America's Defense Meltdown. The Pentagon is moving to get three of the four combat brigades requested by commanders into Afghanistan by summer. That move and others, with TIM WEINER, JEREMY SCAHILL and WINSLOW WHEELER, editor of a new collection of former military personnel writing about America's Defense Meltdown.

Wheeler details how the men with stars on their shoulders have been making decisions with information they know is biased, information they know stinks!

Tim Weiner has written on American intelligence for twenty years. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his work on secret national security programs, available in Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget. (His latest book, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA won the National Book Award.) Weiner says if the Pentagon were a business, they'd be out of business.

Scahill says outsourcing war hurts the image of America, as we've seen with Blackwater. He's none too keen on Mr. Gates either. Scahill is a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine, and the author of the bestselling book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

GOT DOCS? this week follows Sam Jackson, New Orleanian housing activist, in Michele Stephenson's COMING HOME.

Then: MILK. As in Harvey, the man as well as the movie.
He wasn't the candidate. The movement was the candidate -- so said Milk, subject of a New York Critics pick for Best Picture. We talk about the film, the politics of that time, the "professionalizing" of gay advocacy as well as the upsurge of grassroots LGBTQ activism in 2008, with Before Stonewall filmmaker John Scagliotti, poet Pamela Sneed and Ann Northrop, host of Gay U.S.A.