Over the last three weeks, Gov. Scott Walker and his allies in the Wisconsin Legislature made a mockery of representative government. Rather than listen to the citizens of Wisconsin, who are strongly opposed to stripping teachers, nurses and other workers of their rights, Walker rammed through a bill that was a blatant political payback to his out-of-state major campaign donors and cronies, who have sought for years to crush the aspirations of workers who dare to demand a voice in the workplace. This charade culminated when Walker shredded 50 years of labor peace, built through bipartisanship and a democratic process, and signed a bill into law against the wishes of a majority of the voters in Wisconsin.

The governor may have won a short-term political victory, but history and Wisconsin voters won't be so kind. Power exercised without discretion and prudence is corrupting. And based on Gov. Walker's actions -- his underhanded maneuvering to get the bill passed, his misrepresentations that the bill was part of reducing the budget deficit, and his manipulation of the process so the bill could be brought to a vote -- it is clear that the process was indeed corrupting. The people of Wisconsin watched this sorry spectacle and took to the streets to protest it. It was deeply unpopular, and record numbers of Wisconsinites are signing recall petitions to force Republican state senators to stand for election again to defend why they stripped workers of their rights. As brazen as Walker was by stripping workers of their rights in the workplace, he can't strip their democratic right to check his abuse of power at the ballot box.

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I've just been released from the stocks set up on the red carpet outside the Kodak Theatre. As penance for ranting about two significant flaws in the palace tapestries (see my two most recent flogs), today I shall ponder the reason why we are so enchanted, notwithstanding the imperfections of the king's tailor, by the fabric of its story. Underneath that fabric is a heart that beats in sympathy with Dr. Jung and Dr. Campbell. You won't see their names in the credit roll, but their sway may be detected just behind the arras.

The movie rests its royal head on the satin pillow of a fairytale premise: every sorcerer in the kingdom is charged to cure the prince's stammer, to lift the evil curse placed on him at birth. Then, just when the prince's patience is exhausted with gimmickry and patent formulas, he commands that the search be halted. This is when the noble but suffering hero is usually in danger of losing heart (at a similar moment a frightened and confused Dorothy meets Glinda in Oz). But hark, a lowly toad-like healer from a far-off land ministering with unorthodox spells has been discovered by his princess in a Harley Street basement. Much is at stake here. If the prince's stammer is magically cured, the curse at long last lifted, the prince will be crowned king, and his kingdom will successfully ward off the attack of the fiercest dragon ever to face his people.

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Editor's note: "Next Steps for the Anti-Mountaintop Removal Movement" will be a series of interviews with affected residents and activists in the central Appalachian coalfields region, including West Virginia leader Bo Webb, Kentuckian Teri Blanton, Kathy Selvage in Virginia, Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson in Tennessee, and Appalachian Voices legislative aide JW Randolph in Washington, DC. While the EPA scrambles to enforce the Clean Water Act and a Republican-controlled Congress attemps to defund strip-mining regulatory measures, and various state agencies continue to be embroiled in Big Coal machinations, millions of pounds of devastating explosives are detonated daily across mountain communities in central Appalachia. As a national movement, what should anti-mountaintop removal activists do next?

Living underneath a mountaintop removal mining operation in the Coal River Valley in West Virginia, Bo Webb has emerged as one of the most important frontline voices in the coalfield justice movement. Winner of the Purpose Prize last year, this coal miner's son has met with and lobbied EPA and OSMRE officials and members of Congress, made personal appeals to President Obama, co-founded the Mountain Justice movement with Judy Bonds and many others, worked with the Coal River Mountain Watch organization, and organized and led numerous protests, marches and health care campaigns in West Virginia and Washington, DC.

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It is difficult to be an American Jewish organization advocating support for Israel today. On the one hand, there is the staunch belief that Israel must be defended at all costs, and that any division will expose a weakness in the united Jewish front. On the other, American Jews traditionally advocate progressive policies in domestic and global affairs, which seemingly contradict their hard-line stances in support of an Israeli government that is apt to reject such liberalism. At a time when Israel is led by a government that is steering it toward unending conflict, and whose actions are threatening Israel's Jewish and democratic nature, much of the American Jewish community today is merely echoing the Netanyahu government's talking points. While unity has kept the Jewish world strong throughout the Diaspora, if it is perpetuated through blind support of misguided policies, it could severely undermine Israel's national security in the name of misplaced sense of unity.

The instinct to unify is one that is ingrained in Jews the world over. This heritage of unity goes back not only generations, but millennia. Divisions among the early Israelites are cited as key factors leading to the destruction of the First and Second Temples of ancient Jerusalem. The expulsion of the Hebrews from the Holy Land, and their dispersal throughout the Middle East and Europe, provided the impetus for the elevated importance of Jewish community for centuries. Whether by choice or by force, Jewish communities banded together to survive the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms of Eastern Europe and, of course, the Holocaust and the eventual creation of the Yishuv in what would become the State of Israel. Jewish holidays like Hanukkah and Purim celebrate the success of the Jewish people being saved from the threat of destruction, others like Tisha B'av and Yom Ha'shoah commemorate those periods when Jews failed to do so.

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