Papantonio joins us via Skype to give us the latest on the lawsuit, the spill, and the oil--which doesn't just go away, no matter what the companies would have us believe.

The Deepwater Horizon oil disaster woke many people up to the real dangers behind deep water oil drilling. Yet companies around the world are still drilling in deep water, putting us all at risk.  In this video, Sim McKenna - climber and Greenpeace activist - discusses his preparations, with a Greenpeace team, to occupy the Stena Don oil rig, in the deep water in the Arctic Ocean.

Patrick Hennessey joined the British army in 2004 and served in Iraq and Afghanistan; along the way, he wrote an acclaimed book, The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars, detailing his experiences.  He's since returned to Afghanistan as a reporter.

Hennessey joins Laura in studio to talk about Tony Blair, the difference between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the experience of war reporting, and winding up in a 120-year-old former British base in Afghanistan.

Finally, Laura's off to Wisconsin for Fighting Bob Fest on Friday--what would Fighting Bob La Follette say about our current economy?

Wisconsin's a place where that discussion's getting very twisted. Once a solid progressive state, home of “Fighting Bob” La Follette, now it's “purple”-- and  solid progressive Senators like Russ Feingold, the sole Senate vote against the PATRIOT Act, are feeling the lash this election cycle because of misplaced anger from the Tea Partiers and Republicans decrying “big government” while enjoying cash from big business.

In 1931, La Follette wrote in The Nation of the failure of the Hoover administration to deal promptly and sufficiently with the Depression, saying “The bankruptcy of his leadership in the worst economic crisis in our history reveals the tragic failure of rugged individualism and places the major cost of deflation upon those least able to bear it — the unemployed.”

Yet here we are again, nearly 80 years later, and that same rugged individualism, tax cuts for the wealthy and weak stimulus are being tossed out as solutions, as if we've forgotten what ended the Depression, namely spending. Give money back to those who already have it, John McCain and Feingold's foes argue, and they'll fix the economy.

As Katrina vanden Huevel put it here yesterday, when the very rich are sitting on $1.8 triillion in assets and wanting more, but not hiring or paying living wages, that's class war. La Follette knew people needed leaders willing to fight it. As he noted back in 1917, that "wealth has never yet sacrificed itself on the altar of patriotism." No indeed.

For more Fighting Bob talk, come on the Barrymore theater, Friday night in Madison, where I'll be kicking off Bob Fest - with the likes of Feingold, Thom Hartmann, Greg Palast and Jim Hightower. There's more information right here.

Instead, Katrina notes, the real class war is happening in the same direction it always has--from the top down. When people like Elizabeth Warren are demonized and deficits are a point of obsession, it's not the rich who have to worry. She joins us in studio for The Nation on GRITtv to discuss.

Instead, Katrina notes, the real class war is happening in the same direction it always has--from the top down. When people like Elizabeth Warren are demonized and deficits are a point of obsession, it's not the rich who have to worry. She joins us in studio for The Nation on GRITtv to discuss.

Hurricane Katrina and the BP spill have hit New Orleans with a double whammy, but the one bright side has been the opportunity to create not just new jobs for local residents, but green jobs, jobs that help the city move into a new energy future. This video from Green for All looks at just a few of the residents of the city who've found a new purpose helping weatherize homes and better their neighborhoods.

The Obama administration submitted its first report on its own human rights record to the United Nations Human Rights Council, becoming the first U.S. administration to do so--the Bush administration declined to join the council.  The report for the first time showed the government admitting to its own failings, particularly in the area of economic and social rights.

Barbara Crossette, the U.N. reporter for The Nation, covered the story for the magazine, and she joins us in studio along with Anja Rudiger of the National Economic & Social Rights Initiative to discuss the report, the next steps, and what all this means for the state of human rights in this country. Are we moving forward? How far do we have to go? And will we be able to acknowledge social and economic rights as fundamental human rights?

Fletcher joins us from Washington, D.C. via Skype to talk about the "end" of the war, Glenn Beck's march on Washington, and the growing popular resistance to the rhetoric from the Right.

Fear-mongering and Islamophobia have returned to the headlines and the TV stations in the U.S., and recently here in New York a cab driver, Ahmed Sharif, was violently attacked by a passenger who asked if he was Muslim. Nine years after 9/11, why are the culture wars once again an issue for the Right?

As Glenn Beck appropriates the rhetoric and actions of the Civil Rights movement and rumors continue to fly about President Obama's religion, we talk to Bhairavi Desai of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, and Lee Fang from Think Progress about the resurgence of xenophobia and fear, and the corporations that back it.

Finally, Laura notes the best way to fight Tea Party voters is to empower previously disenfranchised people to vote as well.

In a country where 131 million people voted in the 2008 presidential election, a few million more voters sprinkled across the states, just might make a difference.  In a handful of swing states, voting rights groups have sued and won voting rights for hundreds of thousands of low-income people, two-thirds of them women, in the last few years.

The results are impressive. In Missouri, where John McCain beat Barack Obama by less than 4,000 votes, nearly a quarter-million voter registration applications have been filed by people applying for state public assistance since August '08.  In Ohio, where George W. Bush beat John Kerry by nearly 119,000 votes in 2004, low-income Ohioans filed 100,000 voter applications in just the first six months of 2010.

Project Vote, Demos, The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the local civil rights groups who sued these states and won have been waging a lonely fight to implement the National Voter Registration Act. The 1993 law requires a range of state agencies, not just motor vehicles, to offer voter registration services.

That fight became a little less lonely in June, when, for the first time, the Justice Department announced it would start enforcing the NVRA’s voter registration mandate.  This isn't rocket science. This April, 40 million Americans applied for food stamps.  If even 10 percent of those people registered to vote – the nation’s voter rolls would get a millions-strong boost.

The numbers from from Missouri and Ohio dwarf the size of the largest Tea Party rallies and already, right-wingers fear these voters and NVRA compliance, commenting on websites that poor people should not vote for any number of ugly reasons. Now it's up to other candidates to pay attention to voters who've until now been overlooked.  Instead of obsessing about the Tea Partiers -- give those newest voters some good reason to use that vote!

The struggle for green jobs brings together the struggle for sustainability and a cleaner environment and the fight against poverty--a struggle for justice for all. Green for All unites these struggles into one movement, as CEO Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins explained at Netroots Nation, in a personal discussion of her past and present experiences with poverty and the environment.

The current stage of the recession sees state budgets hitting crisis points around the country, and one of the areas targeted for cuts has been state univerisities.  Students, already dealing with prohibitive levels of debt, have been coming together to protest tuition hikes and budget cuts, in some of the largest student protests since the 1960s.

Is this a new era for student activism? Did the Obama campaign train young organizers to turn their skills onto their local campus, or is it just the pressure of paying the bills? Christian Ragland, Student President at Pensylvania State University, and  Angus Johnston, founder of StudentActivism.net, join us to discuss.

It's been five years now since the levees broke, and the changes to New Orleans are many: around 150,000 people haven't been able to return, the city has more charter schools than anywhere in the country, and it's not hard to guess who's been left behind by the policies. Bill Quigley of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Tracie Washington join us to discuss the challenges New Orleans faces, half a decade after the storm.

Actress Melissa Leo didn't know much about New Orleans before moving there to shoot a season of HBO's Tremé, but she quickly fell in love with the city, its music, and its resilient people. The show's focus on the music and culture of the city has brought national attention once again to the unique jazz scene, and filming in New Orleans has brought money and jobs to a city badly in need of both.

Melissa joins us via Skype to talk about her experience in New Orleans as an outsider, and why it's important for pop culture to remind us of people's struggles.

Finally, Laura has some thoughts about what we can do to make sure that the next time disaster strikes, there's help for all affected.