On July 15, BP managed to finally seal its broken Macondo wellhead and stop the oil that had been hemorrhaging into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days. The very next week, as I was driving up the Florida coast, locals kept pointing out to me where cleanup workers were packing up and pulling out. From Crawfordville through to Carrabelle, and Port St. Joe to Pensacola, the booms were disappearing, the crew tents folded up and removed from beaches.

The well had been capped, after all. The gusher had stopped. Game over. Everyone can go home, right?

Fox News and its boss, Roger Ailes, along with Karl Rove and unlimited corporate campaign contributions, pose an enormous threat to President Barack Obama and Democratic candidates this fall.

Although they may not be working in tandem, they pursue common goals: Republicans winning control of Congress in 2010, defeating Obama two years later and restoring conservative business-first Republican policies.

In an August 2 Los Angeles Times story, writer Tom Hamburger from the Times Washington Bureau reports that business and conservative groups are preparing to spend significant sums of money to defeat Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections.  Recent rulings by the Supreme Court allow unlimited spending by corporations and unions for some electioneering activities.

In a seventh-floor conference room festooned with framed articles and journalism awards, Managing Editor Gordon Witkin leads the morning discussion of stories his staff is pursuing.

Their latest scoop -- on members of Congress dumping their BP stock -- "was a big success," he says. "It was in an AP story that sent it everywhere, including Yahoo and Google News."

It has been a long time since Massachusetts decided a presidential election. Presidential candidates spend the vast majority of their time and campaign funds on swing states like Ohio and Florida, and the votes of certain Americans are more sought after than others.

One of the more interesting questions in the burgeoning nonprofit journalism landscape is the extent to which new reporting ventures will focus on one area of coverage, or, like California Watch, will cover a range of topics.

A slew of nonprofit ventures focusing on health and health policy reporting have sprung up in the last few years, mostly underwritten by foundations with a specific interest in health and health policy issues.

Minnesota brothers Laird and Robin Monahan are walking across the United States to warn citizens about corporations assuming more human characteristics in what may be considered a power grab of the Constitution

They arrived in Fallon earlier this week after beginning their journey in mid-May from San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. By following U.S. Highway 50, the Lincoln Highway, they hope to reach Washington, D.C. in mid to late-October.

A consortium of West Marin writers, thinkers and scientists has purchased the Point Reyes Light, hoping to turn the Pulitzer Prize-winning weekly paper into one of a handful of newspapers run by a nonprofit corporation.

"We have created a new model, a hybrid for-profit/nonprofit entity that I think can save a lot of small-town newspapers around the country," said Mark Dowie, a former publisher of Mother Jones magazine and journalism professor at the University of California at Berkeley who serves on the governing board of the new corporation.

A group of civil rights advocates, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, are seeking a permanent injunction blocking Georgia's citizenship voter verification requirements, arguing in a federal court Monday that it targets and discriminates against minorities.

Monday's hearing before a three-judge federal panel comes days after Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue named the state GOP's general counsel as a special attorney general to sue the Justice Department to obtain approval of the contentious measure.

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) announced today that he is reducing the time that must pass, from three years to two, before a nonviolent felon who has completed his sentence can apply to have his voting rights restored. McDonnell also pledged that his office will act on those requests within 60 days after receiving information from the felon, courts and other agencies.

Efforts to control undocumented immigrants challenge some of American democracy’s most basic precepts. At bottom, such efforts deal with the almost unresolvable struggle in democratic society: to locate people (most of whom are of color) who are unidentifiable for lack of records or documents without creating an apartheid police state.