"If you're gonna tell it, tell the truth and tell it all!" was an adage I heard often as a child growing up in rural North Carolina, where hard work, honesty, and generosity anchored our deep, abiding family and community values. Entering adulthood, I learned that living this seemingly simple conviction is much more complicated than the phase itself appears. "If you're gonna tell it" implies that you've made a choice, a conscious decision to speak truth, while "tell the truth" suggests that you have knowledge or understanding of what the truth is, that you know right from wrong and fact from fiction. Finally, "tell it all" reveals that the truth cannot be selective, and you cannot conveniently or deliberately omit facts or tell part of the story. When my siblings and I sometimes landed in trouble, as children often do, my mother admonished, "I don't care what you've done or how bad it seems, I need you to tell me the truth. I can deal with the truth, but there is nothing I can do with a lie!"

In an interview promoting his 2007 lecture at the Figge Art Museum, urban planner Jeff Speck promised that his ideas would be "controversial." He explained to me that "most cities, for better or for worse, are being designed by their public-works departments, who state as the highest objective the free flow of automobiles."

Three years later, the City of Davenport is on the cusp of approving a 10-year comprehensive transportation plan called "Davenport in Motion" that draws from the philosophy Speck promotes. The shock is that it's barely controversial at all.

Governor Pat Quinn was in rare form last week as he attacked state Senator Bill Brady before his Republican opponent had a chance to get his own licks in.

Quinn was put in an extremely awkward position by his budget director, who indicated to an out-of-state reporter that the state's income-tax rate would be increased to 5 percent from its current 3 percent come January. Democrats were predictably stunned by the political stupidity of such a thing, and Republicans were predictably foaming at the mouth with outrage. The virulently anti-tax Brady quickly scheduled a press conference and we all knew what was coming: unadulterated vitriol.

Two things you should know about the 2010 platform of the Iowa Republican Party:

(1) The document of some 12,000 words and almost 370 planks is a fascinating and provocative read. The work is a great candidate for any time capsule so people 100 or more years from now can see how their ancestors approached issues of public policy.

(2) The news media in general, and The Des Moines Register in particular, continue to ignore party platforms as irrelevant to the 2010 election.

The state convention of the Iowa GOP came and went with news coverage given to the nominations of Terry Branstad and Kim Reynolds for governor and lieutenant governor. Little or no news coverage was given to the GOP platform.

There seldom is.