Emerging, essential voices elevated in Iowa documentary
(Editor’s note: Doug Burns is a producer of this documentary.) The a-ha moment struck like spring lightning on the groovy 1970s couch, just a hop, skip and a few [...]
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Posted November 06, 2024in Political Mercury
Posted September 10, 2024in Political Mercury
Ruth Harkin’s inviting memoir spotlights Iowa life, takes readers inside presidential campaigning
Tom and Ruth Harkin leaned forward in their Fleur Cinema seats in Des Moines in the early evening of July 17 as a film chronicling the civil rights journey of [...]
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Posted September 04, 2024in Political Mercury
Tim Walz paints two Americas when southern-frying Iowa
A modern political Mason-Dixon line appears to be taking form north of Mason City and south of Albert Lea — somewhere around the Minnesota-Iowa border. The crash of cultures is [...]
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Posted July 31, 2024in Political Mercury
Project 2025 taking down porn sites will be the start of the second Civil War
The conservative master blueprint Project 2025 will start the next civil war. Just not in the ways you think. In a crammed catalog of things I just don’t want to think about [...]
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Posted July 03, 2024in Political Mercury
Iowa combat veteran, former ag official ‘ready to serve’ again — this time in Congress
After the rains, or in the routines of daily life, in one of the more war-ravaged reaches of the globe, residents would spot the signs of unexploded munitions, mortars and [...]
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Posted June 05, 2024in Political Mercury
Farmers fear Koch takeover of Iowa fertilizer plant would boost nitrogen prices
Harold Beach, a northeast Missouri farmer who runs a row-crop operation and raises hogs and cattle, traveled to central Iowa recently to urge one of the nation’s top regulators to [...]
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Posted May 01, 2024in Political Mercury
‘Nuclear War: A Scenario’
Deep in the warm hurricane of 1980s nostalgia-minded groups on Facebook are the occasional references to fearful school-kid preparation exercises for a forefront haunt to humanity at the time — [...]
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Posted April 03, 2024in Political Mercury
‘The Beekeeper’ is a not-so-subtle Trump fantasy movie
If civil judgments don’t drain the Trump Machine into cashless-ness, the former president may want to open up theaters in the swing states for free showings of the Jason Statham movie “The Beekeeper.” Screenwriter Kurt [...]
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Posted March 06, 2024in Political Mercury
The dehumanizing formula of a school shooting
We were all in the formula, the algorithm of horror that is a modern school shooting. Death for some, dehumanization for others. In covering the Perry school shootings Jan. 4, what struck [...]
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Posted January 31, 2024in Political Mercury
What Tom Harkin would do if he were running for political office in 2024
Tom Harkin still has it. The pulse of Iowa on instinct auto dial and a force of moral clarity and that defining doggedness, an aw-shucks ease with voters, and a [...]
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