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December 14, 2006 - On losing his bid for Senate minority whip to Trent Lott by one vote, Sen. Lamar Alexander said "this gives me the independence to devote all of my time to serving Tennesseans and focusing on the issues I care the most about: education, energy, job creation and the environment."

December 14, 2006 - A scientist at a Charleston conference about the effects of global warming and rising sea levels on coastal communities said:

December 14, 2006 - If there was ever a time that a limit on state spending shouldn't apply, one could say that recovering from the biggest "natural disaster" in history would be it.

December 13, 2006 - The people of storm-ravaged New Orleans lost some of their sway over federal hurricane reconstruction efforts this week when House Democrats removed recently re-elected Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) from his seat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

December 13, 2006 - We are back in New Orleans, meeting with community leaders to get a "ground level" view on how the recovery is going in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast. These visits always remind me why it's so important that we build our own independent media, and why we can never let up in working for progressive change, from the ground up.

December 12, 2006 - The US Department of Energy has a huge stockpile of weapons-grade uranium at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee that they need to do something with. Somewhere along the way, a plan to extract medical radioisotopes got scrapped, and the disposal bill jumped from $128 million when the contract was awarded in 2003 to nearly $380 million now.

December 12, 2006 - Here's an interesting article about the contrasts between two auto manufacturing towns: