Posted October 01, 2025in Political Mercury
He is a United States senator. Ankit Jain ran for election in 2024 and won — and he represents 702,000 people as one of two Washington, D.C. “shadow” senators. But this [...]
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Posted September 03, 2025in Political Mercury
Pie is a stand-in for Iowa itself in many ways in a feature-length documentary from director Beth M. Howard, an Iowa filmmaker who is now on a national tour with [...]
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Posted August 06, 2025in Political Mercury
A Capitol Police officer who stood the ground between hundreds of members of Congress and insurrectionists during the Jan. 6 attack says he thinks often about that day — a [...]
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Posted July 02, 2025in Political Mercury
The opening line of AI 2027, a forecast about the exponential explosion of artificial intelligence, is jaw-dropping. “We predict the impact of superhuman AI over the next decade will be [...]
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Posted June 04, 2025in Political Mercury
Rob Sand knows the outcome at the polls next year depends not just on how Iowans respond to him, the gubernatorial candidate atop his ticket, but Democrat voters themselves. Do [...]
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Posted April 30, 2025in Political Mercury
Many politicians can persuade you to believe in them. That’s a commonly reached feat. But the defining leaders, elected officials like Tom Harkin, Robert Ray, Henry Wallace and Harold Hughes, [...]
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Posted April 02, 2025in Political Mercury
Any conflicted pregnant woman who watched the just-concluded Paramount series sensation “Yellowstone” likely scheduled an abortion before the final cowboy deserted Kevin Coster and Taylor Sheridan’s fictional Montana ranch. Costner should reimburse [...]
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Posted March 05, 2025in Political Mercury
Compound interest. Of all the strands of imagination and provocations and fear and excitement that engage one during Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jonathan Weiner’s terrific book, “Long For This World: The [...]
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Posted February 05, 2025in Political Mercury
The conversation came rushing back to me sometime between the Carter grandchildren’s heart-tugging memories and Andrew Young’s magisterial closing eulogy during the funeral for President Jimmy Carter. As a 10-year-old boy, I thrilled [...]
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Posted January 01, 2025in Political Mercury
In reading the-then (and now-again) publishing sensation “Hillbilly Elegy” eight years ago as it announced a culture-crashing new voice, I found myself stopping at points in the book, both angry and doubtful [...]
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