The League of Iowa
Human & Civil Rights Agencies

Branstad: Immigrants should have to prove status

CLARINDA, Iowa (AP) -- Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad says people in Iowa stopped on traffic violations should have to prove their citizenship status.

Branstad made the assertion during a visit Wednesday to Clarinda. He said if a per...

Prevent crimes by the mentally ill with a federal Ed Thomas Act, Bruce Braley says

Federal lawmakers should pass a version of Iowa’s “Ed Thomas Act,” which gives law enforcement officials new ways to ensure they’ll be informed when mental hea...

Iowa billboard linking Obama, Hitler removed

An Iowa tea party group on Wednesday replaced a billboard comparing President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin, calling the sign a bad decision that reflected poorly on the organization. Workers papered over the sign in downtown Mason City at the request of the North Iowa Tea Party. "We g...

Workforce Development Releases Survey on Unemployed

by Dar Danielson on July 1, 2010 in Business & Economy, Politics & Government (Radio Iowa)

A survey of unemployed Iowans by the state agency in charge of helping them find new jobs finds many have been out of a job for longer then ave...

Crimes distort reality of schizophrenia

By Tony Leys, Des Moines Register

March 7, 2010

Cedar Rapids, Ia. - A newspaper lying in Steve Miller's kitchen blared the latest front-page news about a person with schizophrenia. The big black headline announced: "Becker guilty." The paper showed a picture of a stone-faced Mark Becker, the ...

A Guthrie Center teacher this week received a five-day unpaid suspension for insubordination for not allowing a student to build a Wiccan altar in his shop class - discipline he said he still doesn't agree with. Dale Halferty, who has taught industrial arts at Guthrie Center High School for three years, said he was asked to meet with the school district superintendent and high school principal when he returns to work Tuesday. Halferty said Wednesday he still doesn't understand why school offi...

DES MOINES – Governor Chet Culver announced today that affordable housing initiatives in Council Bluffs, Des Moines and Dubuque will receive a total of more than $2.8 million to preserve 117 affordable housing units. The awards are made through the Affordable Housing Program, a part of the Culver/Judge Administration’s I-JOBS initiative. The Iowa Finance Authority administers the program.  “These awards will help provide safe and decent living conditions for some of Iow...

The poet Wallace Stevens once wrote: "The world is ugly and the people are sad." Stevens was an insurance executive as well as a poet and he spent his commercial life poring over actuarial tables. He saw how fragile luck really is and how our dreams of beauty and health are shortened by accidents, genetics, war and much else. A flap arose not long ago when the Fox cartoon series "Family Guy" featured a character with Down syndrome. The character Ellen was presented as the episodic love intere...

Fairfield, Ia. - It's almost easy to lose Julie Harvey, Fairfield's new police chief, in the big chair behind her desk. Easy, that is, until she breaks into a wide grin and laughs. Harvey, who spent six years in the Army and 16 years with the Fairfield Police Department before becoming chief, is not the kind of officer who feels the need to meet every visitor with a stone face.