Posted April 24, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Republicans, actively conducting an autopsy of the last presidential election, should be cautious about throwing overboard long-held principles and core constituencies in a chase for quick political fixes with younger voters and Hispanics, U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, says. Bottom line: Count King out on the head-turning facelift some key
Read More →
Posted April 17, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Politicians looking to yarn folksy images often talk of being plain-speaking, just-folks fellows. Bruce Braley, who grew up in Brooklyn, Iowa, takes that angle a step further. He authored a bill requiring Washington bureaucrats to dispense with what Braley, a Waterloo congressman, calls “gobbledygook” and deliver information in clear English.
Read More →
Posted April 10, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, who recently has characterized his likelihood of running for the Senate as something of a toss-up, went further last Monday. “I think that needle’s just a little over 50-50 right now, just a little over,” King said in an interview. Speaking after an economic-development session
Read More →
Posted April 03, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
In Mark Segebart’s world, the minimum wage is a quaint notion, something along the lines of an allowance. Make your bed. Clean your room. Flip some burgers after school, and you’ll get $7.25 an hour, enough to take your best girl to the sock hop with some spare change to
Read More →
Posted March 27, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Iowa Republican insiders tell Political Mercury they’re planning on rolling out an unconventional political makeover of Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds, one fraught with potential trip wires that could confound her ambitions to become the first female governor or U.S. senator in Hawkeye State history. But GOP sources see the move
Read More →
Posted March 20, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Oh, for the 1970s — were it not for those wildly ridiculous pants. Those of us in older generations remember a time when K-12 educators were asked to teach reading and writing and arithmetic, with a field trip to the zoo or some such place thrown in maybe once or
Read More →
Posted March 13, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
The “Iowa Nice” guy — he of the snark and snarl, the Internet sensation with the clockmaker’s timing for profanity — talked of being nice. Honestly. For real. Even in a virtual world. “We have to somehow transition into listening again,” Scott Siepker said. Siepker, a Mount Carmel native and
Read More →
Posted March 06, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Congressman Steve King — not a person one usually associates with Shakespeare in word games — is playing a convincing Hamlet with his teasing and toying over a possible bid for the U.S. Senate. The Kiron politician is the Republican keeping other Republicans in a holding pattern. The rest of
Read More →
Posted February 27, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
The thing about a bully is, nobody expects the bullied to win the fight — they just want to see some fight. So let’s say you’re on the school bus, a squirmy, gangly, pimple-faced seventh-grader so uncomfortable with talking to girls that you run from animated female characters when playing
Read More →
Posted February 20, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
The brilliant actress Maggie Smith of “Downton Abbey” quoted the playwright Noel Coward on “60 Minutes” Sunday night in talking about her advancing age. She’s 78. “It seems like you eat breakfast every 30 minutes,” Smith said, referring to how days go racing by as one matures. Fair enough. For
Read More →
