I’ve been meaning to write something snarky about Senator Grassley’s Twitter account for a while now, but this letter to the editor from Wednesday’s Des Moines Register sums it up pretty well:
It’s really funny (but also, in truth, a little sad) how the escalating debate on health care keeps getting sidetracked onto such weighty issues [...]

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Illustration: Sean Delonas/New York Post

In today’s New York Post, a tabloid rag owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, the above-pictured cartoon ran. Naturally, this sparked allegations of racist intent (Obama as the chimp) and condemnation by Al Sharpton, who told the AP the image is “troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans [...]

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Okay, so it will never happen. But now that the economic crisis has left California on the brink of bankruptcy, the arguments in this new diary by Daily Kossack Setrak really ought to be taken seriously.
In short, Setrak argues that legalizing cannabis — the biggest cash crop in California and 11 other states, according to [...]

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Photo: Gavin Aronsen

“I think we need a new New Deal in Iowa, and in America”: Chet Culver speaks to guests before giving his keynote address at the annual Story County Democrats Soup Supper Saturday evening in Ames.

Invoking the economic programs of FDR in Ames last Saturday, Iowa Governor Chet Culver made his case for infrastructure [...]

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Update (8/13): Then again, maybe my skills at prediction aren’t as good as I’d like to believe. This time in 2004, Kerry had a solid and pretty stable lead over Bush in the electoral college polls that became increasingly erratic as November closed in.
Much has been said about national polls that purportedly show a close [...]

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In the 4th Congressional District, The Des Moines Register chose to endorse Becky Greenwald, for what it’s worth.
I have no idea how this one’s going to turn out, but I suspect that Greenwald, with her Iowa Democratic Party connections, and Kevin Miskell, with strong connections of his own through the Iowa Farmers Union and the [...]

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Interestingly, The Des Moines Register endorsed Ed Fallon over incumbent Dem Leonard Boswell, writing that “Boswell’s own record of accomplishment in a dozen years in Congress is relatively light, and, in a recent meeting with the editorial board, he seemed out of touch about some serious issues facing the country.” Then this:
One example: Boswell expressed [...]

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After casting my 3rd district absentee ballot last week at the Polk County election office (don’t forget to vote progressive June 3 if you’re still stateside), I caught a flight to Poland for a month-long study in photojournalism. Nine students and our professor are in Sopot now, at a small resort about a stone’s throw [...]

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Update #2 (5/12): Fallon paid himself a salary in the months following his gubernatorial campaign for campaign clean-up work using unexpected leftover funds, and he doesn’t expect to do the same after his congressional bid, Campaign Manager Lynn Heuss has told me via e-mail.
Update (5/12): Previously, I wrote that I’M for Iowa was “arguably [...]

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If I’ve learned anything about libertarians, it’s that they know how to have a good time. There’s a place on the 500 block of Hayward Avenue in Ames called the Liberty House II, ground zero of my ties to the university libertarian community here and the locale of more than a few heavily intoxicated nights [...]

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