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A Des Moines man phoned emergency services at 5:15 a.m. this morning to let them know that he had accidentally beaten his girlfriend to death. KCCI reporter Keri Gavin said police have told her the body of a woman was found at the scene in the back of a pickup truck. The truck is parked [...]

The Iowa Democratic Party has taken issue with an advertisement being circulated by the Draft Terry Branstad Committee, and have released a  point-by-point critique. Branstad previously served four terms as the Governor of Iowa, and was the last Republican to serve in that office. When he chose to retire, in 1997, he was replaced by [...]

Two of the best known (as well as most well preserved) examples of Southern American quilting were created by Harriet Powers, an African American woman who was born in October 1837 and lived a portion of her life as a Georgia slave. One, an 1886 Bible quilt, is kept by the Smithsonian National Museum of [...]

Dr. Norman Borlaug, a son of immigrants who fled to the U.S. when faced with famine in Norway and a man who taught people throughout the world how to increase crop production, died late Saturday night in Texas from complications of cancer. The Iowa native, who is credited as being the father of the Green [...]

Dolores Huerta, president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation and lifetime champion for social justice, will speak Monday, Sept. 14, in Des Moines at Trinity United Methodist Church. The event is free and open to the public. Huerta was born in New Mexico in 1930 and grew up in a California, where she learned early in [...]

The Iowa Democratic Party plans to offer a live internet video stream of U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin’s annual steak fry fundraiser that is scheduled for this Sunday in Indianola. Keynote speaker at the event will be the junior U.S. Senator from Minnesota, Al Franken. “We are excited to launch a new way of including our [...]

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat who has represented Iowa since the mid-1970s, made the following statement on the floor of the U.S. Senate this morning in relation to U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who lost his battle with cancer a few weeks ago: “Mr. President, I look around this chamber, and I [...]

Michael Duvall, a conservative, “family-values” Republican who serves in the California legislature, didn’t have enough sense to stop talking about his sexual exploits when he was sitting in chambers in front of a live microphone. An added bonus prize to beleaguered California taxpapers? The two women he is discussing are believed to be lobbyists from [...]

One of my favorite political cartoonists is R.J. Matson, and here’s his gem about the Obama school speech controversy: There has been a lot written about the school speech and I won’t attempt to rehash it all here. But I do think that the population that has taken the most grief and garnered the least [...]

It’s school board election day. Eleven Linn County school districts and Kirkwood Community College in Linn County will be heading to the voting booth, and there are also public measures at play in Cedar Rapids, Mount Vernon and North Linn schools. Here are links to the sample ballots for each district (and broken down by [...]