Posted July 21, 2025in Stray Thoughts
Andy McKean is a charming country lawyer from Anamosa. He grew up in New York and was drawn to Iowa by his family roots. He has owned a bed-and-breakfast, called square dances and played in a dance band named the Scotch Grove Pioneers. His tenure in the Iowa Legislature stretched
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Posted July 15, 2025in Stray Thoughts
One longtime truism of journalism is “Names make news.” That shorthand stems from the fact people better understand the significance and context of news when they learn about events and issues through the eyes and experiences of people they know or with whom they can identify. The late Iowa Supreme
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Posted June 17, 2025in Stray Thoughts
People living in central Iowa received a wake-up call last week that should drag water-quality back in front of the state’s 3.2 million residents. Iowa’s largest water supplier, one serving a fifth of the state’s homes and businesses, ordered its 600,000 customers to immediately reduce water demand by ending lawn-watering
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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