The Movement Vision Lab highlights the impact health reform in rural areas, where people have been hardest-hit by the breakdown in our health insurance system. More...

In a column posted yesterday to the conservative website NewsMax, John L. Perry asked his readers to "[i]magine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution." But if you think Perry can be dismissed as part of the far-right fringe, think again. More...

New information out from the federal government shows that the shift to renewable energy is already underway -- and sustainability advocates say Congress should keep this trend in mind as it moves forward with climate legislation. More...

Five Democrats joined all of the Senate Finance Committee Republicans in rejecting one amendment to health reform legislation that would have created a public health insurance option. Another public-option amendment was defeated with the help of three Democrats. More...

Four out of 5 of the Democrats who voted against a "robust public option" in the Senate Finance Committee today represent states where the dominance of a single health insurance company constitutes a near-monopoly. More...

Historian and writer Tim Tyson delivered the guest sermon at Duke University Chapel this Sunday, using the Biblical story of Queen Esther bravely pleading to the king for her libeled Jewish people to offer important lessons for today on how to respond to those who bear false witness. More...

Disability activists who have pushed for equal access to community services have scored a big victory in Florida. More...

The West Virginia lawmaker, a longtime champion of health insurance reform, says the public option is necessary to make coverage affordable. But his proposal is expected to meet stiff resistance from his Finance Committee colleagues -- some of whom have been raking in contributions from lobbyists representing the industry whose profits are at stake. More...

The keynote address delivered by John Lewis -- the longtime Congressman from Georgia and a key leader of the U.S. civil rights movement -- at the 2009 gala for Equality Alabama, an organization working for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. More...

Author Mary Gray's new book shows that not all young queers are leaving small towns for big cities. More...

Independent research from two university professors raises important questions about the way major news outlets frame stories -- and offers hard evidence that ACORN has been treated unfairly. More...

Some Latino leaders are calling for a boycott of the 2010 census, while others disagree sharply. New America Media reports on the controversy. More...

With concern growing over the racially charged rhetoric in the current political debate, we look at the hard numbers on racial resentment and how it relates to support for health insurance reform. More...

A new report examines life in Louisiana four years after Hurricane Katrina, and finds that portions of the state's population experience health, education and income levels that the rest of the country surpassed three to five decades ago. More...

The Arkansas Blue Dog who's fought to scale back health reform faces questions over a land sale to the nation's 5th-largest pharmacy chain -- and a major player in the health care debate -- that netted Rep. Ross and his wife over $1 million. More...

The body of 51-year-old Bill Sparkman was found earlier this month hanging from a tree near a cemetery in the Daniel Boone National Forest. Investigators are looking into whether anti-government sentiment played a role in the killing. More...

The same week the U.N. Climate Summit took place in New York City, a groundbreaking federal court decision handed down there paved the way for states and other entities to sue utilities over climate-disrupting emissions. All five companies named in the action are either based in the South or serve customers in the region. More...

Heavy rains are leading to unprecedented flooding of the Chattahoochee River, which runs near coal ash storage ponds at Georgia Power's Plant Wansley and Plant Yates. The company says it has no reports of problems at this time. More...

The health insurance giant wants to randomly test state workers and their dependents for nicotine and body fat and adjust premiums accordingly. But the company -- which holds a no-bid contract to insure state workers -- has been less than forthcoming about its own hefty administrative costs. More...

Even though Georgia Senate Republicans are proposing to amend the state constitution to prevent health care reform in the state, other Georgia lawmakers are weighing in. Monday the Atlanta City Council passed a resolution calling on Congress to enact "comprehensive, quality, affordable health care legislation for all Americans." More...

Politicians, the media and the public have largely ignored the crisis of poverty in the United States, possibly because the poor don't have an active political lobby to represent their interests, writes Earl Ofari Hutchinson. More...

In 2006, Senate Republicans defeated a measure to heighten accountability in federal contracts -- including 25 of the very same Senators who voted to cut off ACORN. More...

Congressional pressure is increasing on the Department of Defense to investigate the apparent electrocution death of Adam Hermanson, a contractor who worked for Virginia-based security firm Triple Canopy. More...

The United Steelworkers Union has called on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to look into illegal anti-union activities at a Colombian coal mine operated by the Birmingham, Ala.-based Drummond Co., which has been dogged by charges of human rights abuses. More...

Yesterday 345 members of the House of Representatives voted to cut off all federal funding for ACORN -- but two years ago, 23 of those same lawmakers voted against holding Blackwater accountable after its massacre of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. More...

The voter ID debate was re-energized Thursday when the Indiana Court of Appeals struck down the Indiana state law requiring voters to show identification, considered the strictest voter ID law of its kind in the country. More...

Firedoglake runs ads across Arkansas targeting conservative Democrats who oppose a public option -- even threatening to replace them in 2010 unless they change course More...

Having no health insurance means an early death to almost 45,000 people in the United States annually - almost two-and-a-half times the number previously estimated -- according to a study published Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health. More...

Counting prisoners where they are incarcerated, instead of where they lived before their conviction, has caused serious problems for governance at the state and local level, reports the Progressive States Network. More...

W. Horace Carter received numerous threats for his reporting but pressed on -- and in 1953 the Tabor City Tribune won a groundbreaking award for shining a light on white-supremacist violence. More...

The high court is considering a case that could open the floodgates to corporate money in political campaigns under the guise of free speech rights. Bob Hall of Democracy North Carolina considers whether we should grant corporations the same rights as people. More...

While pundits focus on Rep. Joe Wilson's checkered history on black/white relations, an even bigger factor may be Wilson's leadership in the nativist anti-immigrant movement, based in a state that has the fastest-growing Latino population in the nation. More...

A new report from the Census Bureau not only reveals the increasing rates of poverty during the first full year of recession but also highlights the disproportionate impact the economic downturn is having on communities of color. More...

Environmental justice expert Robert D. Bullard calls on the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Inspector General to take action on racism in EPA Region 4, which includes eight states from North Carolina to Mississippi. More...

One year ago Hurricane Ike barreled toward Galveston. A new report details the human rights violations that occurred when the Galveston County sheriff decided 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." More...

Corporate America would save billions of dollars if our country passed universal, public-backed health care -- but big business isn't lifting a finger to support a progressive health care package. Doug Henwood explores why. More...

One day after environmental groups announced they planned to sue over the matter, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it would revise federal rules to limit wastewater discharges from coal-burning power plants. More...

Ten U.S. Senators, half of them from the South and all Republicans, voted against an amendment that would have required health insurers to stop ignoring state laws that ban insurance discrimination against domestic violence survivors. More...

A New York Times investigation finds that millions of U.S. residents are drinking toxic tap water -- and many states across the South and elsewhere are doing a poor job of enforcing laws designed to prevent that from happening. More...

Rebuilding efforts in St. Bernard Parish outside New Orleans have gotten major acclaim by news agencies and public figures. But an alliance of Gulf Coast and national organizations are raising questions about the community's discriminatory housing policies. More...

The Senate voted 83-7 to block the Department of Housing and Urban Development from granting funds to ACORN, the grassroots community organization that has faced a barrage of attacks from conservative activists and Republican lawmakers over the past year. More...

Jury selection begins this week for one of the first trials over toxic fumes found in trailers and mobile homes distributed by the Federal Federal Emergency Management Agency following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. More...

Eights states including three in the South allow insurance companies to deny coverage to survivors of domestic violence -- an example of how the individual health insurance market fails women in particular. More...

Crystal Lee Sutton, whose role in organizing a North Carolina textile plant was memorialized in the award-winning film starring Sally Field, battled her insurance company over its decision to refuse needed treatment, which she called abuse of the working poor and likened to murder. More...

A study by the Migration Policy Institute found that the lack of good record-keeping by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement may make it impossible for the agency to adhere to humanitarian standards in detention centers. More...

A by-the-numbers look at the increasing monopolization of the health insurance market. More...

In the first full year of the recession, the nation's poverty rate climbed to 13.2 percent, up from 12.5 percent in 2007, according to an annual report released Thursday by the Census Bureau. More...

Rep. Joe Wilson's heckling of President Obama wasn't his first time in the spotlight -- as a state senator in the 1990s, he emerged as one of the fiercest defenders of flying the Confederate battle flag over the South Carolina capitol, even calling the Confederate heritage "very honorable." More...

Was it a good move for the GOP to choose a Southern birther and co-sponsor of "death panel" legislation to sell their views on health reform to the nation last night? More...

Forsyth County District Attorney Tom Keith actually said blacks were statistically more prone to violence than whites -- but some community leaders are still unhappy with his corrected statement. More...

Just days after Senate leaders announced plans to delay consideration of legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions, a new coalition of environmental, justice, faith and veterans groups launched a campaign to make sure the bill stays on Washington's radar. More...

Last night was not the first time Rep. Joe Wilson sparked controversy by shouting at a political opponent -- but it hasn't prevented his campaign from enjoying the financial largess of health care interests. More...

This week, conservative Democrat Rep. Mike Ross came out against a public option for health care. But his district -- which includes the city with the biggest health insurance monopoly in the country, Texarkana -- may be the most in need of an alternative to private insurance. More...

Americans for Prosperity, a lobby group working to promote polluters' economic interests, is using the controversy over the president's green jobs advisor to attack the climate bill as a "watermelon" -- "green on the outside but Communist red to the core." More...

Is the apprehension some parents are feeling over the speech President Obama is delivering to schoolchildren today the product of a general feeling they have lost control over the messages reaching their children? Professor Mark Anthony Neal takes a closer look. More...

Four years later, Bush's response to Katrina is still hurting workers. Many New Orleans' migrant workers toil in dangerous conditions for little or no pay. More...

Union members and worker rights' advocates across the country used the Labor Day holiday weekend to reignite the movement for the pro-labor Employee Free Choice Act. More...

The Broadway show The Color Purple has announced plans to raise money for the St. Bernard Project, a strange choice considering St. Bernard Parish's discriminatory housing laws, reports Jordan Flaherty. More...

A by-the-numbers look at the holiday, from its roots in a bloody strike to the state of labor today. More...

Facing calls to resign over an extramarital affair and alleged ethics violations, Gov. Mark Sanford is charged with spreading rumors that the lieutenant governor is gay. More...

A new group of unlikely bedfellows has come together to help win support for an overhaul that would put government in charge of proactively registering voters, and allowing voter registrations to be portable within states. More...

Texas Governor Rick Perry's talk of secession last spring has fed the efforts of a group of Texas secessionists who say it's time for the governor to follow through. More...

The retail giant responsible for damaging an ancient Indian mound in Alabama to get fill dirt for a new store in its Sam's Club chain has damaged culturally significant Native American sites before -- and it's not alone. More...

In light of the continuing affordable housing crisis in post-Katrina New Orleans, advocates are worried about the local housing authority's lackluster efforts to inform residents about a rare chance to get housing assistance. More...

Institute director and co-author of the report "Grading the Katrina Recovery" talks with Laura Flanders about the important issues we're in missing in media coverage and the public debate about Katrina and the Gulf Coast. More...

Is the Gulf Coast back to normal? Has Washington done all it can do? Is Obama better than Bush? Facing South debunks the myths and answers the tough questions the remain in Katrina's aftermath. More...

The phone company touts its environmental record and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So what's it doing sponsoring an event organized by polluting interests? More...

Enacted into law in Texas today, the Tim Cole Act will increase and expand compensation for people who have been wrongfully convicted in Texas. The act also helps to shine a light on Texas' notorious title as the state that leads the nation in prisoners who have been exonerated through DNA tests. More...