In what's being called an "unusual request," Houston Mayor Bill White has asked the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to grant a hearing before a judge on the latest permit application for a Houston petrochemical refinery, citing concerns over its... More...

The rebuilding requests that Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas presented during last week's congressional hearing on the post-Ike recovery has generated so much controversy that the local paper has published an editorial trying to assure readers that it did not... More...

At Facing South, we've provided you with extensive coverage of how the elections are playing out in three key battleground states: Florida, North Carolina and Virginia.Over the last two weeks, each has become an even bigger battleground -- and are... More...

Thanks to you, our loyal readers, for making September a record-setting month here at Facing South.Yesterday we cleared 50,000 unique visitors for the month, and are closing in on a total of 100,000 visits (we're now at 96,000+) and 350,000... More...

The U.S. House voted 228-205 to axe the proposed $700 billion finance industry bailout today. How did the vote go down in the South?Of the 141 members of the Southern delegation in the House, the South's representatives voted against the... More...

A new poll fresh from Public Policy Polling re-affirms what we argued last week: that North Carolina has emerged as a critical battleground state for 2008, with Obama pulling ahead.Here are the numbers of the new PPP poll, results just... More...

As today's economic news centers on the fate of Congress' $700 billion Wall Street bailout package (defeated), what's the picture further down the economic ladder?Earlier this month, the unemployment rate nationally reached a 5-year high, over 6%. To see how... More...

After years of decline, the number of U.S. coal miners suffering from dreaded black lung disease appears to be rising again -- and the increase seems to be especially dramatic in southern Appalachia, the Times West Virginian reports:About 36 percent... More...

Record numbers of voters have registered for the 2008 elections. But that will soon come to a close as registration deadlines loom across the South and the country.Most Southern voters must register in the next week or sooner; 10 out... More...

Danny Funderburk is mayor of Fort Mill, South Carolina (population 9,400). And he insists he doesn't have anything against Sen. Barack Obama personally -- but he is "curious" if Obama is the antichrist, reports the Charlotte Observer:Fort Mill Mayor Danny... More...

North Carolina -- the second-biggest banking center in the country -- continues to be hammered by the global financial crisis. Today, reports are confirming rumors floating over the weekend that Charlotte-based Wachovia, the 4th-largest bank in the U.S., will be... More...

Who watched yesterday's presidential debate held in Mississippi? According to Nielson TV ratings, lots of people in battleground states like Colorado, Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia.Another interesting finding: Half of the 10 biggest markets for the debate were in the... More...

The latest news on the climate front is alarming: According to an annual report released this week by the Australia-based Global Carbon Project, carbon emitted worldwide in 2007 from burning fossil fuels and producing cement increased 2.9 percent over the... More...

In the last few weeks, we've heard a lot about the impact of the finance industry's meltdown on Wall Street. But what about Tryon Street? That's the main avenue running through Charlotte, North Carolina that is headquarters to a vast... More...

Residents of Galveston's storm-devastated public housing projects have been ordered to clear their belongings out by today -- but they're still waiting for answers about where they're supposed to go.A reporter with the Galveston Daily News visited the city's housing... More...

Confused about the financial meltdown and Wall Street bailout? We asked economist Dr. Robert Pollin for his take on the situation. Dr. Pollin is a widely-respected professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University... More...

Facing South’s bi-weekly listing features new books about the U.S. South and books written by Southern writers.Blue Dixie: Awakening the South’s Democratic Majority by Bob Moser, 274 pages, Times Books, (August 2008)From the publisher: In 2000 and 2004, the Democratic... More...

At DailyKos, we cross-posted a piece based on our two earlier posts on surprising developments in North Carolina that have made it a key battleground state. It's now the top-ranked diary at DailyKos and has generated lots of good discussion.Part III... More...

When Hurricane Gustav hit the U.S. Gulf Coast earlier this month, it ruined hundreds of cottages in southern Mississippi that were provided to residents left homeless three years ago by Katrina. So far, more than 230 of the so-called "Katrina... More...

Facing South has been following on the numerous campaigns to franchise former felons happening around the South this election season.The South has always been disproportionately impacted by felon disenfranchisement, and with the legacies of voter suppression and Jim Crow, a... More...

Yesterday, Iwrote about North Carolina's sudden surge to prominence -- to the surprise of pundits nation-wide -- as a key battleground state in the 2008 presidential election. NC's status just jumped a notch today with the release of a Rasmussen Reports... More...

A nationwide mobilization will launch this weekend to address America's deepening environmental and economic crises. Green Jobs Now, a national day of action set for Saturday, Sept. 27, will feature hundreds of grassroots events across the country calling on our... More...

In towns along the Texas Gulf Coast, residents continue to rebuild following Hurricane Ike. The Houston Chronicle reports that Ike’s destruction is sparking one of the largest rebuilding efforts the state has seen in decades, and much of this work... More...

With the election just 40 days away -- and early voting already underway -- both the McCain and Obama campaigns are now tightening up their list of target states. Each side is focusing campaign appearances and advertising dollars only on... More...

The Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Disaster Recovery held a hearing yesterday featuring testimony from Texas and Louisiana leaders about the impact hurricanes Gustav and Ike had on their states. While those testifying noted improved cooperation with the federal government... More...

There are many events that set us on the path to the current crisis on Wall Street, but one is a steady march of deregulation in the finance sector over the last generation.The Center for Responsive Politics looks at the... More...

House leaders announced yesterday that they plan to let a quarter-century ban on expanded offshore oil drilling expire next week, and the Senate is expected to follow suit, the Associated Press reports:"The White House has made it clear they will... More...

In a major victory for civil rights groups, the Department of Justice has announced it won't be stationing criminal prosecutors at polls on Election Day.This is a big shift for the DOJ. As the AP notes:The move reverses a decades-long... More...

How much is $700 billion, the estimated cost of the Wall Street bailout?Put it this way: if the bailout were a country, it would be the 17th largest economy in the world -- bigger than the annual Gross Domestic Product... More...

More than two-thirds of North Carolina residents support offshore drilling for oil and gas, according to an Elon University poll released yesterday. But given the misleading claims about drilling made recently by some of the state's elected officials, we suspect... More...

Activists and lawyers are scrambling to get an 11th-hour stay of execution for a Georgia man due to be put to death tonight, despite strong doubts over his conviction, reports the AFP. Death row prisoner Troy Davis, a 39-year-old African-American... More...

As Facing South has previously reported, civil rights groups and other advocacy organizations have been working to register ex-felons and to educate the greater public around felony disenfranchisement laws. In Alabama, a grassroots coalition began registering voters in the most... More...

The nation added about a half-million immigrants in 2007, down from about 1.8 million the year before, according to estimates released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. Analyzing the newest census data, USA Today reports that immigrants are migrating in... More...

In the wake of the Wall Street meltdown, there seems to be a growing consensus that the free-rolling days of financial deregulation are a big part of the problem. Even Sen. John McCain is now calling for more regulation.But not... More...

Nuclear power foes are celebrating a small victory this week: In the wake of last Wednesday's national call-in day against unlimited taxpayer loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors, the so-called "Gang of 20" senators who were pushing a bipartisan compromise... More...

Barack Obama isn't willing to give up on North Carolina. In fact, the Obama has been investing precious energy and resources in the state.Consider the evidence:* Sen. Obama drew a crowd of more than 15,000 in a Sunday speech in... More...

The federal Environmental Protection Agency is expected to rule as early as today that it won't set a drinking-water safety standard for perchlorate, a chemical found in rocket fuel that has been linked to thyroid problems in pregnant women, babies... More...

Hurricanes, flooding, and coastal erosion continue to threaten many indigenous communities across coastal Louisiana. Albert Naquin, chief of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians on Isle de Jean Charles in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, says it's time for the island's remaining residents to move... More...

Election 2008 has arrived. Even though there hasn't been a single presidential debate yet, thousands of voters will start casting their ballots this week as early voting kicks off in several states. USA Today reports:Residents of Virginia, Kentucky and Georgia... More...

According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, the country’s large disaster-response charities are not equipped to respond adequately to a catastrophic event like Hurricane Katrina or a major earthquake, or to address fully the need for food... More...

Scattered across walls throughout Southwest Central Durham, North Carolina is a series of murals, depicting people in the community, images of divinity and local civil rights leaders, situated in visible cultural landmarks -- from the walls of elementary schools to... More...

An American Civil Liberties Union survey released this week found local South Carolina election officials don’t know enough details about allowing ex-felons to vote in South Carolina.The ACLU, which has conducted similar surveys in 20 states and the South Carolina... More...

The U.S. House of Representatives passed compromise legislation this week that would allow oil and gas drilling past the 50-mile mark off the nation's coast with the agreement of the state involved. It would also boost funds for alternative energy... More...

Following up on our post yesterday, here's a table showing where the McCain and Obama campaigns are putting their TV ad dollars. Florida and Virginia remain top-tier battleground states. Both campaigns are also putting respectable resources into North Carolina -- a... More...

Florida isn't just a presidential battleground state. Three new polls released in quick succession suggest that it is the quintessential swing state -- since all three remarkably show McCain and Obama exactly tied.First came a CNN/Time poll, results published yesterday:McCain... More...

ABC News has an excellent piece on the danger posed by ID-matching rules that will be used this November in states across the country, the most recent addition being Florida.States are matching the names in their newly-developed centralized voter databases... More...

by Louisiana Family Recovery CorpsGuest ContributorThe Louisiana Family Recovery Corps is strongly encouraging local, state and federal leaders to focus on the realities of long-term human recovery as they plan and implement human service efforts around Hurricanes Ike and Gustav... More...

Community organizers across Florida are working hard this election season to register former felons after Florida changed the rules last year to restore the voting rights of about 112,000 former convicts.From the New York Times:Felony disenfranchisement — often a holdover... More...

In the impoverished areas of North Houston, life after Hurricane Ike has been even more of a struggle. Across Houston, illegal immigrants, who already live on the fringes of society, are afraid to ask for help for fear of being... More...

Aside from campaign stops, one of the best ways to tell if a candidate thinks a state is really still in play is TV advertising. If they keep buying ads, it's a sign the campaign thinks it's still at least... More...

Today, Mississippi's state Supreme Court will hear oral arguments about whether state election officials acted improperly by putting the hotly-contested race to replace Sen. Trent Lott (R) at the bottom of the ballot.Earlier this year, Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann... More...

The storms that have impacted and changed the lives of so many along the Gulf Coast, devastating agriculture, housing and infrastructure, have left much of the Caribbean in crisis this season as well. During Facing South’s coverage of Hurricane Gustav,... More...

Haitian grassroots activists in Florida are denouncing a new Florida election rule that will force residents to present identification that matches a state or federal database in order to register to vote. Facing South has previously reported on Florida's controversial decision to... More...

This image, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Response and Restoration, shows oil streaming south from point sources in an Ike-inundated wetland near Galveston, Texas. OR&R says that while it's still early in the damage assessment phase,... More...

The Christian Science Monitor reports that the humanitarian relief effort in the Texas Gulf Coast has kicked into gear, but there have been some noted problems:Few, if any supplies, had been distributed more than 24 hours after Ike made landfall,... More...

A series of mishaps that occurred during a recent refueling outage at Duke Energy's Oconee nuclear plant near Greenville, S.C. exposed workers to dangerous levels of radiation, the Union of Concerned Scientists reports.On April 12, the plant shut down for... More...

As the result of coverage by Facing South and a few other media outlets about the decision to not evacuate over 1,000 inmates and staff of the Galveston County jail for Hurricane Ike, officials are now reassuring the public that... More...

The U.S. House of Representatives opens debate today on compromise legislation that would end the almost 40-year-old moratorium on new offshore drilling for oil and natural gas. The measure, which would allow drilling 50 miles offshore with a state's approval,... More...

Just as FEMA and other government officials were finishing patting themselves on the back for the heralded response to Hurricane Gustav -- which still had plenty of problems; see our coverage here -- Ike has revealed still-deep flaws in our... More...

Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas yesterday ordered city employees not to talk to reporters, the Galveston County Daily News reports. Only she and City Manager Steve LeBlanc are now allowed to address the media.Thomas also said reporters would be allowed... More...

The Galveston County Daily News reports that health conditions on Galveston Island are deteriorating in the wake of Hurricane Ike.Mosquitos and the diseases they carry are a growing concern; one man suffering from about 1,000 mosquito bites had to be... More...

While the post-Ike news coverage has focused largely on the destruction wrought in Galveston and Houston, the storm also caused extensive damage to the coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama -- even into the panhandle of Florida.Ike's floodwaters are... More...

Information continues to be scarce about the over 1,000 inmates in the Galveston County, Texas jail who were inexplicably not evacuated for Hurricane Ike.A report in yesterday's Galveston County Daily News echoes our report that the inmates appear to be... More...

The Galveston area of Texas that took a direct hit from Hurricane Ike is home to a top-level biodefense laboratory that studies highly contagious and deadly diseases including bird flu, but lab officials are assuring the public that the pathogens... More...

The Houston Chronicle reports that the Federal Emergency Management Agency came under fire Sunday as emergency workers were left undernourished and dozens of trucks of water and food had yet to be set up at distribution centers around Houston and... More...

I cross-posed our piece at DailyKos yesterday on the Galveston County jail's decision to not evacuate 1,000 inmates despite a mandatory evacuation order for the city and warnings that those who remained in the area faced "certain death."The story became... More...

Texas-based blog Grits for Breakfast is covering the shocking news that Galveston Island's sheriff -- despite official warnings that those who stayed in Galveston faced "certain death" -- refused to evacuate at least 1,000 people in the county jail.People in... More...

The news so far: Hurricane Ike pounded through southeast Texas early this morning packing winds of more than 110 mph at a strong Category 2 storm. Thousands of homes and government buildings have been flooded, roads made impassable by washouts,... More...

As Facing South reported earlier this week, deportation concerns rank high amongst immigrants evacuating this latest round of Gulf Coast hurricanes. Undocumented immigrants along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast have resisted mandatory evacuation orders out of fear they could be arrested... More...

Florida has found the 3,500 missing ballots. According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:Investigators searching for nearly 3,500 missing ballots from the Aug. 26 election say they have located a "substantial number" -- and perhaps nearly all -- of the unaccounted-for... More...

Hurricane Ike is pushing its way into Texas today and tomorrow, and already hundreds of thousands of people have evacuated to further inland locations. The National Weather Service issued a warning to people living in small houses on Galveston Island... More...

Communities across coastal Louisiana are facing serious environmental contamination in the wake of Hurricane Gustav, according to an assessment released this week by the Louisiana Environmental Action Network.Wilma Subra, a chemist who serves as a technical advisor to LEAN, toured... More...

Updates continually added ... keep sending them in!Travel across any area that's about to get hit by, or has already suffered a blow from, a hurricane, and you'll find signs of an under-appreciated literary genre: Storm Poetry.Usually spray-painted on a... More...

Philip MatteraGuest bloggerThe phrase repeatedly chanted at the recent Republican convention — “Drill, Baby, Drill” — now sounds pornographic in the wake of the new sex and money scandal involving oil drilling companies and the federal agency that is supposed... More...

The 2008 elections are about more than the White House and Congress. With 13 states nationally facing new critical budget shortfalls -- including four in the South -- the battle for state legislatures will be intense this November.The National Conference... More...

This week a federal appeals court overturned the conviction of reputed Ku Klux Klan member James Ford Seale, who was serving three life sentences for his role in the 1964 abduction and killing of Charles E. Moore and Henry H.... More...

According to a new report by the Homeland Security Department's office of inspector general, the federal government wasted millions of dollars on four no-bid contracts it handed out for Hurricane Katrina recovery work, the Associated Press reports.Investigators examined temporary housing... More...

Tomorrow, the 2008 Values Voter Summit will kick off in Washington, D.C., attracting Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, Governors Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, Senators Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum and other luminaries of the conservative movement.The annual meeting organized by... More...

Ongoing labor woes at Progress Energy's Shearon Harris plant illustrate security problems still afflicting potential terror targets in the post-9/11 worldMore than two years after they voted to unionize with the Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America, the security... More...

Politico is holding an interesting round-table discussion on why the media can't seem to stop itself from dwelling on non-issues -- like the recent faux controversy over Obama's "lipstick on a pig" comment -- instead of things that matter, like... More...

Yes, Florida is missing ballots again. And also once again, it's happening in Palm Beach County, Florida's third-biggest county and a decisive hot-spot in the 2000 elections.This time, Palm Beach officials are trying to sort out what happened in an... More...

Ike continues to barrel towards the Texas shore, with an estimated impact sometime early Saturday morning. Models are now projecting Ike will spare Galveston, hitting just south of the city, but will then turn north towards Houston.Florida and Louisiana have... More...

Barreling across the Gulf of Mexico toward the Texas coast, Hurricane Ike is currently expected to make landfall early Saturday somewhere between Houston and Corpus Christi. That area happens to be home to the nation's greatest concentration of oil refineries... More...

When the contentious issue of offshore oil drilling came up during last night's debate between the two leading candidates for North Carolina governor, Republican Pat McCrory made a claim that surprised me. It came in response to Democratic opponent Beverly... More...

After leaving devastation in its wake in Cuba and the Caribbean, Hurricane Ike is making its way toward the Texas coast and is expected to intensify in the warm waters of the Gulf before it arrives Saturday morning. If Texas... More...

The televised debate last night between the two front-running candidates for governor of North Carolina -- Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, a Democrat, and Republican Pat McCrory, mayor of Charlotte and a Duke Energy consultant -- delivered an interesting and contentious... More...

With Election Day only 53 days away -- and early voting meaning that the first votes will be cast even sooner -- here are some voting rights issues coming up around the South:* Florida continues controversial "no match, no vote"... More...

UPDATE: I cross-posted this at DailyKos, where it's generating a lot of interesting debate. Go check it out.Remember all that talk this spring about Obama "changing the election map?" The Wall Street Journal reports today that, with poll numbers tightening... More...

Although Barack Obama and John McCain have barely touched on the issue of immigration, in towns across the South and country the immigration war is at a high boil.Laurel, Mississippi is still reeling from the roundup of 481 undocumented workers... More...

Time magazine declared 2008 the Year of the Youth Vote, and young voter turnout is indeed skyrocketing: the non-profit group CIRCLE found that 6.5 million people under the age of 30 voted in the 2008 primaries. That boosted the primary... More...

There are reports of extensive devastation from Gustav in indigenous communities across areas of Louisiana hit hardest last week by the storm. United Houma Nation Principal Chief Brenda Dardar Robichaux has been posting reports to her organization's website describing her... More...

By Bill Quigley in New OrleansTears dripped down her face as she searched for her missing suitcase in the busy New Orleans bus station. “It had my ID, my children’s birth certificates, my money and my credit cards,” she softly... More...

By Bill Quigley, guest contributorHurricane Gustav killed 18 people in Louisiana and displaced 1.9 million. Over 800,000 homes are without electricity, nearly half the state, and some will not see power for up to a month.In Haiti, Gustav killed 77... More...

In the Institute for Southern Studies' recent report Faith in the Gulf and in our past reports, such as One Year After Katrina, we’ve talked with Vietnamese leaders in New Orleans East and have documented the remarkable stories of the... More...

The Louisiana SPCA is warning New Orleans residents that several unauthorized groups have entered the city to remove pets from people's properties, presenting themselves as animal rescuers.The LA/SPCA is the only group in Orleans Parish authorized to respond to animal... More...

With Sen. John McCain's speech a wrap, the eight-week battle for the presidency is underway. Here's an update on what Southern states might be in play.The polls all show that, in the South, it's down to three states: Florida, North... More...

Today I'm traveling back from New Orleans to North Carolina via Birmingham. I stopped in at the main Red Cross shelter for Gustav evacuees that's been erected at the city's Civic Center to see how people were holding up.Over 3,400... More...

The U.S. Human Rights Network is seeking volunteers to monitor potential human rights violations, gather information, and conduct interviews in shelters housing Gustav evacuees. Volunteers are needed in Memphis, Knoxville and Nashville, Tenn.; Alexandria and Shreveport, La.; Houston and San... More...

Reporting from the Gulf, Institute Director Chris Kromm tells us that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal held a press conference this morning during which he discussed the widespread electrical outages affecting his state. According to documents released this morning by Jindal's... More...

Five farm bosses have pleaded guilty to charges of enslaving Mexican and Guatemalan nationals as agricultural workers in southwest Florida, the U.S. Department of Justice announced yesterday. The guilty are Cesar Navarrete, Geovanni Navarrete, Villhina Navarrete, Ismael Michael Navarrete and... More...

American Public Media's "Marketplace" did a piece this morning on the economic crunch facing Gustav evacuees here in south Louisiana. With city officials slow to let residents back in, many I've been talking to here say they're being put in... More...

This special report produced for Democracy Now! by New Orleans journalist Jordan Flaherty and New Orleans filmmaker Lily Keber, highlights some of the concerns New Orleans' residents felt around the evacuation and the state of New Orleans three years after... More...

Facing South previously reported on Gulf Coast advocates’ campaign to demand “Cash Not Comfort” from FEMA. The Katrina Information Network reports that due to the resulting public pressure, FEMA has announced that they will be making disaster aid available to... More...

The Associated Press reports that many of the illegal immigrants who have been rebuilding New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina stayed behind when Gustav struck because they were afraid of being arrested if they boarded the buses and trains arranged by... More...

I'll be on WBAI 99.5 FM New York again this afternoon to talk about the situation in New Orleans and what it means, this time on Talk Back! with Hugh Hamilton at 3:33 pm EST / 2:30 CST.For more background,... More...

The Katrina Information Network (KIN), a coalition of social justice groups in the Gulf and across the country, is asking for people to take action today to help ensure a just recovery in the wake of Hurricane Gustav. From KIN:Three years... More...

The big news today is that checkpoints have been lifted around New Orleans and the city is back open for residents to return home.This wasn't Mayor Nagin's plan -- he had earlier declared that residents couldn't come back until midnight... More...

I'll be on WBAI New York 99.5 FM this morning at 8:30 EST / 7:30 CST to talk about the current situation here in New Orleans in Hurricane Gustav's aftermath. I'll be on the "In Brief" show with Mimi Rosenberg.You... More...

What's being described as a "giant pile of crashed ships and barges" clogs New Orleans' Industrial Canal one day after Hurricane Gustav, covering the channel's entire width south of the Interstate 10 bridge -- and raising serious questions about the... More...

Tracie Washington, a lawyer with the Louisiana Justice Institute, is asking for help to turn up the heat for an orderly return and for monetary compensation for Hurricane Gustav evacuees.This is a letter from Ms. Washington:Friends:Eariler today, the FEMA Director... More...

I just finished driving the Louisiana back roads from Interstate 55, backed up for miles by residents trying to get back into New Orleans, to Baton Rouge, the state capitol which is still being drenched by Gustav's aftermath.If the image... More...

Hurricane Gustav made landfall yesterday southwest of New Orleans in the historically Cajun community of Cocodrie in coastal Terrebonne Parish. Gov. Bobby Jindal says he's received reports of widespread damage in Terrebonne as well as coastal Lafourche and St. Mary... More...

Earlier today Institute Executive Director Chris Kromm was driving south on Interstate 55 north of New Orleans, between Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas. That's where he snapped this cell phone shot of evacuees on their way home, stuck in a... More...

By: U.S. Human Rights NetworkGuest ContributionAs Gustav slams into the Gulf Coast, President George W. Bush, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director Dave Paulison, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin are taking their bows for avoiding... More...

As Hurricane Gustav slows down into a tropical depression today, some people in southern Louisiana and coastal Mississippi are beginning to make their way back to their homes. The last few days have been a harsh reminder of the 2005... More...

Institute for Southern Studies Director Chris Kromm is in the Gulf this week, and he'll be talking about what he's seeing and hearing today on "Midmorning with Kerri Miller" on Minnesota Public Radio. The show starts at 10:06 a.m. Central... More...

On the Hurricane Gustav front, the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center has launched the informational resource website Gustav Info in order to provide those affected by the storm, Gulf Coast advocates, and people across the country interested in... More...

According to a recent update on Gustav from the Army Corps of Engineers, there are at least four barges and one 500-foot boat loose in New Orlean's Industrial Canal just north of the Florida Avenue Bridge. A Corps official says... More...

As Gustav makes its way inland, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that water is sloshing over the floodwall on the city side of the Industrial Canal that runs alongside New Orlean's Ninth Ward, but fortunately the structure is holding so... More...

In a letter to RNC Leadership, the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, a private nonprofit working to eliminating housing discrimination, urged Republican leaders to commit to Gulf Coast rebuilding as Hurricane Gustav winds ashore in coastal Louisiana. “Residents of... More...

Blackwater Worldwide, the controversial private security firm based in North Carolina, is currently seeking qualified law enforcement officers and security personnel to serve in the wake of Hurricane Gustav.So reports R.J. Hillhouse, a security expert who follows the outsourcing of... More...

As part of the Institute's ongoing Gulf Watch coverage, I am headed to New Orleans today to provide on-the-ground coverage of Hurricane Gustav and its aftermath.A main theme of Gustav media coverage so far is that the hurricane response is... More...