The Tennessee Valley Authority's CEO is scheduled to testify -- along with the environmental advocate who plans to sue him. More...

The Tennessee Valley Authority refused to say what was in the 1.1 billion gallons of coal ash that spilled into East Tennessee last December. Facing South looks at the company's own records and finds than 14 million pounds of health-damaging chemicals. More...

TUES 12/30 -- White House advisors say in a new Vanity Fair piece that Katrina was the beginning of the end for Bush and Republicans. But where was the Democratic and progressive leadership after one of America's biggest tragedies? More...

U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), who sits on a congressional committee that oversees TVA, has reportedly invested somewhere between $5 million and $25 million in a development planned for Watts Barr Reservoir downstream from the company's coal ash spill. More...

It's been a week since a TVA coal ash lagoon broke and inundated a nearby community and river with six feet of toxic coal sludge, and authorities are just getting around to advising nearby residents against drinking well water or coming into contact with the ash. Meanwhile, workers cleaning up the muck aren't wearing basic protective equipment. More...

Human rights lawyer and law professor Bill Quigley offers five principles to help ensure that the post-bailout United States won't end up like the post-Katrina Gulf Coast. More...

To prevent another catastrophe like the one that buried an Eastern Tennessee community under six feet of coal waste, the incoming Obama administration must honor the federal government's pledge to regulate coal combustion waste -- especially since Tennessee and other states are prohibited by law from imposing their own tough regulations. More...

The collapse of a troubled coal-sludge holding dam at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant unleashes a massive toxic spill -- and shows the absurdity of the industry's "clean coal" claims. More...

Devastated by Hurricane Katrina, a historic New Orleans neighborhood has worked hard to rebuild -- only to find itself targeted for tear-downs to make way for a new hospital complex. Residents have joined forces with preservationists to stop the destruction. More...

Obama's failure to put a Southerner in his cabinet isn't just "complaining" -- it's a strategic oversight that could haunt the Democrats. More...

Exxon Mobil was fined $6.1 million this week for breaking air pollution laws -- roughly the amount they earned in profits every HOUR in 2008. More...

Chicago has nothing on these four Southern states. More...

With police and government officials refusing to answer questions or investigate shootings of unarmed blacks by white militias in the disaster's wake, advocacy groups demand a full investigation. More...

Scandal-plagued security company Blackwater was named as a donor to Bill Clinton's foundation. Will that cause problems for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who will have to decide if Blackwater keeps its contract in Iraq? More...

Bernard Madoff's victims weren't just the New York and Hollywood elite. Hundreds of nonprofits -- including leading advocates of voting rights in the South -- will suffer from the $50 billion investor scandal. More...

What happens when a major hurricane hits a community where workers are already routinely exploited and labor laws often ignored? That's the question examined in a new report from the Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center. More...

Sen. Blanche Lincoln's (D-Ark.) announcement that she is backing away from the key labor reform could kill the measure. Does her decision have anything to do with the corporate giants in her backyard? More...

A new study finds that the South, especially along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, leads the nation in its natural disaster death rate. More...

A report released this month by the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana examines some of the recovery misconceptions state and local officials continue to combat more than three years after hurricanes Katrina and Rita washed ashore. More...

Several Georgia state lawmakers plan to push legislation that would allow the popular vote -- rather than the Electoral College -- decide who wins presidential elections. More...

Alabama Secretary of State Beth Chapman this week announced that she will push for a bill to allow military personnel and others living overseas to cast ballots online. More...

A controversial proposal to cut Georgia's education budget created a stir this week when a state senator proposed merging two historically black universities with nearby mostly white institutions. More...

State governments face their worst budget crises in 25 years, topped by a two-year deficit that could reach $200 billion. But Republicans like Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina are leading the charge against a federal aid package. More...

The Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) is under fire once again this week. In a report released Friday federal auditors report finding poor conditions in New Orleans housing developments. The auditors also raised serious questions about the ability of... More...

The auto bailout was derailed by Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama and other Republicans from states that shovel huge subsidies to foreign automakers. Here's the list of who's getting the cash. More...

Obama's pick for HUD secretary wins kudos from affordable housing advocates, who offer the incoming administration a plan to help the nation out of the current crisis. More...

The South's political clout is growing. So why is Obama ignoring the region in picking administration leaders? More...

New figures released from the Bureau of Justice Statistics reveal that U.S prison population continues its record rise with the South leading the way. But will the costly prison policies only worsen the economic burden in the cash-strapped region? More...

The Texas Democratic Party has dropped its courtroom challenges to Republican Linda Harper-Brown's narrow win over Democrat Bob Romano in a Dallas County state House race, making it more likely that the Republicans will maintain a narrow edge in the chamber. But the party is still pursuing its federal case over the counting of so-called "emphasis votes" cast on electronic machines. More...

After their concerns about the well-documented problem were ignored by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Southern Poverty Law Center is calling for action by Secretary Robert Gates. More...

Black and Latino workers prevailed in a 16-year campaign to organize the world's largest pork slaughterhouse. What does it mean for the future of Southern labor? More...

Lawmakers, civil-liberties advocates and immigrant rights' groups are calling for and end to new Texas driver's license requirements that they say discriminate against legal immigrants and cause unnecessary hardships for thousands of people. More...

Mexican guestworkers who were subjected to involuntary servitude in the strawberry fields of Louisiana from 2006 to 2008 brought a major civil litigation against their former employer Thursday.The workers were recruited in Mexico to work in Louisiana on temporary H-2A... More...

A Louisiana judge certified a class action lawsuit Wednesday that could affect thousands of employees of the Orleans parish school system terminated after Hurricane Katrina. The ruling will potentially allow over 8,500 former principals, teachers, clerical staff, social workers, cafeteria... More...

THURSDAY 12/11 -- Steven Chu is a Nobel Prize laureate with a strong record of promoting alternative energy. But does he have what it takes to overcome the global warming deniers still trying to stymie progress on the climate front? More...

Florida papers are closely watching the battle between NASA chief Mike Griffin and Obama's transition team. More...

Immigrant advocates have criticized the tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials last month in a series of federal raids in South Florida. Advocates demanded an investigation Tuesday into the set of raids that left at least six... More...

The judge does not require them to be counted, and he leaves it up to the U.S. Justice Department and State Board of Elections to draw up a plan for preventing future problems. More...

Deaths from overdoses of prescription drugs are increasing in the United States, especially in West Virginia. Coal miners often work the heavy-equipment used for strip mining and mountaintop removal making these laborers the major victims of this epidemic. More...

The Mississippi State Conference NAACP, Gulf Coast Fair Housing Center and several individual residents filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) challenging its approval of a plan submitted by the state of Mississippi... More...

The 2008 elections didn't deliver the "record voter turnout" many anticipated -- except in the South, which set an example for the nation. More...

A special investigation by USA Today found dangerous levels of toxic pollution at schools across the nation. Why aren't government regulators monitoring the problem? More...

Union workers in North Carolina stood in solidarity with Chicago sit-down strikers this week when they picketed outside Bank of America's Charlotte headquarters. Last week 200 workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago, Ill. occupied the factory demanding severance and... More...

Wednesday and Thursday labor rights' advocates will be turning their eyes to North Carolina. About 4,600 workers at the Smithfield Packing Co. slaughterhouse and packing plant in Bladen County will vote on whether the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW)... More...

As the world marks the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, housing advocates in New Orleans point to human rights violations here at home. More...

Today attorneys for Troy Davis are going before a three judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to plead their client's innocence and ask to be granted a new trial. Death row prisoner Troy Davis, a... More...

To the horror of some environmentalists, the Washington Post reports that Jim Rogers may be on the short list of candidates to create the nation's new energy policy. More...

Advocates of public works programs and recovery for the Gulf Coast hosted a Congressional call-in day for the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act (HR 4048) to be included in an economic stimulus package advocated by President-elect Barack Obama. More...

A host of Tennessee Latinos have been filing civil rights lawsuits against state and local governments claiming policies and actions are discriminating against legal immigrants. More...

All decorated U.S. military veterans, the men face the possibility of decades in prison if they're convicted of the charges related to the 2007 Baghdad shooting incident that left more than 30 innocent civilians dead or injured. More...

Warning that the onset of cold weather could have "disastrous consequences" for families who have been camping out or sleeping in cars on their property, Texas Gov. Rick Perry Governor Rick Perry has written a letter to the Federal Emergency Management Agency requesting $300 million to create an alternative temporary housing program for Hurricane Ike victims to supplement the existing FEMA program. More...

Low turnout among African-American voters was a key factor in U.S. Rep. William Jefferson's loss to Anh "Joseph" Cao, an attorney and activist in New Orleans' Vietnamese-American community. More...

Faced with harsh conditions, a small group of migrant workers from southwest Florida have been making waves across the country in their battle for worker justice, waging one of the most successful labor campaigns in a generation. More...

Civil rights lawyers are asking a three-judge federal panel to revive a lawsuit challenging Georgia's voter ID law. Attorney Emmet Bondurant asked the panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday to reconsider a 2007 ruling by a... More...

FRI 12/5/08 -- Residents of the historic Mid-City neighborhood in New Orleans saw their homes flooded by Hurricane Katrina. Since then they've been working to rebuild their homes and neighborhood. But now it looks like they will see those very... More...

Environmental advocates are celebrating this week's federal court ruling that Duke Energy must meet tough clean air requirements for its planned coal-burning power plant in North Carolina, but many residents of Appalachia are mourning a rule that loosens restrictions on coal companies' polluting of streams with mine waste. More...

A history of worker abuse is repeating itself along the Gulf Coast. Hundreds of workers who were hired to clean up the damage caused by Hurricane Ike in Texas say they have been robbed of wages, injured on the job... More...

A Texas-based company already fighting a lawsuit over human trafficking is again under scrutiny after Asian workers who paid dearly for jobs in Baghdad were left unemployed, trapped inside a guarded compound and facing deportation. More...

Mortgage lenders promised to suspend foreclosures and evictions between Thanksgiving and early January. Then why are hundreds of thousands of homeowners ending up on the street this holiday season? More...

The lawsuit says the discussion that led to the firings took place illegally behind closed doors. The plaintiffs also charge that the layoffs are part of a long effort to reduce tenured positions and relocate the facility to a wealthier area. More...

WED 12/3/08 -- A white supremacist is threatening to sue a Florida county's Republican Party for refusing to seat him on its executive committee. But there's more to the story. More...

Piles of waste lining the Gulf Coast stand as a testament to what state and local officials say is FEMA's sluggish response to the 2008 hurricane season. More...

A lawsuit filed under the federal Voting Rights Act over a state House runoff takes aim at a plan to let so-called "emphasis votes" -- votes cast for a particular candidate in addition to a straight-ticket vote for his or her party -- go uncounted when cast by machine. More...

WED 12/3/08 - Known as one of the greatest legends in American folk music, Odetta, 77, died Tuesday at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. The cause of death was heart disease.Odetta was one of the most widely known and beloved... More...

As the nuclear industry plans a revival in the South, a private company has successfully lobbied the state of Virginia to explore uranium mining -- paving the way to lift a 25-year state ban on the practice. More...

Citigroup, Bank of America and other finance giants are taking U.S. taxpayer money -- and then investing in lucrative projects abroad. More...

Foes of immigration fared badly in 2008 -- and some Republicans are worrying that a hard-line stance on immigration might spell long-term political suicide. More...

TUES 12/2/08 -- In 2002, Sen. Saxby Chambliss accused his war veteran and triple-amputee opponent of being soft on terrorism, even putting his picture next to Osama bin Laden. As Georgia votes today in a hard-fought runoff, the 9/11 tragedy is getting dredged up again. More...

More than 25 million men, women and children have died around the world from HIV/AIDS since 1981. Some 20 years after the first World AIDS day shone a spotlight on the virus, some 33 million people are living with HIV,... More...

The United States saw dramatic increases in the number of ballots cast by traditionally underrepresented groups, according to an analysis released last week by Project Vote. In The Demographics of Voters in America's 2008 General Election: A Preliminary Assessment, Project... More...

Obama has taken heat for his administration posts, but Melody Barnes was an early champion of voting rights for immigrant citizens. More...

With much at stake in the outcome of Tuesday's runoff between incumbent U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss and challenger Jim Martin, political heavyweights are hitting the campaign trail to promote the candidates. But some of those appearances raise questions about whose interests will be represented in Washington. More...