Ames Progressive

George W. Bush has said that Jesus Christ saved his soul. He is mistaken.
On March 8, 2008, Bush used his veto power to kill a bill that was intended to make it illegal for the CIA to use torture to obtain information from detainees. Let’s put this clearly: Bush used his executive power to affirm […]

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As the graph below shows, “Afghanistan” is back, “taxes” is big, “terrorism” is bigger, “Iraq” looms biggest, and “Earth” makes a brief appearance, says hi to a couple of people, then takes off. Another popular word in Bush’s final State of the Union Address on January 28 was the word “trust”. Early in his speech […]

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Iowa, as Iowans know well, is something of a joke in the national imagination. The muted tone of condescension familiar in national media coverage of Iowa’s role in the presidential campaign is made explicit in a story in Rolling Stone, which begins, “Iowa is not like other states. There’s fuck-all to do here, and unless […]

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In the October/November issue of the Ames Progressive we published “A Conversation with Christopher Hitchens,” by Gavin Aronsen and Ryan Gerdes. During the conversation, Hitchens, discussing the possibility of pre-emptive military action against a potentially nuclear Iran, asserted that “the evidence against the Iranian government [demonstrating the existence of a nuclear weapons program] has been […]

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Below is an exchange between the president of the campus peace and non-violence organization, Greg Bonett, and Ryan Gerdes. Gerdes recently authored a guest commentary published in the Iowa State Daily in which he argued for a persistent reserve of US troops in Iraq to protect human rights.

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