First, the news:

Jimmy Carter will be the Bucksbaum lecturer at Drake on Sept. 13, thanks in part to 1970 Drake alum Brent Slay. Slay heads a Michigan company that makes “employee-recognition products,” and is, according to Drake, a friend of President Carter. It’s not known how much Drake is paying Carter, but the former President usually gets at least $100,000 for a speech.

Don Tripp apparently is looking to leave his job as head of the Des Moines Parks and Recreation operation, and by the time this appears he may have announced his plan to take a job in Colorado. Or maybe not. If the popular Tripp leaves, that should please council member and former city forester Skip Moore, who is regularly at odds with the parks boss. Most everyone else seems to like Tripp a lot. ...

Now, the non-news:

Christie Vilsack is holding a fundraiser May 12 “to honor the women who paved the way” for Iowans finally to elect (Vilsack hopes) a woman to Congress. Those being honored include past Congressional candidates Ruth Hollingshead, the first Iowa woman to run for Congress and, of course, the first to lose. The Albia postmaster lost to Karl LeCompte, a Republican who served 20 years in the U.S. House. Also being honored: Zoe Nabers, the second woman to run, who lost decisively to Tom Martin in eastern Iowa in 1940; two-time loser Lynn Cutler, once of Waterloo and now of Chicago; two time loser Elaine Baxter of Burlington; Jean Lloyd Jones, the first Iowa woman to run for the U.S. Senate, where she got just 27.2 percent of the vote in losing to Chuck Grassley in 1992; Sheila McGuire Riggs, who lost to Tom Latham in 1994; Connie McBurney, who lost to Greg Ganske in 1996, Donna Smith, who lost a 2000 election to Jim Nussle; Ann Hutchinson, who lost in 2002 to Nussle; Julie Thomas, who lost in 2002 to Jim Leach; Joyce Schulte, who twice lost decisively (2004 and 2006) to Steve King; Becky Greenwald, who got beat up in 2008 by Latham, and Roxanne Conlin, who lost a Senate bid to Grassley in 2010.

But weren’t there other women who ran for Congress? Well, yes. There was Sonja Egenes, who ran against Neal Smith in 1962, and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who lost in 2008 and again in 2010 to Dave Loebsack. And maybe more. Why aren’t they being honored? Well, they’re Republicans. No need to honor them. ...

Meantime, Vilsack is tapping the purses of lots of central Iowa women, persons who aren’t always on the lists of political givers. Des Moines isn’t in Vilsack’s district, but significant Des Moines-area donors in her bid to oust Steve King include Susan Knapp ($5,000) and these $2,500 donors: Kathleen Zimpleman, Patty Cownie (whose son, legislator Pete Cownie has given $750 to King), Andrea Abel, Barbara Crowley, Charlotte Hubbell, Helen Hubbell, Cyril Mandlebaum, Suzanne Engman, Marjorie Foster, Toni Urban, Jodi Urich, Linda Crawford and Pam Bookey, according to records at the Federal Election Commission in Washington. Chipping in $1,000 are Michele Griswell, Connie Wimer, Emily Weitz, Rusty Hubbell and Georgia Helmick. Other women ponying up various amounts include Sue Brenton, Lois Beh, Susan Judkins Josten, Andy McGuire, Julia Gentleman, Bonnie Campbell, Kathie Eckhouse, Rose Mary Pratt, Marsha Wiggins, Marcia Nichols, Mary Nelson and a clutch of Garsts.

The district is heavily Republican — the GOP has 175,895 registered voters and the Democrats 129,442, with 174,106 independents — but Ames is an island of Democrats, and Vilsack has tapped those folks. She has raised around $40,000 from Ames voters, compared to just $15,825 by King. And $10,000 of King’s money came from Roger and Connie Underwood. Vilsack moved to Ames from Des Moines to take on King, and one of her $2,500 contributors was Secretary of Agriculture and former governor Tom Vilsack. He wrote a check to his wife’s campaign on March 20, listing Ames as his address. A year earlier, listing a Washington, D.C. address, he gave another $2,500. (Turnabout is fair play. She gave $2,100 to his gubernatorial campaign in 2006.)

All told, as of March 31 Vilsack had raised $1,550,556, including $1,285,651 from individuals and $260,716 from political action committees. King had raised $1,264,118, including $1,006,494 from individuals and $253,500 from PACs. Vilsack had $905,427 cash on hand and King had $809,854.

Gov. Terry Branstad, unlike many politicians in that he regularly gives generously to those running for office, gave King $2,500 on March 31 this year, the final day of the first-quarter reporting period. That’s the most he has ever given to one federal candidate in an election cycle. But he did more than that for Miller-Meeks. Besides giving her $250 for her unsuccessful 2008 Congressional bid, he hired her after becoming governor and put her in charge of the state’s Department of Public Health.

There’s no indication that Steve King has ever given a nickel to any federal candidate. But, oddly, Stephen King, the author, gave $10,000 to the Iowa Democratic Party in 2004. He lives in Maine. ...

Even in death, Chuck Colson couldn’t escape Bob Pratt. In 2006, Federal Judge Pratt of Iowa’s Southern District ruled that an affiliate of Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries was “pervasively sectarian” and crossed the line between separation of church and state, using the state’s money to finance a religious effort. Pratt ruled that it had to return about $1.5 million to the state. Pratt was upheld on appeal, though the court said the ministries needn’t repay the state.

Colson, who had been an aide to President Richard Nixon and then went to jail for obstructing justice in the Watergate investigation while in his post, died a couple of weeks ago. His long obituary in The New York Times talked about his becoming a born-again Christian in prison and then establishing his fellowship ministries. Then, near the end, the obituary notes that “a federal judge” ruled the program unconstitutional because it “gave special privileges to inmates who embraced evangelical Christianity.”

That federal judge was Pratt, a strong advocate of the First Amendment who has always taken pride — if judges take pride — in the ruling. ...

In 2011, Federal Judge Mark Bennett of Sioux City imposed a 48-month sentence and an $829,715.85 fine on Steven Keith VandeBrake in a price-fixing, bid-rigging antitrust case in the concrete business. The Justice Department was willing to settle for a 19-month sentence and a $100,000 fine. Bennett’s decision “tied the record for the longest jail sentence ever imposed on a defendant solely convicted of violating the antitrust laws,” according to the Department of Justice. The other case was a far larger case. VandeBrake’s sentence was much greater than the guidelines called for, but Bennett explained it by saying he didn’t like the guidelines and, besides, VandeBrake was a rich guy who showed no remorse. And the Justice Department’s lawyer didn’t know as much about sentencing as he, Bennett, did, the judge said. VandeBrake appealed.

Last week, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Bennett on a 2-to-1 vote, but the most interesting ruling was the one-paragraph concurring opinion by Chief Judge William Riley. It reads, in its entirety: “I concur in the general reasoning and conclusion of Judge Bye’s opinion. I write separately to disassociate myself from the district court’s comments about economic success and status, race, heritage, and religion. I consider those comments inappropriate and not a proper reason for supporting any sentence.”

Steve Colloton has been on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals since 2003, not since 1903, as Skinny reported in the print edition last week. The 100-year mistake is well within the margin of error for the column. CV