When I was elected to serve Iowa’s 4th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, I promised that I would be a strong voice for our families, farmers, and rural main streets and equally transparent with and accessible to the people I represent.

Twenty-five years of raising pigs the old fashioned way allowed for those “mortgage lifters” to buy our farm. We avoided taxes that could have ended a hundred-year-old family farm too. I'm told that was not the case in much of post-war Europe.

Dear Editor,

In December of 2009 I wrote the first of what would end up being a series of columns I would affectionately title "Age of the Geek."
I stole the term from the television show "Leverage," in which the team's obligatory tech-nerd proudly observed that the world is run by the people who spend their free time playing "World of Warcraft" and quoting "Doctor Who."

The original plan was simple enough.
I reactivated my subscription to Paramount+ back in March as the second season of "Star Trek: Picard" was underway. The intent was to shut it down again in July once the first season of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" reached its conclusion. Four months, total.
We are now at the end of August.

Here we go again.
The world of Westaros is back as the "Game of Thrones" prequel series, "House of the Dragon," finally premiered this weekend.
Taking place nearly 200 years before the events of the first show, "House of the Dragon" promises another round of fantasy-themed political drama, this time with even more dragons running around.

I must have caught the travel bug because I've been back in the Central Standard Time zone for less than a week and I'm already set to take off again.
Within days of returning from Comic-Con, tickets for TwitchCon went on sale. Coincidentally, both conventions happen in San Diego, so I'll be returning to the west coast this October to the very same convention center.

I have taken a lot of flights in the last couple weeks while on vacation. Doing so has given me an opportunity that I didn't realize I had until I started this multi-destination journey.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe hit an interesting milestone recently.
With the release of "Thor: Love and Thunder" and the conclusion of "Ms. Marvel" on Disney+, the MCU has produced more than 100 hours of content to watch.
That's a lot of super hero antics.

As mentioned in a previous column, I've got my Paramount Plus subscription running right now for the near exclusive purpose of watching "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds." Which is fantastic and if you've ever liked Star Trek you owe it to yourself to give it a watch.

In between the myriad of awful things that have happened in the last several weeks nationwide, a much more trivial event has impacted me on a more personal level.
DeNA, a developer of various mobile games, announced that "Final Fantasy: Record Keeper" will be shutting down at the end of September.

I intended to write this column about a silly mobile game I play, but that feels inappropriate considering what happened last week with the Supreme Court.
In case you somehow missed it, on Friday the Supreme Court officially confirmed its decision to reverse a 50 year old precedent on Roe v Wade, the ruling that has protected a woman's right to decide whether or not to have an abortion.

Graphical fidelity in games has definitely come a long way since I was a kid, but more and more it's becoming clear that there isn't much further they can go.

It's June, and that means it's time for E3.
The Electronic Entertainment Expo has, traditionally, been one of the biggest weeks of the year for the video game industry. The perfect time for publishers to make big announcements and put out trailers to generate hype for their upcoming titles.

So, a weird thing happened this weekend.
A really mediocre movie returned to theaters and did exactly as well as you would expect it to against a line-up that includes "Top Gun: Maverick" and "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness."