A new poll from Public Policy Polling shows that Ron Paul has taken the lead in the Iowa caucus race, while Newt Gingrich’s support is fading fast. A different Gallup poll shows Grinrich still holding the lead, but slipping, while The New York Times has Paul in the lead as well. Surprising?  Not at all, and here’s why: Perhaps the most…

I see that activists are planning for an Occupy Whitewater event. Although I have more than a few doubts about the Occupy agenda, I sincerely wish the group well.  Protest movements are both a right of speech and assembly, and they typically offer something to society no matter what their stated aims.  (The right, in…

Documentarian Ken Burns hits the mark while discussing his new PBS series on Prohibition: “Slavery was our worst idea,” says legendary documentarian Ken Burns. “I’m not sure that Prohibition was second, but it’s really right up there.” Burns talks to Reason.tv’s Nick Gillespie about his new PBS film, animals in-depth look at one of the…

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New York – Ten years on, Americans will come together Sunday where the World Trade Center soared, where the Pentagon stands as a fortress once breached, where United Airlines Flight 93 knifed into the earth. They will gather to pray in cathedrals in our greatest cities and to lay roses before fire stations in our…

Good morning. It’s a sunny day ahead in the Whippet City, with a high temperature of eighty-one. There’s a meeting of the Whitewater CDA today from 4.30 to 7 p.m., a portion of which will be in closed session.  The agenda is available online. It turns out that not all worker ants are identical in…

RT @WiStateJournal: Supreme Court members say Prosser a hot-head who has ‘temper tantrums’ dlvr.it/j0fpt 26 Aug RT @WisWatch: Posted the #Prosser investigative file on our site. Was it a ‘chokehold’? Justices divided.wisconsinwatch.org/2011/08/26/doc… 26 Aug It’s hardly a ‘recovery’ at all U.S. Recovery Sputters, Consumer Confidence Sinks- Bloomberg bit.ly/nJrjha 26 Aug Slate lays off Jack Shafer, others – Shafer will land…

FREEWHITEWATER published a poll previously about readers’ favorite newspapers for Whitewater news, with choices from among the Daily Union, Whitewater Register, and Janesville Gazette. Today’s poll is a version of that one, asking not for favorites, but simply for those newspapers one reads (like them or not). Multiple answers are possible, too. The poll’s focus…

At least, it’s Adel Zakout’s list of the top ten. See what you think. I like Slide 7, of Ricardo Bofill’s abandoned-cement-factory-turned-office-gallery-guest-space-and-residence. Via Huffington Post. For more on Bofill’s house, see Open Buildings – The Cement Factory.

Whitewater, even more than other places, frets over people more than ideas. So when a vacancy opens in a public office, some ask: Who’ll get that job? So much better, all around, to ask: What do you want to do? We have our share of problems, but it’s from the response to a vacancy as…

WRM writes of the gap between a highly competent citizenry and the mediocrity of the Establishment.  There’s great talent of some in power, but of the broader Establishment, there’s never been a more disgraceful lack of ability.  This is true of both political parties’ supporters, and is true, also,  of imitative statewide elites in many…

Over at the Atlantic, there’s a fine, yet troubling. essay about America’s war policy, entitled, How Perpetual War Became U.S. Ideology. James Joyner writes that The United States has found itself in a seemingly endless series of wars over the past two decades. Despite frequent opposition by the party not controlling the presidency and often…

Like the old riddle about who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb, my question about Shakespeare is a joke. Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s plays. There have been some who’ve doubted that he wrote so well, but I am not among them. Of the doubters, some have been accomplished, themselves (including Mark Twain, of all people). Yet, most who…

After a week of uncertain, turbulent politics, here’s something completely different.