“There’s nothing more we can do.” For too long, for too many, medical professionals have used these words when they believe they cannot cure their patients. Facing, as each of us must, the nearness of death, terminally ill patients too often speak of abandonment by their doctors.

This story originally appeared at TomDispatch.com.

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On Thursday, it was announced that 1 in 7 Americans now live in poverty – a disturbing fact which received little attention on Capitol Hill: The reluctance of political leaders on both sides of the aisle to directly confront the fact that growing numbers of Americans are slipping into poverty reflects a stubborn reality about [...]

The rally was a conscious attempt to not only re-appropriate the history of Martin Luther King Jr. but also to push the country closer toward adhering to more principles and tenets of Biblical Law.

Seeing as how the word “Fascism” is being bandied about lately, I thought I’d add something to the mix:

“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Think about it.

No Politician Left Behind: A Few Reading Lists for Our Leaders

Weekly Mulch: Kicking Our Addiction to AC—Why DC Needs to Step Up

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger

This summer, Americans are cranking up their air conditioning. At the same time, Senators are letting climate legislation cool its heels in Washington. Ultimately, both of these summer trends are contributing to climate change. Air conditioning dumps greenhouse gases into the environment, and without climate legislation that caps the country’s carbon emissions, America’s share of global carbon levels will only continue to grow.

On July 4th, Americans are supposed to celebrate their independence. We may no longer have to worry about a greedy, distant monarch. But our country is still held in thrall to powerful interests that prize profit over individuals and their freedom—the energy industry comes to mind. As Jason Mark puts it at AlterNet:

Larry King literally embraced Bush, to the dismay of good journalists.

President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders spent this week trying to stand up to the oil industry. In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama pushed BP to siphon $20 billion into a escrow fund that will cover liability claims, and Congress grilled BP CEO Tony Hayward and other oil bigwigs as to how they were protecting the country’s coastal waters.