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In Trevor Paglen's new book, Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World, he investigates the "off the map" locations of covert government activity, including the "salt pit" in Kabul where Khaled El-Masri was held.
Ben Wizner, from the ACLU's National Security Project, is El-Masri's lawyer and he joins Paglen in studio with Laura to talk about black sites, government secrecy, and why anything goes when prisoners are taken off the map.

Seth Wessler joins us, along with Irasema Garza, president of Legal Momentum, Wanda Fossett with Community Voices Heard, and Carmen Cordero, welfare rights activist with the Hartford-based group Vecinos Unidos. They discuss food stamps, poverty, and why this might be the best opportunity we have to rebuild the social safety net.

Obama's preparing for his first State of the Union speech, and we're wondering if once again he's going to try to be all things to all people. After all, on the campaign trail he dismissed talk of a spending freeze, only to adopt that language a year into his administration, and with the economic team he's still using, he's starting to remind us of the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton--who may have slashed the deficit, but did so on the back of his "welfare reform.

John Perkins and Russ Baker talk about shady global conspiracies, corporate overlords, and the military-industrial complex, and what we can do about it. In the new film "Collapse," filmmaker Chris Smith follows Michael Ruppert, a former Los Angeles police officer who predicted the economic crisis. But his theories often range into the apocalyptic. Is he a genius, or just paranoid? A video from New America Media takes a look at the struggles of veterans to readjust to civilian life, and asks what more we could be doing to truly honor them.