Letters

By Ruthina Malone, Iowa City As the Vice President of the Iowa City Community School District School Board, I could not be prouder of the effort that our teachers, school workers, administrators, parents, and students put into making our public schools among the best in the country. While we have worked hard to maintain the […]

By Joe Bolkcom, Iowa City Adam Zabner is smart, energetic and connected to our community. Adam is a product of Iowa City public schools. He will be a strong public education advocate. What impresses me the most about Adam is his decision to call Iowa home and work to make it a fairer, more prosperous […]

By Heidi Galer, Iowa City I’ve known Janice Weiner since I taught her German at West High School. Over the years, first when Janice spent her senior year as an AFS exchange student in Belgium, then after she left for college and law school, we corresponded and, whenever Janice was in town visiting her parents, […]

By Don Paulson, Letts All Iowans who live in the 20 counties of the new First Congressional District should be appalled and disgusted with Republican Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Her campaign manager, Elliott Husbands, displays a photo on his Twitter page of a room draped with the flags of far-right extremist groups on the wall while […]

Miller-Meeks needs common sense By Paul Deaton, Solon Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ recent statement about common sense would make sense if she demonstrated it in her votes. She recently disparaged Democrats and said she was, “…doing everything in my power to fight for Iowan common sense values.” Instead of common sense, Miller-Meeks adopted right-wing policies of […]

This March 22 marks the 50th anniversary of an important report from the Shafer Commission, a Nixon-appointed group tasked with studying marijuana and issuing policy recommendations. The group’s findings called for the decriminalization of cannabis possession in the U.S., but alas, the suggestions went unheeded. Our state, 50 years later, remains one of the 19 […]

By Tom Carsner, Iowa City All Johnson County residents suffered losses from the pandemic, but not all residents were helped by government stabilization or enhanced unemployment checks. Three Johnson County Supervisors cemented this inequality and sidetracked the discussion about ARPA payments by raising irrelevant “what-about” questions and even questioning whether the county could do such […]

By Dave Bradley, West Liberty When former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley campaigned for candidate Mariannette Miller-Meeks in 2020, she told a Davenport gathering Miller-Meeks will bring moral clarity to the health care reform debate in the country and fight to protect the Trump tax cuts. While the latter may be true, Miller-Meeks is a fraud […]

By Ellen Ballas, Iowa City Recently we learned that twice-impeached former President Trump urged the seizure of voting machines by federal agencies hoping to overturn the 2020 election. Not one Iowa Republican criticized him, including Senator Grassley and Representatives Hinson and Miller-Meeks. Also recently, Republican Representative Thomas Massie criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci using a neo-Nazi […]

We Iowans love to talk about the weather! Not Governor Reynolds. She didn’t mention the recent off-the-charts weather disaster in her rosy Condition of the State address recently. On Dec. 15, Iowans once again experienced a set of events that no one alive has ever witnessed before. A record temperature of 74 degrees. The first […]

By Paul Deaton, Solon Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks should be consistent about where she stands on support for the military. On Jan. 12, she voted against expanding eligibility for educational benefits to our National Guard and Army Reserves in the Guard and Reserve GI Bill Parity Act of 2021. In June, Miller-Meeks said, “I can think […]

Gov. Reynolds wants to starve Iowa’s safety net and, consequently, its people. In her recent Condition of the State address, Governor Kim Reynolds used her platform to kick struggling Iowans while they are down. At one point in her speech, Reynolds lamented that Iowa’s “safety net has become a hammock.” The implication, of course, is […]