SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) – Members of the Iowa Supreme Court will meet with students with stops at five high schools and a college in the Sioux City area.  The justices will split up for visits Wednesday at Sioux City North, Sioux City West, Maple Valley in Mapleton, Westwood in Sloan, OA/BCIG High in Ida Grove, and Morningside College in Sioux City. They will talk with students about the role of the courts.

The Judicial Branch says the justices also will hold a special session at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Morningside’s Epply Auditorium, where they will hear arguments in two cases.

The chairman of the Republican National Committee made a trip to Iowa Thursday, rejecting calls for the G-O-P to moderate its message. Reince Priebus, a Wisconsin Republican, presided over the national party in 2012 and has been elected to stay on for the 2014 elections.  “Listen, I don’t think our platform is the issue,” Priebus told Iowa reporters Thursday afternoon. “I think a lot of times it’s some of these biologically stupid things that people say, you know, that I believe caused a lot of the problems.” Priebus points to controversial comments about abortion from Missouri Republican Todd Akin.

Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King backed Akin in 2012. King may run for the U.S. senate himself in 2014 and G-O-P operative Karl Rove has threatened to run ads against King, so a more moderate Republican candidate could win a primary. Priebus says Rove has a First Amendment right to make the case against King.  “Obviously there’s a lot of groups out there that are picking winners and losers in primaries, right? It’s been for happening a long time,” Priebus says. “…Personally, as an RNC (chair), I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe the party should pick winners and losers in primaries and I think it’s, historically, if you look at it, it’s a bit of a fool’s game because you can’t actually predict some of the things that go on.”

Priebus is on a “listening tour” to visit with Republicans around the country and chart a new course for the party. He says the G-O-P can’t just wait ’til the last four months of a campaign and, instead, must embrace “permanent politics” in order to compete with Democrats.  “It’s something that quite frankly our party has been slow to get to because we really don’t like politics as a vocation, as a party. It’s something that we resist, generally, as a party and it’s something that has to come to an end,” Priebus says. “If we want to compete at a granular, person-to-person, heart-to-heart level — we’ve got to be here all the time.”

Priebus says the “liberty movement” presidential candidate Ron Paul built in Iowa must be “welcomed” because it’s a “big piece” of a growing party. The chairman of the Iowa Republican Party and a majority of members of the state central committee are Ron Paul supporters.

(Radio Iowa)

Researchers at Iowa State University are using a federal grant to investigate ways to keep Iowa prison inmates from returning to prison once they’re released. ISU sociology professors David Peters and Andy Hochstetler have found treatment programs designed to reduce Iowa’s recidivism rate are working for many former inmates. But, Peters notes the treatment programs in place have proven much more effective for offenders from urban areas of the state. “For parolees sent back to urban areas, the treatment they got both in the prison and outside of the prison in the community really was effective at reducing their liklihood of ending up back in prison,” Peters said. “In fact, it was about a 40 percent reduction in the odds of a (parolee) showing up back in prison.”

But, for rural parolees, the treatment programs had “zero effect,” according to Peters. Both researchers suspect rural parolees face more obstacles to accessing substance abuse treatment and other help, so they may be more likely to relapse and violate the terms of their parole. Hochstetler says drug and alcohol problems clearly increase the risk of recidivism, but time spent in prison doesn’t appear to be much of a factor. “Curiously, we thought the longer you were (in prison), the more difficult time you would have reintegrating. But, we did not find that was an important predictor of either treatment or recidivism,” Hochstetler said.

The second phase of the study will involve visits to all eight community corrections districts across the state and interviews with probation officers. They’re hoping the work will help them identify treatment options that will further reduce the rate of recidivism and provide a cost savings to the state.

(Radio Iowa)