"The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. ... They conferred against the Government the right to be let alone -- most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men." -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941) The ...
Author's Note: Diana Newquist Parson is from Ottumwa. She and I have something in common: we both know first hand The Big C, although mine is in remission, while Diana's is still snapping and snarling, gnashing its teeth and playing its tricks. I invited her to write the following piece. Her books can be found on Amazon. This is an excerpt from my upcoming book: “Dusty Women.” As in “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust.” It’s a book about ordinary women facing death and handling death. While this section tries to capture what happened when I was diagnosed with uveal melanoma in my ...
Two very different topics are vying for my attention right now, so I’m going to write about both: the Iowa Data Center Decision Tool, developed at the University of Iowa, and the meeting of the Marshall County Supervisors that I attended on Wednesday morning. My website ...
Game shows have one virtue Iowa’s open-records enforcement system does not: Winners and losers know on the spot what prizes are theirs to keep. Hendrik Van Pelt learned this firsthand. In February, the Guttenberg man won a case before the Iowa Court of Appeals when the judges affirmed a ...
Iowans need to realize they are being misled by the anti-Proposition 12 Save Our Bacon (SOB) bill being hawked by Iowa's US senators, and particularly by Second District Congresswoman Ashley Hinson. (The current US House of Representatives version of the Farm Bill includes the Save Our Bacon Act, which would obstruct state laws regulating animal housing standards -- including those set by California's Prop 12 – but also endangers other state level laws and regulations. The US Senate is currently debating whether to include it in their Farm Bill draft.) A recent op-ed by Iowa Pork ...
As State Auditor, I’ve been sounding the alarm on the unaccountable private school voucher program for years. Politicians who like to lie say it’s because I’m against private schools. That’s not true at all. What I am against is waste, fraud, and abuse of Iowa tax dollars, and ...
