Tuesday, Mar. 23 at 9pm on PBS (Check local listings). Producer Ofra Bikel chronicles the recession's impact on one unlikely neighborhood -- New York's Upper East Side...

Correspondent Doug Rushkoff spoke today at SXSW about crowdsourcing -- a topic he's addressing in this month's Digital Nation roundtable.

Two men on a remarkable journey high in the Himalayas investigate threats to global water and food supply. Seventy-five percent of the world's fresh water is stored in glaciers, but scientists predict climate change will cause some of the world's largest glaciers to completely melt by 2030. What effect will this have on our daily lives, especially our water and food supply? With global warming falling low on a national list of American concerns, it's time to take a deeper look at what could be a global calamity in the making. In a special one-hour NOW on PBS, David Brancaccio and environmentalist Conrad Anker -- one of the world's leading high altitude climbers -- adventure to the Gangotri Glacier in the Himalayan Mountains, the source of the Ganges River, to witness the great melt and its dire consequences first-hand. The two also visit Montana's Glacier National Park to see the striking effects of global warming closer to home and learn how melting glaciers across the world can have a direct impact on food prices in the U.S. Along the way, Brancaccio and Anker talk to both scientists and swamis, bathe in the River Ganges, view a water shortage calamity in India, and see with their own eyes and cameras the tangible costs of climate change. "We can't take climate change and put it on the back burner," warns Anker. "If we don't address climate change, we won't be around as humans."

The West has constructed the dual identities of Persia and Iran as alter egos, the former the ancient civilization, the latter the modern one. ...

(Photo by Robin Holland)

This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers talked with New York University president John Sexton for a wide-ranging conversation about religion, the role of higher education in a globalizing world, and the troubling disintegration of civil discourse in today's society.

Sexton suggested that America increasingly exhibits what he calls an "allergy to thought" and that universities are the key to restoring nuance to public discourse:

"This is a pattern that I see: an allergy to thought, to complexity [and] nuance - a kind of collapse into an intellectual relativism where opinions become fact... It's a dangerous thing... I think there's a growing hostility to knowledge in this country... Our national progress is being retarded because we have fallen into this discourse by slogan. We have fallen into this relativism where it's a conversation to stop and say, "Well, that's your opinion. [This is] my opinion...' Go back to the Athenian idea of political speech - it was a search for good answers. We're so far from that today that it's almost ludicrous for me to bring that up, but I want to remind us... We don't listen well as a society. When we listen, we listen in feedback loops to people who are likely to say what it is we think is right... We're in the process, it seems to me, because of this allergy to complexity and nuance, of devaluing the importance of education... I think universities are the last, best hope for pushing back against this because what we do is complexity and nuance."

Some critics contend that many of today's universities refuse to foster a truly vigorous exchange of ideas. Arguing in the WALL STREET JOURNAL that recent high-profile incidents at Yale, Harvard and Duke demonstrate universities' lack of commitment to open dialogue, columnist Peter Berkowitz wrote:

"Professors have a professional interest in - indeed a professional duty to uphold - liberty of thought and discussion. But in recent years, precisely where they should be most engaged and outspoken they have been apathetic and inarticulate... The aim of liberal education is not to guard [students'] sensitivities but to teach them to listen to diverse opinions and fortify them to respond with better arguments to those with whom they disagree... As the controversies at Yale, Duke and Harvard captured national attention, professors from other universities haven't had much to say in defense of liberty of thought and discussion either. This silence represents a collective failure of America's professors of colossal proportions. What could be a clearer sign of our professors' loss of understanding of the requirements of liberal education than their failure to defend liberty of thought and discussion where it touches them most directly?"

What do you think?

Does American society suffer from "an allergy to thought?" Why or why not?

Do you believe that America's universities encourage open and nuanced debate on the issues of our time? Explain.

Are there other institutions you see "pushing back" against sloganeering in favor of honest and intelligent dialogue?

New development: A second officer has been charged in the Danziger Bridge cover-up...

Bill Moyers concluded the JOURNAL this week by mentioning his favorite poem, "Yes To Blue" by Jim Haba long-time director of the Dodge Poetry Festival. It's reproduced below:

"Yes to blue after trying
to separate green from yellow
and hoping that everything
will get simpler each time
you bring an idea closer
to the light which is always
changing always being
born
day after day
year after year
again and again
now"

Explore more poetry from the Moyers Digital Archives.

Please share your favorite poem in the space below.

Living in these United States, there comes a point at which you throw your hands up in exasperation and despair and ask a fundamental question or two: how much excess profit does corporate America really need? How much bigger do executive salaries and bonuses have to be, how many houses or jets or artworks can be crammed into a life?

After all, as billionaire movie director Steven Spielberg is reported to have said, when all is said and done, "How much better can lunch get?"

But since greed is not self-governing, hardly anyone raking in the dough ever stops to say, "That's it. Enough's enough! How do we prevent it from sweeping up everything in its path, including us?"

Look at the health care industry saying to hell with consumers and then hiking premiums - by as much as 39% in the case of Anthem Blue Cross in California. According to congressional investigators, over a two-year period Anthem's parent company WellPoint spent more than $27 million dollars for executive retreats at luxury resorts. And in 2008, WellPoint paid 39 of its executives more than a million dollars each. Profit before patients.

Viewer reactions to our film, The Suicide Tourist, with so many sharing their own stories...

View -- it reveals why Pakistan's public schools are a ticking time bomb. The secretary of state referenced it in her Congressional testimony last week.

After watching last night's exciting win for Kathryn Bigelow and realizing that today is the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, I found myself wondering who had been the first woman director to win Best Documentary? And for that matter, how many documentaries directed by women have won Oscars in the history of the Academy Awards?

A little googling informed me that this is not exactly easy information to come by. The first time documentaries were acknowledged at the Academy Awards was in 1942 — and it was actually a tie between four films (!) — all about war and all directed by men (including one entitled Prelude to War by Frank Capra). I kept clicking. I thought I hit pay dirt with 1945's winner, The True Glory, a British film directed by Carol Reed (the English Leni Riefenstahl, perhaps?), but was reminded in the next graph that Carol used to be a popular name for boys when "she" was referred to as "Sir Carol Reed."

After trolling through two decades of mostly war and travel docs in Wikipedia, I finally found the first documentary directed by a woman to win best feature. It's a biopic entitled Helen Keller in Her Story (also known as The Unconquered), and it won in 1955. The director-writer-composer-producer Nancy Hamilton is described in imdb.com as "one of the true triple-threat pioneer film-women of the time." The film also gets a 9.3 out of 10 rating.

Find out about more winning women after the jump.

Independent journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup. You can also follow Tom on Twitter @DocSoupMan.

Hollywood's biggest night was not, sadly, documentary film's finest hour. The 2010 Oscar ceremony will be most remembered for how The Hurt Locker trumped Avatar, and how Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Best Director award. But, for documentary fans, it may be remembered for a couple of missed opportunities.

Things certainly didn't start well for me, as my cable provider, Cablevision, is at war with ABC. This battle blocked the telecast for the first 15 minutes — we were tuned in just as the first award was being presented. That was a stark reminder that this show is, of course, all about money. But once the awards started rolling, I was pleased to see that I had correctly predicted the doc winners — Music by Prudence in the Short category, and The Cove in the Feature category.

Read more after the jump.

Colgan Air's reaction to our recent investigation into regional airlines - and see what others in the industry say.

Americans have a longstanding love affair with food -- the modern supermarket has, on average, 47,000 products. But do we really know what goes into making the products we so eagerly consume? David Brancaccio talks with Robert Kenner, director of the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc., which takes a hard look at the secretive and surprising journey food takes on the way from processing plants to our dinner tables. The two discuss why contemporary food processing secrets are so closely guarded, their impact on our health, and another surprising fact: how consumers are actually empowered to make a difference.

Watch this Sunday's Oscar ceremonies for mentions of two POV films nominated in the Best Documentary Feature category — Food, Inc. and The Most Dangerous Man in America. Food, Inc. airs on PBS next month.

(Photos by Robin Holland)

In January, when Republican Scott Brown won the special election for the Massachusetts Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy, Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority and the fate of their health reform legislation plunged into uncertainty.

After weeks of strategizing and negotiation, President Obama made headlines Wednesday by encouraging Democratic members of Congress to pass the Senate’s version of the health bill through the controversial tactic known as reconciliation. Originally intended for budget bills rather than more complicated legislation, reconciliation would bypass potential filibusters in the Senate and require only a simple majority of votes in both chambers for passage. Democratic leaders are now working to amass enough support among Democratic Senators and Congressmen, many of whom disagree with aspects of the legislation, to pass the bill despite polls suggesting that a plurality of the public opposes it.

In this week’s JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with two prominent advocates of health reform with very different perspectives on the President’s health bill.

Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive who has become an outspoken critic of the industry, said that the legislation is flawed but good enough that it should become law:

“We need to look at this as a win for consumers as well. Yes, it’ll be a win for the insurance companies, but I don’t think we’re gonna wind up with the insurance companies walking away [and] winning the whole ball game. If we don’t do anything right now, that’s what will happen. They’ll win everything... I was distraught when I saw what happened, what I saw the Senate voting on. But then I realized – you know, I studied a lot of these efforts over the past many years to get reform – [that] often we’ve come short because we’ve tried to get the perfect, and we’ve never been able to get anything as a consequence... We need to have a foundation, and this may seem to be not an adequate foundation for a lot of people, but there are more than 50 million people in this country who don’t have insurance... Wouldn’t you rather, and I think wouldn’t most Americans rather, that we have something to start from rather than starting from scratch the next time? It’s very hard to build up to doing this in the first place... I’m frankly pretty amazed that we’re getting this close to passing something.”

Dr. Marcia Angell, a Harvard medical lecturer and former editor-in-chief of the NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE, has advocated for single-payer reform, in which the federal government would provide a national health insurance program for everyone. Angell argued that the current bill would make a bad situation worse and sour the public on further reforms, so Democrats should regroup and push for better legislation in the future:

“What this bill does is not only permit the commercial insurance industry to remain in place, but it actually expands and cements their position as the linchpin of health care reform... Not only does it keep them in place, but it pours about $500 billion of public money into these companies over 10 years... and it mandates that people buy these companies’ products for whatever they charge. Now that’s a recipe for the growth in health care costs not only to continue but to skyrocket, to grow even faster... The President’s absolutely right that the status quo is awful. If we do nothing, costs will continue to go up. People will continue to lose their coverage... Things will get very bad. The issue is, will this bill make them better or worse? I believe it will make them worse... Let’s say [the bill] is passed. It will begin to unravel almost immediately, and then what will people do? Well, they’ll say ‘We tried health reform, and it didn’t work. Better not try that anymore’... Whereas if the bill dies now, people can say ‘This bill died because it was a bad bill,’ and the problem is still on the front burner.”

What do you think?

Do you think the President’s health bill is worth supporting? Why or why not?

What do you think should be the goals of health reform, and how are you working to get there?

(Photo by Robin Holland)

Below is an article by JOURNAL senior writer Michael Winship. We welcome your comments below.

"Campaign 2010: Déjà Vu All Over Again"
By Michael Winship

Comparisons are odious, the old saying goes, and certainly Democrats are dealing with some smelly, stinky realities as they stare down the next eight months until Election Day 2010 and pundits galore compare the party’s prospects to debacles of the past.

For a long time parallels were being made with 1994 and the midterm elections during Bill Clinton’s first term. Those gave us a Republican House and Senate, the glory that was Newt Gingrich and a Contract with America that after a dozen years turned out to have a hell of a balloon payment attached.

But this week, the mainstream media meme has shifted, advancing to the elections of 2006, when Democrats took back control of Congress, campaigning against a GOP “culture of corruption.” Now the village drums are signaling that it’s the Democrats who have been poisoned by too much power and made vulnerable. Exhibit A is Charlie Rangel, dean of the New York congressional delegation, forced to step down this week as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee.

As Reid Wilson wrote Wednesday on the NATIONAL JOURNAL’s Hotline on Call blog, “Dems have seen this movie before – only last time, it happened to the other guys. Now, a beleaguered Dem majority has to hope their party can withstand a building wave that favors the GOP, and that effort isn't made any easier by countless, and mounting, self-inflicted errors.

Independent journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup. You can also follow Tom on Twitter @DocSoupMan.

The Best Documentary Short award is probably the least watched, least understood and least appreciated category at the Academy Awards. Okay, maybe it's tied with Best Sound Editing. Still, that's too bad. Fortunately, some of the winners have made the most of this underdog status in their speeches, such as when Jessica Yu joked in 1997 that her evening dress cost more than her film. This year, the nominees for Best Oscar Short are:

• China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province by Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neil
• The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner by Daniel Junge and Henry Ansbacher
• The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert
• Music by Prudence by Roger Ross Williams and Elinor Burkett
• Rabbit à la Berlin by Bartek Konopka and Anna Wydra

There's relatively little horse-trading going on in this category, and little is known about the filmmakers — plus, Academy members who vote are obligated to actually see each film, so it's usually up for grabs. So, how can the rest of us hope to predict the winner? Find a good source. And what could be better than an actual living, breathing Academy voter who is willing to dish a little? That's what I got — let's call him/her "The Source" — to help me read the tea leaves and get us all one step closer to winning our respective Oscar pools.

Read more after the jump...

Available for viewing online. Do we have the right to end our lives if life itself becomes unbearable, or when we enter the late-stages of painful, terminal illness? The questions, debated for centuries, have only grown more pressing in recent years as medical technology has allowed us to live longer lives, and several U.S. states have legalized physician-assisted suicide. With unique access to Dignitas, the Swiss non-profit that has helped over one thousand people die since 1998, Academy award- winning filmmaker John Zaritsky offers a revealing look at a couple facing the most difficult decision of their lives--and lets us see for ourselves as one Chicago native makes the trip to Switzerland for what will become the last day of his life.

POV Executive Director Simon Kilmurry unveils the exciting line-up for the 23rd season of POV on PBS.

I always feel a bit of a disconnect when I hear talk of a crisis in the media and then I see all the fantastic films that come through POV. Believe me, I know it's tough out there, but from what I can tell, there are more excellent documentaries being made than ever before, despite the challenges. At POV, that makes our job more fun — and harder. We get to work with great films, but never have enough room for all the films we love, and those are decisions we never take lightly.

So, this is the time of year when we finally get to announce our 2010 POV season. We've been working with some of these filmmakers for a long time while they have been in production; others came to us more recently. We are thrilled to welcome back some esteemed POV alums, and give other filmmakers their first shot at a national broadcast. The subject matters may be diverse, but if there is one thing that unites these films, it's the singular vision of the filmmakers. They have all found approaches to storytelling that serve their subjects — whether it be adoption, international aid, civil liberties, art or personal crises.

A couple of Oscar nominees bookend our year, and many of the films have been on the festival circuit from Sundance to IDFA, Hot Docs, Silverdocs and Full Frame, to name just a few. Some you'll be seeing in your local theatre, too.

So, here is the list.

The year kicks off on April 21 with a special broadcast of Oscar nominee Food, Inc. by Robert Kenner. As part of this broadcast slot, we'll also have the short documentary Notes on Milk by Ariana Gerstein and Monteith McCollum, a variation on their 2007 feature documentary Milk in the Land.

The regular POV season starts in June and runs through September, as follows:

June 22       William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
                    by Emily and Sarah Kunstler
June 29       The Beaches of Agnès
                    by Agnès Varda
July 6          Promised Land
                    by Yoruba Richen
July 13        Good Fortune
                    by Landon Van Soest
July 20        El General
                    by Natalia Almada
July 27        Presumed Guilty
                    by Roberto Hernández and Geoffrey Smith
Aug. 3         The Way We Get By
                    by Aron Gaudet (Encore)
Aug. 10       First Person Plural
                    by Deann Borshay Liem (Encore)
Aug. 17       Salt
                    by Michael Angus and Murray Fredericks
                   A Healing Art
                    by Ellen Frick
Aug. 24       The Edge of Dreaming
                    by Amy Hardie
Aug. 31       Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy
                    by Stephanie Wang-Breal
Sept. 7        Off and Running
                    by Nicole Opper
Sept. 14      In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee
                    by Deann Borshay Liem
Sept. 21      The Oath
                    by Laura Poitras

We'll wrap the year up with a special fall presentation of the Oscar-nominated film, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith with a date to be announced.

Also this year we are excited to partner with Dave Isay and StoryCorps to present a selection of animated documentary shorts based on StoryCorps' groundbreaking NPR oral-history project. We'll present these shorts alongside some of our feature documentaries and short film slots. Look for details soon.

There will be local community screenings for many of these films around the country over the next few months — so, why not join us on Facebook and Twitter and sign up for our newsletter here (check the left column of the page) so you don't miss a single film.

Independent journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup. You can also follow Tom on Twitter @DocSoupMan.

It's that time of year again — when some of us roll our eyes at the foolish, self-aggrandizing notion of awards and others of us lap it up, savoring every detail, prognostication and red carpet mishap. I am solidly in the latter camp, and this year's documentary Oscar race is a particularly interesting one because it's a tight race that involves two POV docs.

Without question, Food, Inc. and The Cove are the frontrunners. But let's not count out The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, the dark horse in this contest. The other two nominated films? Burma VJ and Which Way Home. They don't have a chance. But let's break it down — from the bottom up...

Which Way Home is a film of great beauty and integrity. It is also backed by HBO, which has strong influence in the Academy. It also had a token theatrical release and whenever I speak with someone about the nominees, this is the one film that people can't remember. Burma VJ collected a bunch of awards over the past year, and it has a lot of edgy, underground clout; but it's a foreign-made film that takes place in a foreign country about a foreign problem. It just doesn't have enough of a support base.

Read more after the jump...

The 2010 True/False Film Festival got started on Friday with a day full of screenings and the usual March March parade down the main drag of Columbia, MO.

 

True/False is five this year and like any youngster it's coming into its own — getting taller and more rambunctious faster than you had realized. Lead by Paul Sturz and David Wilson, True/False boasts an impressive slate of docs — some better known than others, but all an expression of this years' festival motto: "There Are No Small Stories."

I think as a philosophy that holds true — any programmer/curator will tell you that some of the most affecting films are not always about huge "issues" but individual lives through which we see larger truths about our world. Films like Circo, Antoine and When We Were Boys being prime examples.

There are also no small audiences here in Columbia. T/F originally started out as the "little festival that could," but now can safely boast that it has some of the most engaged/excited audiences on the U.S. circuit. True/False is awarding its 2010 True Vision award to filmmaker Laura Poitras, director of the Oscar-nominated My Country, My Country and The Oath, winner of the 2010 Sundance Award for Outstanding Cinematography. My Country, My Country is screening during theTrue/False, as is The Oath.

I'll be blogging and tweeting from T/F for the next few days and send my regards to all the would-be attendees who were stranded on the East Coast by the blizzard on Thursday: Wish you were here!

The True False Film Festival got underway in Columbia, Missouri yesterday and continues over this weekend. POV's own Yance Ford is there and will be tweeting about the screenings she's attending. Over 40 documentary films are being featured, including Laura Poitras's The Oath and Lixin Fan's Last Train Home, which will be featured on POV in 2010 and 2011, respectively.

Last week in New York City, a group of famous whistle blowers, including The Most Dangerous Man in America's Daniel Ellsberg, Carl Bernstein, Mark Whitacre and Frank Serpico, got together to talk about the essential role of whistle blowing in American society. The panel was held at the Paley Media Center and co-sponsored by Participant Media to herald the DVD release of The Informant. The film stars Matt Damon as Mark Whitacre, an employee of the agri-industry giant Archer Daniels Midland who blew the whistle on their price fixing conspiracy in the 1990s. Participants discussed the role that whistle blowers played in exposing federal government malfeasance, various corporate conspiracies and corruption within the 1970s New York City police department. A video of the entire discussion is available online.

Roger Ebert news after the jump...

(Photos by Robin Holland)

This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with prominent lawyers Ted Olson and David Boies about their legal challenge to California’s ban on same-sex marriages. Olson, a conservative, and Boies, a liberal, are best known for facing off before the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore following the disputed 2000 election. Now, they’ve joined forces to argue that gay and lesbian couples should have the right to marry.

Though a decision of the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in the state for several months in 2008, voters’ passage of the ballot initiative Proposition 8 that November – by a margin of 52.3 % to 47.7 % – amended the state constitution to declare that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

Proponents of gay marriage have been divided over how to respond to Proposition 8. Some have advocated challenging the ban in federal court as a violation of the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law, as Olson and Boies are attempting, but others fear an unfavorable legal precedent if the opposition wins. Instead, they have suggested running ballot initiatives in hope of repealing Proposition 8 by the democratic process and avoiding the risk of losing in federal court.

Ted Olson explained why he took on the case despite many other conservatives’ view that it would be judicial activism for a federal court to strike down the California law:

“It’s unfortunate that people think of this as something that is a political issue or a conservative or liberal issue. It is a matter of human rights and human decency and liberty. Many conservatives are libertarians, and they think that the government should allow people to live their lives the same way that other people live their lives under the Constitution, and be treated equally without the government deciding who they can live with or who they can be married to... We’re not advocating any recognition of a new right. The right to marry is in the Constitution. The Supreme Court’s recognized that over and over again. We’re talking about whether two individuals should be treated equally, under the equal protection clause of the Constitution... It isn’t judicial activism for the Supreme Court to recognize an associational right, a liberty right, and a privacy right for two people who love each other to be married.”

David Boies explained why he wants the federal courts to strike down legislation that California citizens democratically enacted via ballot initiative:

“If you didn’t tell the majority of voters they were wrong sometimes under the Constitution, you wouldn’t need a Constitution. The whole point of the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment is to say ‘This is democracy, but it’s also democracy in which we protect minority rights.’ The whole point of a Constitution is to say there are certain things that a majority cannot do, whether it’s 52 percent or 62 percent or 72 percent or 82 percent of the people... There are certain rights there are so fundamental that the Constitution guarantees them to every citizen regardless of what a temporary majority may or may not vote for... Nobody’s asking to create a new constitutional right here. This is a constitutional right that has already been well recognized by the Supreme Court... What the Constitution says is that every citizen gets equal protection of the laws. It doesn’t just say heterosexuals.”

In a statement prepared in the run-up to the 2008 vote, supporters of Proposition 8 argued against judicial determination of what constitutes marriage and said the legislation was not about attacking gays and lesbians or denying anyone rights:

“Proposition 8 is about traditional marriage; it is not an attack on gay relationships. Under California law gay and lesbian domestic partnerships are treated equally; they already have the same rights as married couples. Proposition 8 does not change that. What Proposition 8 does is restore the meaning of marriage to what human history has understood it to be and over 61% of California voters approved just a few years ago... It overturns the flawed legal reasoning of four judges in San Francisco who wrongly disregarded the people's vote, and ensures that gay marriage can be legalized only through a vote of the people... Prop. 8 will NOT take away any other rights or benefits of gay couples. Gays and lesbians have the right to live the lifestyle they choose, but they do not have the right to redefine marriage for everyone else. Proposition 8 respects the rights of gays while still reaffirming traditional marriage.”

What do you think?

Do you support same-sex marriage? Why or why not?

In your view, would it be appropriate for a federal court to strike down a constitutional amendment enacted by a popular vote?

(Photo by Robin Holland)

Below is an article by JOURNAL senior writer Michael Winship. We welcome your comments below.

"Two Legal Foes Unite to Fight -- for Same-Sex Marriage"
By Michael Winship

Watching this week’s “health summit” in Washington, with both sides barely repressing the urge to turn the Blair House event into the Potomac version of mixed martial arts cage fighting, was discouraging. To get a little peace and quiet I was tempted to switch to ESPN and search for an hour of the world’s greatest soccer riots. At least they make better theater. And there are better-defined goals.

But just when you think that liberals and conservatives will never see eye to eye on anything in this country, there comes an alliance that transcends partisan and ideological lines and takes your breath away. The two powerhouse lawyers who fought each other all the way to the Supreme Court to decide whether Al Gore or George W. Bush would become President are at it again, but this time they’re fighting on the same side to defend marriage equality – same-sex marriage – as a constitutional right.

Former Bush Solicitor General Ted Olson and liberal attorney David Boies are in the middle of a case that, win or lose, they expect will wind up at the Supreme Court, just like Bush v. Gore. The former adversaries are united in support of core American values – diversity, equality and tolerance. They’ve become key players in one of the most important civil rights trials of the last decade, a pivotal legal action that could change contemporary society, but which has escaped the attention of much of the country.

In 1995 and 1996, 66 gray wolves were relocated from Canada to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho to help recover a wolf population that had been exterminated in the northern Rockies. The gray wolf relocation is considered one of the most successful wildlife recovery projects ever attempted under the Endangered Species Act; today there are more than 1,600 wolves in the region. But a debate has erupted between conservationists and ranchers over the question: how many wolves are too many? Last year, the Obama Administration entered the fray by removing federal protection for some of these wolves, paving the way for controversial state-regulated wolf hunts. The move has wolf advocates fuming, with more than a dozen conservation groups suing the Interior Department to restore federal protections. NOW reports on this war over wolves and implications for the area.