Yesterday in Council Bluffs, the Board of Pharmacy examiners held their final of four hearings on the medical value of marijuana. A final decision for the Statehouse is expected by the time the legislature reconvenes in January. According to Susan Frey, the board’s vice chair, via Radio Iowa: “We have received copious amounts of information [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

That’s according to his campaign’s latest media release. Ed Fallon (who, for any newcomers to the site, is challenging Democratic Representative Leonard Boswell in Iowa’s 3rd district primary) received DFA’s Des Moines chapter endorsement in March. I’ve got to bounce in a minute, so I’ll just share with you some excerpts from the e-mail: “PDA’s [...]

[Read more →]