Yvelot Brianville, 24, lies quietly on a steel hospital gurney, a boyish naval officer in blue combat fatigues standing by his side. The officer, Lt. Cmdr. Mill Etienne, 34, is Haitian, fluent in Creole. He is also a neurologist, called to the intensive-care ward of this floating U.S. Navy hospital just off the coast of Port-au-Prince to assess the impact of Haiti's earthquake on one man's spine.

Some union leaders think that the Supreme Court ruling in the case of Citizens United v. FEC -- which essentially takes the limits off campaign spending -- will give them the same flexibility and freedom to influence the process as it does corporations.

Through treacherous floods and military coups, Gale Hull's organization Partners in Development has provided medical services to Haiti's poor. The group's clinic is still standing despite the devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake, but there's no medical team there. Hull is just one of thousands of people eager to get into Haiti to help, but whose efforts have been delayed by communications outages and the country's crumbled infrastructure.

With prospects for national healthcare reform dimming following Tuesday's election in Massachusetts, a major bill that would establish universal healthcare, through a Medicare-for-all style reform, has been cleared today for a new vote in the California legislature.

Kyle Martin has traveled to Haiti since he was 12 years old as part of local mission groups. Now 26 and a second-year osteopathic medical student at Michigan State University, he has traveled to the impoverished Caribbean nation eight times in the past year to work at a medical clinic in Gressier, a town southwest of Port-au-Prince.

More than 7,000 nurses in the United States have volunteered to go to Haiti to help injured survivors of the devastating earthquake.