Not even a week after Buzzfeed’s relationship with the Koch Brothers is exposed do we learn that a near civil war erupted in public television over documentaries that focused on Charles and David Koch. In an expose written by Jane Mayer of the New Yorker it is revealed that two public television affiliated documentaries prominently featuring the Koch family came under pressure to be censored and edited due to fear that Charles and David Koch, major donors to public media, would withdraw support.

Sundance hit Casino Jack and the United States of Money is everything a documentary should be: Fast paced, informative and fun. It opens with Jack Abramoff’s quote that no one watches documentaries, suggesting that an action film be made instead, and rockets on from there, beginning with a murder and taking us through the perfidious history of Jack Abramoff, a master of corruption, shady deals and deregulation and the fallout: Human trafficking, environmental disasters, the hornswoggling of Indian tribes for casino profits, and murder.

Joe Berlinger, the director of Crude–and our guest on Movie Night in August 2009–has been ordered by a federal judge to turn over 600 hours of unused documentary footage to energy giant Chevron as part of the lawsuit discussed in the film

My mother was diagnosed with esophogeal cancer after spending months in the hospital with complications, including an antibiotic resistant bacterial infection and a feeding tube, after a series of operations. Back surgery for which she was not really a good candidate–osteoporosis, 50 years of smoking, decades of heavy drinking were all overlooked or downplayed–left her pretty much home bound and in as much pain as prior to surgery, just different pain, a year of her life lost to hospitals where more than once she was left tied to the bed moaning and thrashing from a urinary track infection until I got there and raised hell, where a rapid intubation (performed by a doctor in a hurry to get to Nancy Reagan’s house and check on her broken hip) caused Mom to be unable to swallow correctly for a month; ICUs; nursing facilities, and home health care.