Stories

The City of Ames has decided to institute national background checks for all participants in its Section 8 housing assistance program.
The new background checks are an expansion of those currently utilized which only use state data.
The decision comes after an Ames resident filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the city, asking for the [...]

The latest issue of AARP The Magazine recognized Ames as one of the country’s most ideal places to retire. Specifically, Ames ranked first nationally in life expectancy, with an average of 81.02 years. The national average is 78.1 years.

Proponents say the Iowa Crime Free Multi-Housing Program creates a partnership between police officers and rental property managers to help keep a lid on illegal activities. But some fear it will lead to discrimination against those with checkered pasts or will simply create pockets of crime in properties or communities that don’t participate.

The presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama responded to statements made by Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty in an Iowa Independent story published earlier today.

During his visit to Ames this afternoon to stump for Sen. John McCain, Pawlenty said voting for Obama to be the next president is too risky, comparing it to bungee jumping. [...]

The rumors circulating in Ames last November were hard to ignore:
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was conducting experiments to move inner-city poor to smaller communities, and Ames' Section 8 housing was being filled by poor black people from Chicago. There was a crime wave in Ames because black people from Chicago [...]

AMES — Rudy Giuliani is dreaming.

No, really.

That’s what he told an audience of about 400 at Iowa State University’s Memorial Union in Ames Thursday afternoon.

In fact, Giuliani joked, he’s had the same dream over and over. In it, the former New York City mayor and Republican presidential candidate’s kindred political spirit, Nicholas Sarkozy, a Frenchman [...]

The League of Rural Voters hosts its 2007 National Summit on Agriculture and Rural Life today in Ames.  The League describes the summit as “a golden opportunity to bring the issues of family farm agriculture, energy, food and rural development policy front and center into the debates that will ultimately determine the candidates for President [...]

[Commentary] The poll tax in the South was abolished decades ago. It’s a measure of the bizarre character of the presidential nominating system that a key event in Iowa’s pivotal first-in-the-nation caucuses features a close cousin of the poll tax, a $35 charge to cast a ballot in the straw poll Iowa Republicans will stage [...]

The Republican State Central Committee decided which of the announced presidential candidates will appear on the Iowa Straw Poll ballot. They are: Sam Brownback, John Cox, Jim Gilmore, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo and Tommy Thompson.
Chuck Laudner, executive director of the Republican Party of Iowa, feels [...]

Faith In America, a nonprofit GLBT advocacy group headquartered in North Carolina, will kick off its several-state campaign to promote religious acceptance of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender persons in Ames on Sunday, with a large ad in the Ames Tribune.
Likely to provoke significant controversy, the series of ads slated to run in the Tribune [...]