Posted April 11, 2023in Stray Thoughts
My friend Denny and I were as different as night and day. He was conservative; I wasn’t. I accused him of being to the right of Atilla the Hun. He accused me of working for Pravda, the famed Communist party newspaper. We thoroughly enjoyed poking each other this way. It
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Posted April 05, 2023in Stray Thoughts
The Iowa Legislature and Governor Kim Reynolds cannot seem to make up their minds whether they support parental rights or are against Mom and Dad being the decision-makers when it comes to their children’s well-being. Trying to analyze Republican officials’ views on parental rights is challenging. Baseball’s infield fly rule
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Posted March 20, 2023in Stray Thoughts
On a late summer afternoon in Bloomfield 40 years ago, the people of Iowa learned about an unofficial government principle we have seen repeated in recent weeks. Although this has played out in various ways through the years, it ultimately comes down to the same concept: If your problem is
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Posted March 14, 2023in Stray Thoughts
Every few months, someone is killed or injured by police somewhere in the United States under circumstances that lead to inevitable questions about what exactly occurred. Typically, answers come when video from the law officers’ squad car cameras or their uniform cameras is made public. Each time this occurs, there
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Posted March 01, 2023in Stray Thoughts
There is an interesting study in contrasts playing out right now in Iowa. One example comes from the Davis County School District in Bloomfield. It is the 96th-largest of Iowa’s 328 public districts, with an enrollment of 1,150 students. The other example comes from the Iowa Legislature and Gov. Kim
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Posted February 27, 2023in Stray Thoughts
This has not been an easy time to be a librarian. Sixty-plus years ago, back when the library card was a coveted sign of my status as a young reader, Miss Botts and Mrs. Sager were never viewed as conspirators of controversy in the corner of the free world where
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Posted February 06, 2023in Stray Thoughts
A recent public opinion poll found that three-quarters of Americans want members of Congress to end their bickering and begin compromising more with their colleagues from the other party. The poll was conducted across the United States by Marist College’s Institute for Public Opinion for National Public Radio and the
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Posted January 31, 2023in Stray Thoughts
Not that she asked, but I have some advice for Rita Hart, the new chair of the Iowa Democratic Party. Yes, Hart is an experienced practitioner of politics. She was twice elected to the Iowa Senate. She was the Democrats’ lieutenant governor candidate on the ticket with Fred Hubbell in
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Posted January 23, 2023in Stray Thoughts
You don’t need a crystal ball to see that private school vouchers appear to be barreling toward passage by the Iowa Legislature, just three weeks into the 2023 session. These vouchers, or education savings accounts, or whatever you want to call them, would give parents $7,600 per year for each
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Posted January 09, 2023in Stray Thoughts
The Legislature wrote Iowa’s public records law 55 years ago, and one of the tenets of the statute was the belief people deserve to know how state and local governments spend their tax money. Another important concept in the law is that fees for copies of government records must be
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