Davenport City Administrator Craig Malin casts the debate over a new riverfront casino/hotel as an either/or proposition. Either you accept the new hotel, or you're stuck with the status quo. "Some folks in the community have the [mistaken] feeling that there's this third or fourth or fifth option," echoed DavenportOne President and CEO Dan Huber.
On any given day 15 million shipping containers are in transit around the world, the workhorses of a global bazaar that most of us depend upon for the goods that prop up our lives. Could one of those containers carry a secret nuclear device? Would anyone find it? If you don't enjoy losing sleep about such questions, you probably don't want to spend much time around Stephen Flynn, a former U.

Nightline Snub

Sinclair Broadcast Group on April 29 ordered its eight ABC affiliates to pre-empt April 30's Nightline broadcast of the reading of the names of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq, saying the program is "motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq.
The war in Iraq has become also a war of images. A few weeks ago, we were troubled by pictures of tortured Iraqi prisoners. Earlier, it was photographs of American soldiers who have given their lives there. On April 30 on Nightline, Ted Koppel read the names of the dead and showed their photographs.
Several years ago, after reading books by Angela Davis and several other black women regarding the role of black women in the suffrage and civil-rights movements, I was asked to be a part of a women's history celebration at one of the local colleges.
It could be worse. Remember, Willy Horton was originally Al Gore's inventive way of beating up on co-Democrat Mike Dukakis in the 1988 primary - but even so, the perennial spectacle of Democrats rooting in each others' dirty-linen baskets and waving their soiled finds in public looks like unnecessary party-political harakiri to outsiders.

Ungodly Politics

I was recently reading an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean in Newsweek when I had to stop and check that it was indeed Newsweek and not, say, Christianity Today. Yes, it was indeed Newsweek.
Mr. Aeschliman states the obvious in his "Business Insighter" column (see "Globalization Trend Means Change in Job Types," River Cities' Reader Issue 458, January 7-13, 2004). He summarizes the symptoms and partial effects of the current runaway globalization.
A subpoena can work like truth serum. Drag waffling officials and dissembling politicians before a serious investigating body and suddenly secrets start to spill and disclosures mount. Dots are connected. Confessions emerge, and sometimes, indictments follow.
According to a recent news story in a Des Moines newspaper, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack "is taking heart from Illinois' conclusion that it could safely save millions of dollars by helping state employees buy prescription drugs through Canada.

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