Within the next two weeks, the Iowa Senate will be debating early-childhood-education legislation (HF877) to create new programs that will provide voluntary preschool education for four-year-olds. The concept is a good one, but the current proposal has some problems.

Although I have not been a dedicated reader of the Reader, I have never seen criticism of it as "anti-business." (See "Defining Pro-Business News," River Cities' Reader Issue 622, February 28-March 6, 2007.) What people need to understand is that criticism is often a great way for businesses to understand their weaknesses and improve on them. Since a business can never objectively look at itself, it should rely on the feedback of clients and the community to identify and solve problems or expand and grow.

Davenport has a glorious history of birthing newspapers - 150 in 171 years. Yet even the mud-caked, hand-cranked press of the old Daily Gazette, which fell off the gangplank into the river, could have printed a clearer picture than the Quad-City Times as to what Davenport citizens will lose if their council eliminates all four standing committees.

It was the Gisswold v. Connecticut case in 1965 that struck down state laws prohibiting married couples from using birth control; the law was ruled unconstitutional because it violated marital privacy, a right protected by the Constitution.