self-defense.

UPDATE. Had to change one word in paragraph two, sentence seven, so that it would make sense. I should have avoided saying "members" when I meant "citizens." I'll try not to repeat such errors.

the ever-popular tortured light posting notice effect.

I had a morning appointment, and deluded myself into thinking I could whip something together in the early afternoon, but, in a word, no.

Tomorrow's post may be even more ornery than usual -- even for those of you who like my brand of ornery.

sometimes I need to see/the way it used to be.

H.Res. 630 would condemn the coup in Honduras, would call for President Zelaya's reinstatement, would call on President Obama to continue to refuse to recognize the new government, and would urge Mr. Obama to suspend nonhumanitarian aid to Honduras until Mr. Zelaya gets his old job back, as required by U.S. law. Here we are, telling the President to enforce the law again. True, the White House's previous occupant might have overtly helped topple Mr. Zelaya (as they overtly tried to help topple Mr. Chavez in Venezuela), but clearing the Bush Bar isn't a moral standard we ought to be setting for our children. Latin America Working Group and School of the Americas Watch each provide email contact tools.

Meanwhile, far-rightists try to hold health care reform hostage to their own anti-woman agenda. Last week, they failed in convincing large numbers of people that a Senate amendment to health care legislation would mandate abortions, but this is a new week, with new attacks on cervical cancer screening, contraception, and abortion. I guess letting women die of cervical cancer is nothing to them as long as they "prevent promiscuity." I guess unplanned pregnancies are nothing to them, either -- hell, the "free market" will take care of them, won't it? Everything's simple when you live in a fantasy world, even simpler when the "liberal" media enables that world. But we live in the real world, whether we choose to recognize it or not. Planned Parenthood provides the contact tool.

Sometime very soon, the Senate may vote on an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill that would strip new funding for the F-22 fighter plane, which (all together now!) was designed for the Cold War and has never flown a combat mission. And that's not all! A Pentagon weapons testing analyst reported that the F-22 "flunked" on reliability and maintenance measures during Mr. Bush's first term (sic), not that Tha Bush Mobb particularly cared. Sens. Levin and McCain (he remembers!) have co-sponsored the amendment; Peace Action West provides the contact tool.

Meanwhile, FAIR helpfully instructs us, again, about media complicity with the HMO industry against health care reform. Mr. Wendell Potter, a former HMO PR hack who's since turned against the industry, appeared on Bill Moyers' Journal on July 10 and told the story of teenager Nataline Sarkisyan, whose request for a liver transplant (at her UCLA doctors' recommendation) was rejected by Cigna. Ms. Sarkisyan's family went to the media and the powerful California Nurses Association, and Cigna did ultimately reverse its decision -- but only hours before Ms. Sarkisyan died. The moral of this story? The media doesn't look for cases that might reflect badly on corporations, despite, you know, nominally being composed of "journalists" -- but will respond to a life-or-death struggle you might be facing if you can make enough noise. The other moral of this story? Bill Moyers is that rare journalist who does look for stories that might reflect badly on corporations, but then the corporate media attacks him for his "liberal" "bias." If they want to call muckraking "bias," so be it. They'll answer to their God for it.

of good intentions.

Common Cause, also, helps you demand an investigation into alleged Bush Mobb criminal practices. Did you click on that link? Are you creeped out by the photograph of that oddly-colored flag flying? I think you're supposed to be creeped out by it -- just like you're supposed to be creeped out by the fact that this great country ever had a Bush Mobb's heel to its throat. And if we don't get a full investigation into their wrongdoings, some worse Mobb will have us under their boot next time. I don't buy this "we're looking forward" crap from Mr. Obama, as if everyone in the federal government will have to stop whatever they're doing in order to get justice. Can we fix the country and investigate Bush wrongdoings at the same time? Yes we can!

Meanwhile, you may have heard that Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (who apparently comes from a long line of Jefferson Beauregard Sessionses!) has submitted that unfairly-infamous Judge Sotomayor speech as evidence of insufficient "impartiality." But the Institute for Southern Studies recounts Sen. Sessions's own nefarious record on race relations, a record that kept him from his own seat on the federal bench back in 1986. Sadly, the report leaves out (to me, at least) the most compelling detail: that when he admitted criticizing the NAACP for being "Communist-inspired" and "anti-American," he quickly added, "but I meant no harm." As if one could be blindsided by the harm such comments cause! That statement, sadly, helped plant a seed for all defenses of racism thereafter -- essentially, you can't cut me open and prove the bad intention was there, so you can't prove the racism is there. Problem with that isn't just that so much racism is unconscious, but that it's all too easy to convince yourself your intentions are good.

all-defense Thursday! Plus bonus "liberal" media hatorade-drinking.

The ACLU warns that some unscrupulous Senators may use the Defense Department Authorization Bill (on the Senate floor this week and next) to attach all sorts of unsavory amendments. They may try to stop the closure of Guantánamo Bay, stop efforts to investigate Bush Mobb-era torture, or even start a new system of indefinite detention, and the authorization bill has to pass, so such amendments would, essentially, hold us hostage. You know how much I like hostage situations. Wonder why Mr. Obama declared he'd veto the Defense authorization bill if it had F-22 funding in it? Maybe this is why. Anyway, the ACLU helps you keep your Senator on the right track.

Oh, almost forgot: so-called missile defense hawks want to put missile defense funding in the Defense authorization bill as well. Stupidity really offends me, and greedy stupidity, well, really, really offends me. Firing a missile (or 10) at an incoming missile is a bad way to stop it -- as even Mr. Bush's rigged missile defense test failures showed -- but it's a wonderful way to funnel taxpayer money into defense contractors' pockets. The best way to stop missiles from rogue states is to park your aircraft carrier outside their borders, where any missile you fire would have a much better chance of hitting any missile they fire. Of course, that would require negotiation, which right-wingers apparently believe is anti-American. You can find contact info for your Senators using this tool, or any of the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page.

You may have heard of the Israeli non-governmental organization Breaking the Silence, established by IDF soldiers who collect testimonies about their own military service in Gaza and the West Bank. They've just put out a booklet collecting 54 testimonies concerning IDF conduct in Palestine just during this past December and January, and it's sobering reading, reading that happens to corroborate previous accusations of Israeli inhumanities. The booklet describes (among other things) phosphorus attacks, the use of Palestinians as human shields, and a highly-inflated sense of self-righteousness and invulnerability on the part of IDF soldiers. And we funded all of that. Jewish Voice for Peace helps you share these stories with your Congressfolk, in the hopes that future aid to Israel comes with some strings, any strings, attached. I look at Israel and I despair for our future -- given that we fabricated a rationale for invading Iraq after 9.11, how far are we, really, from letting our thirst for revenge swallow us whole, too?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the "liberal" media already guzzles the hatorade at the thought of Al Franken (D-MN) doing something Senatorial. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet discusses Sen. Franken's Perry Mason episode question to Judge Sotomayor -- faulting him for "breaking" a "pledge not to be funny" she can't even verify he took, confessing that she just can't get used to the idea of calling him Senator, suggesting that he should have known which Perry Mason episode the prosecutor won if he was going to ask Judge Sotomayor about it. Now read the actual transcript of Sen. Franken's questioning of Judge Sotomayor. Note that he actually spent a lot more time on other things -- he led with a tough question about network neutrality and the First Amendment, then proceeded with a question about "judicial activism" that turned (perhaps too subtly) into a critique of the Supreme Court's right-wing judicial activism, then moved on to questions relating to whether words like "abortion" and "birth control" actually have to be in the Constitution for the Court to issue rulings about them, and then ends with what's obviously a joke. Yikes, the guy actually sounds like he's done his homework. Of course, that's not a surprise to anyone who's read his books -- only to "liberal" media types who phone their blog posts in.

there's awesome, and then there's "awesome."

Astonishingly, Rep. Weiner (D-NY) plans to offer an amendment in the manner of a substitute to the House's health care bill -- the amendment would essentially substitute Rep. Conyers's single-payer bill (H.R. 676) for whatever bill the House has at the moment. Rep. Weiner will introduce his amendment in the Energy and Commerce Committee; these folks serve on said committee -- call your Rep if they're on the list; call Chairman Waxman if they're not. Furthermore, Rep. Kucinich (D-OH) plans to introduce an amendment in the Education and Labor Committee that would permit states to enact single-payer programs more easily if Congress doesn't enact one. Here's that list; you'd follow the same strategy as above. Finally, Sen. Sanders (I-VT) has introduced an amendment similar to Rep. Kucinich's; he's on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, whose members can be found here. All these alerts come from Public Citizen. (Also, NETWORK provides an email tool supporting the public option.)

Meanwhile, reporter Mike Allen tells us that the huge federal deficit is an "awesome issue for Republicans." How cool is a "reporter" who says "awesome"? I mean, that's so cool, even though "cool" is, like, so 1999 already. But, of course, Mr. Allen does not tell us that, while Mr. Bush's last budget deficit was around $350 billion and Mr. Obama's first budget deficit may be four times that, Mr. Bush hid the real size of his deficit by funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars through supplemental spending requests, and there's also the matter of that little $700 billion bailout, which appeared on whose budget for the first time? Mr. Obama's, of course, since Mr. Bush demanded it in September. It's a wonder Mr. Obama hasn't made the deficit much higher, given his stimulus package. Most folks know in their gut, though, that the Republicans got us into this mess, and most folks think Mr. Obama is doing his damndest to get us out, and as long as those two facts hold, there's nothing "awesome" for Republicans in any of it. And, seriously, Mr. Allen: you're pimping Alex Castellanos as a master meme-shaper? The only thing he ever did was keep Jesse Helms in the Senate by fearmongering about affirmative action. Any idiot can do that.

what you need.

In the wake of news that Mr. Bush's surveillance went far, far beyond the warrantless wiretapping to which he's admitted, and the news that Mr. Cheney ordered the CIA to withhold information about secret spying from Congress, both Common Cause and CREDO help you demand that Attorney General Holder appoint a special prosecutor to investigate possible Bush Mobb crimes. Mr. Holder says he'll decide whether to go ahead with that in a few weeks. It's OK for us to make the decision for him if we like.

Meanwhile, the FCC solicits comments on a National Broadband Plan, and Free Press, bless their hearts, helps you leave said comments. The big telecoms can lobby against net neutrality and serving rural areas all they want, they can lobby for their precious "tiers" of service and their "right" to gouge consumers all they want, but they're going to lose, and we're going to win, if only we speak. I know it doesn't seem that way, what with us sitting in 22nd place in the world in broadband penetration, and with us paying twice what folks in France and Japan pay for much faster internet service. Yikes, it's almost like we're talking about American health care, it's so crazy. But we will be victorious, if we only speak. The corporations aren't just against the lefties in this battle -- they're against the righties, too.

Meanwhile, the Center for Constitutional Rights provides a letter-to-the-editor tool arguing that the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act is unconstitutional. I remember reading the law and deciding that, although the Act expressly states that it does not criminalize activities protected by the First Amendment, it expressly criminalizes acts that "harm" any animal enterprise. Any enterprising lawyer can make the case that anyone participating in a protest or rally or letter-writing campaign against an "animal enterprise" intends to harm it, or does harm it, and any enterprising right-wing judge can split that particular Gourdian knot in the animal enterprise's favor. And behold! The FBI arrested four animal rights protestors in February, and have attempted to weave a conspiracy charge from constitutionally-protected acts such as protesting, chalking the sidewalk, chanting, leafleting, and even looking for info on biomedical researchers on the internet. Those four folks are one John Roberts away from spending serious time in jail for no good reason. So write your local paper about it, lest they one day label you a "terrorist" for using one of the links you find here.

Finally, the Washington Post, more and more a gravity well of suckitude, "reported" that a Gallup poll said the plurality of Hondurans supported the military coup against President Zelaya. Funny how the New York Times and the Associated Press got the report right: more Hondurans opposed the coup (46%) than supported it (41%). Somehow -- through laziness, ineptitude, malice, who cares? -- the Post reported that only 28% supported it. Just Foreign Policy helps you demand the necessary correction. Do it even if they don't care, which seems likely, the way they let discredited neo-cons natter on over there.

a previously-undiscovered evil, two extremely tiresome evils, and a surprisingly ineffective evil.

H.R. 682, a.k.a. the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (spells STOCK), would prohibit "insider trading" by government employees. Seems only fair, not just because insider trading is already illegal for everyone else, but because the government will be increasing its regulatory role over businesses, and thus would accumulate more information about said businesses which its members could use for their personal benefit ("@StudMuffin Widgetco CEO indicted any minute now sell sell sell! burn this email"). Congress actually plans to hold a hearing on this bill within the week -- I shudder to think what amazing rhetorical contortions Republicans will concoct in opposition. Public Citizen helps you support the STOCK Act.

You may have heard about the Montgomery County swim club that wouldn't let a largely black summer-camp contingent use their swimming pool, though said camp had a contract to use said pool. You may even have heard the swim club's President say "There was a concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion" of the club. Like how racists always hide behind the passive voice? "There was concern," like they're going to admit exactly "where" (not even "whom"!) the concern came from. Anyway, Keystone Progress, working with Color of Change, helps you condemn their stupidity and call for a Justice Department investigation, as Senator Specter has already done.

FAIR still provides a petition calling for media outlets to report (accurately) on single-payer health care. Single-payer enjoys enormous popularity with the people, et cetera, yet the "liberal" media outlets still pretend it doesn't belong in a "serious" debate, et cetera. This is America. Anything the people want to talk about is part of "serious" debate. These "liberal" media outlets think a corporate-sponsored "tea party" "movement" deserves "serious" consideration, yet also believe that single-payer health care, which has actual majority support in every poll I've seen except one (and it beat the private sector in that one), does not? Yikes, what new level of hell are these folks campaigning for?

Finally, the Institute for Southern Studies informs us about the latest corporate campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act, in which a study uses data from three Canadian provinces going back 33 years to claim that by Ford, the EFCA would cost us 600,000 jobs! Eh, news flash: the economy's already losing that many jobs every month. Have corporations unleashed so much destruction on our economy that they can't even find scare numbers big enough anymore? Yes, I believe they have. I also believe they have also discovered that their OMG they're taking away the secret ballot line of "reasoning" doesn't work anymore. That surprises me, given that the "liberal" media, with all its putative resources, has spent less time than I have examining the whole "secret ballot" myth.

crack that whip!

I have more health care alerts! NETWORK provides an email tool that makes a list of quite reasonable demands. They also advocate a "strong" public option, since our Congressfolk may well expend considerable time and energy creating a public option that really isn't very public or very much an option. FireDogLake also provides a "whip count" tool, with which you call your member of Congress and try to get them to commit to a strong public option. As always, if (like me) you prefer the Canadian-style, single-payer option, Public Citizen still stands with you. But only pedants see hypocrisy in demanding both. And speaking of pedants, watch Rep. Kucinich (D-OH) rip a free-market pedant apart. Don't be fooled by said pedant's "hurt" and "anger" at Mr. Kucinich's "aggressiveness," because said pedant does not seem to have an actual human heart.

In other news, NETWORK also helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop building F-22 Raptor fighter planes. The President and the Secretary of Defense both agree that we don't need any more F-22s, which were developed to fight the Soviets, have never flown a combat mission, and have cost over $350 million each. And yet the Senate Armed Services Committee has proposed authorizing seven more F-22s at a cost of $1.75 billion. Since seven F-22s would normally cost around $2.45 billion, I guess Congress calls that "compromise" -- or "getting tough on defense contractors." I say they're not tough enough, and they should cut the F-22 entirely. You may well reasonably ask: why fight so hard over less than $2 billion out of a defense budget that's almost half a trillion? First, because spending any money on the F-22 is wasteful. Second, and more important, you can get more bang for your buck out of $2 billion if you spend it on something else -- job training for the underemployed, for example, or green small business start-up assistance. You might even get more bang for your buck out of it if you just hand it out as welfare to poor people, though I wouldn't advise doing that.

Finally, Rumproast bills Mark Steyn's latest flatublaster for National Review Online as "the stupidest argument against health care reform ever." I'll confine my remarks to Mr. Steyn's rhetorical errors, which he apparently hopes will glide by you because he doesn't shout or resort to sarcasm. Early on, he commits the one-example-equals-all-trends error by moving almost imperceptibly from talking about preventive care to preventing cancer (and then just breast cancer, for women over 60) -- as if cancer (or, more appropriately, breast cancer for women over 60) is the only malady in the world! Then he commits the lies-damn-lies-and-statistics error by stating that preventive care only protects 3 in 1,000 women from breast cancer over 10 years, when (as Rumproast points out) there are more than 1,000 women in the United States and thus, by Mr. Steyn's own logic, preventive cancer screening would save almost half a million lives over a decade. Finally, he commits the extreme-example-equals-all-other-examples error by citing Michael Jackson's legendary paranoia about his own health (and his recent death) as if it should mean a damn thing to anyone who doesn't own a hyperbaric chamber. Oh, I almost forgot: before that, he wrenches one of his main supporting arguments almost completely out of context -- or, as Gregg Easterbrook might say, he tortures the argument so it tells him what he wants to hear. Come to think of it, Mr. Steyn's entire post does that.

UPDATE. Winslow Wheeler has more on the F-22 folly.

ANOTHER UPDATE. The Crooks and Liars link in paragraph one (showing Rep. Kucinich's tough questioning of a single-payer opponent) doesn't appear to work anymore, but C&L does link to the C-SPAN hearing from which the clip originated; go to about the 1:21:50 mark.

poorboy shuffle.

In a not terribly surprising development, I've been getting a bunch of health care-related alerts in my inbox lately. I'll share two: one from Unionvoice and the other from Public Citizen. The former alert argues for a public option, while the latter alert argues for a single-payer system, so of course I prefer the latter. I include the former alert mainly because I haven't gotten around to mentioning taxation of employee-provided health benefits somehow being "on the table." That's the second-dumbest solution to the health care mess I've heard (Mr. McCain's anti-health insurance Health Savings Accounts plan being the dumbest). Your Reps and Senators need to hear from you -- over the phone, preferably -- that taxing health insurance benefits is a non-starter with the American people, no matter what Republicans think of it.

The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network has had trouble pressuring Mr. Obama to change don't-ask-don't-tell -- even though, you know, Mr. Obama could just order the Armed Forces to accept openly gay soldiers, just as Harry Truman ordered the Armed Forces to desegregate. So now they're targeting Nancy Pelosi, who could make action on the Military Readiness Enhancement Act (H.R. 1283) a priority if she so chooses. Thus SLDN provides a petition demanding action on H.R. 1283. Apparently over 120,000 folks have signed it already. Maybe it'll move the legislation, maybe it won't. But at least we'll be on record as having said something about it. That's more important than it seems sometimes. Karl Rove was right about one thing -- politics is a ground game. And we need to think of ourselves as John Riggins.

Meanwhile, in another not terribly surprising development, Fox News let Stephen Moore say this about Mr. Obama's plans to fix the economy: "The one thing this administration won't do is cut taxes." Except that, like, it already has. And I don't even mean the annual Alternative Minimum Tax patch that somehow got thrown into the stimulus bill; I mean an actual tax cut, targeted to lower-income earners for once. I also remember Mr. Obama wanting it to be much larger, but Congress balking because it was, you know, fiscally irresponsible or something. I also remember that none of Mr. Bush's tax cuts worked, and that Mr. Reagan's 1981 tax cuts didn't do nearly as much for the economy as his 1984 tax hikes did. Sigh. Stephen Moore is kinda like the late Jack Kemp, just without the heart or the brain. Probably without the throwing arm, too.

light posting notice, qu'est-ce que c'est?

Because when I have nothin' to say, my lips are sealed. Say something once, why say it again?

I should be back Thursday. In the meantime, please patronize the excellent blogs on my blogroll.

in which we fight the moneyed interests, and, in addition, fight the moneyed interests.

Mr. Obama supports a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and your Reps and Senators are coming around to support a Consumer Financial Protection Agency -- so it's a done deal, right? Wrong -- the banksters don't like it and are willing to spend the money to defeat it, rather than, you know, spending the money to, I don't know, hire people to do actual work. They're even willing to spend money they got from us, the taxpayers, in that $700-billion-because-it's-a-big-number bailout. The House Financial Services Committee plans to vote on the new agency before the end of the month, so Public Citizen helps you turn up the heat.

Meanwhile, Keystone Progress gives Pennsylvania residents the opportunity to balance the Pennsylvania state budget, which currently faces a $5.6 billion deficit. After you're done, you can submit your solution to your lawmakers. Frankly, I thought it was pretty easy, mainly because I did all kinds of things -- stop the phase-out of certain corporate taxes, for example -- that the Pennsylvania legislature doesn't have the will to do. But then that's the point, isn't it? They're supposed to represent their constituents, after all, so if we have the will, then they should have the will. Things I'm proud of doing? Balancing the state budget without raising either income taxes or sales taxes (which latter item wouldn't exist in my ideal society anyway). Things I regretted doing? Cutting pre-kindergarten spending to the max, shaving a few million bucks from a few other services, and raising taxes slightly on cigarettes (not because I love cigarettes but because, really, it's not nice to tax addicts). Things I wish I could have done? Overhaul the state income tax. Pennsylvania's flat income tax mostly benefits its wealthiest citizens. If I could have introduced, say, 1, 3, 5 and 7 percent brackets to replace the flat 3 percent bracket, I think I could have balanced the budget entirely with raised revenues. And what would rich Pennsylvanians do about it? Move to New Jersey?

no words, more words, and "exact words."

FAIR sounds a bit fed up in asking us to demand more media coverage of single-payer health care -- but who can blame them? Single-payer polls well with everyone but big corporations, who the media obviously consider their real constituency. And they wonder why they get no respect. Wow, this paragraph is starting to read like "'Thieves in the Temple''s Greatest Hits." Now, the media has started to mention single-payer a little more, and Congress has included more single-payer advocates in their hearings. But that could be the Big Liars throwing us a bone. We deserve better.

Consumers Union also helps you oppose "exclusive" contracts for cell phones. We'd be a lot better off if we could choose our own phone service and choose our own phone, rather than get stuck with whatever applications our service provider wants us to have. Stunningly, Consumers Union reports that four out of five cell phone users in Asia get to choose their own providers when they get a phone. Plus they have their pick of over a thousand different cell phones, when Nokia can't even get a wi-fi phone into the U.S. because the big telecoms don't like it. It's like these big telecoms think "the free market" should only serve them. I'm so old-fashioned I think "the free market" should only serve the consumer.

Meanwhile, Media Matters provides an instructive overview of Howard Kurtz's generally lame media criticism. In fact, I think their overview instructs even more than they intend -- by which I mean it instructs us, as folks who would critique the critics. Mr. Kurtz shows quite an impressive ability to use the questioner's words against them. One questioner, asking about Mr. Kurtz's Joe Scarborough-sized blind spot when he writes about MSNBC's "liberal hosts," asks, "why do you keep pretending Joe Scarborough's three hours a day don't exist?" I feel the questioner's frustration, but Mr. Kurtz uses it against him/her: "My pretense hasn't been very consistent, since I've written lengthy pieces on both Joe and Mika." The lesson we should learn from this article isn't so much that Mr. Kurtz isn't a very good media critic, though he's not -- the lesson we should learn is that we should be more verbally precise in our interrogation of folks like Mr. Kurtz. Maybe, then, he'll get frustrated for once.

the Honduras coup, health care for legal immigrants, and errata regarding food safety.

Just Foreign Policy urges us to demand that our government vigorously oppose the coup in Honduras, which occurred on Sunday. Both President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have condemned the coup, and the U.S. co-sponsored a U.N. resolution calling for "the immediate and unconditional restoration" of Mr. Zelaya as President, but neither have used the U.S.'s immense leverage to take strong action against the coup -- Mrs. Clinton has resisted calling what happened in Honduras a "coup," because doing so would require our government to cut off foreign aid to Honduras. They can't be afraid of that twittering machine, Newt Gingrich, can they? Mr. Gingrich twittered over the weekend that Honduras was "on the edge of a leftist dictatorship" and that "the obama administration has joined castro and chavez attacking honduran supreme court and congress for defending their constitution (all failures to capitalize proper nouns in the original)." In other words, military coups are all right with Mr. Gingrich if they prevent a "leftist dictatorship" (which conclusion must have been so obvious Mr. Gingrich didn't feel the need to defend it!), and they're even more all right if they go against the express will of Messrs. Castro and Chavez -- and, er, not incidentally, the rest of the world. Because the U.N. passed that resolution opposing the coup unanimously. Mrs. Clinton's phone number is 202.647.4000.

Meanwhile, at home, Congress has been slow to -- well, they've been slow to reform health care in any meaningful way, but they've also been slow to include reform for health care for legal immigrants. Currently, legal immigrants (including children of said immigrants) must endure a five-year waiting period to get Medicaid. Undoubtedly our government hopes that legal immigrants will do well enough to place out of Medicaid's parameters within five years, but that's not a given, especially in a corporate economy that fires workers whenever the CEOs need to gild their plumbing. You may well be asking, shouldn't we take care of our own citizens first? And I may well answer: a) we can do both; b) if we're going to bring immigrants in to work for dung pellets, it's cruel to deny them access to our health care -- especially when legal immigrants pay the same taxes we do. You can call your Congressfolk using the tools in the upper left-hand corner, or download the Coalition for Human Needs's contact info for House and Senate leaders.

Finally, I apologize for passing along the People's Email Network alert about H.R. 2749 the other day, and I direct you to this Consumers Union alert supporting it. I've supported many Congressional efforts to reform food safety this term after reading the bills in question, and I've avoided alerts I've received opposing food safety bills because I couldn't verify their information, and I wish I'd done the same this time. Consumers Union addresses the concerns raised by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Network (to which I linked the other day) and, long story short, finds them largely inaccurate. I sure hope I didn't get taken in by some astroturf right-wing "farmers' rights" group -- or worse (since they have a larger audience), that the People's Email Network didn't get taken in.

starring, once again, health care, indefinite detention, and consumer protection.

The "liberal" media finally (finally!) reports polls showing majorities favoring Mr. Obama's "public option" health plan, and even Arlen Specter (NK-PA) suddenly supports it -- so now's the perfect time to push for Canadian-style, single-payer, privately-delivered health care! H.R. 676, the U.S. National Health Insurance Act, has 83 co-sponsors; S. 703, the American Health Security Act of 2009, has only one sponsor, Bernie Sanders of Vermont (its House companion, H.R. 1200, has eight). But either bill will do. Tools for contacting your Congressfolk are, as always, in the upper left-hand corner of this page. Both H.R. 676 and S. 703 would create a publicly-financed but privately-delivered health care system. I doubt it would cause doctors to make only twenty dollars an hour, either -- not if it wants to compete with the private HMOs that will still exist under any circumstances.

In other news, the Obama Administration seems no less eager than Tha Bush Mobb to detain folks indefinitely without charge or trial. After all, indefinite detention worked out so well for Mr. Bush -- most of those folks in Guantánamo got out after years of detention because Mr. Bush couldn't charge them with anything, and it's a wonder they haven't all gone to work for al-Qaeda since then, let alone some indeterminate few. Perhaps that's on Mr. Obama's mind: Mr. Bush created some 750-plus walking time bombs and he'll need some way to keep them from blowing up American buildings. No matter. We're either a nation of values or we're not; if we detain people indefinitely, without charge, without trial, then we're not. The ACLU helps you keep the country you love from becoming a value-free zone.

Sadly, we have two more occasions to fight for the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency -- one, Wall Street's co-ordinated push against "populist overreaction" (!), and two, the stated opposition of U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue, who has pledged $100 million to strangle the CFPA in its crib. Where did he find $100 million in this economy? And why isn't he spending it on, I don't know, hiring good folks to work for the Chamber of Commerce? After all, we're just about at 10 percent unemployment (officially) -- don't we all have to make sacrifices? Mr. Obama (after prompting by good folks like you) has proposed a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, but Congress will have to create it; USPIRG helps you get them on the stick.