"Justice requires that we learn the lessons from these past disasters," says Tracie Washington of the Louisiana Justice Institute. And Antonia Juhasz, author most recently of Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill, points out that nothing that we saw happen in the Gulf has been addressed, and clearly we have learned nothing from the disaster that occurred a year ago this week.

"What's at stake is whether assaults on working people will prevail," says Ellen Bravo, who fought with the Family Values @ Work Consortium to get paid sick leave for Milwaukee's workers only to see it banned in the state legislature--and the ban broadened to include the entire state. Meanwhile, to heighten the already tense situation in that state, Sarah Palin was there this weekend to speak to a Tea Party crowd.

Today is Tax Day in the US, and that's almost universally greeted with groans and complaints. That tax word's been so effectively demonized that it may be there's no coming back. Is it time for a new word?

"I think it's an identity project that's been given to you, you can go out there and play the hero in the big scene, inscribe yourself in this political rhetoric about the situation," says Janus Metz, who went with a team of Danish soldiers to Afghanistan to make his documentary, Armadillo.

This is a moral issue; the budget is a moral document. We can take care of the deficit and rebuild our infrastructure and strengthen our safety net by reducing military spending and eliminating corporate subsidies and tax loopholes for the rich. Or we can sink further into debt and amoral individualism by demonizing and starving the poor. Which side are you on?

The Tea Party governor of Maine ordered a labor mural removed from the state's Department of Labor--and a controversy ensued that even involved the federal labor department, who contributed funds to the mural. Protesters have continued to fight to get the mural reinstated, but a group of artists made their protest a little more creative, projecting photos of the mural on the side of the capitol.

"I think it's an identity project that's been given to you, you can go out there and play the hero in the big scene, inscribe yourself in this political rhetoric about the situation," says Janus Metz, who went with a team of Danish soldiers to Afghanistan to make his documentary, Armadillo.

Phone home, Mr. President. Laurence Tribe, the legendary constitutional law professor, is really ticked off with you. That should be some kind of wake up call. Because he was your constitutional law professor. One of the key backers of your 2008 presidential campaign. Even joined your justice department as a legal advisor in 2010—briefly.

Comedian Bill Hicks "was really obsessed in some ways with the idea of getting people to think for themselves, confronting them with ideas they might have on a big subject," says filmmaker Matt Harlock, one of the directors of the new documentary American: The Bill Hicks Story. Hicks died in 1994, but his influence lives on in today's political comics and his critiques of the first Iraq war sound remarkably prescient years later.

"At a time when we are cutting health care, cutting education, cutting old people from the budget, we want to put $50 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear power?" asks Mark Hertsgaard, longtime environmental reporter. "Nuclear power will make climate change worse, not better," he argues.