Posted October 09, 2013in Political Mercury
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin’s days in the great American food-stamp fight go back to the 1970s, his first years in Congress representing Iowa. “I remember going through all these things about, ‘Oh, people are gonna cheat, people are gonna cheat, people are gonna cheat,’” said Harkin, a Democrat. “And at
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Posted October 02, 2013in Political Mercury
He’s not King Corn around these parts for nothing. Gov. Terry Branstad knows the strings to pull — where, and just how hard. Eschewing the advice of GOP consultants near and far, and enjoying something of a death grip on Terrace Hill, the Great Mustachioed One cannot resist star-making impulses.
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Posted September 25, 2013in Political Mercury
A veteran Chicago congressman shaping the raging immigration debate says he has a powerful accidental ally in U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa. “Every time he opens his mouth, he helps the pro-immigrant movement in this nation,” U.S. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, an 11-term Democrat, said in an interview in his Washington,
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Posted September 18, 2013in Political Mercury
A western Iowa Republican Party fall fundraiser weaved the local and international in a power-punch case for a conservative reshaping of U.S. government at all levels. In a two-hour session last week at Santa Maria Winery in Carroll, headlined by WHO Radio talk-show host Simon Conway, a London-born American, an
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Posted September 11, 2013in Political Mercury
The president of an order of Catholic sisters with deep influence in western Iowa supports immigration reform with a path to citizenship for the more than 11 million people living in the United States without proper documents. Sister Linda Mershon of the La Crosse-Wis.-based Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration said
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Posted September 04, 2013in Political Mercury
Bugs Bunny broke the news. Not the cartoon, but this wonderful plastic transistor radio shaped like the silly rabbit. No trick for this kid. That radio worked. For ball games. Bee Gees songs, maybe a Gerald Ford comment here and there — whatever was happening in 1975, when I was
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Posted August 28, 2013in Political Mercury
There’s a term in China and India for men like me and U.S. Senate candidate David Young: bare branches. We’re single, never-married, with no kids — branches on a family tree with no leafs or splintering twigs. Bare. Nothing. Lineage dead-enders. Young is 45. I turned 44 last week. Young,
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Posted August 21, 2013in Political Mercury
Nationally syndicated talk-radio host Steve Deace, an Iowa native who has built a national brand as an in-house critic of the conservative movement, says Democrats are out-gunning Republicans on strategy and message. “Say what you will, the Democrats offer solutions,” Deace said. Meanwhile, the GOP issues statements that come across
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Posted August 14, 2013in Political Mercury
In the aftermath of a controversial comment about immigration and drug smuggling, U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, has said he built his words largely on the observations of border-patrol officials with whom he talked in the Southwest. “It was pretty close to the descriptions that I have been given by
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Posted August 07, 2013in Political Mercury
A few days before the furor broke over Congressman Steve King’s intellectual meanderings on cantaloupe-shaped calves and otherwise skinny Mexican kids, U.S. Senate candidate David Young visited with Political Mercury. We talked about many topics, including, of course, immigration. Young said there are many planks in the Republican Party platform
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