Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush will be in Iowa this coming week, attending meet-and-greet events Monday at Morningside College in Sioux City, before heading to Ames to speak at the Story County GOP dinner. On Tuesday, the former Governor from Florida will attend a meet-and-greet at the Barley’s Pub, in Council Bluffs (114 W. Broadway), beginning at Noon.

Bush’s campaign reported Thursday that it raised $11.4 million in just six days. That’s likely at least twice as much as his next closest Republican competitor.Yet Bush has no direct control over 90 percent of the money. The total includes $103 million raised by a super PAC. And by law, the super PAC can’t take direction from Bush’s Miami-based campaign. The two operations have limits on how they can communicate. The system was designed by Bush’s most trusted advisers. It’s a strategy untested in modern politics.

Volunteers with treatment-resistant high blood pressure are needed for a medical trial that’s being done at a hospital in central Iowa, one of only seven medical centers in the country chosen for the study. Dr. Magdi Ghali, of the Iowa Heart Center at Mercy Medical Center-Des Moines, says a small metal device is implanted in the carotid artery in the neck, a key place where the body regulates blood pressure.

Dr. Ghali says, “This device sits there and increases the sensitivity of the nerve endings to the pressure that’s happening inside the artery, allowing the brain to receive the correct signal and then lower the blood pressure.” Despite advances, Ghali says a growing number of patients in Iowa with high blood pressure suffer from drug resistance and they have few options once they’ve failed multiple medications. The trial is designed only for patients with treatment-resistant high blood pressure, also known as resistant hypertension.

“The patients who qualify are people who are on three blood pressure medications and their blood pressure is remaining higher than 160/90,” Ghali says. “If that’s the case, we would evaluate the patient to make sure there’s not a secondary cause and then they would have a couple of weeks of keeping a diary of the blood pressure to make sure they’re exactly the right patient for the study.” Hypertension can significantly increase the risk of heart attack, stroke and kidney failure, so controlling it is vitally important, he says. For more information about the trial, call (515) 633-3845.

(Radio Iowa)

Republican Congressman Steve King is trying to get the U.S. House to pass a resolution that says States “may refuse” to recognize or license same-sex marriages, although such non-binding resolutions do not have the force of law. King’s resolution is his latest response to last month’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

“We’re in a place where the Supreme Court has put themselves above the law, above the Constitution and above the will of the people,” King says. Most Republicans in congress have publicly expressed opposition to the court’s ruling, so the resolution would likely pass, although House leaders have not indicated it’s a priority for debate. King’s House Resolution embraces what he calls the “traditional definition of marriage” as a “union between one man and one woman.”

“The domestic life of America has been dramatically transformed by the order of the Supreme Court,” King says. King calls the court’s same-sex marriage opinion a “blatant act of judicial activism” that has “perverted” the word marriage. “And they will impose it on the rest of the country because they’re the ‘enlightened five’ of nine in black robes,” King says. “Well, the Supreme Court has had a terrible record on dealing with large domestic issues.”

King cites the court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision which ruled African Americans weren’t citizens and the federal government had no authority to restrict or regulate slavery and the 1962 decision that ruled mandatory prayer in public schools is unconstitutional. Earlier this year, before the court’s ruling on same-sex marriage last month, King tried to get congress to pass legislation that would forbid the federal courts from deciding such cases, but that legislation stalled.

(Radio Iowa)

A couple from Kingsley were injured during a single-vehicle accident Friday evening in northwestern Iowa’s Monona County. The Iowa State Patrol said a 2005 Chevy Silverado pickup driven by 77-year old Josephine McConnell, was traveling north on Interstate 29 at around 6:45-p.m., when the woman fell asleep at the wheel.

When the pickup went off the road onto the east shoulder, McConnell woke up, and over-corrected, causing the vehicle to go out of control. The pickup went onto the west shoulder and rolled over, coming to rest upright in the west ditch.

Josephine McConnell, and her passenger husband, 79-year old Max McConnell, also of Kinsgley, both of whome were wearing their seat belts, were injured. Josephine was flown by Life Flight helicopter to Mercy Hospital – Sioux City. Her husband was transported to the same facility by Burgess Ambulance.

Assisting the State Patrol at the scene were deputies with the Monona County Sheriff’s Office, Sloan and Whiting Rescue personnel and others.