Posted February 13, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Let’s get straight to the point. The Harkin Institute of Public Policy shouldn’t be located anywhere that’s accessible by taking a taxi from an airport. Visitors and researchers should have to traverse — by car or small plane — the farms U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin has so ably represented for
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Posted February 06, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
“No one’s a Boy Scout, not even a Boy Scout.” “I hate children. There, I said it.” — “House of Cards” Francis Underwood The just-released, made-for-Netflix political drama “House of Cards” — 13, 50-minute episodes rolled out in a delicious package — is so damn good it makes you
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Posted January 30, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Congressman Bruce Braley admitted he had a hard act to follow. Iowa’s two U.S. senators, Tom Harkin and Charles Grassley, who were both sworn into Congress in 1975, celebrated their 10th presidential inauguration dating back to President Jimmy Carter, who was in attendance in Washington, D.C., last Monday as President
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Posted January 23, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Will Iowa Republicans in 2013 accept from first-term U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida what they wouldn’t from war-hero, political veteran John McCain in 2008? One could be speaking for the other on immigration, allowing, of course, for five years difference, and taking into account the Republican Party’s suicidal approach
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Posted January 16, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
What a delight to chronicle the story of Lillian Braden and her 12 brothers and seven sisters, all biological kids of Jans and Elizabeth Peters, German Lutheran immigrants who settled near Glidden in the early 1900s. Mrs. Braden passed away at the age of 92 earlier this month, the last
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Posted January 09, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
State Sen.-elect Mark Segebart, a Vail Republican who will represent a wide swath of western Iowa starting next week, says the purpose of the Second Amendment is to empower Americans to protect themselves from tyranny. “It’s really why we have a Second Amendment,” Segebart said in an interview. “It wasn’t
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Posted January 02, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
It’s the National Rifle Association’s Big Solution. And Iowa Department of Education Director Jason Glass says it’s an idea worth considering. We are talking about armed guards in our schools. Glass is right. Armed guards are worth considering. We should make one major stipulation, though. Any armed guards in Iowa’s
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Posted December 26, 2012in Featured Story, Political Mercury
State Rep. Dan Muhlbauer, D-Manilla, says Iowa lawmakers should ban semi-automatic guns and “start taking them” from owners who refuse to surrender any illegal firearms through a buy-back program. In an interview, a fiery Muhlbauer, the chairman of the Iowa House Democratic Rural Caucus with a reputation for often voting
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Posted December 19, 2012in Featured Story, Political Mercury
What the hell is going on in that house? That’s what I thought routinely in Lake Worth, Fla., as I’d hear the cries of kids in the house next to me. Some screaming. Just strange stuff. It’s been 20 years since I lived there during an internship for The Palm
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Posted December 12, 2012in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Back in June of 2007, when then U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, of Idaho, took his infamous wide stance in that Minneapolis airport men’s restroom, much of the discussion centered on whether he was a closeted homosexual looking for surreptitious action. For those who don’t remember the story, an undercover officer
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