A man from Montgomery County was arrested early this (Saturday) morning on a drug charge. Police says 28-year old Benjamin William Hrabik, of Red Oak, was taken into custody at around 1:50-a.m., for Possession of Drug Paraphernalia. Hrabik was booked into the Montgomery County Jail and held on full bond.

Governor Terry Branstad is no longer asking state legislators to pass an anti-bullying law. “We have taken action through executive order last September. We’ve started the governor’s anti-bullying center at the University of Northern Iowa,” Branstad says. “We’re going to build on that.”

In each of the past three years, Branstad has forwarded a proposal to legislators that would have given school officials broader authority to crack down on bullying that happens off of school grounds and online. Branstad says he’d “love to have” legislators revive that proposal and pass the bill, but he’s not counting on it and that’s why he took executive action in September.

“We, through the two anti-bullying summits, and the involvement of more students in standing up to bullies,” Branstad says, “plus the better reporting and requiring every school to notify parents when bullying occurs I think is going to help reduce the amount of bullying that goes on in our state.”

The Governor’s Office for Bullying Prevention at U-N-I has worked with the Iowa Department of Education to develop the procedures Iowa schools should follow when bullying occurs and it includes notifying parents. Last September, Branstad went to a Cedar Rapids school to say he was done waiting for the legislature to act and he issued an executive order that addressed most of the issues he had hoped legislators would tackle by passing a bill.

The 2016 legislative session begins Monday, January 11th and Branstad’s “Condition of the State” message is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. on Tuesday.

(Radio Iowa)

Iowa Senator Joni Ernst says “ObamaCare” is not working and President Obama made the wrong call by vetoing a Republican plan to repeal broad sections of the Affordable Care Act.  “The president had promised us that through ObamaCare we would see about $2500 savings per family,” Ernst says. “Unfortunately, the exact opposite has happened with rising health care and health insurance costs.”

Obama issued a statement, saying repealing the law would harm the 22 million Americans who are getting health insurance coverage through Affordable Care Act provisions.

(Radio Iowa)

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press

BREDA, Iowa (AP) — Authorities say the body of a person was found in the remains of a burned house in Sac County, north of Breda. The Sac County Sheriff’s Office says deputies and firefighters from Auburn responded Friday morning to a rural home and found that it had burned to the ground. Investigators later found that the resident of the house hadn’t shown up for work and that all the resident’s vehicles were at the home.

The State Fire Marshal was called, and about 1 p.m. authorities found human remains inside the house. The remains have been taken to the State Medical Examiner’s Office in Ankeny for an autopsy. The cause of the fire remains under investigation. The name of the resident wasn’t released.