‘Commentary’

If you already booked your horse and buggy ride into Des Moines in anticipation of Iowa’s 2011 constitutional convention, you’d be wise to cancel soon.
And, if you are wondering why we haven’t paid much lipservice here to the idea that opponents of same-sex marriage might push for such a convention in 2010 rather than using [...]

Democrats and their advocates may be disenchanted with Gov. Chet Culver’s 2008 veto of labor legislation. They might even be disappointed with the inability of the Iowa House Democratic Caucus to sound a unified voice during this session. And the battles between “Obamacrats” and “Democrats” are already well under way.

But all that could vanish with a single sentence: “I’m Congressman Steve King and I want to be Iowa’s next governor.”

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley led news broadcasts today for controversial comments he made in an interview with eastern Iowa’s WMT radio last night. While the comments sounded off the cuff, they certainly weren’t out of character.

Conservative Ken Black of the Marshalltown Times-Republican published a column Sunday under the headline, “Elections Have Consequences.”  In it, he criticizes voters for electing Democrats, who he says killed the proposed coal-fired power plant that was set to be built in his city:

The world of online journalism seems to have a buzzword for everything, and I must admit that even I have trouble keeping up with all of them.  Today I learned a new one that really threw me for a loop.
It turns out that the title I have held for nearly two years — “Managing Editor” [...]

Because labor legislation is too easy for Democrats to pass when the sun is out, it appears that Iowa House members might be in for another late night.
That is, unless lawmakers abandon their plan to vote on the “prevailing wage” bill tonight.

Pull up the palm trees and other tropical plants, and it would be fairly easy to mistake some of the hurricane-ravaged communities scattered along the Gulf Coast for flood-weary Cedar Rapids.

No one is sure how vulnerable Gov. Chet Culver will be in 2010, when he will likely run for reelection, but this week, we have a better picture of which Republican political figures might challenge him.

Cedar Rapids Gazette Editor Steve Buttry published a blog post Sunday lamenting the fact that traditional news outlets often fail to credit one another for stories they pick up, repurpose, or in some cases simply regurgitate from other sources.  Buttry cites a tweet from Des Moines Register reporter Daniel P. Finney complaining that KCCI took [...]

Nearly six months has passed since I stood on the top of the 1st Street Parkade in downtown Cedar Rapids, feeling the fury of the Cedar River as it battered the concrete pillars of the structure below, and snapped photographs of the flood that surrounded me. To be honest, there are days now when I can almost forget the damage that has happened in Cedar Rapids, Linn County and in other parts of Iowa — almost.