Posted January 23, 2025in Morain
A January 9 Iowa Appeals Court decision could bring a major change to the conduct of meetings by Iowa’s local government bodies, including county supervisors, city councils, and school boards. The decision centers on the legitimacy of closed sessions by those public bodies. The specific citation of Iowa law at
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Posted December 17, 2024in Morain
A share of Iowa’s Republican electorate appears ready to abandon Senator Joni Ernst in favor of a more Trumpian replacement in the 2026 Iowa Republican primary election. It’s yet another sign of what today’s Republican Party has become: Donald Trump’s captive. Independent judgment within the GOP is now almost extinct.
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Posted December 12, 2024in Morain
President Joe Biden’s recent pardon of his son Hunter Biden has reignited the debate over the presidential pardoning power. And argument over this constitutionally protected prerogative of the President will not go away with Donald Trump’s return to power next month. Trump already has his own history of using the
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Posted December 06, 2024in Morain
Grandfathers and clocks have a lot in common. Remember the “Grandfather’s Clock” song? How the clock kept accurate time for the old man’s entire life? “Ninety years without slumbering, tick, tock, tick, tock?” We have a pendulum clock on the wall in our downstairs hall that rings the Westminster Chime
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Posted November 26, 2024in Morain
A list of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees for Cabinet positions suggests strongly that he envisions the U.S. Cabinet playing a very different role from those that key appointees have traditionally played in the past. Most of Trump’s nominees have relatively little administrative experience and/or familiarity with the duties and obligations
Read More →I played a role in a movie three weeks ago, without even so much as a screen test. Well, technically speaking, I suppose, I didn’t actually debut on the big screen. It was more of an off-screen performance. It began this past summer when a group of residents of Green
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Posted November 12, 2024in Morain
President-elect Donald Trump after securing victory in the 2024 election: “It’s time to put the division of the past four years behind us. It’s time to unite. And we’re going to try. We’re going to try. We have to try. And it’s going to happen.” President-elect Joe Biden after securing
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Posted November 07, 2024in Morain
What effect will the 2024 election have on the immigration situation? I’m writing this column on Sunday before the Tuesday election, so I don’t know its outcome. But the outlines of immigration policy possibilities are visible nevertheless. This year’s experience with immigration proposals brought the nation to where it is
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Posted October 31, 2024in Morain
Last Sunday, at a concert Kathy and I attended, one of the introducers referenced countries where political campaigning lasts only a few months. The audience erupted in applause. By all indications, that appears to be the consensus around the nation as this Tuesday’s Election Day approaches. Party officials and private
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Posted October 24, 2024in Morain
Pundits are fond of saying that elections are about the economy, and people’s relationship to it. “It’s the economy, stupid” and all that. It may be true — but there’s certainly evidence to the contrary. Look no further than the reaction to Donald Trump’s tariff proposals from Iowans whose livelihoods
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