This weekend, an ayatollah helped remind me why I love Iowa. The thought struck me after about an hour of paging through coverage of the (ahem) disputed election results in Iran. I realized that it’s...

In the Age of Karaoke, more people (including me) like to join in the singing when they strike up the national anthem at public occasions. No one can stop you, no matter how embarrassed she might be by...

Women, it seems, are bummed-out these days. A study released last month from the National Bureau of Economic Research and the University of Pennsylvania showed that even though men’s and women’s happiness...

The decision to cut 130 jobs at the UI — a move laid out in a budget plan presented to the state Board of Regents on Thursday — was obviously not an easy call to make. Unfortunately, this summer holds...

I never thought when I wrote my first paper arguing for a national sales tax that I’d write a column denouncing such a plan 10 years later. Like Frankenstein’s titular character, I’ve seen my vision...

Attempts to market Iowa City as a friendly place for same-sex marriage have again raised the question of what defines marriage. Individuals opposed to same-sex marriage argue that marriage is a sacred...

“I want to just delete all the information off my Facebook profile,” a friend recently told me. “Then I’ll just use my account to look at what everyone else is doing.” There’s a name for “looking...

In 1986 and 1987, I was one of the “masterminds” behind the importation and sale of approximately 75 tons of pot from Southeast Asia to the United States. It was the culmination of a 20-year career...

With the saturation of Iowa City’s rental market and growing population of college students, certain rental agencies, such as mine, and real-estate owners have targeted renters in Iowa City, college...

In ruling that a justice on West Virginia’s highest court should have recused himself from a case involving a campaign benefactor, the U.S. Supreme Court has righted an egregious wrong. More important,...

Variety is important. We should all hold diversity as a personal value and recognize the positive consequences it brings. However, when government gets into the business of mandating diversity, we’re...

The first week or so of June is full of anniversaries, it seems. What? You haven’t noticed? You really need to stop Twittering so much. Or Tweeting. Whatever. Baseball is a much safer addiction. For...