The U.S. Supreme Court may roll back two pillars of the civil rights era this term -- the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and affirmative action -- both of which have long been targeted by the right-wing and whose challenges are backed by the same set of deep-pocketed ideological funders.

Last week, the Center for Media and Democracy and The Nation magazine worked together to publish a package in The Nation and a new online wiki resource on Pete Peterson and the Campaign to Fix the Debt, an entity we consider an "astroturf supergroup" with a huge budget working hard to create the fantasy that Americans care more about national debt and deficits than jobs and the economy. Fix the Debt is currently exploiting the "sequester" debate in Congress to encourage steep cuts to incredibly popular social programs like Medicare and Social Security.

A controversial mining bill, which opponents say will weaken environmental standards and threaten the state's water resources, has passed the Wisconsin State Senate. The bill, the first to be introduced in the 2013-2014 legislative session, passed 17 to 16 with one Republican, Senator Dale Schultz, voting against along with the 15 Senate Democrats. SB1 is nearly identical to the bill that failed to pass in 2012.