'Winsome' Reynolds an insulting choice for Iowa

In the brilliant 1960 movie “Inherit the Wind,” the William Jennings Bryan character, sweating with religious fervor, allows a truth to emerge amid his hubris, albeit accidentally and embarrassingly.

'Winter's Bone' gives us rural heroine for the ages

Rural white poverty is very much alive and well, although not always easy to spot, as it hides around the mountain or in an apparently abandoned trailer off a county road that is surprisingly a home. We don’t see it, or we don’t want to. “Winter’s Bone” grabs us by the hand and leads us into this world, quickly punching us in the face with its realities. Set in the Missouri Ozarks, “Winter’s Bone” chronicles the heroic efforts of Ree Dolly, a 17-year-old who raises her two younger siblings amidst the squalor of off-grid living and danger of the methamphetamine trade in which her entire extended family is seemingly entangled.

Branstad supports getting Oklahoma tough on Iowa women

A few weeks ago, in an effort to appeal to his party’s base, Terry Branstad threw uncompromising (and one suspects uninformed) support behind an Oklahoma law that requires pregnant women to watch ultrasounds of their fetuses and listen to details from doctors about the function of vital organs. (4 comments)

Controlling your kids through their cell phones

Cell phones have granted this current crop of teen-agers freedoms unknown even to relatively recent generations of kids. Ubiquitous texting and the ability to stay in contact with one’s friends 24/7 has allowed kids to scrub their lives of certain interactions with older people. The deadline for such living is fast approaching for kids of parents savvy (or snoopy) enough to avail themselves of developing technology. Case in point: Taser International Inc. is poised to release a new product in August called Protector.

Congressman King still our employee, not shock jock yet

Congressman Steve King, who gets testy when others challenge his motivations on racial matters, had no problems doing just that with Obama on Monday on the talk show of Watergate alum G. Gordon Liddy. Our congressman also spent the week doing a number of other interviews in which he defended, amplified and elaborated on the statements. (1 comments)

All aboard for Chicago to Des Moines to Omaha

Imagine being able to catch a passenger train in Des Moines and take it to Union Station in downtown Chicago, going through Iowa City and the Quad Cities along the way. (1 comments)

Council makes correct move on Corridor pavers

Carroll City Council members on Monday hewed to the original vision of the Corridor of Commerce in voting to include decorative brick pavers at three major intersections with U.S. 30 in the central business district. (3 comments)

Roberts appealing for local crossover votes

Here’s the bottom line with Rod Roberts next Tuesday: we’re a city of 10,000 in a state of 3 million people and we have a chance to get one of our residents to a general election in November for Iowa’s highest office. (1 comments)

Why Lake View should back CR-Herndon trail

LAKE VIEW — This is a big weekend in Lake View. Memorial Day is the annual start to the tourist season in this western Iowa resort community that continues its impressive pull of visitors to Black Hawk Lake.

Want a job? Major in agriculture at ISU

The world of 7 billion people and growing has to eat, meaning there’s a bull market or bright future for people involved with getting food from its origins, whether in the ground or within animal hides or plucked from trees, to plates the world over. Which is why Iowa State University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences associate dean John D. Lawrence is able to come to the Carroll Rotary Club and unleash some staggeringly good figures about that school’s graduates.

Roberts sees winning role model in S.D. governor

In 2002 South Dakotans were shocked when a decided underdog captured the Republican gubernatorial primary in a three-way race over two better-known and more highly funded opponents. State Rep. Rod Roberts, R-Carroll, is looking to reprise Rounds’ role, Iowa- style, in 2010. The dynamics are sure similar in the Iowa Republican primary: two well- known politicians with money and that third guy, the one who looks dignified, dare we say, gubernatorial, and doesn’t lose his cool.

Bob Vander Plaats: Mr. Reverse Remote Control

For most people, a television remote-control works like this: you push the buttons and, presto, that flat screen shows what you want to see, whether its “Meet the Press,” a Chicago Cubs game or Fox’s surprisingly engaging “Glee.” But for GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats this exchange functions another way. The images on the TV push his buttons, turning his typically three-channel mind (gays, really gays and really, really gays) to Arizona and an impulsive endorsement of that state’s controversial new police-state response to illegal immigration. (3 comments)

No rural or Midwest voice on Supreme Court?

The U.S. Supreme Court lacks a rural voice, and the top candidates being men-tioned in the national media as possible replacements for departing Justice John Paul Stevens don’t have the biog-raphies to change that.

Check out our new online calendar

The new version of our Web site, carrollspaper.com, contains many features designed to increase interaction with readers and make it possible for you to get more information and news to us.

5 travel questions for Cathy Greteman

In a feature story on Jan. 5 we focused on Cathy Greteman of Carroll who was just elected as chairman and CEO of the National Tour Association. We asked Greteman her opinion on five travel questions. Here they are:

Health-care bill burns tanning salons

With controversy centering on the vague yet now-politically explosive term “public option” and long-running battles over abortion assuming center stage in the health-care reform debate some local businesses are feeling more than a bit blindsided by one element of a U.S. Senate-passed plan. The U.S. Senate, on a party-line vote, passed a sweeping heath-care bill that includes a 10 percent federal sales tax on tanning salons.