Posted April 09, 2014in Political Mercury
Tom Hoefling wears the underdog label with pride. The Lohrville Republican, a long-time conservative activist, is on the ballot in the GOP gubernatorial primary, the lone challenger there to Gov. Terry Branstad, a five-term officeholder seeking a sixth, four-year stint at Terrace Hill. Does Hoefling, 53, a political consultant, think
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Posted April 02, 2014in Political Mercury
The West Tennessean walked tall. And he spoke in a manner one would expect from the curator of so many things associated with the famous 1973 movie based on tall-walking Sheriff Buford Pusser. The question from my quick acquaintance came as easy as his syrupy drawl on this spring afternoon
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Posted March 26, 2014in Political Mercury
One of the Iowa conservative movement’s more skilled tacticians is expected to roll out a controversial new legislative initiative that would bar women from driving motor vehicles in the State of Iowa. The measure, the brainchild of Bob Vander Plaats, president of the Family Leader and a former Republican candidate
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Posted March 19, 2014in Political Mercury
Gov. Terry Branstad’s designation of Greene County as the state’s first Home Base Iowa community distinguishes the west-central county as one of the most supportive locations for returning military veterans in the United States, said Maj. Gen. Timothy E. Orr, adjutant general of the Iowa National Guard and a former
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Posted March 12, 2014in Political Mercury
There’s this terrifically descriptive term college administrators use these days. Helicopter parenting (hovering protectively over one’s kids) is creating a new breed of college freshmen university deans call “Teacups” — young people who are so fragile they break down, crack, anytime something doesn’t go their way. The Atlantic magazine recently
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Posted March 05, 2014in Political Mercury
Many gay-obsessed conservatives are no doubt a lot like Iowa Senator Mark Segebart of Vail. They’ve done their “research” about what turns the eyes of otherwise red-blooded Hawkeye State men from the pages of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition to, well, the eyes of other red-blooded Iowa men. They are
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Posted February 26, 2014in Political Mercury
The meat of the recently-passed farm bill, signed by President Barack Obama into a law governing agriculture for the next decade, is the elimination of the $4.5 billion annually in direct payments in favor of an expanded crop-insurance program. The package also reduces spending on food stamps by about $8
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Posted February 19, 2014in Political Mercury
It’s eye-rolling, this posturing and re-posturing of Iowa Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Jacobs. Faced with news that he gave money to a Democrat — former U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine of New Jersey ($1,000) — Jacobs said he just did that because Corzine was CEO of Goldman Sachs, where Jacobs
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Posted February 12, 2014in Political Mercury
Some long-assumed sagacity about success in Iowa politics is this: never say things are going too well on the farm. Considering the last five years, that wisdom, which always sort of played on hayseed characterizations of those of us living in rural Iowa as taciturn head-shakers, is far from realistic.
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Posted February 05, 2014in Political Mercury
State Sen. Mark Segebart, R-Vail, says Iowa shouldn’t have three state universities. The population just doesn’t justify it, says the lawmaker-farmer who represents a vast swath of western Iowa. “We probably have, for 3 million people, having three huge universities, and all the infrastructure and employees that go with that,
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