Eight years ago, Wal-Mart employee Debbie Shank was hit by a semi-truck, leaving her severely brain damaged and confined to a wheelchair. Last September, her son was killed in Iraq — a fact she has to be constantly reminded of since the accident left her virtually without any short-term memory.

Wal-Mart paid for her medical fees, but after Shank won $1 million from a lawsuit against the trucking company, her former employer sued her to recoup its medical expenses, despite the fact the settlement left her only $417,000 after legal fees:

But a clause in the retailer’s benefits agreement says the store can recoup medical fees paid if an injured employee receives damages from a lawsuit. Wal-Mart, which earned more than $11 billion in profits last year, sued Shank for $470,000, and won.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann has begun a campaign against Wal-Mart, tagging the company one of his “Worst Persons in the World” for four straight nights. Olbermann says he will keep reminding people of “what they’re supporting when they go to Wal-Mart. And we’ll do it nightly, and indefinitely.”

Watch a compilation of Olbermann’s “Worst Person” designations for Wal-Mart:

Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley, who called Debbie Shank’s case “unbelievably sad,” said in a statement: “Wal-Mart’s plan is bound by very specific rules. … We wish it could be more flexible in Mrs. Shank’s case since her circumstances are clearly extraordinary, but this is done out of fairness to all associates who contribute to, and benefit from, the plan.”

Chris Hayes and Ezra Klein both hail this Gawker Media writer revolt.

I like industrial action myself, but if it’s really true as Felix Salmon reports that Valleywag writers get paid $9.75 per thousand pageviews then I’m not necessarily that sympathetic. If I got paid on that scale, I’m pretty sure I’d be making a lot more money than my current salary pays. I mean, it’s nice not to feel under the gun the way a per-pageview salary structure would leave me, but I’d gladly give up that feeling of relief in order to double my take home pay.

Today Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) stopped at his alma mater, Episcopal High School in Virginia, to lecture on the importance of teaching and the honor code. McCain’s toughest question came from student Katelyn Halldorson, who called the senator out for the political motivations of his appearance:

“I think judging by the amount of press representatives here and also by the integration of your previous political endorsements in your earlier personal narrative, we can see that this isn’t completely absent – er political motivation isn’t completely absent,” she said. “Yet we were told that this isn’t a political event. So what exactly is your purpose in being here – not that I don’t appreciate the opportunity, but I’d just like some clarification.”

“I knew I should have cut this thing off. This meeting is over,” McCain joked, before launching into a long description of his biography tour…

McCain concluded the visit by saying, “I hope that attendance here was not compulsory…I apologize if you were unwillingly in attendance here.”

According to one EHS staff member, attendance was required.

McCain doesn’t seem to know how to handle his youngest critics. Earlier in the campaign, a student chastised him for his refusal to support gay marriage. McCain called another student asking about the senator’s age “a little jerk,” adding, “You’re drafted.”

Given the general fogginess of his strategy thinking, it comes as no surprise to see that both John McCain and his key advisor Randy Scheunemann don’t really seem to have any understanding of the fighting that played out in Basra over the weekend. All of McCain’s thinking about Iraq seems dominated by a desire to achieve “victory” and, consequently, he’s unable to grapple with the reality of a multifaceted situation.

For some reason he thinks that helping Nouri al-Maliki help Iranian-backed militias fight other Shiite militias constitutes rolling back Iranian influence and al-Qaeda. Because, basically, he thinks Iran is bad and al-Qaeda is bad, whereas we are good. Maliki is working with us, so he must be good, too, and whoever he’s fighting must be the bad guys — i.e., al-Qaeda and Iran. Nevermind that this has little relationship to reality, it fits with McCain’s desire to see an honorable struggle in which we eventually prevail through gritty determination.

Elizabeth Edwards and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) have both survived cancer — breast cancer and melanoma, respectively. But as Edwards observed this week, “Neither one of us would be covered by his [McCain's] health policy.”

In response, McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin criticized Edwards, saying her comments were “disappointing” and a misunderstanding of McCain’s “comprehensive” plan:

[Holtz-Eakin] said Saturday that Edwards’ comments were disappointing and that they revealed she did not understand the comprehensive nature of the senator’s proposal.

Holtz-Eakin said McCain’s policy would harness “the power of competition to produce greater coverage for Americans.” Because McCain’s plan would lower the cost of healthcare through competition, Holtz-Eakin said, it would reduce costs for consumers with or without preexisting conditions.

McCain’s plan, which largely extends the failures of the President Bush’s health care approach and gives insurance companies a pass, is hardly “comprehensive.” Today on the Wonk Room, Edwards responds to Holtz-Eakin, noting that McCain’s plan shuts Americans “outside the clinic doors”:

I freely admit that I am confused about the role of overnight funding in repurchase markets in the collapse of Bear Stearns. What I am not confused about is John McCain’s health care proposal. Apparently Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior policy advisor to McCain, thinks I do “not understand the comprehensive nature of the senator’s proposal.”

The problem, Douglas, is that, despite fuzzy language and feel-good lines in the Senator’s proposal, I do understand exactly how devastating it will be to people who have the health conditions with which the Senator and I are confronted (melanoma for him, breast cancer for me) but do not have the financial resources we have. In very unconfusing language: they are left outside the clinic doors.

Ten million Americans live with cancer today, and three of four families will help care for a family member with cancer. But health experts note that cancer survivors are routinely denied insurance when they try to purchase insurance as individuals.

“As one of those [voters] with a pre-existing condition, I sure would like some straight talk,” writes Edwards. Read her full response at the Wonk Room.

Our corporate sisters at National Journal are doing a breakfast event tomorrow featuring surrogates for each presidential campaign and moderators Linda Douglass with Ron Brownstein and Chuck Todd beginning at 8 at the Columbus Club at Union Station. You can RSVP here if you’re so inclined.

Representing John McCain will be Lindsey Graham with Evan Bayh for Clinton and Dick Durbin for Barack Obama. I find the Clinton campaign’s undying affection for Bayh, a thoroughly unimpressive centrist favorite, to be telling.

The New York Times reports today:

The political season continues to be very good to CNN, which will officially announce on Tuesday that for the first time since 2001, it managed to beat the Fox News Channel in prime time for one quarter of the year in the category of news viewers most desirable to advertisers, according to Nielsen. Thanks to its debate coverage and heavy focus on the presidential primaries, CNN’s ratings in prime time for viewers 25 to 54 were up 90 percent, to an average of 453,000 for the first quarter of 2008. That was enough to edge past the perennial leader, Fox, which had 438,000 viewers, up 12 percent from last year.