As a trollish critique of a recent Des Moines Register interactive map detailing which Iowa school districts had on-campus security, The Iowa Republican managing editor Jeff Patch created a Google map identifying the addresses and home values of Register editors and executives. Last week, the Register‘s map had been quickly removed from the story it [...]

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Remember Randi Shannon, the Republican who was challenging incumbent Democratic state Sen. Liz Mathis in Linn County last year before bizarrely dropping out of the race to accept a position as a senator of the Republic of the united States of America? She’s old news by now, but on April Fools’ Day Jeff Patch, managing [...]

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Last Wednesday, the Des Moines Register published the results of a survey of Iowa school districts that asked whether they had regular security on their premises. The news value was pretty clear: after the December massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, policymakers across the country began discussing school security. National Rifle Association CEO [...]

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On Thursday, the Des Moines Register reported that supporters of two Creston police officers convicted of sexual assault showed up at the Capitol with more than 800 signatures petitioning Gov. Terry Branstad to release the cops from prison and grant them a new trial. They were convicted in 2009 for the rape of a bartender [...]

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For the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, the Huffington Post tracked down five of the seven Republicans in Congress who voted against the invasion. One of them was former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach, who told HuffPo, “If we didn’t know after years of review and international inspections where alleged nuclear capacities were located and [...]

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Continuing in the longstanding tradition of state lawmakers who ignore the Ames Progressive‘s requests for comments, GOP state Rep. Dave Maxwell of Gibson instead contacted the Des Moines Register to apologize for distributing the racist Montezuma Record report on University of Iowa salaries to his House colleagues. Maxwell told the Register yesterday that he hadn’t [...]

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After Jim Romenesko picked up our story about a racist report in the Montezuma Record, its publisher and editor in chief Chuck Dunham shrugged off the controversy, explaining that he wasn’t even aware of it because he didn’t use the internet. Yesterday, the Cedar Rapids Gazette published more thoughts from Dunham, who continued to dismiss [...]

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UPDATE II, Friday, March 15, 1:09 p.m.: Progress Iowa executive director Matt Sinovic told the Progressive that GOP state Rep. Dave Maxwell, who represents Poweshiek County, requested that House members receive a copy of Thursday’s Record, which is how the paper ended up in Des Moines. Maxwell owns a business in Gibson called Maxwell Tiling, [...]

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There has been a lot of activity coming out of the Fairfield scene in the past two weeks, adding to an already thick catalog of fascinating music and videos from a crew of artists largely associated with The Beauty Shop and the St. Mary’s Project. First, there’s the new video from the pop duo Trouble [...]

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I haven’t been in Iowa for most of the 2012 election cycle, but since I worked for the Census Bureau in 2010 I suppose I had a bit part in costing Iowa one of its five congressional seats. That development has been particularly interesting in the 3rd Congressional District, where Democratic Rep. Leonard Boswell faces [...]

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