A Polk County District Court judge issued a temporary injunction preventing Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz from implementing new rules on removing registered voters before the 2012 general election.

The first statewide poll on the 2012 judicial retention elections suggests that the four Iowa Supreme Justices who will be on the ballot this November have good chances of being retained. However, the pollster does not distinguish between support for retaining the justices as a group and support for Justice David Wiggins, whom opponents of same-sex marriage rights are trying to defeat.  

One of the Republican Party of Iowa’s candidates for elector resigned yesterday after indicating that she would cast her electoral college ballot for Ron Paul in the event that Mitt Romney wins Iowa this November.

This thread is for any comments related to this week’s assassination of Christopher Stephens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and the violent protests at the U.S. embassy in Egypt. Here’s a timeline of events and statements from various officials and politicians. The diplomatic community is mourning Stephens, who became the eighth U.S. ambassador killed in the line of duty since 1950. There were some pro-American and anti-terrorism rallies in Libya on September 12. The U.S. has warships en route to Libya and is tightening security at embassies around the world.

Yesterday several commentators lambasted Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney for bungling his “3 a.m. phone call” moment. While events were unfolding in the Middle East, Romney criticized the Obama administration’s handling of the incidents. As Matt Vasilogambros reported here, the facts do not support Romney’s claim that the president’s “first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.” President Barack Obama told CBS correspondent Steve Kroft, “Governor Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later. And as president, one of the things I’ve learned is you can’t do that.”

Yesterday a Polk County District Court judge denied Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s request to dismiss a lawsuit over emergency rules on checking Iowa’s voter rolls for non-citizens.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday Schultz answered questions about the rules at the Iowa legislature’s Administrative Rules Review Committee meeting. His responses didn’t impress the Democratic lawmakers on that committee.

Blazing star used to be “abundant in native prairie landscapes” but “have been reduced to fragmented populations due to conversion of prairie to agricultural fields and urbanization.” All of the photographs posted below were taken at a small prairie planting near Gray’s Lake in Des Moines.

This is an open thread; all topics welcome.

A few weeks after reserving television advertising time in Iowa’s second Congressional district, the National Republican Congressional Committee started running a spot against three-term Democratic incumbent Dave Loebsack late last week. Loebsack’s campaign launched its first television commercial of the year today.

Both Democratic incumbent Jeff Danielson and Republican challenger Matt Reisetter have started advertising on television in what is expected to be one of Iowa’s most competitive legislative races: Iowa Senate district 30. Both videos and transcripts are after the jump, along with a district map and background on both candidates.  

This thread is for any comments related to the 11th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. I’ve posted statements released by Iowa politicians after the jump. I shared my memories of that awful day on the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

I recommend reading Kurt Eichenwald’s op-ed piece based on his research for the new book 500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars. The latest issue of Vanity Fair magazine contains an excerpt from the book. Last year Esquire compiled links to all that magazine’s stories about the attacks. This piece based on an interview with survivor Michael Wright was riveting.

Last night the U.S. Senate confirmed Stephanie Rose to be a federal judge for the southern district of Iowa by a vote of 89 to 1. Iowa Senators Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley both strongly supported Rose’s nomination. I’ve posted their floor statements after the jump.

Rose will be the first woman to serve as a federal judge in the southern district of Iowa. She was one of three women Harkin recommended for this vacancy last year. Harkin also recommended Rose for the position of U.S. attorney in Iowa’s northern district of Iowa, to which she was confirmed in November 2009.

Rose’s work on the Postville cases in 2008, when she was assistant U.S. attorney for the northern district of Iowa, sparked opposition to her appointment as U.S. attorney and as a federal judge. During her Senate confirmation hearing in March of this year, Rose disavowed any role in devising the legal tactics used against undocumented immigrants swept up in the Postville raids. The U.S. Supreme Court later invalidated the use of aggravated identity theft charges in cases similar to those of the Postville defendants. Harkin defended Rose’s involvement in the Postville cases.

The air war in Iowa’s first Congressional district is fully engaged, with four new television commercials in the last week alone. Three-term Democratic incumbent Bruce Braley started running a spot about veterans last week and went up on the air yesterday with a response to a new ad about Medicare, paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee. Last week Republican challenger Ben Lange launched his second tv spot, which depicts the national debt as unfair to the next generation.

More details on the new commercials, including videos and transcripts, are after the jump. Bleeding Heartland covered Braley’s opening tv spot here and Lange’s here.  

One of Republican Mitt Romney’s latest television commercials in Iowa asserts that cutting government spending and eliminating the federal deficit will create 130,000 jobs in Iowa. Meanwhile, in states with more military bases and defense sector industry, Romney campaign advertising promises to create hundreds of thousands of jobs by reversing planned cuts in defense spending.

Three days after proudly announcing the largest set of tax incentives Iowa has ever offered to a corporation, Governor Terry Branstad criticized President Barack Obama’s “penchant for trying to pick winners and losers in the marketplace.”

Hunter Oatman-Stanford’s fantastic article for Collectors Weekly on “The Top 10 Most Dangerous Ads” inspired this post. Click through to see some amazing advertisements from the last century: A 1923 paint book for boys and girls, encouraging kids to have “fun with the whole ‘Lead Family’ of products,” 1950s ads encouraging mothers to give 7-Up to young children, 1969 ads promoting sugar as a diet aid (“Sugar just might be the willpower you need to curb your appetite”), and even a 1947 ad proclaiming, “DDT is good for me-e-e!” Oatman-Stanford gives the background on the health impacts of the advertised products.

All topics are welcome in this open thread, particularly memories about idiotic things that were once widely accepted in our culture. No partisan warfare here, please: if you want to talk politics, try to focus on wrongheaded consensus ideas like Iowa’s film tax credit program or the deregulation of the banking sector in the 1980s.

P.S. – I’m not nostalgic for most of the dangerous playground equipment of my childhood, like see-saws and metal monkey bars sets over solid concrete, but I have to agree with the Retro Junk blog, those merry-go-rounds were fun.

The two major-party presidential candidates held rallies yesterday in Iowa’s key Republican and Democratic strongholds. Mitt Romney was in Sioux County, which has voted more than 80 percent Republican in past presidential elections. Barack Obama and Joe Biden were in Johnson County, which has delivered big margins to Democrats who won close statewide elections in the past.

Public-sector jobs continue to decline, and private-sector job growth is not nearly strong enough to make a significant dent in the national unemployment rate, according to the latest monthly jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. On the contrary, another recession is well within the range of possibilities for the coming year. Equally worrying, there appears to be no chance of passing another government stimulus package, no matter who wins the presidential election.

President Barack Obama just finished officially accepting the Democratic nomination for president. Normally I am not a fan of his speaking style, but that was one of his best performances in my opinion–better than the celebrated “Yes We Can.” Given how well Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton did earlier this week, I will be surprised if Obama doesn’t get a bump out of this convention. However, I don’t know what the television ratings have been like this week. Far fewer people watched this year’s Republican convention than in 2008.

Any comments about the presidential election are welcome in this thread. I’ll update the post later with more links related to the Iowa delegation and other speeches in the convention hall today. UPDATE: Links and clips are now after the jump.

A bidding war between Iowa and Illinois ended yesterday, as an Egyptian company’s representative stood with Governor Terry Branstad to announce plans for a $1.4 billion fertilizer plant in Lee County. A package of state, federal, and local tax incentives worth hundreds of millions of dollars will support the project, costing taxpayers more than $1 million for each of the 165 permanent jobs created.

Here’s a lede I didn’t expect to read in any newspaper: “It can be good to have a nuclear power plant nearby if you have a flood disaster.”

President Bill Clinton is firing up the Democratic crowd in Charlotte. You can’t even tell he is using a teleprompter, in contrast to Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren speech a bit earlier this evening. He is talking about President Barack Obama rather than about himself, in contrast to last week’s Republican convention speech by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

I’ve posted some Clinton-related links after the jump, along with more news about the Iowa delegation. Any comments about the Democratic National Convention or the presidential race are welcome in this thread. UPDATE: Clinton’s speech just ended; he clocked in around 45 minutes. Too long, but well-delivered.