My lunchtime conversation with an old friend recently never got to the Major League Baseball races, the WNBA or Caitlin Clark. We skipped over the weather and never got around to how corn and soybean plantings were progressing. Instead, we spent a goodly amount of time analyzing the preamble to
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Posted May 19, 2026in Stray Thoughts
Because of his intimidating style, the legendary 1950s baseball pitcher Sal Maglie was known as “The Barber.” His brush-back pitches came sooooo close batters felt as if they were getting a shave. Considering his nickname, it’s probably best that “The Barber” is no longer with us, lest he find himself
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Posted May 11, 2026in Stray Thoughts
At the risk of blurring the increasingly fuzzy line between church and state, here is a Gospel reading for public employees and elected officials, according to Matthew: “But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear.” Unfortunately, it does not take much looking these days
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Posted April 21, 2026in Stray Thoughts
Come July, Iowa employers may want to add an ominous warning on their job application forms: tell a lie and you could go to jail. That’s right — no more puffing the resume with false degrees from the University of Okoboji or Faber College. And do not claim to have
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Posted March 30, 2026in Stray Thoughts
Noah Petersen and Priscilla Villarreal live 1,200 miles from each other, Petersen in Newton, Iowa; Villarreal in Laredo, Texas. They share a key connection despite that distance. Each has encountered government punishment for exercising their First Amendment rights. Both went to court to fight for their freedoms. For Petersen, he had
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Posted March 16, 2026in Stray Thoughts
City leaders in Des Moines are making it difficult to understand why they selected the new police chief, considering how they have imposed a code of silence about their recent $975,000 payout to one of the candidates who did not get the job. The payout and, even worse, the sealed
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Posted March 10, 2026in Stray Thoughts
The offices of the Des Moines Register’s opinion staff were mostly empty when my telephone rang late one afternoon about 15 years ago. The guard at the lobby security desk said two men were there and hoped I had time to meet with them. I said sure and invited them
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Posted February 26, 2026in Stray Thoughts
We all need reminders now and then. Some of us believe there is only one correct way to think and speak and act in these United States of America. But that is not true. Americans are not who we are because we are the same. Americans are who we are,
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Posted February 17, 2026in Stray Thoughts
It’s funny how a government body can learn and teach an important civics lesson in the time it takes a student to go from kindergarten through 12th grade. In 2012, the Atlantic Community School District won a lawsuit to keep information secret about disciplinary measures taken against two employees who
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Posted February 10, 2026in Stray Thoughts
My ancestors trace their roots in America to before the days the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence. You may have seen my distant cousin, Joseph Hewes, in the massive painting hanging in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. It shows colonial leaders including Cousin Joe presenting the Continental
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