When Kane first reported the news, Smiley had only posted a limp response on his Web site. After Kane’s story ran, black media, including The Root (which ran a headline, “Tavis: You’ve Got Some ‘Splaining to Do”) and Jack and Jill Politics, turned up the heat on Smiley. Posts across the Web demanded answers. Two days after the piece first appeared on TWI, Smiley told Richard Prince that he had decided to “sever ties” with Wells Fargo, even though such a move will “cost him a lot of money.” Smiley said he would not be affiliated with Wells Fargo until the bank resolved charges that it targeted minority borrowers for higher-cost loans.

David Weigel tapped his sources in the conservative movement to deliver a behind-the-scenes report on the media strategy underlying the recent conservative-fanned ACORN scandal. Weigel spoke with Andrew Breitbart, cofounder of The Huffington Post and Matt Drudge’s former right-hand man, who recently launched BigGovernment.com, the site that released the videos of ACORN employees giving advice to two undercover conservative activists on how to evade taxes on a fictitious prostitution and child-trafficking scheme. Breitbart explained that the videos were released slowly, without identifying the people behind them, to withhold any information that ACORN’s defenders could use to discredit the attackers. “It was strategized,” Breitbart told Weigel, so “that [the liberal infrastructure] would be deprived of the type of information that a defense attorney would try to gather in order to create a defense.” As a result, the videos were able to permeate the media unchallenged. Weigel’s story drew a lot of attention around the blogosphere, with pickup from BigGovernment, Andrew Sullivan, and Politico, among others.

Congressional reporter Mike Lillis took a look at a question that has largely been ignored during the debate over health care reform: What good is insurance coverage if local doctors don’t accept it? While Democratic proposals for expanding Medicaid may guarantee coverage for millions of Americans currently going without, the legislation may do little to ensure they actually get care unless more doctors start participating in the program. Just 40 percent of physicians currently accept all new Medicaid patients, while only 27 percent of dentists accept Medicaid. Lillis’s reporting outlined how enacting true reform may be more complicated than the already hairy fight over the “public option.”

To help our growing online community of readers track the debate over the public option, TWI just launched an exciting new feature—the “Senate Public Option Scoreboard.” Exhaustively researched and updated daily, it contains the latest position of every senator on a government-run insurance program to compete with private insurers as part of a health care reform package. Marketwatch highlighted the TWI scoreboard, and OpenLeft’s Chris Bowers used a scoreboard analysis to argue that Democrats do indeed have enough votes to pass a triggerless public option through reconciliation.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Polis recently introduced legislation that would repeal the controversial Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and he quickly came under criticism by Republicans, including Colorado Springs Rep. Doug Lamborn. The Colorado Independent’s Joseph Boven fact-checked the basis of Lamborn’s opposition—that all states would be forced to recognize same-sex marriages—and found the congressman’s reading of the bill to be “as politically easy to sell as it is factually slippery.” The DOMA repeal would apply only federal recognition to same-sex marriage, leaving state laws to govern locally, Boven explained.

The debate over proposed federal legislation that would more stringently regulate the practice of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” in oil and gas drilling continues. In Garfield County, commissioners decided to delay consideration of a local resolution on the bill to learn more about the process, which some say has led to groundwater contamination, as David O. Williams reported. A Democratic county commissioner voiced her support for the fracking bill, but there is opposition from some Republicans. The legislation would require the disclosure of the ingredients that go into the chemical cocktail that helps loosen up additional oil or gas in a well. 

As officials in Montrose County consider a plan to jump-start uranium milling near the Utah border, David O. Williams reported that trucks carrying the uranium ore and the processed uranium concentrate called “yellowcake” to make fuel rods for nuclear reactors would face almost no restrictions on where they can go and what highways they can use. Such materials, he found, are considered mere hazardous materials and therefore are not limited to transportation along the state’s designated nuclear materials routes.

In recent years, a unique partnership between state government and nonprofit groups has made significant strides to clean up acid mine drainage in the Sugarloaf Mine District in Lake County. But as Katie Redding explained, such “Good Samaritan” cleanup efforts could be subject to lawsuits under the Clean Water Act if they do not meet federal standards. That has put the scare into a number of volunteer cleanup efforts across Colorado, something U.S. Sen. Mark Udall hopes to change with a Clean Water Act amendment later this year.

The Iowa Independent’s Jason Hancock tracked statements that U.S. Rep. Steve King recently made on a conservative radio talk show. The western Iowa lawmaker declared that Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling that approved same-sex marriage is laying the foundation for socialism to take root in the state. King, who also made inaccurate analogies related to the Soviet Union, said same-sex marriage is a “purely socialist concept,” and for a socialist state to form, traditional marriage must be undermined. 

Lynda Waddington continued her examination of Iowa’s HIV transmission law, which one observer described as “a sledgehammer looking for a thumbtack.” In some cases, like that of 34-year-old Nick Rhoades, even if the virus is not transmitted those with HIV can face tougher prosecution and stiffer criminal penalties. Waddington profiled Rhoades’s case, in which Rhoades was sentenced four months ago to serve 25 years behind bars for violating the state’s transmission law, even though his partner did not contract the virus and the sexual contact was consensual.. During a recent recrimination hearing, a judge let Rhoades leave prison to serve five years probation instead. 

After months of meticulous, award-winning reporting by Jason Hancock, Iowa’s public universities decided to test the groundwater near the unlined, unmonitored coal ash dump they jointly use near Waterloo. This move comes several weeks after the universities said such testing would be unnecessary. Students, acting on Hancock’s reporting, called on their university administrations to take action. In an interview with Iowa’s Democratic governor, Chet Culver, Hancock learned Culver expects there will be changes to the way the state regulates disposal of toxic coal ash, given consensus due in large part to Hancock’s reporting. But, the governor said, the state will have to wait until federal regulators rewrite guidelines. That’s expected by the end of the year. 

The Michigan Messenger’s Eartha Jane Melzer focused her attention on the storage of nuclear waste at power facilities in Michigan. At the Fermi power station downriver from Detroit, local activists have voiced concerns that the storage of fuel rods in concrete casks on plant property leaves the radioactive materials vulnerable to attack or accident. Melzer also noted new concerns over the long-term storage of such nuclear materials at the former Big Rock plant near Charlevoix among other sites across the country. Although the plant closed in 1997, eight casks of high-level nuclear waste remain at the property. 

After assuring LGBT activists and leaders for two years that a controversial Web site would be removed from its computer servers, Michigan State University said last week it will continue to host the Web site of the “ex-gay” ministry known as Corduroy Stone, Todd A. Heywood reported. The university said the man who controls the site is a retired university employee who is entitled to the server space and isn’t violating the school’s usage policy. Although MSU officials called the “ex-gay” ministry content offensive, it is protected by the First Amendment.

As a round of closed-door negotiations conclude between Dow Chemical and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over the Midland-based company’s contamination of toxic dioxin into the local watershed, Eartha Jane Melzer asked: Will local residents be relocated from cleaned-up areas that will be recontaminated during seasonal flooding? So far, the EPA has said relocation is unlikely, which is unsettling to some observers because past cleanups by the company had to be redone by federal authorities. 

The Michigan Department of Corrections justified its policy that prevents HIV-positive inmates from working for prison food services, which provide the highest-paying jobs in jail. As Todd A. Heywood pointed out this spring, the department’s rationale was based on the unscientific belief that HIV/AIDS can be transmitted through tainted food, which prompted the Michigan Department of Civil Rights to investigate. But this month corrections officials shifted their rationale to one based on security: Some prisoners may think HIV-positive inmates are intentionally trying to poison them through food, which could make those HIV-positive inmates the object of jailhouse reprisals.

The Minnesota Independent’s Chris Steller fact-checked a highly publicized letter that Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty sent to state officials ordering a freeze on all state payments to ACORN in the wake of the group’s recent scandal. But as Steller pointed out, ACORN doesn’t receive any state funds. What’s more, local ACORN officials told Steller that the governor actually trumpeted his ACORN-related work as recently as two years ago, when he signed into law an anti-predatory lending bill that ACORN helped develop. ACORN’s state political director said the letter was “clearly political opportunism on the governor’s part.”

Meanwhile, the MnIndy team maintained its focus on the Minneapolis City Council races. Chris Steller interviewed the key players in Ward Two, the ward that launched the careers of Democratic-Farmer-Laborer titans such as Hubert Humphrey and Don Fraser. For the first time in memory, no Democrat is on the ballot in that ward. Instead, Green Party incumbent Cam Gordon is squaring off against Republican- and Independence Party-endorsed Allen Aigbogun, a recent law school grad. Paul Demko profiled the race in South Minneapolis’s diverse Ward Six, where Democrat Robert Lilligren faces five challengers, more than any other city council incumbent.

Andy Birkey broke big news when his investigation revealed that an evangelical treatment program in Minneapolis has received $2.4 million from the state since 2007. Minnesota Teen Challenge acknowledged the religious nature of its chemical-dependency treatment programs but said state money is kept separate from its evangelical program. Testimony from program graduates, however, suggests that evangelism—and perhaps even conversion—are key to the group’s mission. First Amendment groups told Birkey that Teen Challenge’s activity appears to run afoul of the constitutional principle of church-state separation, but it’s difficult to prove whether the organization is misusing state funds.

As crucial elections draw near in Minneapolis, Chris Steller scrutinized Hennepin County’s online records and found that financial reports for at least a dozen Minneapolis campaign committees and a dozen more political action committees are missing. A change in pre-primary filing rules, along with a technical snafu, explained some of the missing data. But of 26 PACs registered with the county as current in Minneapolis, pre-primary reports for only 14 are posted online; meanwhile, two third-party candidates flatly refused to release their personal financials.

New Mexico Independent (NMI) reporter Heath Haussamen earned top traffic with his coverage of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s announcement, made in Las Cruces, that the Obama administration is laying the groundwork for immigration reform, including a proposal similar to the “DREAM Act”—the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act that would grant certain undocumented immigrants, such as those who arrive as children and graduate from high school, the opportunity to earn permanent residency. The news was picked up by issue blogs on both the right and the left around the country.

Marjorie Childress investigated the active role that the state Republican Party is playing in Albuquerque’s mayoral race, which by law is nonpartisan. The party has helped Republican State Rep. Richard Berry with canvassing and volunteer labor, and Berry has used telephone lines and a copy machine at state party headquarters, Childress reported. In addition, the party funded a poll late in 2008 that included questions about the mayoral race. The city clerk said such support is legal, but his office is looking into how Republican funds have been spent in this and other local races.

In addition, Childress revealed that the construction company Berry describes as his “family-owned business” is actually owned by his wife. The firm has secured almost $50 million in federal no-bid contracts due to its status as a woman- and minority-owned business. Berry did not respond to Childress’s inquiries for clarification, but NMI is at work securing details about Berry’s five reported sources of income while the candidate continues to resist releasing his tax returns. 

Childress also fact-checked a mailer sent to voters by the Berry campaign that linked the city’s crime rate to a police policy regarding immigrants. The mailer inaccurately described Albuquerque as a “sanctuary city” that “attracts criminals.” Officials with the Albuquerque Police Department told NMI that Berry mischaracterized the department’s policy on immigration and noted that such distortions threaten to weaken the trust the department has worked to gain among the city’s immigrant community.

GOOD NEWS:

Democratic State Rep. Fred Durhal announced a free college tuition plan for Michigan high school graduates. He says his plan will be accomplished without raising taxes.

As Cedar Rapids, Iowa, continues to recover from last year’s devastating floods, the new director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Craig Fugate, promised $5 million in funding to repair the city’s devastated Central Fire Station.