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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Posted December 05, 2012in Featured Story, Political Mercury
The million-dollar question is: What do you do with this information? Featured as a speaker at a TEDxDesMoines event Sunday aimed at women, nationally-respected pollster J. Ann Selzer rolled out some spectacularly stunning numbers on the recent presidential election voting in Iowa. It was worth the $12 admission — if
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Posted November 28, 2012in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Seconds after Christie Vilsack’s seventh and final congressional debate this fall, her husband turned left from his front-row seat in Mason City and said to the writer Chuck Offenburger that the former Iowa first lady now officially had more stage experience than Tom Vilsack, a former two-term governor.
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Posted November 21, 2012in Featured Story, Political Mercury
There’s more true American spirit in little Annie Nguyen’s smile than in a thousand political proclamations from our November-minded patriots. The politicians running for state and national office tell us about the American dream, where it is, how they can help us find it or why their opponents are leading
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Posted November 14, 2012in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Much GOP hand-wringing in the election post-mortem necessarily centers on the canyon-sized advantage President Obama and the Democrats have with Latino voters. Having spent a good deal of time in Iowa’s Latino community, I can tell you this is deep and real. At Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s final Iowa
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Posted October 24, 2012in Featured Story, Political Mercury
You don’t see it so much in the cities of our state. But in rural western Iowa, the pro-life movement is visible and highly animated. Almost every day for the past few weeks on U.S. Highway 30, in the center of our community, the anti-abortion picketers are there. Steadfast. Drive
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Posted October 17, 2012in Featured Story, Political Mercury
The urgency in Congressman Steve King’s words sent me searching for a 1984 movie I hadn’t seen since, well, 1984 — on VHS. If what the Kiron Republican insisted in Orange City the other night is not mere campaign clutter but skin-shivering clairvoyance, we need to be locked and loaded,
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