Since the health care debate began, advocacy groups, including the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza, have been arguing for a public option and for health care that's affordable for all their members. But will they be successful in using a civil rights organizing platform to affect the health care debate? For a primer on whether or not affordable health care can be considered a fundamental human right, we turn to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. We also hear from Hilary Shelton, the NAACP's senior vice president for advocacy and policy and director of its Washington bureau. And we talk to Jennifer Ng’andu, deputy director of health policy at the National Council of La Raza.

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) is still the chairman of the influential House Ways and Means Committee, despite the fact that House Republicans voted to oust him from the chair. As expected, the move failed on a near party-line vote. But that doesn't mean Rangel is out of the hot seat. Todd Zwillich, The Takeaway's Washington correspondent, has the story.

• There seems to be no end to the lavish bonuses that Wall St. firms – even previously struggling firms – continue handing out to their top employees. Even Merrill Lynch executives stand to make millions of dollars in extra pay this January, despite working for a bank that faltered and was bought by Bank of America. Finance reporter Louise Story breaks the story in today's New York Times: "In Merrill’s Failed Plan, Lessons for Pay Czar."

America's pastime has headed into the post-season. Baseball's playoffs are underway; last night the Dodgers beat the St. Louis Cardinals 5-3 in the first game of their series. The New York Yankees spanked the Minnesota Twins, who had stayed up late the night before fighting off the Detroit Tigers. The Takeaway's Sports correspondent, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, recaps all the night's highlights.

How far back in your family tree can you go? Most people draw blanks if asked to go farther back than their great-grandparents. Our two guests, Rachel Swarns, Washington correspondent for The New York Times, and Megan Smolenyak, a genealogist, were able to discover details about Michelle Obama's ancestry that even the first lady didn't know.

For more, read Rachel Swarns' and Jodi Kantor's article, "In First Lady’s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery," in The New York Times.

The grandson of infamous dictator Joseph Stalin has hauled a Russian newspaper into court alleging they defamed the reputation of the former Soviet leader. The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes was in the courtroom; he joins us with the details.

As we've brought more phones, laptops and assorted gadgetry into our lives, we've gotten used to bringing along all the cords, chargers and batteries necessary to keep them powered up. Today we're looking at new technologies to provide power to our electronics without the wires. Eric Giler, CEO of WiTricity, and The Takeaway's tech contributor Farhad Manjoo, who also covers technnology for Slate.com, say wireless power may still be a few years away from mainstream usage...but it's on the way.  

The United Nations Security Council will vote today to reauthorize the mandate for international forces in Afghanistan. Forty-two countries have troops in Afghanistan in numbers small and large, ranging from Singapore's two soldiers to Britain's 9,000. We're spending the week on the now eight-year-old war in Afghanistan; today we look at the role international forces are playing and how well U.S. forces and international allies are working together. Evelyn Farkas is a senior fellow with the American Security Project, a public policy organization. She was part of a NATO delegation with the International Security Assistance Force that just returned from Afghanistan this week. We also speak to BBC defense and security correspondent Nick Childs in London, and BBC correspondent Tristana Moore in Berlin.

Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office delivered its final estimates on the Senate Finance Committee's proposed health care reform bill. The CBO estimates the bill will cost $829 billion over 10 years – way less than the expected $1 trillion price tag – and is considered deficit-neutral. For more on the dollars and sense behind health care reform, we talk to The Takeaway's Washington correspondent, Todd Zwilich.

Google wants the world to be able read books online for free. That's great news for readers, but if reading books is free, how do authors get paid? Is the future of books neither paperback nor hardbound, but online? New York Times finance reporter Louise Story explains how authors are supposed to get paid in Google's brave new publishing world.

It's no secret that more low-income American families than ever before are facing foreclosure. But there's a new problem that is making it even tougher for those families to navigate housing court: a national shortage of free legal aid attorneys to represent them. Melanca Clark is an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice, which published a report yesterday called "Foreclosures: A Crisis in Legal Representation." The report discusses the challenges facing homeowners trying to navigate the lending system without legal representation. We also talk to Atlanta legal aid attorney Sarah Bolling about having to turn away clients.

Today in Stockholm, the Nobel prize committee announced that Romanian-born German poet Herta Muller has won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature. Muller is the author of such books as "The Land of Green Plums" and "The Appointment: A Novel." We speak to Patrik Henry Bass, books editor for Essence magazine, about why American authors so rarely win what is arguably the literary world's most coveted prize.

A heated debate has emerged in parenting circles: Should kids be allowed to walk to school? In 1969, nearly 50% of kids walked. Today, that number has dropped to 13%, with many parents arguing that it’s just too dangerous nowadays to let kids walk. Are they right? The Takeaway's correspondent, Andrea Bernstein, was at the Walk21 NYC conference yesterday in New York to talk with people about urban planning strategies for city walking. We also talk to Gina Lovasi, from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, about the health implications. Jeremiah Weintraub, a fifth-grader from West Virginia who's been riding his bike to school for over two years, joins us with his thoughts on the matter.

In the eyes of Yankees fans, Derek Jeter earned his hefty salary last night with a two-run homer that helped the Yankees cement a 7-2 win against the Minnesota Twins in the first game in their series. The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the St. Louis Cardinals 5-3 in game 1 of that playoff. Wall St. Journal sports reporter Nando di Fino joins us with a look at last night's playoff games.