Do you remember that phrase our nation’s founders wrote in the preamble to the Constitution 237 years ago? The one about forming a more perfect union? We have hit some speed bumps in that …
This year, like last year, is a Farm Bill year and this year, like last year, probably won’t deliver any Farm Bill. The reason is the oldest one in Washington, D.C.: politics. Most …
If Joe Biden is using a walker with an oxygen tank attached, and if his eyelids are propped up by toothpicks, and if he cannot debate after supper time, we will vote for him on Election Day with …
As an end-of-the-road farm boy growing up deep in southern Illinois, the Fourth of July was more of a shadetree holiday from the alfalfa field than a noisy celebration of national independence. …
Friday's Iowa Supreme Court decision to uphold and implement Governor Kim Reynold’s and Iowa Republican’s 6-week abortion ban is one of many ways Iowa Republicans are trying to control …
Through the years, justices on the Iowa Supreme Court typically avoid harsh or overzealous language in their decisions. That is why two separate dissenting opinions jumped out Friday when the …
God works in mysterious ways with a wicked sense of humor, I mused last week. God the Father, with the long white beard and big index finger. Damn straight, I’m driving to Spencer last …
If you are aware of the Marion County (Kansas) Record, it is probably because you winced at the dings and dents inflicted upon the First Amendment when the local police department conducted a raid on …
Dear Editor of the Cherokee Chronicle Times, I want to say a big thank-you for all the hard work Kenny Schlenger and his county guys did and are doing with all this flooding we are having. Also, …
Dear Chronicle Times, I buy 3 subscriptions a year for myself and 2 kids, mostly for Paul Struck’s editorials and the excellent sport section. Hope Paul is back soon, he will be difficult …
It must be that time of year — we’re sick of bird flu as the geese take roost. Yet another Sioux County dairy barn has been infected. A turkey flock in Cherokee County was wiped out. …
You know how some memories stick with you for no logical reason? One such memory involves my dad in the 1960s when I was a teenager. After World War II, my father worked for the City of …
While Americans still face a long season of political campaigning, more than 80 other nations have completed their federal elections this year or are about to go to the polls. For example, …
Ever since Father’s Day I’ve felt second-rate after reading the heaps of praise on dear old dad. I wasn’t so great in the Ward Cleaver role. It has struck me since that God the …
For the past 3½ years, Donald Trump has claimed the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. At last count, at least 70% of the nation’s Republicans say the same thing. The …
You may think that climate change is a hoax, or that it is something in the future, or it is not related to the gasoline we burn to rubberneck the flooding at Sioux Rapids or Cherokee, or with the way we farm and produce protein. Shriveled night crawler corpses baked on the Sunday morning pavement, roughly marking high flow from the night before raging down from Spencer through the Valley of the Little Sioux and choking off Cherokee. Stranded people in Rock Valley were rescued by boat and helicopter. It is real enough.
The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is shrinking because of warming water and not because of less nitrate flowing in from the Mississippi River complex, according to two leading researchers. Dr. …
A longstanding complaint here is the utter incomprehensibility of federal milk pricing policy. For years we’ve joked (mostly through tears) that only four people in the world understand its …
For the past 3 1/2 years Donald Trump has claimed the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. At last count, at least 70 percent of the nation’s Republicans say the same thing. …
In the next 10 days, the seven justices of the Iowa Supreme Court will issue a ruling in the misnamed “Fetal Heartbeat” ban. This legislation is the third iteration forced through the Iowa …