PAGE 2                                                                                                                             Monday, July 28, 2003

 IOWA/NATIONAL POLITICS: 

… Report from Iowa’s eastern political front: The Quad-City Times’ Ed Tibbetts reports on Nussle and Leach bankrolls – and questions whether Nussle is saving for an ’06 gubernatorial run? Excerpt from Tibbetts’ weekend column: “Our congressman, U.S. Rep. Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, doesn’t have a confirmed opponent for his 1st District seat next year, but you couldn’t tell that by his second-quarter fund-raising totals. Nussle raked in $205,000 from April through June, about the same amount as he did during the first half of 2001. And, according to Federal Election Commission reports, he had $269,000 in the bank. Nussle has been rumored to be a possible 2006 gubernatorial candidate. U.S. Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, who escaped a tough fight last year in the 2nd District, has picked up his mid-term fund raising, according to government records. Leach raised $153,000 in the second quarter, more than he raised during all of the first half of 2001. He had about $138,000 in the bank as of the end of June, $46,000 more than he did at the end of June 2001.”

 MORNING SUMMARY:    

This morning’s headlines:

Des Moines Register, top front-page headline: “From nightmare to Iowa…Liberians find safe haven far from war” Report on about 50 from Liberia who now call Waterloo home. Register columnist John Carlson continues reports from the Iraq war front. Headline on Carlson’s dispatch from Kuwait: “Troops are just as gritty as their environs”

Quad-City Times, featured online stories: “Gay rights will come to fore at Episcopal convention” & “9/11 report raises questions”

Nation/world heads, Daily Iowan (University of Iowa): “Israel to release prisoners” & “Explosions rock Liberian capital”

Sioux City Journal online, top stories: “Americans hunt for Saddam around his Tigris

River hometown; One soldier killed” & “Mutinous Philippine soldiers surrender after seizing Manila shopping center”

Omaha World-Herald, online heads: Online – “Man sues Boys Towns alleging he was abused” & Nation/world -- “California race boasts colorful cast of characters” Report says “a few unconventional candidates” are lining up to fill shoes of Gov. Gray Davis.

Featured headlines, New York Times: “Budget Crisis in States Slow an Economic Recovery” & “AT&T to Offer New Allegations in MCI Inquiry”

Chicago Tribune, main online reports: “Record 5^th Tour win ‘rough’ for Armstrong” & “Israel to free 200 militants”

WAR & TERRORISM: 

…  From the Cuban Front: Castro, on 50^th anniversary of his revolution, trashes European Union as agent of U. S. Excerpt from coverage – under the headline “Castro lashes out at EU” -- says: “Veteran Cuban leader Fidel Castro has dismissed the EU as an agent of the US or ‘the superpower's Trojan horse’, as he put it. In a speech at the historic Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba to mark the 50th anniversary of the revolution which brought him to power, Mr Castro told a crowd of 10,000: ‘Cuba does not need the help of the European Union to survive.’ In 1953, as a 26-year-old revolutionary, Mr Castro led about 120 fighters in a raid against the garrison of about 800 soldiers at Santiago de Cuba. Mr Castro's forces were crushed and he was arrested, but Cubans still mark the date as the beginning of the revolution. In this anniversary year, the Cuban leader directed his thunder against the EU, which was until recently seen as an economic lifeline for the ailing Socialist state. Relations deteriorated rapidly in early June, however, when the EU raised the prospect of sanctions over the Cuba's mass imprisonment of dissidents.  The EU was a ‘group of old colonial powers historically responsible for slave trafficking, looting and even the extermination of entire peoples’, Mr Castro told his audience.”

FEDERAL ISSUES:  

…”Republicans to Try Another Vote on Owen” – Headline from FOXNews.com. Excerpt from Associated Press coverage: “Republicans say they will try for a third time to break a Democratic filibuster on a Texas Supreme Court justice picked by President Bush for the federal appeals court. Senate Republican leaders announced Friday they plan to force a confirmation vote on Tuesday for Priscilla Owen, who has been nominated for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. This will be the third vote on Owen. The GOP failed to push her through on the first two votes in early May, garnering only 52 votes each time in the 100-member Senate. It requires 60 votes to break a filibuster and move a nominee to confirmation. Republicans control the chamber by a two-vote margin, with 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats and one independent senator, Jim Jeffords of Vermont, who usually sides with the Democrats. Democrats contended that Owen is an anti-abortion and pro-business judicial activist whose opinions and rulings are overly influenced by her personal beliefs. When they controlled the Senate in 2001, they voted her nomination down in committee on a party-line vote. Owen and GOP senators say Democrats misrepresented her positions, and that she would be a fair and impartial judge if confirmed by the Senate.”

… “In Senate, Stiff Resistance to a Drug-Import Bill…A letter signed by 53 lawmakers decries a measure passed in the House, saying it would remove ‘vital’ consumer safeguards.” – Headline from the Los Angeles Times. Excerpt from report by the Times’ Nick Anderson: “Despite the House's surprisingly easy passage early Friday of a bill to let U.S. consumers buy lower-cost prescription drugs from other countries, the measure's opponents — including the Bush administration — seem to have built a solid bipartisan wall in the Senate to stop it. The House's 243-186 vote for the drug-import bill, which came hours before the chamber adjourned for its summer break, was still a sharp setback for the administration and the pharmaceutical industry. In a sign of growing public outrage about the higher prices for many brand-name medications in the United States compared with other countries, 87 Republicans deserted their party leadership to join with 155 Democrats and the one House independent to pass the bill. It would allow individuals, pharmacists and drug wholesalers in the United States to import certain prescription drugs from licensed facilities in several industrialized nations…But the bill's opponents delivered a strong blow themselves just before the House vote: a statement signed by 53 Democratic and Republican senators opposing any measure that would weaken the power of federal officials to block drug imports because of safety concerns. ‘We do not believe it would be prudent to remove these vital safeguards,’ the senators wrote in an open letter to lawmakers negotiating a Medicare prescription-drug bill. Neither of California's two senators — Democrats Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein — signed the letter. But the signatories included such ideological opposites as Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), indicating the depth of Senate concern about the safety of drug imports. The letter means that barring a reversal of opinion, the House bill may not even surface in the Senate.”

IOWA ISSUES:

OPINIONS: 

Today’s editorials:

… Today’s editorials, Des Moines Register: “Fight terrorism first…The war on Iraq is diverting resources from protecting the U. S. from terrorist attacks…The report by a joint panel of U. S. House and Senate intelligence committees was actually the most important news of the week.” & “Strike the English-only law…D. M. schools’ new Spanish Web site shows that other Iowans get what lawmakers don’t.”

 IOWA SPORTS: 

IOWA WEATHER: 

… DSM 7 a.m. 69, mostly cloudy. Temperatures mostly in the 60s across Iowa this morning from 62 in Sioux City and 63 in four locations – LeMars, Harlan, Clinton and Decorah – to 71 in Cedar Rapids and 72 in Oelwein. Today’s high 82, partly cloudy. Tonight’s low 61, partly cloudy. Tuesday’s high 84, mostly sunny Tuesday night’s low 65, partly cloudy. From WHO-TV’s Brandon Thomas: “Plenty of sunshine on Tuesday, with highs in the low/mid eighties. A good chance of strong t-storms on Wednesday evening, highs in the mid eighties.”

IOWAISMS: 

… A butter “hog” to join butter cow at the Iowa State Fair. KCCI-TV (Des Moines) reports that the traditional butter cow will be joined at this year's Iowa State Fair by a butter hog, but not the four-legged kind. Norma "Duffy" Lyon will create a full-scale Harley-Davidson – to mark the 100th anniversary of the Milwaukee-based motorcycle manufacturer. Lyon planned to start working on this year's butter cow Friday and hopes to have it finished by Wednesday, when she will start on the Harley. Lyon, who owns a dairy farm near Toledo in Tama County, said she's done her homework by visiting motorcycle shops in Waterloo. She's made butter figures at the fair every year since 1959. This year’s state fair runs from 8/7 to 8/17.

back to page 1                                                                                                             click here  to read past Iowa Daily Reports