Posted June 09, 2025in Stray Thoughts
Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” focused on manners and goodness, two virtues sometimes forgotten today. Shortly before the novel was published, our Founding Fathers settled on the free exchange of ideas as one of the fundamental concepts they wanted to guarantee in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But
Read More →
Posted June 02, 2025in Stray Thoughts
If an opinionated old guy from southern Iowa delivered the recent commencement address at the United States Military Academy, my message would have contrasted with the one given by another opinionated old guy, one from Queens, N.Y., by way of the White House. When I was a newspaper editor, I
Read More →
Posted May 27, 2025in Stray Thoughts
Last week, the Pentagon accepted the emir of Qatar’s gift of a Boeing 747, a $400 million bauble donated for our president to enjoy by a monarch whose family has ruled the tiny Mideast nation for more than a century. Our commander in chief said the United States would be
Read More →
Posted May 19, 2025in Stray Thoughts
The Iowa Supreme Court gave citizen engagement and accessibility to public meetings a much-needed boost Friday in an appeal of a lawsuit against the Iowa City Community School District. The district’s practice of posting full videos of school board meetings on the internet for on-demand public viewing was at the
Read More →
Posted May 12, 2025in Stray Thoughts
You may be experiencing whiplash this spring just trying to track the Iowa Legislature’s zig-zag movements. It comes from what some might charitably call a lack of consistency on a key theme. A set of bills from the Republican majority at the Capitol illustrates this inconsistency. First, there’s the Legislature’s
Read More →
Posted May 05, 2025in Stray Thoughts
At least one member of the Iowa House appears to live by the mantra “Do as I say, not as I do” as he demands access to sensitive personal information and commands silence as he trolls for documents. The audacity of Representative Charley Thomson’s recent demands to a nonprofit organization
Read More →
Posted April 29, 2025in Stray Thoughts
Give Governor Kim Reynolds credit for consistency. When it comes to wanting to hide details of possible misstatements or misdeeds, she treats Lutherans and atheists alike. Soon, Iowans may learn important lessons about “executive privilege” claims by the governor and whether they provide her any cover to keep staff documents
Read More →
Posted April 22, 2025in Stray Thoughts
As we approach the second anniversary of a tragedy that shocked the people of Davenport and brought national attention to the issue of building safety, government secrecy continues to cloud public understanding of just what happened and who to hold accountable. The tragedy occurred a few minutes before 5 p.m.
Read More →
Posted April 14, 2025in Stray Thoughts
A constitutional showdown taking shape in southern Iowa’s Decatur County could put taxpayers on the hook financially to defend the county’s efforts to silence a critic of public officials there. The Institute for Justice, a national nonprofit law firm, wrote Decatur County Attorney Alan Wilson last week expressing its concerns
Read More →
Posted March 31, 2025in Stray Thoughts
Growing up in the 1950s, Evans family vacations seem typical by rural Midwest standards: car trips to the Ozarks, the Black Hills, Nauvoo and New Salem in Illinois, or St. Louis for a Cardinals baseball game. But one memorable summer trip, around 1960, occurred when we motored north through
Read More →
