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July 24, 2009 - I grew up in a small, rural town in southwest Louisiana. At the time I went to high school (and it's still the case today) black kids and white kids had separate proms. All the black kids went to the "official" school prom, in a streamer-filled high-school gymnasium, and all the white students threw their own separate prom across town in a party space paid for by their parents.

July 24, 2009 - Earlier this week, I reported that Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR) -- the Blue Dog who has emerged as the leading barrier to the House passing a health care reform bill this summer -- and his personal ties to the health industry.

July 24, 2009 - The crazy quilt of regulations governing coal ash disposal across the United States got a new patch this week when North Carolina lawmakers passed a law requiring stricter regulation of coal ash impoundments, the giant lagoons where utility companies store the nearly 6 million pounds of toxic combustion waste generated each year at electric power plants.

July 22, 2009 - For Obama and Democratic leaders anxiously -- desperately? -- trying to pass health care reform by the end of the summer, every week seems to present a new obstacle likely to derail the whole plan. The current Obstacle of the Week: Rep. Mike Ross, a conservative Democrat from small-town Arkansas who is currently leading a Blue Dog rebellion from his perch on the now-critical House Energy and Commerce Committee.

July 21, 2009 - Post-Katrina New Orleans has become the center of a national effort to protect migrant day laborers from wage theft.

July 20, 2009 - North Carolina Gov.

July 17, 2009 - SEN. SESSIONS, RACE AND IMPARTIALITY: 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? (7/16/2009)