In August, two news stories broke the same day - one meaty, one junky. In Detroit, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that the Bush administration's warrant-less National Security Agency surveillance program was unconstitutional and must end. Meanwhile, somewhere in Thailand, a man named John Mark Karr claimed he was with six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey when she died in 1996.

Predictably, the mainstream media devoted acres of newsprint and hours of airtime to the self-proclaimed beauty-queen killer, including stories on what he ate on the plane ride home, his desire for a sex change, his child-porn fixation, and - when DNA tests proved Karr wasn't the killer - why he confessed to a crime he didn't commit.

During that same time period, few words were written or said in the same outlets about Judge Diggs Taylor's ruling and the questions it raised about due process in the context of the "war on terror."

The Iowa Chamber Alliance (ICA), a nonpartisan coalition that represents 16 chambers of commerce and economic-development organizations throughout the state, has joined a nationwide get-out-the-vote effort with the United States Chamber of Commerce. The partners have unveiled (http://www.VoteForIowa.com), a one-stop shop for nonpartisan information about the upcoming election. The Iowa Chamber Alliance's mission is to put forth and enact an agenda to improve the state's economy through support for programs that stimulate economic-growth opportunities for the entire state and its residents. ICA members include chambers and economic-development organizations in Ames, Bettendorf, Burlington/West Burlington, Cedar Falls, Cedar Rapids, Council Bluffs, Davenport, Des Moines, Dubuque, Fort Dodge, Iowa City, Marshalltown, Mason City, Muscatine, Sioux City, and Waterloo.

The slogan for Butterworth Center & Deere-Wiman House, "Where history lives in real time," can be taken literally when it comes to their new Web-site features. The Web site at (http://www.butterworthcenter.com) will now include free, downloadable audio features and mini-video recaps. Angela Hunt, who directs the public-relations program, decided to add the audio features after attending a local workshop about podcasting. The debut audio feature, "Makeover for the Birds," is a 20-minute interview with Program Director Gretchen Small. In the interview, listeners will learn about the historic homes' collection of Audubon's Birds of America prints from the 1860s. Of the 106 prints, the historic sites have 98. Small talks about how the Charles Deere family may have acquired the prints, and the sensitive restoration process that the prints are undergoing. Video recaps are also a high-tech addition to the 1800s-flavored website. The video recaps are two-minute segments and show highlights of past events or programs to background music. The Web site will post different audio topics on a regular basis, from snippets of tours, interviews, or programs.

This year's heat wave is part of a broader trend of rising temperatures in Iowa, according to a new report released last week by the Iowa Public Interest Research Group (Iowa PIRG). The average temperature in Des Moines is up 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 2000 compared with the previous three decades (1971 through 2000). In the continental United States , the first seven months of 2006 were the warmest January-to-July period of any year on record, according to the National Climatic Data Center. In Iowa , the average temperature was the third warmest January-through-July on record. To examine how these recent temperature patterns compare with temperatures over the past 30 years, Iowa PIRG's researchers analyzed temperature data from 255 major weather stations in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., for the years 2000 through 2005 and the first six months of 2006. Research was collected from four Iowa cities: Des Moines, Waterloo, Dubuque, and Sioux City. In August, Iowa PIRG released a report showing how the U.S. could cut global-warming pollution by nearly 20 percent by 2020 by making homes, cars, and businesses more efficient; switching to renewable-energy sources; and giving Americans more alternatives to driving, paired with strong, mandatory limits on global-warming emissions. For more information, visit (http://www.iowapirg.org).