iowa underground blog

Now that the dust has settled on the eminent domain legislation (for now) – another related issue has come to a head in Clear Lake.

State lawmakers can brag all they want about how they protected Iowans from shopping malls, airports and lakes. But when it comes to the property rights fight over hogs, they have nothing to brag about.

Sure, no one is seizing property to build hog confinements. But you don’t have to physically grab property to take its value.

Read the rest of Todd Dorman’s Blog Entry

• Sousy

Three cheers for the Cedar Rapids Gazette. It would appear she of the prodigious adam’s apple has reached a tipping point in her career – and is finally pissing off and offending those to the right of the political spectrum. It’s not quite ‘ding dong, the witch is dead’ yet, but it’s atleast a start, eh?

Via Editor & Publisher

By Sarah Weber

Published: July 12, 2006 5:05 PM ET

NEW YORK Ann Coulter is no stranger to controversy, but her latest adventures have several newspapers questioning whether carrying her syndicated column is worth the trouble. The Shreveport (La.) Times is currently leaving the decision of whether or not to keep Coulter up to its readers. But the first newspaper to officially drop Coulter’s column since the latest uproar began seems to be The Gazette of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where she had appeared for about 14 months.

Opinion Page Editor Doug Neumann told E&P, “Our decision was made before the plagiarism allegations. It did come after the publication of [Coulter’s] book, but I would say it didn’t directly play any role on our decision.”

However, Neumann surmised that Coulter’s incendiary book may have played an “indirect” role in the final decision. “I think it was the book that began to unwind support among her readers,” Neumann explained.

“Liberals have never liked her, and we’ve always gotten complaints [from them]. But the complaints that mattered the most were from the conservative readers,” who felt that their views were being misrepresented.

Coulter’s syndicate, Universal Press, cleared her of plagiarism charges earlier this week.

Though The Gazette may be the first to drop the outspoken conservative columnist in recent months, Neumann emphasized, “It’s not uncommon for opinion pages to change their line-up.” The daily has long published conservative Cal Thomas and replaced Coulter with another conservative, David Limbaugh.

“We’ve always had a rich line-up of conservative columnists,” said Neumann, “and we still do.”

related digg thread
Also, via ‘Crooks and Liars’, Donny Deutsch Shatters the Coulter Myth

• pdx

I just found this – which gives a good rundown of what “wage stagnation” is.

The census data can be found here.

• Sousy