Editorials

Dubbed ominously as Brood II, more than 30 billion cicadas are emerging from a 17-year-long slumber underneath Earth along the East Coast. As we speak these beady-eyed winged menaces are clawing forth from the ground with only one thing on their collective minds: insect sex.

Dear Tom Ricketts:

With this past week being three years since devastating flooding across Iowa, and the fact that recent weather has again caused agonizing problems with folks across the state, I feel the need to identify some facts regarding this situation. 

You may not know it, but June 15th, people around the world are celebrating Global Wind Day. As Iowans, we have lots to celebrate because of the wind industry.

Government’s role in defending its citizens from crime through enforcement of our laws and by exacting punishment upon those who violate them is not up for debate. But, given recent news accounts involving previously violent criminals allegedly committing new violent crimes, perhaps how government is performing that role should be.

The education reform bill that recently passed the Iowa Legislature is an important victory for Iowa’s children and a step in the right direction toward regaining our leadership role in education.

Bob Tur is a well-known and respected news helicopter pilot and reporter in Los Angeles. Those of us who have lived here for a while remember his reporting of some of the most famous (or infamous) events in our city’s history.

Every week I have to wrack my brain to come up with something to write about for this column. Unlike a handful of people in the newsroom, I don’t have kids or Godkids to talk about, but I do have a cat I adopted from JCARL back in January.

It is not really news that Victor Davis Hanson has written another outstanding and eye-opening book. He has done that before and repeatedly, on a variety of subjects.

I go through coffee machines the way long distance runners go through shoes.

Friday’s Jasper County Relay for Life event was pretty emotional for me. As many of you know, I lost my mother a few years ago to cancer. Seeing her luminary and those of others folks who didn’t make it, talking with survivors and other people whose lives were affected by cancer, it got to me.