The markup in the House Judiciary Committee of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, has begun. Observers expect at least two days of markups, and the bill wouldn’t see the House floor until sometime thereafter, probably next year. There are over 60 amendments on the bill, and opponents on the committee are dragging out the proceedings. Rep. Zoe Lofgren refused to waive the reading of the bill, so Judiciary staffers needed to spend an hour doing that.

Understand that this bill is getting a hearing, and a markup, because very wealthy interests want it to pass. It so happens that very wealthy interests want it to fail, but that puts it on the agenda as well, because both sides can go to their funders and raise money off the threat of the bill passing or failing. This becomes a bonanza for K Street lobbyists. There are over 1,000 of them working on SOPA.

Labor commentator, and former union staffer, Steve Early draws on years of trade union activism to shed light on labor’s troubled path over the last decade. His recent book, The Civil War’s in US Labor, examines the internal conflicts which have wracked the labor movement over the last decade: the 2005 split of several international unions from the AFL-CIO to form the Change to Win coalition, the subsequent fracturing of Change to Win, and the internal conflict within the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Wisconsin Democrats came up just short last night, flipping two seats in recall elections but not the three needed to take back the state Senate. Currently the Senate will have a 17-16 majority for Republicans; there are two recall elections against incumbent Democrats Robert Wirch and Jim Holperin next Tuesday, August 16. It’s possible that the disappointment of not reaching the goal number in the Republican recalls will depress Democratic turnout, but the expectation is that Wirch and Holperin will hold the seats.

Jim Messina tried to claim in his video announcing the Q2 numbers that 98% of all donations were $250 or less, and the average contribution was $69 from around 550,000 contributors. That gives the impression of a grassroots-fueled army. Messina didn’t say that these numbers excluded the DNC contributions, mostly maxed-out $30,000 donations. And now, the fact of these bundlers complicates Messina’s narrative even more. It’s possible – in fact, given the numbers, it’s likely – that a portion of the under-$250 contributions were collected by bundlers. I think we can say with confidence that bundlers aren’t going to “ordinary Americans” for those collections. They are rich elites who go to their rich elite friends.

After the health care law passed, we were promised a massive, $125 million PR campaign staffed with top quality talent that would really sell the new law to the American people. In a fascinating article, Politico found that this promised campaign essentially crashed and burned.

Don’t Hope– Get Mad and Do Something!

The Progressive’s Guide to Raising Hell might struck you first, as it did me, as a sort of ‘path not taken’ over the past political cycle, but its also a path forward. Jamie Court understands the political landscape, exactly what happened, and how it could have been avoided. This is not a book that wallows in being right, but instead focuses on where to go next. Ballot measures play a large role. Many of the activists here, having just come out of activist participation in the Marijuana initiatives, will gain from the insights of this book.

In Herding Donkeys Ari Berman tells a compelling story about how the Dean campaign sparked a grassroots resurgence and laid the foundation for the Democrats’ improbable success over the next 4 years. He captures some of the untold stories from the 2004 campaign and Howard Dean’s years at the helm of the DNC where, despite the ire of Rahm Emanual and other establishment Democrats, his 50-state strategy helped lead the Democrats out of the desert and back into the majority.

Daniel Okrent was the first public editor of “The New York Times.” In his new book “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition,” he tells the fascinating and often-overlooked story of Prohibition. Despite being one of the most important issues in the country for decades and a dominant force in our nation’s politics, the history of Prohibition is little known to most Americans.

A chat about inside/outside electoral strategy and reality. This, and the full hour of GRITtv: Hillary and the RFK flap, Iraqi insurgency “Meeting Resistance”, Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, and Stop The Clash of Civilizations from Avaaz.org