Posted September 10, 2014in Political Mercury
State Sen. Joni Ernst deserves points for candor on her pro-life stance on abortion. The Red Oak Republican’s stated position would be that the person performing the abortion should be punished — if the leading goal of her social ideology is realized, and abortion is criminalized. Her exact words, reports
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Posted September 03, 2014in Political Mercury
Bryce T. Bauer, the Audubon-raised author of a just-released book on Templeton Rye during Prohibition, spent about two hours reading selections from his work and answering questions at signing event in Carroll. Bauer, 27, a native of a farm four miles north of Audubon on U.S. Highway 71 — land
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Posted August 27, 2014in Political Mercury
Political question of the day for Iowans: What’s worse, being Sarah Palin, or wanting to be like Sarah Palin? Many opponents of Joni Ernst, the Red Oak Republican seeking a Hawkeye State U.S. Senate seat, make the easy reach in comparing Ernst with another conservative female political figure, Sarah Palin,
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Posted August 20, 2014in Political Mercury
Just hours before celebrating the opening of a $1.7-million community center they helped fund, members of the Templeton Rye Spirits brain trust gathered at their distinctive facility in this southern Carroll County city. What emerged from that meeting were some big announcements for the future of the legal incarnation of
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Posted August 13, 2014in Political Mercury
It started as instinct. I was 10. I didn’t have the words to summon an explanation. But I knew it, felt it. These are my places — the places along the journey to celebrated destinations. My father was a music professor at Simpson College in Indianola, which afforded our family
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Posted August 06, 2014in Political Mercury
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, says the federal government should keep confidential the location and identities of the 139 undocumented, unaccompanied immigrant children who have come to the state in the last year. Releasing the information, as some Republicans are demanding of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
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Posted July 30, 2014in Political Mercury
About the only thing Gov. Terry Branstad didn’t do for energy production on a recent Wednesday in west-central Iowa was to check the porch bulbs or flip on the night lights for residents in Glidden and Coon Rapids before leaving the region. Branstad spent most of a working day involved
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Posted July 23, 2014in Political Mercury
Over-hard or scrambled. That’s how the governor likes his eggs — which are part of his breakfast diet one or two days a week, he says. Gov. Terry Branstad talked about his own taste for eggs at the end of an hour-long tour of Rose Acre Farms outside Guthrie Center
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Posted July 16, 2014in Political Mercury
With all that bread-bagging of shoes and hog castrating on the farm, life for a young Joni Ernst surely didn’t afford a lot of time for leisurely television. And in the 1970s, before the proliferation of cable TV and the development of modern satellites to reach into space and snare
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Posted July 09, 2014in Political Mercury
Mitt Romney had his 47 percent — the portion of the American electorate he famously dismissed. The number is closely associated with the Massachusetts Republican’s failed 2012 campaign. U.S. Senate candidate Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican whom Romney endorses, faces her own challenging political figure — call it The 12
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