Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes openness and transparency in Iowa’s state and local governments. He can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. This essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, Stray Thoughts. 

January ended with a notable week for federal courts because of the voices of its judges.

Judges in Minnesota and Texas spoke with clarity in these troubled times. In between them, a longtime Iowa federal judge’s voice fell silent after a quarter century of delivering justice, along with lessons in compassion, fairness and our shared history.

Robert W. Pratt was 78 when he died. The Emmetsburg native was a U.S. district judge in the Southern District of Iowa from 1997 to 2023.

Pratt began his legal career working for Iowa Legal Aid, a nonprofit law firm that champions society’s underdogs and gives a voice to those who rarely are heard in our society.

It’s time for another review of Bleeding Heartland’s most widely-read posts from the year that just ended. I always struggle a bit with this task, because the work I’m most proud of doesn’t always overlap with what resonated most with readers. Also, I’m wary of watching traffic numbers too closely, because I try not to let potential clicks drive my editorial decisions.

However, I always gain some insight from this review, so here goes.

This list draws from Google Analytics data about total views for 598 posts this website published during 2021: 362 written by me and 236 by other authors. I left out the site’s front page and the “about” page, where many people landed following online searches.