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On Nov. 18 the celebrated historian, Dr. Douglas Brinkley, testified before the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee. The committee was taking testimony on another congressional effort to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil exploration and drilling.

Could a mass movement of college students and graduates challenge the student debt status quo? That’s the aim of Occupy Student Debt, a new movement inspired by Occupy Wall Street that wants to send a clear message about the crushing burden of the debt by convincing a million Americans to pledge to stop paying their student loans.

While it set out to target the institutions of finance, Occupy Wall Street has emerged as the foil of a whole other group: the police. In the two months since the protests began, the enduring images of the movement are not bankers or traders being harangued by righteous hordes; they are Oakland police officers firing tear gas at a war veteran, Denver cops in riot gear facing down peaceful crowds, and, most recently, campus police at the University of California, Davis hosing down a group of students with pepper spray. 

The best ground view of Occupy Wall Street comes from a former skateboard videographer and a one-time Realtor, aka Tim Pool and Henry Ferry of The Other 99. With little more than mobile phones they've offered a perspective that the mainstream media can't match. Here's how.

Protesters in Seattle began their occupation in early October at Westlake Park, near a upscale downtown mall of the same name. After their camp was broken up by the police, the demonstrators set up a new one on land owned by Seattle Central Community College in the trendy Capitol Hill neighborhood. Protesters say the college wants them out, but they have the backing of the teachers’ union. The camp is more substantial than anything built at Zuccotti Park, with tarpaulins hung from trees to guard against the northwest drizzle and some makeshift two-story structures. Following our series of interviews with protesters in New York, we spoke with people in Seattle. Below are edited transcripts of the interviews.

“We are the 99 percent” is a great slogan. It correctly defines the issue as being the middle class versus the elite (as opposed to the middle class versus the poor). And it also gets past the common but wrong establishment notion that rising inequality is mainly about the well educated doing better than the less educated; the big winners in this new Gilded Age have been a handful of very wealthy people, not college graduates in general.

The nail barely thudded into the coffin of Congress' failed super committee Monday before all sides launched a barrage of blame, signaling what may be a year-long showdown over fiscal responsibility and fairness amid the Occupy Wall Street movement.

On Saturday, Justice Clarence Thomas spoke at the opening of a local history museum in the small Georgia town where he grew up. Normally, this kind of return of a town’s most famous native son would be unremarkable, but this particular museum plays a supporting role in the ongoing saga of Justice Thomas’ ethical scandals:

This afternoon at the newly cleared, heavily patrolled, and sparkling (Christmas lights!) Zuccotti Park, a group of activists dressed in caps and gowns made from garbage bags and draped with paper chains announced the official launch of theOccupy Student Debt Campaign.

It’s a very strange experience to have your friends think you’ve gone crazy. Some will tell you so. Others will indulgently humor you. Still others will avoid you. More than a few will demand that the authorities do something to get you off the streets. During one unpleasant moment after I was fired from the think tank where I’d worked for the previous seven years, I tried to reassure my wife with an old cliché: “The great thing about an experience like this is that you learn who your friends really are.” She answered, “I was happier when I didn’t know.”

I think someone needs to explain to Karl Rove what the definition of fascism is. Poor Karl wasn't much happier when he appeared on Sean Hannity's show on Fox this Thursday than he was when interrupted by some Occupy Baltimore protesters the other night during a speech he gave at Johns Hopkins University.

Karl Rove Flips Out At Protesters: ‘Who Gave You The Right To Occupy America?’: