It scored the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Paul Krugman's feature, CAN EUROPE BE SAVED? And a quick read may have left American readers feeling reassured. At least Americans aren't in the Europeans' fix with their common currency, enduring safety net, shared responsibilities and all that socialisty stuff.

"We didn't have sponsors when we came to Washington in 1963. We didn't have sponsors when we marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. The young people that came to Mississippi in 1964, and three of my colleagues died, didn't have sponsors. We came out of the feeling that we wanted to redeem the soul of America."

What would Dr. King say about the racial achievement gap in our schools today? The most reliable national test data shows, for 13-year-olds, a 28-point racial gap in math scores, and a 21-point gap in reading scores.

"We didn't have sponsors when we came to Washington in 1963. We didn't have sponsors when we marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. The young people that came to Mississippi in 1964, and three of my colleagues died, didn't have sponsors. We came out of the feeling that we wanted to redeem the soul of America."

As everyone probably knows, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in Memphis in 1968 by an assassin's bullet, but it's often forgotten that he was in Memphis joining the sanitation workers' fight for fair wages and working conditions. King's support for labor, particularly low-wage public workers, was a theme of his work for most of his life, and to honor that legacy, we bring you a segment of the speech he gave to those workers the day before his death.

"Phil was always a little ahead of the curve," says Ken Bowser, the director of a new documentary on 1960s protest singer Phil Ochs. Ochs wrote and performed folk music in its heyday, weighing in on major political issues of his time and connecting with other singer-activists around the world, from Bob Dylan to Chilean singer Victor Jara. Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune talks to people, from Sean Penn to Christopher Hitchens, who were touched by Ochs's music and who knew the singer, who took his own life in 1976 at age 35.

Half a century after Dr. King, the civil rights struggle continues and one group still pushing even to be understood, let alone included in what President Obama would call the circle of our concern are transgender people, people who feel their gender and their physical bodies don't match. The group for Parents Familes and Friends of Lesbians and Gays has produced a film, "Faces and Facets of TransGender Experience," a story less of tragedy than triumph.

"Phil was always a little ahead of the curve," says Ken Bowser, the director of a new documentary on 1960s protest singer Phil Ochs. Ochs wrote and performed folk music in its heyday, weighing in on major political issues of his time and connecting with other singer-activists around the world, from Bob Dylan to Chilean singer Victor Jara. Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune talks to people, from Sean Penn to Christopher Hitchens, who were touched by Ochs's music and who knew the singer, who took his own life in 1976 at age 35.

In the wake of the horrific Tuscon shootings, The State of Arizona has passed an emergency measure instituting “funeral protection zones” that will keep all protestors at least 300 feet away from funeral services, Of course this was a response to Westboro Baptist church and the Reverend Fred Phelps, who are to Christianity what Jesus Christ was to ignorance, hatred & inbreeding.

"Candidates and politicians who are at their best do not touch our brain, they touch our hearts. It's in our heart that our attitudes are shifted," notes John Nichols of The Nation, and that's what Barack Obama did last night, with his speech on the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others in Tucson, Arizona last week. He also provided, Nichols notes, a striking contrast to Sarah Palin's response to the shooting, which made it all about her.