MIKE PALECEK lives in Sheldon, Iowa with his family. He works at a group home. He has been a federal prisoner for peace. He met Fr. Dan Berrigan while in the Catholic seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. Berrigan told him things about America and the Catholic Church that changed Mike's life. So, Mike went to jail, went crazy, went home, like that.

And Mike has worked as a reporter, editor, publisher on small-town newspapers in Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota. The small newspaper Mike & Ruth owned and operated in southeast Minnesota won the Minnesota Newspaper of the Year Award from the MNA in 1994, and went out of business later that year. Mike was the Iowa Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000. He received 65,000 votes in a conservative district on an anti-military, anti-prison, pro-immigration platform, even after endorsing Ralph Nader over Al Gore.

One thing you might not know about Mike Palecek: He once spent an overnight in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary and did not like it.