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Posted July 31, 2024in Political Mercury

Project 2025 taking down porn sites will be the start of the second Civil War

The conservative master blueprint Project 2025 will start the next civil war. Just not in the ways you think. In a crammed catalog of things I just don’t want to think about — in a kind of running and screaming and kicking way — the storyline I’d most like to avoid considering,

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Posted July 03, 2024in Political Mercury

Iowa combat veteran, former ag official ‘ready to serve’ again — this time in Congress

After the rains, or in the routines of daily life, in one of the more war-ravaged reaches of the globe, residents would spot the signs of unexploded munitions, mortars and other devices of death. The Army National Guard’s combat engineers would scout and remove rocket rounds and similar weapons for

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Posted June 05, 2024in Political Mercury

Farmers fear Koch takeover of Iowa fertilizer plant would boost nitrogen prices

Harold Beach, a northeast Missouri farmer who runs a row-crop operation and raises hogs and cattle, traveled to central Iowa recently to urge one of the nation’s top regulators to stop a multi-billion-dollar takeover of a Lee County fertilizer plant he and other rural advocates say will further erode competition

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Posted May 01, 2024in Political Mercury

‘Nuclear War: A Scenario’

Deep in the warm hurricane of 1980s nostalgia-minded groups on Facebook are the occasional references to fearful school-kid preparation exercises for a forefront haunt to humanity at the time — the night-shaking stalk of the prospect of a world-ending nuclear holocaust. Remember duck and cover under the chewing-gum-ridden desk chairs?

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Posted April 03, 2024in Political Mercury

‘The Beekeeper’ is a not-so-subtle Trump fantasy movie

If civil judgments don’t drain the Trump Machine into cashless-ness, the former president may want to open up theaters in the swing states for free showings of the Jason Statham movie “The Beekeeper.” Screenwriter Kurt Wimmer may be accidentally inspiring MAGA more effectively than any speechwriter in Trump’s infamously off-script political orbit. “The Beekeeper” is

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Posted March 06, 2024in Political Mercury

The dehumanizing formula of a school shooting

We were all in the formula, the algorithm of horror that is a modern school shooting. Death for some, dehumanization for others. In covering the Perry school shootings Jan. 4, what struck me was the hope-stealing realization that so many students and families seemed prepared for their roles. The students I talked

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Posted January 31, 2024in Political Mercury

What Tom Harkin would do if he were running for political office in 2024

Tom Harkin still has it. The pulse of Iowa on instinct auto dial and a force of moral clarity and that defining doggedness, an aw-shucks ease with voters, and a rhetorical sledgehammer ever ready when he needs it. He’s fast, too, on the draw with a prescription for Democrats in

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Posted January 03, 2024in Political Mercury

‘A Fever In The Heartland’

Twenty one years ago, Chuck Offenburger and I had ringside seats for a rare and fascinating journalistic forum: the now late George “Lefty” Mills, the legendary Des Moines Register reporter; the late Bob Beck, the former publisher of Centerville’s Daily Iowegian, a towering figure in journalism and Republican politics for decades; and my

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Posted December 06, 2023in Political Mercury

A pioneering Iowa Democrat

Six-year-old Hayes Hofmeister of rural Cedar Rapids, a Springville, Iowa, farm kid, can’t stop talking about Josh Turek — “that guy in the wheelchair” — the one who plays basketball and has Paralympics gold medals. The one who inspired him at Camp Sunnyside. Born with Spina Bifida, Hayes, a bright-eyed kindergartener,

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Posted November 01, 2023in Political Mercury

Burgum’s answers on rural, small-town economic battle with ‘Generica’ suburbs

It’s the defining issue in Iowa. Heartbreak in rural towns. Heave-ho construction in the suburbs. Framing it further, we are talking about rural decline versus the explosive growth in certain corridors, the economically bulging Des Moines suburbs and the Iowa City-Cedar Rapids corridor. But it is such byzantine business that

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