• Sign up for the newsletter at FactCheck.org.
• Sign up for The Progress Report from the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
• Watch the video (or read the transcript) of Abu Ghraib whistleblower Samuel Provance speaking out on torture and cover-up, and then write a letter to your local newspaper.
• Watch the Wage Peace: The Cost of War video at the American Friends Service Committee site, and then do any of the related actions listed there.
• Check out WAND’s (Women’s Action for New Directions) listening guide to the State of the Union Address, listen to the President make the speech on Monday, then contact Congress with your thoughts and questions.
• Tell George Bush the REAL State of the Union (Democratic Congressonal Campaign Committee / Care2 Petition).
• Urge your Senators not to pass wiretapping legislation that violates our rights as expressed in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, or that gives blanket retroactive immunity to the telecom companies who helped the Bush Administration commit violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Credo/Working Assets).
• Say No to the Homeland Security Department’s attempt to corrupt the 1994 Violence Against Women Act (Care2 Petition).
• Tell Your Representative to stop the Bush Administration from rushing through the sale of oil and gas drilling leases in Alaska’s prime polar bear habitat before it makes a final decision about protecting these imperiled bears under the Endangered Species Act.
• Send a message (before Feb. 8th) to the Bureau of Land Management to protest the Bush administration’s plan to sharply increase oil and gas development and off-road vehicle use over a full 11 million acres in Utah. This fragile land of ethereal red rock, rivers, and canyons (which I love), belongs to all of us and deserves protection, not exploitation (The Wilderness Society).
• The Fish & Wildlife Service has made it easier to kill wolves in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Rockies region — even while they remain protected under the Endangered Species Act. Tell Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne that this rule change is unacceptable (Defenders of Wildlife).

This week, the Senate is planning to quietly hold a vote that would pardon President Bush for breaking the law by illegally wiretapping innocent Americans.

The bill would let the administration off the hook for breaking the law and make it legal to wiretap Americans, in secret, without any oversight whenever they want to.

Democrats and some Republicans are holding strong against it, and if enough of us speak up we can stop it.

Can you sign the petition opposing the Republican move to pardon President Bush for breaking the law?

http://pol.moveon.org/dontpardon/

My Republican senators – Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss – would be among the last to oppose, challenge, criticize, or even discuss anything that Bush does, but I still feel that it is worthwhile to speak up for Georgia even as a minority without representation.

I am astonished that the Senate could consider whitewashing the criminal offense here by grandfathering a pardon and expanding executive powers even further.

We expect the Senate to uphold the laws of this nation and to act as a full branch of government that represents the interests of all Americans.

Even in the context of party interests, there is a pragmatic reason for Republicans to vote nay on this. Short of cancelling elections, I find it difficult to believe that hard-right rubber-stamping Republicans will continue to hold office unless they get more of a conscience on these matters. This is a matter of the fundamental duties of their position.

If our legislative branch continues to chip away at everything America means, they will have done more to meet the aims of those who use terrorist methods against us than anything that terrorists could have done.

No Pardon for the President