Briefly...

Folks, I'm way behind on a deadline. (The past couple of days haven't been the best, health-wise). So there's no time to spew all of the verbiage backlogged in my brain. There is much to say, especially on the topic of Hillary Clinton's emails.

(Be wary of that "NSA" story that has been floating around. I'll get to that soon.)

Right now -- and ever-so-briefly -- my ladyfriend asked me to bring the following to your attention: "How Citizens United Made It Easier For Bosses To Control Their Workers’ Votes."

Citizens United eliminated restrictions on the ability of employers to lobby their workers in support of particular candidates and causes. Bosses can even make employees attend partisan political events during work hours.

In addition to now being legal, those tactics are also effective, according to new research by Paul Secunda, a law professor at Marquette University, and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, a doctoral candidate in government and social policy at Harvard. A survey they conducted for an upcoming UCLA Law Review paper found that workers are generally responsive to political pressure from their managers.

When you cast your vote, think of the Supreme Court, and think of the overwhelming need to overturn Citizen's United. Arguably, fixing our electoral process takes precedence over all other concerns -- and the first step is to change the highest court's most obscene recent ruling.

On a trivial note: Advance word is quite positive on the new Batman/Superman film, and you can color me surprised. I finally caught up with Man of Steel a few weeks ago, and it left me with no desire to see another DC superhero epic. It was a cinematic first -- a no-fun Superman movie. The big problem was tone. Nobody wants another ludicrous camp-fest like Batman and Robin -- but do we really want our silly pop cultural artifacts to look and feel like Schindler's List?

The same problem afflicted the second-to-last Harry Potter movie. While watching it, my ladyfriend said: "This is all Holocausty." Fer chrissakes, it's a story about witches and wizards and elves and goblins; it shouldn't feel "Holocausty." Nerd culture needs an infusion of whimsy.