As part of their Week Without Capitalism leading to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit that begins Sunday, 100 members of the anti-war Catholic Workers movement occupied Chicago’s One Prudential Plaza, the building housing President Obama’s campaign headquarters, on Monday. Eight were arrested, including three from Des Moines — Frank Cordaro, Julie Brown, and Jessica [...]

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When I spoke with progressive radio host Ed Fallon last month about his departure from 98.3 WOW-FM, he told me it was “a possibility” that fellow exile Chris Bradshaw would get a show similar to Fallon’s new internet-only program. (Bradshaw got the boot from the conservative-minded station last year.) It didn’t take long: starting today [...]

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kent.) came to Waukee Friday to hold forth at a dinner hosted by the right-wing Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition about the role of his father, Ron Paul, in the Republican Party. Rand Paul also weighed in on Barack Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage, poking fun at the president’s “evolving” position ruse. [...]

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Earlier today, Barack Obama gave ABC News the exclusive interview that confirmed what everyone already knew about the president: he’s cool with gay marriage. For months now, Obama has told reporters that he has been “evolving” on the issue, a transparently bogus position that could only mean that he sympathized with the cause but remained [...]

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This morning in Boston, the three Iowa Supreme Court justices ousted at the ballot box for ruling in 2009 that a one-man-one-woman marriage law violated the state’s constitution — Marsha Ternus, David Baker, and Michael Streit — were awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. The awards, which were announced in March, sparked [...]

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Ed Fallon, the former state legislator who later ran for governor and Congress, has hosted progressive talk radio show the Fallon Forum on 98.3 WOW-FM since 2009. But the show came to a halt last week after station owner Cumulus Media deemed it to be insufficiently “center-right,” Fallon says, so today at noon he’s launching [...]

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On Thursday, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad visited Nebraska to do damage control against renewed opposition to the use of “pink slime,” which is quickly becoming a PR disaster for Big Ag. Otherwise known as “finely textured lean beef,” the congealed substance of fatty cow parts discarded from choicer cuts — a very common filler ingredient [...]

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On Friday morning, journalist Jeff Zaslow died at the age of 53, after losing control of his car on a snowy northern Michigan road and striking a semi. Zaslow wrote the 2009 New York Times bestseller The Girls from Ames, which chronicles the lives of 10 women in their forties who grew up together in [...]

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UPDATE III, Thursday, February 9, 8:00 p.m. Out of respect for his privacy, the name of the individual mentioned in Update II below, who has informed me that he is a minor, has been removed at his request. The image he posted of the apparently fake Facebook message (its font does not match Facebook’s typical [...]

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Last week, deconstructing some of the arguments of the conspiracy group Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth reminded me of one particular video trying to prove 7 World Trade Center was felled by a controlled demolition. “Compare the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 with stock footage of controlled demolitions,” the video’s description reads. [...]

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