Iowa City Owl

President Obama is making yet another trip to Iowa as part of his campaign for a "grassroots" event Tuesday of next week. Obama will speak with Iowans on Tuesday of next week in Cedar Rapids as part of his re-election campaign, according to the Sioux City Journal website.

The Iowa City couple that has been charged with beating a 20-month-old child to death has elected to plead not guilty in their upcoming trial. 18-year-old Mireya Balderas and 20-year-old Jorge Perez have both been accused of child endangerment resulting in death after an investigation was launched to establish the cause of death of Balderas's 20-month old baby, Marcus.

Iowa has received the approval on their application for the No Child Left Behind legislation for one year, allowing them to seek further solutions to be able to meet the requirements that have been set according to the law.

Iowa has joined the other states that are rumored to be planning a refusal to expand their Medicaid programs under President Obama's health care plan, which passed through the Supreme Court just recently.

The state of Iowa has agreed on a settlement from a lawsuit filed against the University of Iowa Hospitals by Jonathan and Martha Fountain for negligence of their son during his birth. The state has agreed to pay the family $3.

50-year old Miranda Lee Lalla, the Iowa City woman that ran over her friend with a truck, faces additional charges after the results of the autopsy have returned. [ads]Lalla was originally arrested and only charged with her second DUI offense after she ran over her friend, Pamela Gross, killing her after the two had been in a fight.

The Iowa Right to Life anti-abortion group is in the process of getting the ability to issue a state-legal license plate that will display the message "choose life" on them. This could actually happen before the end of the year in Iowa.

The Iowa City Police Department has started working on a program that will allow them to hire two military veterans. The plans are still in the works, but they were given a grant of $250,000 to create the positions in their department as part of a federal program.

Iowa City has long been known as a mecca of the strange in the Midwest, but tomorrow, Lydia Hartunian and her creative crew are planning on pushing the weirdness to the extreme with her planned 'Avant Art Festivity'.

This past weekend, my girlfriend and I drove up Highway 1 through pastoral Iowan landscapes to the Ushers Ferry Historic Village to attend their annual Wild West Weekend, to watch 'reenactors' in full cowboy and period regalia shoot it out among themselves, eat cake and soup made on cast iron stoves, and to enjoy an idyllic summer day in the past.