Posted April 15, 2013in Featured Story, Iowa Watchdog
One of the worst kept secrets in Iowa is that U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, a Democrat, is considering a run for governor. Many in Iowa’s Democratic Party see Vilsack as potentially the only one among them capable of beating Republican Gov. Terry Branstad in a 2014 match-up. Vilsack,
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Posted April 11, 2013in Featured Story, Iowa Watchdog
DES MOINES — A highly- touted and much-anticipated Iowa agency aimed at improving government transparency is in jeopardy just three months before it’s set to open its doors because of concerns over funding. The Iowa Public Information Board, created at the urging of Republican Gov. Terry Branstad, has been meeting
Read More →No longer relegated to the fictional worlds of Iron Man, James Bond and Star Trek, sometime within the next two years your friends and family will start sporting computerized watches, glasses, rings and potentially more. You may have heard of Google’s much buzzed-about “Project Glass,” a.k.a. “Google Glasses,” a computer-powered
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Posted April 10, 2013in Belly Up To...
Every once in a while in Des Moines, you’ll spot someone wearing a T-shirt with the shape of Iowa printed on the chest enclosing the clever sexual innuendo: “I <3 Cumming.” (Who doesn’t?) The popular T-shirt is actually referencing the town of Cumming, which can be found by frustrated motorists
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Posted April 10, 2013in Film Review
“42” 4 stars Rated PG-13 Biography Starring: Chadwick Boseman, T.R. Knight, Harrison Ford Writer-director Brian Helgeland’s methodically balanced biopic about revered baseball legend Jackie Robinson manages a near-impossible feat of offering all things to all people. Baseball fans, civil rights followers and casual filmgoers will be rewarded with a film
Read More →Amount: $7,206.35 To: Polk County Auditor and Commissioner of Elections For: Fees for holding a special Ward 2 election on Feb. 12, including printing ballots and registers ($2,496.50), legal publications ($328), preparation, maintenance and deliver of a voting machine ($375), rental of a poling precinct ($480), mileage reimbursements ($275.70), postage
Read More →Alien races try to coexist in the post-apocalyptic ‘Defiance’ Syfy boasts that “Defiance” marks the first conversion of TV and online gaming. The drama will unfold as both a series and a multiplatform videogame, with connections between the two mediums. That’s an intriguing gimmick — but luckily there’s nothing gimmicky
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Posted April 10, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, who recently has characterized his likelihood of running for the Senate as something of a toss-up, went further last Monday. “I think that needle’s just a little over 50-50 right now, just a little over,” King said in an interview. Speaking after an economic-development session
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Posted April 10, 2013in Civic Skinny, Featured Story
The Des Moines Register had a little two-paragraph item in the sports section the other day that said Iowa State University made $15,366 from its participation in the Liberty Bowl. The university got $964,500 in bowl revenue and had $949,134 in bowl expenses, the item noted. Geez, Skinny wondered, how
Read More →Courtesy of Beaverdale Books Review by Sally Wisdom Knopf Dec. 6, 2012 $24.95 243 pp. University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate Ayana Mathis has earned well-deserved acclaim for this painful first novel. In 1923, young Hattie, along with her mother and two sisters, flees Georgia for Philadelphia, becoming part of
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