AHouse bill to study reparations for slavery, H.R. 40, resurfaced in committee this April and is dusting up old debates about how much is owed, to whom, and who should pay. The issue can be divisive. But as a supporter of reparations, a recent Jeopardy clue (of all things) left me feeling ...
Some time ago I wrote a story about an Old Testament person named Jeremiah. God called this man to a special task. In that message, God allowed us to see a little pre-birth communication with this fetus. Perhaps Jeremiah agreed to God’s conditions by looking at the concluded part of his ...
We are entering what is scheduled as the last week of the legislature. This is the week when we will debate and vote on budgets and other bills. Many of the budget bills are large and involved with millions of dollars appropriated. Also at this time of the session, many things can get added to ...
It takes just two simple words. Just two. I was raised, and I would hope my children are, to use the words “thank you” everywhere and anywhere. April is known as Volunteer Appreciation month. Think about the numerous volunteers that cross your path every day. Who are they and how are ...
Sorry, but this is not an open-and -shut case. This is not Tamir Rice, Philando Castile or Walter Scott, unarmed and clearly executed on camera by police. No, the bodycam video of Tuesday’s killing of a 16-year-old black girl named Ma’Khia Bryant tells a more complicated story. In it, ...
As we draw near to the end of the session the schedule becomes fairly routine. We gavel in, we caucus on the bills we intend to debate that day, we wait while Democrats file amendments, then we debate those bills. One of the more significant bills this week that we passed in the House was ...
We all know what’s coming. In Minneapolis, in anticipation of the jury’s verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the alleged murder of George Floyd, everything is shutting down. Minneapolis public schools announced that schoolchildren will be transitioned to distance learning from ...
The little brown sign on Highway 34 is easy to miss, just like the significance of two little sisters in Danville, in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, who were pen-pals with Anne Frank and her sister, Margot. Follow the sign to downtown Danville and an attractive little library and museum ...
Former Vice President Walter Mondale, who died Monday at age 93, did more for the high office he held as President Jimmy Carter›s stand-in than any previous occupant, by defining its prime functions in his own application for the job. In 1976, prior to his selection as Carter›s running ...
Iowa’s farmers received corn subsidies in excess of $19 billion from 1995 to 2020. Much of this money rewarded farmers for unsound agricultural practices such as raising corn in the same ground year after year, plowing up waterways and leaving the ground uncovered. These practices are ...
The president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Alexis McGill Johnson, has used The New York Times as a confessional to fess up to the racist history of Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger. “We must reckon with Margaret Sanger’s association with white supremacist ...
Iowa’s 91 House and Senate Republican legislators want to outlaw classroom discussion of topics like racism and sexism. Furthermore, Iowa’s GOP attempt to ban discussion of the slavery-oriented “1619 Project” book reveals their pro-white bias. Republicans’ effort to sweep racism and ...
It wasn’t even close. The final count was 1,798 against and 738 for, 71 percent to 29 percent. The issue in question was whether the employees at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, wanted to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Not, as The Washington ...
My mother recently fell in her home and phoned me. When I arrived, I called 911 and within a few minutes first responders from MFD and Unity Point EMTs arrived. The four people huddled around mom, gathering information and her allergies so they wouldn’t give her something her body couldn’t ...
Taking into consideration the polling popularity of the COVID Relief Bill and the proposed infrastructure plan, the Biden administration seems to have touched the hearts and minds of Americans. About 70 percent of Americans approve of the COVID Relief Bill as three million Americans are ...
The Marshalltown Community School District anxiously awaits the new opportunities for increased student participation, school pride and individual student and team success that the creation of the new interscholastic conference will provide in the 2022-23 school year. Marshalltown plans to form ...
Our society has been filled with unsympathetic political climates, divisive COVID 19 response debate, and circumstances in our lives that can bring us down and take many frustrations out on our leaders in government. Elected officials have signed up for answering to the public, taking their ...
“The anguish we are suffering cannot translate into violence.” So said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey last week in the wake of yet another police killing of yet another unarmed African-American man. The sentiment was altogether fitting and proper, especially given that his city was the ...
America has been wrecked on the shoals of identity. Identity politics has been characterized casually as a form of tribalism: Americans grouping themselves according to biological or sexual characteristics, in opposition to other groups associated by biological or sexual characteristics. ...
It is with great pleasure I announce a book signing and “Meet the Author” for L. Kephart-Nash, better known as Linda Nash, of Ft. Madison. This gala affair will take place on Saturday, April 24th, at 1:00 p.m., at the First Christian Church in Ft. Madison, 608 10th St. Masks and social ...