Posted October 07, 2015in Political Mercury
“You’re Mexican!” “Go back to Univision!” “You probably don’t pay taxes!” A 27-year-old Latina Iowa State University graduate student said these were just some of the taunts that greeted her and other political protesters outside the Cy-Hawk football game last month in Ames. Maria Alcivar, the student and a representative of the
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Posted September 30, 2015in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Anyone who follows politics with even a challenged attention span can quickly summon from memory banks the basics of the 1960 presidential debates: Nixon sweating; Kennedy charming. Nixon, as the popular and conventional history goes, did better on the radio. In the last Republican presidential debate, the one with the candidates
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Posted September 23, 2015in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Tyson Fresh Meats’ decision to permanently cease beef-packing operations at its Denison plant in August jettisoned some 400 workers, many of them Latino immigrants with varying degrees of language proficiency and connections to Iowa. Within hours, Evan Blakley, executive director of the Chamber & Development Council of Crawford County, started fielding phone calls.
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Posted September 16, 2015in Featured Story, Political Mercury
It’s one of those moments that cements a friendship, reveals character in a longtime pal, makes you happy to be riding shotgun in his car. My friend Matt, a Cedar Rapids native now living in Texas, pulled up to a stop sign in Florida. We looked to our left and saw an overweight woman who was slowly,
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Posted September 09, 2015in Political Mercury
Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker says he’d cut short the run of the of the Renewable Fuel Standard to a “couple of years.” The ethanol-boosting federal mandate supported by a raft of farm groups is scheduled to expire in 2022. “I’d love to have a phase-out over time,” Walker said in
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Posted September 02, 2015in Political Mercury
An overflow audience at the Santa Maria Winery in Carroll Friday gave Carly Fiorina her most sustained applause before the Republican presidential aspirant even entered the room. Craig Williams, chairman of the Carroll County Republican Party, introduced Fiorina with an exhortation to the more than 150 in attendance: send a message to
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Posted August 26, 2015in Political Mercury
Anti-abortion candidates like Carly Fiorina apparently don’t have much confidence in their ability to prevail. They haven’t thought or don’t want to talk about the key question a in Roe-reversed world in which abortion is illegal. Should this happen, there’s this little matter of the punishments phase. And just what should the
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Posted August 19, 2015in Political Mercury
Call it the night the Iowa Democratic Clinton doubts died. Hillary Clinton didn’t sing. Or break out any instruments. But, according to several key Iowa Democrats, and by measures of applause and animation in the audience, the presidential candidate rocked an audience of 2,000 Democratic Party regulars Friday in a fiery
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Posted August 12, 2015in Political Mercury
Maybe you’re yelling at your kid a little too much in the grocery. You hear your own voice raised, recognize the fault in it as Lucky Stars spill from the cereal box your son, with snot-nosed precociousness, ripped wide. Perhaps, you’ve screamed something at another driver you regret because it’s
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Posted August 05, 2015in Political Mercury
Hillary Clinton says the next president of the United States must understand modern America, the changing nature of families, strong role of women, and use the Oval Office to bridge what she called an achievement gap so all young people toe the same starting line early in school. “Our families are different
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