You may know that Vermont just passed a single-payer health care bill, which would provide health care coverage to every resident of the state without interference from private health insurance corporations. But you may not know that Vermont can't implement single-payer unless they get lots of waivers from the federal government. So firedoglake helps you tell HHS Secretary Sebelius to grant every waiver Vermont requests, on favorable terms. It's not like granting waivers is unprecedented -- some 30 corporations just got waivers from HHS so they could deliver worse health care coverage than federal law requires. But the big health care corporations also want Vermont's plan to fail. One more time: it doesn't matter what they want; it matters what we want. And if we all pressure HHS to do the right thing, then they'll know what we want. And if they don't do what we want, again, then they'll get turned out of office. It ain't that tough to do anymore.

Meanwhile, did you know that Saudi Arabia effectively bans women from driving? Or from pretty much any sort of moving around -- riding the bus, riding a bike, walking in public -- without the consent and accompaniment of a male relative? Saudi Arabia might have really stepped in it, though, when they arrested Manal al-Sharif for driving a car -- with her brother and with his permission, I might add. One high government official (and cleric) suggested that Manal should be "flogged in the women's marketplace as a model and a lesson." Any of this sounding even remotely 19th century to you, let alone this century? Change.org helps you tell King Abdullah to drop charges against Manal. Apparently Saudi women plan to protest the various bans on their movement by driving en masse on June 17. Good luck to them, and shame on any man who'd try to stop them.

Finally, here's an update on two initiatives we've been watching in this space. First, the Kucinich resolution that would have ended the Libya war failed, as Mr. Boehner successfully lulled many House Republicans into voting for a weaker resolution demanding more information, justification, etc. I doubt it'll do much good, but I'd be happy to be wrong. Meanwhile, the Obama Department of Education gave in to corporate lobbying and issued far weaker rules on for-profit colleges than they'd originally proposed. You have to wonder why Mr. Obama rarely seems to give in to lobbying from the American people. It can't have anything to do with the billion dollars he hopes to raise for re-election, can it? Mr. Obama may have to learn the hard way that money doesn't win elections, but votes do. And votes have to be earned.