Winners

Um, no.

Losers

Jonathan Narcisse must be infectious, as the Des Moines School Board winners are now carrying his "loser" virus. Harry Strong, husband of new board member Ginny, lodged a complaint last week with the Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board, accusing rabble-rouser Nan Stillians of failing to disclose that the Save Our Schools committee paid for a postcard message. Stillians, in an e-mail to Charlie Smithson of IECD called Strong's complaint "harassment," as she says she paid for the mailing herself. All together now: "It's over, people!"

In an age of political pork and hollow grandstanding, at least someone inside the beltway is keeping focused on the vital issues that really affect the lives of Iowans - like the naming of post offices in California. Thankfully, Rep. Steve King took time out of his busy schedule of immigrant bashing to beat back an insidious resurrection of the Red Scare that surely would have swept the nation had a Berkeley post office been named after a left-leaning, 94-year-old former city councilwoman, who, King alleged, had past ties to communism. The Iowa rep wasn't alone in his reservation about the naming rights and the designation was shot down with a 215-190 vote in the House. But true to his legacy of laugh-out-loud absurd comments, King then went on to rebuff accusations of McCarthyism by gushing that the infamous witch-hunting senator was "a great American hero." Of course, if irrational paranoia resulting in outlandish persecution of an already-marginalized segment of society is the new measure of an American hero, King - the champion of barbed-wire borders and English-only - is well on his way to heroic status himself.

Akin to cutting back on food stamps because Uncle Sam only wants to feed the starving with filet mignon, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a significant drawdown in the number of agriculture acres eligible for long-term contracts in the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to protect, instead of plow, environmentally important land. While some hailed the agency for taking a more critical look at the quality of land enrolled in the program, it's likely the bird species that are literally starving as they migrate over our habitat-barren state might prefer that the thousands of Iowa acres up for re-enrollment remain among the ranks of conservation lands instead of being added to the monoculture sea of corn and beans. And, call us cynical, but with the revision coming the same week the U.S. House passed a bill that brazenly guts the Endangered Species Act in the name of financially compensating private developers if they have to so much as scale back their multi-million-dollar housing developments or timber sales to protect critical habitat, the CRP revisions seem more like another land grab from the enviro-challenged Bush Administration than a genuine desire to enhance the quality of conservation.

Although paid extremely well to protect and to serve, Des Moines police officer Franklin Irvin Jr. needs to join the mooks he spends time chasing down behind bars. Is he a pederast? A murderer? A drug kingpin? No, nothing like that. Irvin is just part of a tight-knit clan that has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection eight times in the past 14 years, abusing a federal law that is supposed to limit debtors to one shot at a clean slate every six years. Frankly put, Irvin, his wife and two sons like to suck on the tit without paying for the milk, or their rent, or their credit card debt, or their utilities; and it's these kinds of people who have forced Congress to crack the whip on reforming the bankruptcy system overall. Because pantyhose over the head and guns blazing or not, one can draw no other conclusion than that Irvin is robbing the system blind. What makes it even more disgusting, and what should make the stomachs of honest-to-God taxpayers' turn, is that Irvin is an officer of the law and, according to his supervisor, a "superior detective" - or that which he does when he's not too busy totally fucking people over. CV

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