Henry Jay Karp is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, Iowa, which he served from 1985 to 2017. He is the co-founder and co-convener of One Human Family QCA, a social justice organization.

In 1990, Michael Godwin observed a phenomenon on internet and proposed a concept known as “Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies.” It stated, “As an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or Nazis approaches one.” Godwin’s law quickly spread to all forms of conversations and debates on hot-button issues.

Folks like me, who did not grasp the meaning of the phrase “approaches one,” have explained it as either “you know the discussion has gone on too long” or “that thread is over and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress.” As a writer in the Guardian once reframed it, “The longer an argument runs, the greater the likelihood Hitler gets mentioned.”

The point of this rule is that Nazi analogies are over the top. They are a kind of hyperbole that trivializes an argument, using reckless and thoughtless comparisons to win.

Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

In the time before the election, I’ve become a TV junkie. So, I did see a clip of Donald Trump trying to win votes in Pennsylvania by telling penis jokes. It shows how low he and his applauding fans can go.

Arnold Palmer’s daughter told ABC News Donald Trump had disrespected her late father’s memory by fawning over the size of the golf champion’s penis. There’ll probably be a cross burned in their front yard.

It’s now nine days until voters decide the fate of the nation and possibly the whole world. I’m on pins and needles. Anxious, and frankly, scared.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

On October 14, the state of Iowa observes Indigenous Peoples’ Day, in recognition of the roles native tribes have played in the state’s history and culture. It’s not a federal holiday, but an increasing number of states and cities now observe it instead of Columbus Day, the traditional name for the mid-October holiday. (Governor Kim Reynolds made the change in Iowa in 2018.)

October 11 was the anniversary of another notable event in Iowa history: on that day in 1842, the Sauk and Fox tribes signed a treaty ceding to the United States a large chunk of central and southern Iowa, including what is now Greene County. (The term “Sac and Fox” is a designation historically employed by the American government. A more accurate term is “Sauk/Meskwaki.”)

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

James Madison, a key figure in adopting our Bill of Rights and our fourth president from 1809 to 1817, seemed to foresee the Donald Trump phenomenon and the farce and looming tragedy of the 2024 election.

In 1822, Madison wrote, “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will for ever govern ignorance: and a people who mean to be their own Governours, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

Journalists cite Madison’s concerns as an argument for access to government meetings and public records so a “watchdog press” can hold government accountable and also serve as “The Fourth Estate” of government.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes openness and transparency in Iowa’s state and local governments. He can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

Thirty-three years ago on a snowy Friday in November, the nightmare of mass school shootings shocked Iowa like it has never been shocked before.

It was 3:40 p.m. A former University of Iowa graduate student with a brilliant scientific mind, and a .38-caliber revolver, walked into a conference room in Van Allen Hall, the home of the university’s renowned Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

The anguish and angst visited upon us this election year is faithful to the old saying “Politics makes strange bedfellows.’” That take is adapted from a line in Shakespeare’s The Tempest—”Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”

Inspired by this season of anguish and angst, this post offers dots connecting George Orwell, Bob Feller, Donald Trump, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, and Joseph Welch. You’re familiar with most of our cast. And you may recall that Welch is the attorney who grew up in Primghar, Iowa and attended Grinnell College. He gained national fame as the U.S. Army’s attorney 70 years ago, when he got fed up and asked Senator Joseph McCarthy on live television, “Have you left no sense of decency?”

Kurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register and the Substack newsletter Showing Up, where this essay first appeared. He served as chair of the executive committee (the equivalent of board chair) of Americans for Democratic Action, America’s most experienced liberal organization.

You’re invited to time travel with me today, to April 1968, fifty-six years ago. Newspaper headlines on April 1 said President Lyndon Johnson won’t seek reelection. Some might have thought it was an April Fool prank. A much bigger jolt came April 4, with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The number of Marines in Vietnam peaked just under 86,000. Tragically, U.S. fatalities in Vietnam also crested in 1968, almost 30 percent of all American battle deaths happening that year. And, after 249 shows, the final episode of the Andy Griffith Show aired. Bucolic Mayberry seemed strangely out of synch with what was going on in America.

On April 27, 1968, Vice President Hubert Humphrey formally declared his candidacy for president. The second paragraph of his announcement:

Arnold Garson is a semi-retired journalist and executive who worked for 46 years in the newspaper industry, including almost 20 years at The Des Moines Register. He writes the Substack newsletter Second Thoughts, where this article first appeared.

The story of Iowa’s Arabella Mansfield has been widely mentioned in Iowa newspapers and historical accounts but seldom told.

Mansfield’s name appears every year or so on average in an Iowa newspaper somewhere, usually as a stand-alone sentence or short paragraph within a longer news article about women of achievement in general.

The reference most often includes a single fact: Mansfield was the first woman lawyer in Iowa—and in the United States.

What? The first female attorney in the U.S. happened in Iowa? How did that come about? Who was this woman and what is the rest of her story?

The fascinating answers to these questions require a deeper dig.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on February 7, 2024.

For the second year since becoming an official state holiday, February 1 was George Washington Carver Day. What better kickoff for Black History Month every year?

I attended the Carver Day celebration at Iowa State University, in the same Memorial Union Great Hall where, as a 9-year-old boy, I saw Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1960.

You can watch the entire event online. It runs most of two hours, and I heartily recommend it. The program starts 17 minutes into the video.

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

Sorry to rain on the parade, but here’s a metaphor about the news media excitement and anticipation generated by the forecast of a September 10 presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump: Looking forward to that debate (and its possible sequel) is like going to the busiest intersection in town or camping out along a freeway looking forward to a traffic accident—maybe, if you’re lucky, even one in which someone is seriously injured.

Inherent in the presidential debates is a sense of suspense, and it’s not whether worthwhile information will be offered to viewer. The suspense has been whether one of the two, or both, may suffer a self-inflicted injury by blundering into a campaign-damaging statement or behavior. 

Trump, however, seems to escape being accountable despite his frequent lies. It is a real-life application of what he said in Sioux Center in January 2016: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?…It’s, like, incredible.”

Ed Wasserman is a 52-year resident of Iowa and a professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at The University of Iowa. The views expressed in his piece are his own and do not in any way reflect those of his employer.

Donald Trump has often been credited with being a supremely slick sloganeer. Indeed, who among us is unfamiliar with such memorable monikers as: Little Marco Rubio, Ron DeSanctimonious (DeSantis), Lyin’ Ted Cruz, Nikki “Birdbrain” Haley, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, “Shifty” Adam Schiff, “Wacky” Jacky Rosen, and Laffin’ Kamala Harris? All of these scornful sobriquets concisely convey Trump’s deep disdain for his many political rivals.

Yet, long before Trump, another Republican office-bearer garnered high marks for his cutting political invective. Spiro T. Agnew served as the 39^th Vice President of the United States from January 20, 1969 to October 10, 1973, when he was forced to resign after pleading ‘no contest’ to a felony charge of tax evasion.

Expertly aided by White House speechwriters Pat Buchanan and William Safire, Agnew delivered a series of strident speeches in 1969 and 1970 attacking the Nixon administration’s many enemies, both perceived and real.

Dave Leshtz is the editor of The Prairie Progressive.

In August 2023, Bleeding Heartland published my memories of the Hamburg Inn. The venerable Iowa City diner that I had patronized for more than five decades was on the verge of going out of business. Michael Lee, the absentee owner, had returned to his home in China when COVID-19 struck, leaving the restaurant in the hands of inexperienced staff who struggled to keep it alive, even after the pandemic subsided.

My memoir was a eulogy to a dying business, and to my own youth. The Hamburg Inn was a touchstone in college, a regular stop as an adult, and finally a frequent destination while I worked for political candidates and a U.S. Congressman. The diner’s travails seemed to embody the loss of local culture nationwide, as franchises and chains relentlessly took over family-owned establishments that had endured economic ups and downs for years.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

During the “Progressive Era” in American history—two decades or so, from roughly 1896 until 1917—a number of states adopted the “initiative” and “referendum” as part of the way their governments operated. Many of those states were in the American West. Iowa was not among them. What would it be like here if we had taken that step—or if we did so now?

The initiative allows citizens to propose new legislation on the election ballot, and the referendum allows voters to vote those proposals up or down. That combination provides a way to bypass the state legislature which, as we know, doesn’t always enact legislation that is the people’s choice.

Kurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register and the Substack newsletter Showing Up, where this essay first appeared. He served as chair of the executive committee (the equivalent of board chair) of Americans for Democratic Action, America’s most experienced liberal organization.

By the time you read this, I will have been in Washington D.C. to participate in the annual awards gathering of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). I’ve attended these events for the last dozen years although, as for most organizations, the ADA get-together went “virtual” during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, it’s a hybrid, virtual/in-person event.

Americans for Democratic Action was founded in the aftermath of World War II by a distinguished group of progressives, led by Eleanor Roosevelt, Reinhold Niebuhr, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Walter Reuther, and Hubert Humphrey, then Minneapolis mayor. This gathering is special for me, for although I’ve introduced numerous honorees before, this year I received ADA’s “Timeless Liberal” award. 

This column by Daniel G. Clark first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on January 10, 2024.

I braved slick roads to attend a Martin Luther King Day celebration in Iowa City at the historic Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Instead of the announced speaker, Professor Venise Berry who got stranded by weather, I got to hear a preacher whose name I didn’t know but whose face I thought I recognized.

Soon enough, I placed Orlando Ray Dial the instant he mentioned a recent communication with an unnamed (smile) Pulitzer Prize-winner former student. Of course! I had seen him on stage in Waterloo with journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Iowa native now famous for creating The 1619 Project, the controversial New York Times series turned anthology, curriculum, and TV documentary.

Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers.

For many, the current political climate seems to have taken a distinct turn. The media has been ablaze with U.S. Supreme Court decisions concerning the rights of kings—I mean presidents—in regard to the rule of law, as well as sweeping changes to how policy can be interpreted by different branches. The high court has also determined that prosecuting people for being homeless is not “cruel and unusual.”

Closer to home, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that people with uteruses are not full citizens, and after six weeks of pregnancy no longer have the same rights that non-uterus-having folks still maintain to control their own bodies.

This may seem like an onslaught of bad news, or at least noteworthy and worth paying some attention to. For the first time, many are becoming a bit more carefully tuned-in to the goings on and the headlines now that democracy and basic human rights are at a serious risk of being eroded away. Yes, democracy is under threat and yes we should all be paying attention.

However, for those of us who are tuned in to what the political Right has wanted since its existence as a pro-monarchist political realm, it is so clearly not new, it was a long time coming, and it is genuinely and utterly at the feet of the Republican Party and those who support them.  

Dan Guild is a lawyer and project manager who lives in New Hampshire. In addition to writing for Bleeding Heartland, he has written for CNN and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, most recently here. He also contributed to the Washington Post’s 2020 primary simulations. Follow him on Twitter @dcg1114.

Before the June 27 debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, I wrote about the history of presidential debates. I observed in that piece,

“A good performance tonight may allow Biden to close the gap below. A bad one and this gap may become permanent, creating enormous turnout problems among key elements of the Democratic base.”

A week later, the question isn’t whether Biden’s performance was a bad one—the question is whether it was fatal for his campaign. At a minimum, Biden missed an opportunity to close the enthusiasm gap that exists between Democrats and Republicans. At worst, he has ended his chances at winning, and imperiled Democrats down the ballot from U.S. Senate to state legislatures.

In some ways, the data creates a paradox. The shift from the last debate was not large in historical terms. However, the impact on the race is enormous, because the race was so close, and Biden trailed in many key states before the debate.

Dan Guild is a lawyer and project manager who lives in New Hampshire. In addition to writing for Bleeding Heartland, he has written for CNN and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, most recently here. He also contributed to the Washington Post’s 2020 primary simulations. Follow him on Twitter @dcg1114.

This post updates a piece I wrote in 2020.

At this moment the race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is close; you could argue it is the closest in U.S. history. To say it is unique is to state the obvious. This is the first presidential campaign in the modern era where both candidates have held the office of president. It is unique in another way too: many Americans did not want this race.

As the data below shows, incumbents typically do poorly in the first debate. If that trend holds this year, it bodes ill for Biden—but this time may be very different.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on January 10, 2024—but heavily edited and with a different title (“Early remembrances of Alexander Clark”). And with the page-one teaser above. Further explanation follows the end of the column.

A celebrated 20th century humorist drew much of his material from memories of growing up in Muscatine. Ellis Parker Butler (1869-1937) struck gold in 1906 with “Pigs Is Pigs,” then kept American laughing for three decades.

He married his hometown sweetheart, went to New York, and there succeeded as a publisher and banker. Always a part-time author, he wrote at least 32 books and more than 2,000 stories and essays.

Muscatine Journal and News-Tribune (September 14, 1937): “The pen, with which he brought smiles to brighten the faces of countless readers from coast to coast, will write no more. The clean humor he created however, remains. He scattered sunshine while he lived.”

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

The people called “leaders of the free world” and some 4,500 of their citizens gathered on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, on June 6 to mark the 80^th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. D-Day is often considered the beginning of the end of World War II.

The annual rites of memories, mourning, and hope had a special poignancy this year. It was clear this would be the last time many of the few hundred remaining D-Day veterans would visit their place of nightmares, where they scrambled to establish a beachhead to bring the battle home to Hitler.

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

Attorney General Brenna Bird continues to ignore her critics, doubling down on actions that have drawn criticism. Unfortunately for Iowans, she’s picked a bad model to imitate.

This shoot-yourself-in-the-foot strategy had worked so well for Donald Trump that Bird seems to figure, “Why not give it a try?”

And she’ll likely continue that style, despite the unanimous verdict(s) against Trump in the one trial he has not managed to delay.

Former President Donald Trump marked Memorial Day on May 27 by ranting on his social media platform about “the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great County,” the “Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York,” and “the N.Y. State Wacko Judge,” among others.

In contrast, Iowa politicians from both parties embraced the spirit of the holiday originally known as Decoration Day by honoring Americans who died during military service. Governor Kim Reynolds attended Memorial Day events at the Iowa Gold Star Museum in Johnston and Iowa Veterans Cemetery in Adel.

In that spirit, Bleeding Heartland remembers the Iowans killed in military conflicts, from before statehood to the current decade.

Writing under the handle “Bronxiniowa,” Ira Lacher, who actually hails from the Bronx, New York, is a longtime journalism, marketing, and public relations professional.

Imagine, for a moment, you have fallen on hard times. You’ve lost your job, you’re being evicted or foreclosed, and you have nowhere to go. However, your parents, who built a rich, prosperous life out of their meager immigrant beginnings, invite you to stay with them, for as long as you like. And you breathe a welcome sigh of relief—you’re not going to have to sleep on the street!

But little by little, you discover some excruciating and unsettling facts about the people who are beckoning you home.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Where does your primary loyalty lie: as a citizen of America, or as a citizen of Iowa?

Probably seems like a meaningless question. But around the nation, more and more states these days are enacting laws in opposition to those of the federal government, placing the loyalty question front and center. And a growing number of U.S. residents are declaring a preference to honor their state laws above those of the United States.

ORIGINS OF THE SUPREMACY CLAUSE

In terms of settled law, there’s no real dispute: federal law outranks state law. The U.S. Constitution leaves no doubt. Article VI, Clause 2 (the “Supremacy Clause”), reads as follows:

Rev. Cathy F. Young of Waterloo is a retired pastor in the Presbyterian Church. The following is an abbreviated version of a sermon about Christian Nationalism.

My father, who served as a Naval officer in the South Pacific, shared fascinating World War II stories with me. With ensuing history classes I became troubled by America’s slow response to Hitler’s atrocities in Europe and incredulous that Christians in Germany blindly followed their deranged dictator.

While pursuing a Master of Divinity degree at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, I took a course titled Christianity and the Holocaust. I learned that Hitler’s strategy to build loyalty and support within German churches was masterful. He encouraged kids in his German youth organizations to get their families to attend Sunday worship with them. Church attendance skyrocketed; pastors were thrilled. Eventually, Germany’s government rule and religion became one.

Henry Jay Karp is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, Iowa, which he served from 1985 to 2017. He is the co-founder and co-convener of One Human Family QCA, a social justice organization.

Governor Kim Reynolds came to Beit Shalom, the home of the Quad Cities Jewish community, on May 15 to sign House File 2545, a bill containing controversial new social studies curriculum requirements.

Why Beit Shalom? Because the bill requires Iowa schools to teach Holocaust education, following the model of Illinois, which has required it for several years.

Though members of the Quad Cities Jewish community are divided about the policies of the governor and the Republican-controlled legislature, we do stand united on the issue of Holocaust education in our schools. According to FBI statistics for the past several years, more than 50 percent of religion-based acts of hate in the U.S. targeted the Jewish community, more than all the other faith groups put together. Since the atrocities of the Hamas attack on Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, the number of antisemitic attacks in the U.S. has more than tripled.

Ed Wasserman is a 52-year resident of Iowa and a professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at The University of Iowa. The views expressed in his piece are his own and do not in any way reflect those of his employer.

Observers often puzzle over the chummy connection between former President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. What links these two leaders to one another? Largely ignored among several possibilities is their common political philosophy.

In a column for the New York Times in February, Carlos Lozada sharply criticized Donald Trump’s ostensible lack of political philosophy: “The difficulty with Trumpism is Trump himself, who renders any coherent ism impossible.” His assessment echoes the widespread belief that Trump is utterly unschooled in geopolitical history or philosophy. Although few would disagree with Trump’s scholarly naïveté, I fear his political acumen may have been seriously underestimated.

John Clayton grew up on a farm in Poweshiek County, which he now farms. During his childhood, going to Meskwaki Pow-Wows in neighboring Tama County was the highlight of each summer. He is a 2024 candidate for Poweshiek County supervisor.

Minnesota officially adopted a new state flag on May 11, replacing the previous design, which had long been criticized for its depiction of a Native American on horseback with a spear and a white pioneer farming with a gun. The flag’s imagery was viewed by many as a symbol of Indigenous defeat and displacement, which was considered offensive by the state’s Dakota and Ojibwe tribes.

Poweshiek County in Iowa uses a caricature of a Native American as its icon. The Poweshiek County Board of Supervisors acknowledged in a public open meeting held on May 6 that the county’s icon caricature isn’t of Chief Poweshiek. 

Bill Bumgarner is a retired former health care executive from northwest Iowa who worked in hospital management for 41 years, predominantly in the state of Iowa.

The recently concluded legislative session has shown again that the state of Iowa is firmly entrenched in red state antipathy. 

Republican elected officials continued to casually pursue and advance legislation that strips away at Iowa’s once proud history of engagement, moderation, and inclusion.

The last few legislative sessions have produced attacks on public education, threatened a women’s right to make her own health care decisions, eroded the civil rights of certain citizens, advanced book bans and now—recklessly—introduced guns into Iowa schools.

Jon Stewart discusses Donald Trump’s Gettysburg remarks on The Daily Show

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

Seldom do late-night TV hosts scoop the giants of the mainstream news media. But that seems to be the case regarding news coverage of Donald Trump’s campaign rally on Saturday, April 13, in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, near Gettysburg.

Here’s how Mark Sumner of the Daily Kos website put it: “The only thing more amazing than Trump’s Gettysburg address may be how PBS, The Associated Press, The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post all managed to cover Trump’s rally without mentioning one word of this historic statement…Had President Joe Biden said anything half so irrational, every one of those same outlets would have dedicated their full front pages to a discussion of Biden’s mental fitness.”

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on Dec. 27, 2023. Above: Historian Paul Finkelman at Susan Clark Junior High in February 2023.

What will it take to get Muscatine’s Alexander Clark House declared a National Historic Landmark?

From Guidelines for Preparing National Historic Landmark Nominations (2023): “Nationally significant properties embody stories that have exceptional value to the nation as a whole. … The history embodied in NHLs may not always be familiar, but their significance to the nation means that they are no less deserving of recognition.”

Our city’s Historic Preservation Commission didn’t expect a “national significance” hurdle back in 2010 when we received a grant to hire an expert in U.S. legal history to help us make the case to the U.S. National Park Service. I was HPC chairperson at the time.

President Donald Trump listens to a prayer offered by the Rev. Franklin Graham on September 20, 2019. Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead, available via Wikimedia Commons.

Dan Piller was a business reporter for more than four decades, working for the Des Moines Register and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He covered the oil and gas industry while in Texas and was the Register’s agriculture reporter before his retirement in 2013. He lives in Ankeny.

“Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name and will deceive many.” Jesus Christ, Matthew 24. 

“Evangelical Christianity has been hijacked by people who, if Jesus appeared at their door, would give him the boot.” – Former President and former Baptist Jimmy Carter

Devout Christians who hoped they could get through the Holy Week between Palm Sunday and Easter free from politics were sorely disappointed.

Stephen Frese in 2006 and 2023

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on Dec. 13, 2023.

My previous column told of the high-school junior whose 2006 biographical essay on civil-rights hero Alexander Clark won him a full-tuition university scholarship, the top prize in the National History Day competition.

To find out what became of Iowa’s prodigy, I sought help from Naomi Peuse who had been the NHD coordinator at the State Historical Society at the time.

“Stephen Frese, the history nerd,” he called himself back then.

Saying she had not been in touch with him in the intervening years, she quickly pointed me to a picture on the website of his alma mater, Marshalltown High School, where he is now a teacher—of science.

Bill Bumgarner is a retired former health care executive from northwest Iowa who worked in hospital management for 41 years, predominantly in the State of Iowa.

Few presidential election cycles pass without wishful thinking in some quarters that this is the year to elect a third-party candidate to lead the United States. 

2024 is one of those years—and the outcome will be the same as in the past. Either a Democrat or a Republican will be elected president in November.

In contemporary times, a third-party candidate has not remotely come close to winning the presidency.  In fact, very few have earned a single electoral vote toward the magic number of 270.

From left: Margaret Chase Smith, Lowell Weicker, Liz Cheney

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

In an odd—even terrifying—way to respond to threats to our democracy, The Republican/MAGA Party will offer Donald Trump as its presidential nominee in 2024, the golden anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s resignation.

Nixon left office in disgrace on August 9, 1974, in the wake of Watergate disclosures that would likely have led to his impeachment and removal.

The Republican Party will formally endorse Trump as its presidential candidate at its national convention in Milwaukee in July—despite Trump’s disgraceful behavior before, during, and after his one term as president. He won the electoral college in 2016 while trailing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by more than 2.8 million popular votes. Trump lost both the electoral college and the popular vote to Joe Biden in 2020—by more than 7 million votes this time—yet he continues to spread his Big Lie about the supposedly rigged election.

U.S. Department of State photo of NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium on July 12, 2018, via Wikimedia Commons

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Two events within a few months of each other 75 years ago forever altered the political and military landscape of the world. Their combined effects play an an important role in today’s diplomatic chess game.

On April 4, 1949, twelve Western nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, DC to create the Organization by that name, abbreviated to NATO. The signatories were the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland.

Over the next 75 years NATO’s membership expanded eastward through Europe to include today’s 32 nations, with Sweden’s signature affixed earlier this month.

Scott Syroka is a former Johnston city council member.

It’s unclear whether Koch Industries would avoid paying utility replacement taxes worth millions of dollars every year if it acquires OCI Global’s Iowa Fertilizer Company plant in Wever (Lee County).

According to Chuck Vandenberg’s February reporting for the Pen City Current, the Iowa Fertilizer Company plant’s current owner, OCI Global, paid between $2 to 3 million in utility replacement taxes in 2023 alone.

To understand why it’s unknown whether Koch Industries would be required to pay these taxes if it acquires the plant, we must look back in the history books.

After deregulation spread across the country in the 1980s, including in the electric and natural gas industries, the Iowa legislature responded in 1998 by passing Senate File 2146, the Property Tax Replacement and Statewide Property Tax Act.

Images of Thomas Paine, Juvenal, and Trofim Lysenko all taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

This Bleeding Heartland post offers four perspectives on the dreadful Iowa legislature and on fears of the outcome of the November general elections. Three small doses come from Thomas Paine, known as the poet or penman of the American Revolution; Juvenal, a poet in First Century Rome; and Trofim Lysenko, a Soviet agronomist, who was not much of a poet and even less of a scientist.

The larger fourth dose is the draft of A Social Statement on Civic Life and Faith. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is considering this draft for September adoption by the Task Force for Studies on Civic Life and Faith. The text is relevant to laws approved by Iowa lawmakers or pending in the state legislature, and to political campaigns now under way across the country.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on Nov. 15, 2023. Above: Detail from illustration by Hayle Calvin.

Susie the Brave
was also Susie the Queen
who was born in a town
called Muscatine.

So begins the picture book Susie Clark: The Bravest Girl You’ve Ever Seen: Desegregating Iowa Schools in 1868.

You say you never knew there was
a Queen in Muscatine?
Well, get ready to meet
the bravest girl you’ve
ever seen!

Susie’s father is Alexander Clark, the most famous “colored” person in 1860s Iowa. He has just won the court case which bears her name and makes her a public figure at age 13.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on November 1, 2023.

Back in January I told of forthcoming books about Susan Clark and said she had a publicity problem.

“Never heard of her” was indeed a buzz surrounding the mid-October release of the picture book by author Joshalyn Hickey-Johnson and illustrator Hayle Calvin—“Susie Clark: The Bravest Girl You’ve Ever Seen: Desegregating Iowa Schools in 1868.”

Iowans, even long-time Muscatine residents, exclaimed that the true story was new to them.