Representative Tom Latham (IA-03) announced in an e-mail to supporters this afternoon that he will not seek the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate in 2014. I’ve posted his message after the jump. When Latham says, “I cannot in good conscience launch a two-year statewide campaign that will detract from the commitment I made to the people who elected me […],” I think he means, I prefer not to give up an easy job.

Governor Terry Branstad had made clear on several occasions, most recently this past weekend, that he would like Latham to run for Senate. Latham’s decision clears a path for many other Republicans who are reportedly considering the race, including former U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker, State Senator Brad Zaun, Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds, Iowa Senate Minority Leader Bill Dix, and Secretary of State Matt Schultz.

I’m standing by my prediction that Representative Steve King will not leave his safe perch in IA-04 for a statewide campaign he knows he would lose. Some “bold color conservative” is bound to run, though. I suspect Bob Vander Plaats knows that his ship has sailed, but maybe he has one last campaign in him.

Any comments about the IA-Sen race are welcome in this thread. Representative Bruce Braley will surely be relieved to have Latham off the list of potential Republican opponents.

UPDATE: Politico’s James Hohmann tweets, “Iowa Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds is ‘very serious’ about running for Senate, a source tells me.” Imagine what Republicans would say about a Democrat who didn’t finish college running for U.S. Senate. Further updates are after the jump.

A new study of 201 large municipal water systems in the U.S. found traces of a certain family of toxic chemicals in all of them. The highest levels of these chemicals, known as trihalomethanes, were found in Davenport, Iowa.  

A new report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows that the youth incarceration rate in the U.S. “reached a new 35-year low” in 2010. Iowa was one of 44 states where fewer young people were locked up in 2010 than in 1997.

The U.S. Senate voted today to confirm Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense by 58 votes to 41. Although Hagel is a Republican, all of the votes against his confirmation came from GOP senators, including Iowa’s Chuck Grassley. The entire Senate Democratic caucus, including Tom Harkin, voted to confirm Hagel, joined by four Republicans.

Earlier today, a cloture motion on Hagel’s nomination easily passed by 71 votes to 27 (roll call). Just 60 votes were needed to pass the motion. Grassley was one of the 27 Republicans who tried to filibuster Hagel’s nomination. Their effort failed because 18 Senate Republicans voted for cloture; most of them later voted against confirmation.

The 501(c)4 group American Future Fund, led by Nick Ryan of Iowa, was one of the big spenders in the effort to defeat Hagel’s nomination. After the jump I’ve posted excerpts from a good piece explaining why the campaign against Hagel was a “win-win” for “dark money groups,” even though they failed to prevent his confirmation. I’ll update this post as needed if I see comments from Grassley and Harkin.  

While more than 80 nationally prominent Republicans have signed on to a brief encouraging the U.S. Supreme Court to support marriage equality, Iowa Republican legislators continue to march lockstep behind efforts to overturn the Iowa Supreme Court’s Varnum v Brien ruling.

Senator Chuck Grassley announced this morning that he will vote against confirming Jacob “Jack” Lew, President Barack Obama’s nominee for Treasury secretary. In a statement I’ve posted below, Grassley explained his reasons. They relate to Lew’s actions and compensation while he worked at New York University, not his government work during Obama’s first term as director of the Office of Management and Budget and later chief of the president’s staff. Grassley’s objections look reasonable to me, although I have to laugh when Republicans who supported Mitt Romney for president object to Lew’s Cayman Islands investments.

Grassley also plans to oppose two other presidential nominees: William B. Schultz as general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services and Christopher J. Meade for general counsel at Treasury. The statement below explains his reasons. Grassley has substantive grounds for opposing Meade, but Schultz looks like a victim of other beefs between the senator and the HHS department.

I doubt many presidential appointees have indirectly saved more lives or done more to change American culture for the better than C. Everett Koop, U.S. surgeon general under Ronald Reagan. Koop died today at the age of 96, a legend in the field of public health.

Following up on Saturday’s post about the possible closure of three Iowa airports air traffic control towers, the White House has released more details on how automatic federal spending cuts could affect Iowa, beginning on March 1, if Congress and President Barack Obama don’t agree on a deal to replace the “sequester.”  

This weekend in Des Moines, Democratic State Senator Matt McCoy showed how pro-choice elected officials should talk about abortion rights and the “personhood” movement.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread.

To get the conversation started, I’ve posted some scary or disturbing news after the jump.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood warned yesterday that air traffic control across the country may be severely disrupted if the “sequester” goes into effect. Budget cuts may prompt the Federal Aviation Administration to shut down air traffic control towers at three Iowa airports as early as April.

CORRECTION: Closing the air traffic control towers would not necessarily shut down all traffic at the affected airports. On the other hand, “many corporations won’t fly into airports that don’t have an active tower.”

Senator Tom Harkin, a lifelong Catholic, believes it would “send a strong signal to the rest of the world” for the church to select a Latino pope as successor to Pope Benedict XVI next month.

Five years ago this week, I was hospitalized with an infection that might have become life-threatening or permanently debilitating had I not had health insurance coverage, which allowed me to receive a relatively early diagnosis. Every day in this country, uninsured people hunker down, hoping their health problem will go away without an expensive doctor’s visit. That’s one of many reasons studies have shown that expanding Medicaid saves lives.

Governor Terry Branstad sounds determined not to expand Medicaid, but none of his arguments can withstand scrutiny.

UPDATE: Branstad confirmed on February 23 that he will not agree to expand Medicaid. Added details and other related news below.

Eighteen casinos currently operate in Iowa, but if backers have their way, that number will grow in the near future. Early voting is under way for the March 5 Linn County referendum on a proposed casino in Cedar Rapids.

Meanwhile, this week some people rolled out plans for a new casino in Norwalk (Warren County), just south of the Des Moines metro area. Links and details are after the jump.

Any comments related to expanding casino gambling are welcome in this thread. I tend to agree with Richard Florida, an expert on urban development who made the case against casinos in the Cedar Rapids Gazette not long ago. Florida commented this week that casinos are a good litmus test, showing which self-styled “city builders” are actually “city destroyers.”

The future of Iowa’s Congressional representation is not encouraging, judging from the latest League of Conservation Voters’ scorecard.

Do you want the good news first, or the bad news? President Barack Obama has reportedly settled on a strong candidate to replace Lisa Jackson as Environmental Protection Agency administrator. On the flip side, Steven Chu’s successor at the Department of Energy is likely to be a nuclear physicist with connections to major polluting industries. Details are after the jump. Still no word on the next secretary of transportation.

Florida Governor Rick Scott is the latest Republican governor to decide to expand Medicaid under the 2010 health care reform law. He was one of those leading the charge to have the law declared unconstitutional. Some comments from today’s press conference are after the jump as well. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, Ohio Governor John Kasich and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder are all Republicans who opposed the Obama administration policy but have agreed to expand Medicaid in their states. I hope that when Iowa Governor Terry Branstad meets with U.S. Health and Human Services officials later this week, he will find some face-saving way to agree to expand Medicaid here. So far he sounds determined to resist the policy, despite the consensus of every major Iowa medical group as well as a wide array of religious and social justice organizations.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Nine days from now, approximately 85 billion in federal spending cuts will go into effect unless Congress and President Barack Obama can agree on an alternative to the so-called “sequester.” After the jump I’ve posted details on how the spending cuts might affect Iowa, as well as recent comments and actions by some of the Iowans in Congress.

Personal business and political agendas aren’t supposed to influence the work of the Iowa Board of Regents, so why did Bruce Rastetter ask University of Iowa President Sally Mason to arrange a meeting between ethanol industry representatives and Professor Jerald Schnoor?

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack may be thinking about running for Iowa governor again in 2014, according to one of his longtime friends.

UPDATE: Vilsack stopped by the Iowa capitol on February 19 to meet with statehouse Democrats. According to State Representative Marti Anderson, he came to “talk about the looming sequester in DC. and other Food, Farm, and Jobs issues from USDA.”

Catching up on news from last week, all four Iowans in the U.S. House supported a bill seeking to “freeze the pay of federal workers for the third year in a row” as well as the salaries for members of Congress.