Politics

October 11, 2012 - The Southern Environmental Law Center has filed a complaint on behalf of four environmental advocacy groups asking state regulators to require cleanup of documented groundwater contamination from coal ash storage ponds at 14 power plants owned by Duke Energy and its Progress Energy subsidiary.

October 10, 2012 - Amidst new controversy over its plan to monitor polls and challenge voters across the country, Texas-based True the Vote has insisted it's "nonpartisan." But recent IRS contribution records undermine that already-shaky claim.

October 9, 2012 - Congressman Paul Broun (R-Ga.) is under fire for recent remarks that evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory are "lies straight from the pit of hell" -- especially since he's a member of the House Science Committee. But he's not the only member of that group who holds beliefs that put him at odds with mainstream science.

October 5, 2012 - Conservative N.C. Supreme Court justice Paul Newby has taken $240,100 in public campaign funding to help run his re-election campaign. He's also getting support from a right-wing political group that calls public funding "immoral" and "welfare for politicians."

October 4, 2012 - Asian Americans have been trending Democratic but remain highly independent, and their numbers are growing in the key Southern swing states of North Carolina and Virginia.

October 3, 2012 - A grassroots effort to open up the presidential debates to third-party candidates has succeeded in getting three of the 10 corporate sponsors of the debates that begin tonight to withdraw their support.

October 3, 2012 - Indiana Republican Steve Buyer, who fought tobacco regulation while in the House, is now representing the North Carolina-based tobacco giant, which has been aggressively marketing smokeless tobacco products in the face of declining U.S. cigarette consumption rates.