The move by GOP leaders to slash Amtrak's train routes that we warned about have apparently been derailed:The House, ignoring President Bush and the Republican leadership, voted Wednesday to reject planned slashes in Amtrak's budget that could have led to... More...
FACING SOUTH - Online Magazine of the Institute for Southern Studies
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June 2005 Archives
Many pundits –- especially on the political right -– are incensed about the Supreme Court’s recent verdict in Kelo v. City of New London, which backed the Connecticut town's use of eminent domain to take (with compensation) a woman’s house... More...
In what could become a landmark case, the state of Tennessee is going to federal court today seeking approval to cut back on coverage offered by the state-paid TennCare health program.Gov. Phil Bredesen (D) says the cut-backs will save the... More...
Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC), who was picked to accompany President Bush at Fort Bragg yesterday -- instead of the shunned colleage Rep. Walter Jones, whose district is closer -- is now claiming to have special knowledge about Iraq and Al... More...
Bush's "major policy address" on Iraq may have taken place in Fort Bragg's Ritz-Epps Sports Complex, but it had little to do with the 700 soldiers assembled there. They were just the backdrop, stage props for a speech aimed squarely... More...
As I write, President Bush is likely preparing for his fly-in photo-op to shore up support for the Iraq war which will be held at Fort Bragg, home of the 82nd Airborne and other units heavily deployed overseas.North Carolina may... More...
From South Knox Bubba:A federal appeals court has upheld some of Bush's changes to the EPA's “new source review” regulations that will allow industrial polluters, including power plants, to upgrade and expand their operations without updating existing pollution controls. Industry... More...
Gov. Jeb Bush has vetoed three bills designed to check the governor’s power to hand out multi-million-dollar contracts for state government work. The bills were passed nearly unanimously in the Republican-dominated legislature, raising the possibility that the legislature could vote... More...
The Hillsborough County (Fla.) commission recently voted “not to acknowledge, promote or participate in gay pride events.” Right after the July 15 vote, two gay literature displays in the Tampa public library were taken down (a similar display at another... More...
Courtesy of the Texas Observer:“I’ve already yielded more than a cheerleader at a drive-in.”—Sen. Kel Seliger (R-Amarillo) on the Senate floor.“I can’t define yours for you or you define mine for me. I don’t have a word-for-word description of it,... More...
Everyone has heard about Philadelphia, Mississippi, site of the 1964 killings of civil rights activists Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, but most of the suspects (including the triggerman, Wayne Roberts) were from Meridian, a town with its own... More...
One hundred years ago today in the city of Chicago, Eugene Debs, "Big Bill" Haywood, and other union leaders launched one of the most dynamic and radical efforts to organize workers in our country's history -- the Industrial Workers of... More...
[Ed. Note: It's that time of the week again -- time for more Friday Film Blogging from the Independent Weekly's David Fellerath.]I think one sign of a war’s maturity is when it starts to be a setting for movies. There’s... More...
Fresh off the anti-war awakening of Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), another North State Republican has given progressive bloggers something to chatter about. The Lincoln Tribune reports via Raw Story:CARY -- A candidate for North Carolina Chief Justice of the North... More...
Here at Facing South and the Institute, we've long been interested in the billions of dollars flowing to private military contractors. Halliburton, Custer Battles, and many other notorious contractors are based in the South, and the region as a whole... More...
This morning, Robert Orr -- a former North Carolina Supreme Court justice and leader of the conservative North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law -- filed a historic lawsuit seeking to block $225 million in subsidies awarded to Dell Inc. last... More...
Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), representing eastern North Carolina, has drawn fire from Republicans and praise from progressives for his growing opposition to the Iraq war. Today's Raleigh News & Observer reports another reason to like Jones: his opposition to rigged... More...
Disney, watch out: the Southern Baptists are coming! That's the announcement coming out of the Southern Baptist Convention being held this week:Southern US Baptists ended an eight-year boycott of the Walt Disney Company for violating "moral righteousness and traditional family... More...
[Ed. Note: Once again we welcome our resident film afficianado, David Fellerath, for some film blogging.]Readers of the Independent Weekly may have seen Peter Eichenberger’s impassioned and vividly metaphor-ized piece about Raleigh development and the ways in which developers are... More...
Tonight, the PBS show Frontline will broadcast "Private Warriors," what promises to be an excellent look into private contractors working in Iraq. From the Frontline website:FRONTLINE returns to Iraq, this time to embed with Halliburton/KBR, and to take a hard... More...
Tonight, the PBS show Frontline will be airing "Private Warriors," what promises to be an excellent look into the war profiteers in Iraq. Here's a description from the website: FRONTLINE returns to Iraq, this time to embed with Halliburton/KBR, and... More...
IMPORTANT! If you're not using this for a post, you MUST DELETE IT! -->... More...
Amtrak isn’t the only transportation system whose service to small-town and rural areas is at risk. “The Greyhound has always been the savior of small-town America,” notes the St. Petersburg Times. But not for long. The bus line is “streamlining”... More...
The recent spate of thefts and lost records at banks and credit companies, which have rendered millions of consumers vulnerable to fraud and identity theft, is nothing new. From Inner City Press:CitiFinancial on June 6 admitted that it has lost... More...
It's been at least a few hours since Gary or I blogged about the Senate lynching resolution scandal, so I feel moved to weigh in with one more thought, this one about the regional character of the Lackadaisical About Lynching... More...
It's been at least a few hours since Gary or I blogged about the Senate lynching resolution scandal, so I feel moved to weigh in with one more thought, this one about the regional character of the Lackadaisical About Lynching... More...
Bob Geary of the Independent Weekly reports that payday lending in North Carolina is alive and well. This upstanding “industry” preys on people living paycheck-to-paycheck, giving them “advances” on future wages with effective interest rates of up to 400 percent.... More...
Note that this is a recent mayor of Philadelphia, Miss. From the AP (via the Nashville Tennessean):The defense rested Monday in the trial of a former Ku Klux Klanman in the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers after a... More...
The Mobile Register has produced an excellent package of reports on mercury contamination in Alabama’s “Chemical Alley,” much of it originating at the Olin Corp.’s plant in McIntosh, Ala. The plant stopped using mercury to produced chlorine a quarter-century ago,... More...
(Apologies for slight overlap with previous post.)Here, courtesy of our new best friends, are some explanations for not supporting the lynching apology from a few of the dead-end Southern senators. Only Lamar Alexander was motivated to come up with a... More...
Just when the 13 Republican Senators who declined to co-sponsor the Senate's lynching apology resolution last week thought it was safe to poke their heads above the political parapet -- maybe a lazy June weekend would cause folks to forget?... More...
A tip of the hat to the New York Times for their kind mention of Facing South in the "What's Online" section this morning. For those who aren't registered or otherwise can't get to the piece, here's what they said:GOING... More...
This Sunday, June 19, African-Americans across the South and beyond (and others who recognize the holiday) will celebrate Juneteenth. This is the 140th anniversary of what many call "America's Second Independence Day," marking the day in 1865 -- over two... More...
I was at meetings in South Carolina the last two days -- meeting some great progressive advocates in the state -- and somehow Wednesday night found myself at a fundraiser for the Richland County Democratic Party in Columbia, the state... More...
Check out this piece (sub or day pass req’d) by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a joint Rolling Stone/Salon investigation into the federal government’s position on thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative in childhood vaccines. Despite strong links between thimerosal and the abrupt... More...
A U.S. House panel has recommended cutting funding for dozens of long-distance Amtrak routes through Mississippi. From the Clarion-Ledger:Meridian, Miss., Mayor John Robert Smith, former chairman of the Amtrak board, said the proposed cuts would amount to a dramatic lifestyle... More...
On the road today for meetings in South Carolina, blogging will be light. Some items from the news files to tide you over:THE LYNCHING CAUCUS: Raw Story pulls a piece from the Atlanta J-C website (with its hideous registration requirements)... More...
I didn’t intend to follow this story so closely, but you reach a point of no return…. Anyhow, the day in lynching news ends in confusion, as senators scramble to make excuses or claim they supported the resolution even if... More...
I started to write this in the comments, but it became too long for the main page. I suppose I should myself apologize for singling out a commenter, but it’s not like we get them every day here -- we... More...
See The Carpetbagger Report on the anti-lynching resolution’s chief Republican sponsor, George Allen (R-VA), who “started his career by keeping a Confederate flag and a noose in his law office.” He has also called the NAACP an “extremist group” and,... More...
The U.S. Senate has apologized for not passing anti-lynching legislation when it was really needed -- say, 70, 80, 90 years ago, when some of the 4700 lives that were taken in lynchings across the country might have been saved.... More...
Today the excellent Center for Responsible Lending -- based here in Durham, N.C. -- announced a major court victory out of Georgia in the ongoing battle to rein in predatory bankers, especially pay-day lending operations.At issue were "rent-a-banks" -- shady... More...
DKos has the latest on increasing U.S. public support for a pullout of Iraq, as well as rising sentiment that the war just wasn't worth it:Gallup finds Americans much more likely to favor reducing U.S. troops in Iraq than increasing... More...
The scandal-ridden military contractors now in Iraq may have proved less than reliable in doing the jobs for which they have received billions of dollars in taxpayer money, but they have shown an indomitable spirit and resolve in the pursuit... More...
Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) -- the conservative congressman who earlier this month voiced his reservations about the Iraq war -- is now turning his anti-war crusade up a notch. As the AP reports:A Republican congressman who voted for the Iraq... More...
Yesterday brought news that's becoming all too familiar in western North Carolina:Furniture Brands International Inc. is giving further details of its planned closing of its Thomasville Furniture Industries' plants in Davidson County and sister plants in western North Carolina, resulting... More...
[Once again, please welcome guest blogger David Fellerath, movie critic extraordinaire for the Independent Weekly]More Max Mail: I got an email from my friend D.B. about my Slate piece on Max Baer and Cinderella Man. D.B. suggests that the inspiring... More...
As reported in yesterday's Facing South email newsletter, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) -- a former telephone company executive -- has introduced a bill that would ban free or low-cost "Community Internet" across the country.The bill, heavily backed by the telecommunications... More...
Today, Citigroup -- the world's largest financial services company -- announced a $2 billion settlement in an investor lawsuit over the company's involvement in the Enron scandal. These settlements are getting to be old hat for Citi:The class-action settlement is... More...
Today marks Facing South's 4-month anniversary in the blogosphere. It was four months ago that we posted our manifesto about the need for a fresh new take on key issues and prospects for progressive change in the South.Four months --... More...
Here's the Institute Index for this week's issue of the Institute's Facing South email newsletter. If you don't already get it, sign up in the upper right hand corner -- it's free!INSTITUTE INDEX - Fiddling While the World BurnsSquare miles... More...
President Bush recently condemned South Korean researchers who developed a process for cloning human embryos: “I'm very concerned about cloning. I worry about a world in which cloning becomes accepted.”Sure. He’s probably just jealous. After all, there’s plenty of cloning... More...
The SEC lawsuit against HealthSouth for accounting fraud has been settled, the company agreeing to pay the government $100 million, less than a sixth of its annual cash flow. The Birmingham News points out that both Time Warner and Qwest... More...
Remember the Lincoln Bedroom -- that place in the White House which President Clinton supposedly turned into a den of scandal and disrepute with sleep-overs by soft-money contributors?In the late 1990s Clinton's Lincoln BR guestlist ranked just behind Monica and... More...
The Galveston Daily News reports on more Tom DeLay-related unpleasantness. Back in the 1990s, Saipan, capital of the Northern Marianas Islands, a U.S. territory, was the site of quite a racket for the garment industry. Companies could import workers and... More...
The latest of many possible candidates for the Supreme Court to have his name floated is Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). It’s pretty clear what kind of justice Cornyn would be. He’s been a good soldier for the Bush machine in... More...
We're a little late in posting it, but the Raleigh News & Observer ran a good story on Sunday about how Durham is grappling with the cross burnings in the city two weeks ago. The piece quotes the legendary historian... More...
As announced here at Facing South and over at DKos, we're looking for a few good Southern bloggers. Lots of them, in fact.Here at the Institute for Southern Studies -- your favorite think tank/act tank work for progressive change in... More...
Virginia is emerging as hot political turf this year. The Richmond Times-Dispatch (via Political Wire) reports that "Almost overlooked in last year's presidential race, Virginia will be treated as a battleground state by the national political parties" for this year’s... More...
Yesterday, media flocked to a story that, as the Associated Press reports, "Federal agents raided a migrant farm labor camp where homeless men and women were kept in what labor officials called a version of modern-day slavery."Officials said homeless people... More...
The Louisiana coast may be rapidly sinking into the Gulf of Mexico. And Texas may be next. But how fast, and why?That's the debate stirred by a lead story in today's Houston Chronicle, which cites a new NOAA report that... More...
[Ed. Note: We're once again pleased to welcome one of our favorite film critics, David Fellerath of the Independent Weekly in Durham, N.C., for a round of Friday Film Blogging.]Documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald has launched a cottage industry of making... More...
David Sirota has a good piece at The American Prospect that deflates the hot air of self-congratulation filling the media in the wake of Deep Throat's unveiling. While the talk shows and newspapers herald the Golden Age of investigative journalism... More...
Here's a news story from last week that deserves more attention: when Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) offered her amendment to the defense spending bill calling on President Bush to submit a plan for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq,... More...
The L.A. Times reports on a little gift to the energy industry Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran snuck into the emergency military spending bill signed by the president this month. This provision (see this post for more details) allows drilling for... More...
And Nico at Think Progess tells us why:Exxon’s execs have it rough these days. As Fortune Magazine reported, “If oil simply stays where it is now, Exxon’s cash could approach $40 billion in 12 months. By then [Exxon’s CEO Lee... More...
Wachovia Corp., the biggest bank in these parts (the Carolinas) and one of the biggest in the nation after a merger/acquisition spree in the past few years, just apologized for its involvement in slavery.It wasn’t Wachovia itself, which didn’t exist... More...
They exhumed the body of Emmett Till yesterday. The all-white jury that acquitted his killers reportedly did so in part because they couldn’t be certain the body fished out of the Mississippi was really Till. Apparently 1955 Mississippi was so... More...
For those in the North Carolina Triangle area, our friend Mandy Carter at Southerners On New Ground has more details on the Unity Rally that will be held this Sunday in Durham in response to last week's cross burnings:DURHAM UNITY... More...
The North Carolina House has postponed its vote on the proposed two-year death penalty moratorium until later this month, because its backers can’t muster quite enough support. It’s worth noting that, while the moratorium movement is certainly full of death... More...
June 1 marks the first day of Atlantic Hurricane Season, and in the wake of last year's destruction at the hands of Charlie, Frances and Jeanne, things don't look good for 2005:Earlier this spring, forecasters predicted another bad hurricane season.... More...
The right-wing WorldNetDaily reports on a resolution being mulled by the Southern Baptist Convention "calling for church members to pull their children out of public schools." The resolution further asks churches to "lovingly warn all of their members concerning the... More...
Today, years of battle over the death penalty will come to a head as the North Carolina House will vote on whether to pause executions for two to three years -- a move endorsed by hundreds of municipalities and organizations... More...
