1 Moo U. all wet - again

Iowa State University announced last week that it will lift a campus ban on alcohol during its annual Veishea celebration. Drunken riots in 2004 caused a one-year hiatus of the event, and its past is certainly tainted (including a murder), but school leaders came to their senses when they realized that without binge drinking, fist fights, burning couches and multiple arrests as distractions, students might suddenly realize they are (egads!) in Ames.

2 Jewelry for strays

Newt Gingrich's best buddy and Iowa gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle kept the e-mail-press-release-big-idea train rolling last week when he proposed that police in our state should be allowed to track, in real time, the movements of sex offenders using GPS tracking devices. "The 2,000-foot rule is not enough," said Nussle, who could have used a monitoring ankle bracelet himself during his first marriage.

3 On to the next idea

As President Bush launched a new effort last week to gain public support for the Iraq war, a majority of Americans rewarded his plan by essentially telling him they think it is not doable and that he personally is full of shit and is going to hell. OK, actually we tacked on the last part ourselves.

4 So much for solidarity

Breaking up is hard to do, especially when the state's largest labor union is involved. Or so claims AFSCME's former president, Jan Corderman, who sued the group last week, alleging she was shorted compensation for 3,132 hours of unused sick time that amounted to more than $113,000 or a half-dozen years of free health insurance when she retired under "very complicated" circumstance earlier this year.

5 Bus-ted

Sick of giving surrounding cities a free ride, the Des Moines Metropolitan Transit Authority rolled out a proposal last week that would make suburbs and county municipalities shell out a more equitable share for metro bus services. While proponents say it will facilitate a better-resourced regional system with pie-in-the-sky suggestions of a subway, we're thinking the folks in Clive, who'd see their financial input spike by more than 150 percent, might throw a wrench in the gears before this gets too far from the station.

6 Ka-ching

The University of Iowa was feeling like a golden goose last week, announcing that the institution of higher learning had hit the $1 billion (yeah, with a "b") mark in its "Good. Better. Best. Iowa" fund-raising campaign, joining fewer than four-dozen schools around the country to shake down private sources for such a sizable chunk of change.

7 Greedy bastard, meet illiterate loser

According to a study from the Iowa Policy Project released last week, it turns out that a troubling number of Americans working part-time, temporary and on-call jobs mistakenly believe they have health insurance, when in fact, all they've got is a virtually useless medical discount card that leaves them holding the bag on essentially all claims. This begs the question, who's more pathetic: the employer trying to look like the good guy with a deceptive piece of plastic, or the working stiff so ignorant as to make this troubling misperception "a common mistake."

8 Katrina's milk money

Waukee's 10-year-old fund-raising wonder, Talia Leman, helped raise more than $5 million for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Her fund-raising idea, T.L.C. (Trick-or-treat for the Levee Catastrophe), was started with the goal of raising $1 million. However, with the help of about 4,000 schools nationwide, she exceeded her goal five times over. That's a hell of a lot of missed candy.

9 Hawkeye State

The whining could be heard from the Missouri to the mighty Mississippi when the Iowa Hawkeyes were awarded with their fourth straight January bowl game (an honor shared with only three other prominent programs), while Iowa State drew the Houston Bowl. Talking heads who had been "99.9 percent sure" of who was going where - and were dead wrong - summed it up as Iowa simply being able to "travel" well. Yes, it sure doesn't hurt to actually have fans.

10 Foundation in education?

Perhaps. But the rest of the structure isn't doing so well, at least according to a National Education Association report which shows that Iowa ranks 41st in teacher pay, with its educators earning about $8,500 less than the national average. CV

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