August marks the fourth anniversary since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, devastating New Orleans. The latest numbers from the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center offer a snapshot of how far the recovery has come -- and how far it has left to go. More...

Texas is one of the latest states facing serious problems with its unemployment insurance system, borrowing tens of millions of federal dollars to keep its unemployment insurance trust fund afloat. More...

A new report calls on the Census Bureau to ensure an accurate count of undocumented immigrants so states get adequate federal funding, an increasingly important issue in the midst of the country's deepening economic troubles. More...

An United Nations advisory group headed to New Orleans this week on a fact-finding mission to investigate housing issues related to the displacement of Gulf Coast residents following Hurricane Katrina. More...

Moody's Investors Service warns that it will probably take a "more negative view" of bonds issued by companies seeking to build new nuclear reactors. Will electricity customers end up paying the price? More...

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has been systematically violating its own standards in governing the detention of undocumented immigrants, according to a new report released Tuesday. More...

The conservative Republican from South Carolina broke ranks with the Judiciary Committee's other Republicans yesterday to approve Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the high court. How much did his state's changing demographics have to do with it? More...

The dean of the University of North Carolina's school of public health visited a center of industrial hog and chicken farming in her state recently and came away "sad, angry and shocked." More...

Wal-Mart recently announced that it would require its suppliers to provide information to create a product sustainability index. But is it just greenwashing? More...

The Defense Department's Inspector General examined electrocution deaths of soldiers and contractors in Iraq that have been blamed on shoddy wiring by Houston-based private contractor KBR. It found numerous problems on the part of the company and the military. More...

Tennessee's tourism industry is under fire because of a proposal by U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander to end destructive coal mining practices. The boycott comes amid heightening tensions over mountaintop removal. More...

A new report by the Sentencing Project finds that an unprecedented number of prisoners are serving life sentences. More...

A new government report blasts the Federal Emergency Management Agency's slow response to the health hazards found in post-Katrina emergency housing. More...

In two separate interviews, Blue Dog leader Rep. Mike Ross suggests he hasn't had enough time to read the House health care reform bill -- legislation that was first circulated in early June. More...

The expansion of 287(g) programs that allow local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law flies in the face of problems with the program that have already surfaced, reports Bill Ong Hing. More...

Federal lawmakers want to create a new independent agency to promote government investment in clean energy, but watchdogs say it's structured in a way that's unfair to taxpayers and bad for the environment. How did the plan end up being so biased toward expensive and polluting nuclear power? More...

Prom Night In Mississippi, the acclaimed documentary about the first racially integrated high-school senior prom in the small town of Charleston, Miss., premiered this week on HBO. More...

A law toughening regulation of coal ash dumps passes in North Carolina, where there are more high-hazard facilities than any other state. Meanwhile, the Tennessee Valley Authority revises hazard ratings for its ash ponds -- but should companies really be making that call? More...

Thousands of low-income workers earning a minimum wage got a boost in their wages as the national minimum wage rose to $7.25. Yet, one group remains excluded -- tipped workers have a national minimum wage that has been frozen at $2.13 for 18 years. More...

Coastal protection groups are calling on the public to send comments to the Army Corps to address the failings of the Corps long-overdue Category 5 hurricane protection plan for south Louisiana. More...

Already in legal trouble for exposing employees to toxic chemicals, shoddy wiring, human trafficking and rape, the Houston-based military contractor is now accused of infringing on workers' religious freedom. More...

If President Barack Obama's health care plan is defeated, blacks and Hispanics -- who make up nearly half of the estimated 50 million Americans without health insurance -- will be the most affected, reports Earl Ofari Hutchinson. More...

How did a small-town Arkansas pharmacist come to be the administration's biggest nemesis on their top domestic issue? More...

It can take years for ailing coal miners to qualify for black lung benefits -- but then the mining companies and their slick attorneys can force them to do it all over again, Betty Dotson-Lewis reports. More...

In what is being called a political victory for the Obama administration, the Senate voted Tuesday to halt further production of the Air Force's F-22 Raptor fighter jets, one of the nation's most expensive defense programs. More...

Post-Katrina New Orleans has become the center of a national effort to protect migrant day laborers from wage theft. More...

The Natural Resources Defense Council lists the most environmentally advanced U.S. cities, and locales in Texas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina make the cut. More...

New campaign finance records offer a glimpse of the intense pressure the powerful health care industry exerted on North Carolina's first-year senator. More...

Why is one of the most influential consulting firms on health care policy the Virginia-based Lewin Group, a firm owned by a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, questions Phil Mattera. More...

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has requested that displaced Hurricane Katrina victims list the city as their home residence in the 2010 Census if they plan on returning to New Orleans. But federal officials say this goes against Census rules. More...

The governor of North Carolina -- the state that has more "high-hazard" coal ash dumps than any other -- endorses legislation to increase oversight. But what about the dangers lurking elsewhere? More...

Is it a coincidence that the GOP senators who have softened the most on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination come from states with the fastest-growing Latino populations? More...

Court filings reveal a third recent incident of marital infidelity tied to the politically powerful Christian group The Family -- this time involving former U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering Jr. of Mississippi. Is this really a church group deserving of nonprofit status, or a political fraternity gone wild? More...

Democrats have dropped one of the central provisions of the pro-labor Employee Free Choice Act, which would have made it easier for workers to unionize. More...

In case you missed them ... the past week's biggest stories at Facing South. More...

As the health care debate rages on the national scene, in New Orleans the future of health care also remains uncertain. More...

Audra Shay of New Orleans was chosen as the new chair of the GOP's youth wing last week despite a controversy over racist remarks posted to her Facebook page. More...

Protesters gathered outside of the company's headquarters this week to protest its opposition to a public option for health insurance. More...

Perhaps the most impressive recent success story in expanding political participation has been the dramatic turnaround in public agency voter registrations in some states. More...

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has led his party's hostile questioning of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, charging her with bias because she's acknowledged that being Latina influences the way she thinks. But what about Sessions' own well-documented racial bias? More...

With concerns growing over public health problems associated with industrial hog farms, environmental advocates are calling on North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue to launch a task force to study the problem. But what happened when advocates tried to get state lawmakers to hear their case shows how hard it is to take on Boss Hog. More...

The North Carolina House approved the Racial Justice Act, a bill that would give capital murder defendants the right to challenge prosecutions on grounds of racial bias. It's a landmark piece of legislation for a state that has seen several challenges to the death penalty in recent years. More...

Just last year another black man barely escaped execution in North Carolina because of gross mistakes and misfeasance in the justice system, writes Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II. More...

As the health care debate heats up, the latest PR blitz from business groups divided the nation's retail industry -- with Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, on one side and the National Retail Federation, the world's largest retail trade group, on the other. More...

You would have if you were following Facing South on Twitter! More...

Since Obama was inaugurated, legislation aimed at stimulating a new, green economy has surged. But is it creating green jobs yet? More...

As the recession deepened across the country in 2008, the nation saw a shift in its homeless populations to include more families and more rural and suburban areas. More...

Dr. Regina Benjamin, winner of numerous honors including a MacArthur Genius Award, will be an important voice in the debate over health care reform. More...

States continue to expand alternatives to incarceration for low-level offenders, including reducing sentencing times and streamlining probation and parole. More...

Should burning dirty coal and scrap tires really count as "alternative energy" under law? West Virginia's governor and legislature say yes -- despite the risks to the climate and environmental health. More...

Sonia Sotomayor is expected to be confirmed as the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court. But her confirmation hearings may spell trouble for Republicans, who must engage their conservative base without further alienating Hispanic voters, writes Gebe Martinez. More...

After finding some 40 personal profiles on a neo-Nazi website listing members' occupation as "military," the Southern Poverty Law Center is calling for action -- and questioning why the extremists get to stay when gays have to go. More...

Revelations about the millions of dollars members of Congress have invested in banks, energy companies and other industries raise questions about conflicts of interest and how policy gets made. More...

Just weeks after a police raid on a gay club in Fort Worth left a patron with life-threatening brain injuries, El Paso is embroiled in controversy after gay men were kicked out of a restaurant -- and local police took the restaurant's side. More...

The communities of coastal Louisiana are being submerged by the encroaching Gulf -- an environmental problem that has become a socioeconomic one. More...

A month into the 2009 hurricane season, and almost four years since hurricanes Katrina and Rita blew threw the Gulf Coast, federal authorities still aren't ready to handle another Katrina-scale disaster. More...

While federal recovery spending is generally working as intended by helping states provide needed services and avoid layoffs, a number of states have squandered funds trying to steal jobs from each other. More...

In one of his first acts as the junior senator from Minnesota, Al Franken signed on as a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to organize. More...

Unemployed people in Alabama and Mississippi are finding themselves in dire straits because their states turned down federal stimulus aid to expand unemployment insurance. More...

Democrats and Republicans agree that the failure to get immigration policy right will have serious consequences for America's future. More...

A former lobbyist for dirty energy interests, Haley Barbour testified yesterday that the Waxman-Markey climate bill would cost too much. But what about the cost to his state of doing nothing? More...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved a plan to dump 3 million tons of toxic coal ash from last year's massive Tennessee spill in an impoverished Black Belt county -- but local residents and officials are fighting back in creative ways. More...

In 2008, New Orleans grew faster than any other large city in the United States, according to the latest census numbers -- but you wouldn't know that from visiting some of its neighborhoods, Paul A. Greenberg reports. More...

Community groups are launching efforts to ensure an accurate 2010 Census count in the Gulf Coast, a region still dealing with mass displacement from the 2005 hurricanes. In some Gulf states, an undercount by even several thousand people could lead to the loss of millions of dollars in aid in communities still trying to recover. More...

A U.S. appeals court decides that the military, and not a private contractor, was actually in charge of a fuel convoy when an accident left a U.S. soldier with severe brain damage. More...

Sanitation workers in Charleston, S.C. are knocking on doors to drum up support for their battle to gain union recognition. They've been learning from leaders of a historic 1969 struggle, and drawing support from students and other unions. More...

On Saturday, a group of 20 men and women -- some of them wearing Massey Energy-issued shirts -- crashed a West Virginia music festival against mountaintop mining removal and threatened attendees. The disturbing incident was captured on video. More...

An appeals court rules that Massey Energy -- the nation's fourth-largest mining company and a major mountaintop removal operator -- must give jobs back to 85 mine workers it fired because of their union membership and pro-union sentiments. More...

Five of our country's best-known -- and most patriotic -- songs have a hidden, progressive history. More...

Facing South is your trusted weapon against spin, corruption deceit. This July 4th weekend, honor free and fearless media by helping Facing South raise $3,500 to double our investigative reporting and outreach programs! More...

Newly released test results of samples taken from a waterway near last year's massive ash spill show dangerously high levels of toxic heavy metals. Is it really a good idea to encourage people to play in the water? More...

A resident of West Virginia's Coal River Valley, Bo Webb urges the former vice president and climate protection advocate to join the fight against the especially destructive form of mining. More...

The White House and members of Congress must move quickly on enacting a just and humane immigration reform package that will reunite families, reinvigorate the economy, and remove the term "illegal or undocumented immigrants" from the dialogue in this country, reports New America Media. More...

As the South Carolina governor's marriage fell apart over his Argentinian love affair, he turned for help to The Family -- a right-wing Christian religious cabal founded to oppose FDR's New Deal. Does its theory of the God-chosen leader help explain Sanford's refusal to resign? More...

Employees at the massive Smithfield pork plant in Tar Heel, N.C. accepted a four-year labor contract, an achievement that's been almost two decades in the making. More...

A new report finds that Bush-era immigration enforcement tactics routinely led to systemic abuse of workers' rights and a willful disregard for the rule of law. More...

A hard-hitting TV ad featuring a breast cancer survivor began airing in Louisiana today pressuring Sen. Mary Landrieu to support a public option for health insurance. Breast cancer survivors and their allies are also petitioning public option foe Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina. More...

More than 9 million people in the U.S. use TRICARE, a popular government-backed health plan for military families -- and nearly half of them live in Southern states where Congressional leaders vocally oppose government involvement in health care. More...

The second Free Minds Free People conference took place in Houston last weekend, and Melissa M. Forbis reports that the event's Gulf Coast location gave it special urgency. More...