What does the press take away from this week's top stories: a presidential nomination for Supreme Court, a catastrophic oil spill, and the political changes in Great Britain? Apparently it investigates Elena Kagan’s height and drinking habits, and heralds the spill as Obama’s Katrina. Host of WBAI's Wake Up Call Esther Armah and Dorian Warren, Political Editor of the Daily Voice and ColorLines Contributor weigh in on today's media panel.

Contributing editor to The Nation, Christian Parenti joins us in studio to share his take that the United States response to Afghanistan is a political instance of an iatrogenic disease: an endless cycle of creating more problems with supposed “cures.”

The war in Afghanistan seems to be a constant rigmarole of democratization, stabilization, and Al-Qaeda claims. Which is it? Contributing editor to The Nation, Christian Parenti joins us in studio to share his take that the United States response to Afghanistan is a political instance of an iatrogenic disease: an endless cycle of creating more problems with supposed “cures.”

We have all seen the job market changing radically in a variety of ways. Not only is there more freelance, more contract, and more part time jobs, but some industries are dissolving all together while new ones rise to take their places. What does this mean for the future of labor movements, unemployment, and the work place?

Even though twenty-nine coal miners were recently lost in the West Virginia Upper Big Branch mine explosion and the environmental and economic devastation from the BP oil spill continues to trump the clean up efforts, environmental legislation is strangled by this “deadly addiction.”

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For all his faults, I was struck by outgoing British Prime Minster Gordon Brown's resignation speech. It wasn't the pomp of the job he loved, he said, it was the chance to make his country a fairer place.

Actress and activist Lena Horne passed away this week at the age of 92. She was memorialized around the U.S. and the world as a beloved entertainer, but some have noted her background in work with the NAACP and the Civil Rights movement--as John Nichols wrote at The Nation, "Such appearances earned Horne a reputation, she joked, as the 'bad little Red girl.'"

The federal government keeps trying to tell us that things are looking up for the economy, but cities and states across the country are still struggling to meet budget requirements. One of the things on the chopping block here in New York City is after-school programs, which provide kids of working parents someplace to go, get help with homework, and stay off the streets. GRITtv's Sam Alcoff and Anna Gold visited one such program, CAMBA, in Brooklyn and brought us this report.

President Obama got his second chance to nominate a Supreme Court justice not even a year after the first one with the retirement of John Paul Stevens, the Court's oldest member and its liberal backbone. He has nominated Elena Kagan, the current Solicitor General and the former Dean of Harvard Law School, but many progressives are unhappy with the choice, wishing that Obama had instead chosen a staunch liberal who would not run the risk of moving the Court to the right.