A three-member panel voted today to allow Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson to be on the Iowa ballot, but supporters of Republican Mitt Romney are expected to take their case to court.

UPDATE: Added more background below on why the Iowa Secretary of State’s office rejected the Libertarians’ first set of petitions to place Johnson on the ballot.

SECOND UPDATE: A Polk County district court will resolve this dispute.

Normally I am a political party convention junkie, but I haven’t watched any of the Republican National Convention so far. Judging from media accounts of the prime-time program, it seems that Ann Romney gave a decent speech, dwelling on the theme of love, after which New Jersey Governor Chris Christie talked mostly about himself and said Republicans need to seek respect, not love. He also praised presidential nominee Mitt Romney for being willing to tell the hard truths about how to fix the deficit, but naturally, didn’t share any details on those tough budget cuts to come.

Any comments related to the GOP convention are welcome in this thread. Many links and news stories related to the Iowa delegation are after the jump.

President Barack Obama held a campaign rally in Ames today, drawing a crowd of approximately 6,000 on the Iowa State University campus. I enclosed the transcript of the president’s remarks at the bottom of this post. As in all his campaign speeches, he framed the election as a “choice” between two paths, rather than as a referendum on his performance. Obama also emphasized his administration’s efforts to make college tuition and student loans more affordable.

The president will need strong turnout in places like Ames this November, because yet another Iowa poll shows the gap between Obama and Romney within the margin of error.

Some politicians at the federal and state level would have you believe that rules intended to protect public health and the environment are “job-killing regulations.” Congressional Republicans and some Democrats have voted several times to block air quality rules that would force certain industrial plants to retrofit. Although the Obama administration has enacted promising rules to reduce air pollution from coal-fired power plants, President Barack Obama has occasionally validated Republican scaremongering over pollution regulations. For instance, he delayed new smog rules from going into effect in 2011, citing a concern for “reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover.”

The reality of pollution control looks different. It looks like hundreds of construction workers getting a job, and Ottumwa-area businesses reaping the benefits.

Luther College in Decorah has built the largest solar array in Iowa, which will power the state’s first college housing facility to be “net zero” as a greenhouse gas emitter.  

Governor Terry Branstad issued two new executive orders last week. One directive rescinded 12 executive orders issued between 1998 and 2009, including two that were intended to make state government operate more efficiently. Branstad’s other order granted “stakeholder groups” new levers for blocking potentially “burdensome” administrative rules.

Highlights from the new and the disappeared executive orders are after the jump.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? I have been thinking about several great Americans who died this week, including Neil Armstrong, the first human being to walk on the moon in July 1969. Here’s a contemporary news account of that day. NASA posted an Armstrong photo gallery here.

Like everyone who ever watched Sesame Street, I was sad to hear that Jerry Nelson, who voiced Count von Count and other Muppet characters, died on Thursday.

A giant of the Iowa journalism world passed away suddenly on August 23. Barbara Mack was a longtime professor at Iowa State University’s Greenlee Journalism school, planning to retire after this semester. She previously worked as a reporter and as general counsel for the Des Moines Register. Mack’s former students and colleagues are posting memories and tributes here. I posted a few of them after the jump.

The Iowa way of assigning delegates for presidential candidates may need to change for the 2016 election cycle, assuming the Republican National Convention approves a rule change sought by Mitt Romney’s campaign.

Republican candidate Ben Lange launched his first television commercial of the 2012 campaign today. Like incumbent Democrat Bruce Braley’s opening ad in the first Congressional district, the 30-second spot emphasizes values the candidate learned growing up in a small Iowa town.

At this time four years ago, Barack Obama’s campaign had about 30 field offices up and running in Iowa, compared to six offices for Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Obama’s campaign has had eight Iowa field offices open this summer and is rolling out another 26 offices around Iowa this weekend. So far, Mitt Romney’s campaign has ten Iowa field offices, in addition to the unified Republican headquarters in Urbandale.

After the jump, I compare the field office locations for each presidential campaign, grouped by Iowa Congressional district. Where relevant, I’ve also noted competitive Iowa House and Senate districts near the Obama and Romney field offices, although I doubt either presidential campaign will do much for down-ticket Democratic or Republican candidates.

The University of Iowa and the city of Iowa City announced a new car sharing program yesterday, available to local residents as well as to university students, faculty, and staff. Iowa City is already bike-friendly, well-served by public transit and the most walkable city in Iowa. Car sharing will be an excellent option for Iowa City residents who need a car only occasionally for errands or day trips. Many cities in other states have similar car sharing services. A friend of mine has used Zipcar for years and found it much cheaper than making monthly payments for a car, insurance, and parking in his area.

More details on the new car-sharing program are after the jump. On a related note, Erin Gustafson wrote a piece for the Sierra Club’s blog about the 30 bike-sharing programs that have popped up around the U.S. in recent years. Members of the Des Moines Bike Collective and Iowa Bicycle Coalition helped get Des Moines B-cycle going downtown.

I’ve seen a lot of flimsy hooks for political fundraising, but nothing like the latest call for donations to the Republican Party of Iowa.

Full disclosure: today’s featured wildflower is on Iowa’s noxious weed list under the name “horse nettle.” However, Carolina horsenettle is native to most of the United States, including Iowa. A few photos of this flower in bloom are after the jump.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

For the past ten days, GOP strategists have worried anonymously that Representative Paul Ryan’s presence on the national ticket will hurt Mitt Romney’s campaign, especially in the must-win state of Florida. One of the top Democratic talking points of the last year and a half has been Ryan’s plan to “end Medicare as we know it” by forcing future retirees to purchase government-subsidized private health insurance.

Romney’s strategists seem to have decided that the best defense on Medicare is a good offense. A television commercial launched last week attacked President Barack Obama’s record on Medicare, and a brand-new spot echoes that charge. Both videos are after the jump, along with transcripts and one of the Obama campaign’s response ads.

The non-profit organization Campus Pride has been assessing LGBT-friendly policies at U.S. colleges and universities for the last decade. Seven Iowa schools are among the 341 institutions of higher education scored on the latest edition of the LGBT-Friendly Campus Climate Index. Follow me after the jump for details on how they stacked up.  

Two absentee ballot request forms arrived in my mailbox yesterday, courtesy of the Iowa Democratic Party. The delivery was a helpful reminder that it’s time to post updated information on the three ways to vote early in Iowa.  

Republican candidates and elected officials are falling over themselves today denouncing U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri for his claim that women cannot become pregnant in a “legitimate rape” situation. In contrast, Representative Steve King passed on an opportunity to pile on during a public appearance in northwest Iowa. Democratic challenger Christie Vilsack’s campaign is doing its best to seize the moment.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has tried to keep his campaign focused on economic and fiscal issues, but President Barack Obama’s latest television commercial in Iowa spotlights abortion rights and federal funding for Planned Parenthood. The video, annotated transcript, and related news are all after the jump.

One of the top international news stories of this week was the criminal conviction of three Russian feminist punk rockers from the group Pussy Riot. Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova face two years in prison on trumped-up charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” Read the closing statements they delivered at their trial and tell me these women aren’t more brave than anyone you know. They must be missing their families and hating their crummy prison conditions, but the defendants denounced the show trial instead of apologizing and asking for mercy from the court.

Meanwhile, Iowa politics-watchers once again debated whether it’s appropriate to heckle speakers at the Iowa State Fair soapbox.

Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz has asked a Polk County district court judge to dismiss a lawsuit over emergency voter roll maintenance rules and reject the plaintiffs’ efforts to prevent the state from implementing the new procedures. Accompanied by Attorney General Tom Miller at a joint press conference today, Schultz made his case for the new rules and the procedure through which he enacted them. This pdf file contains Schultz’s affidavit and supporting documents filed with the Polk County district court on August 16. The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa and the League of United Latin American Citizens filed a lawsuit on August 8 challenging the rules.

After the jump I’ve posted the full text of the Secretary of State’s press release and transcribed a timeline Schultz provided to reporters today. I also enclosed details on the normal administrative rulemaking process, which provides opportunities for public comment and legislative review before new rules go into effect. While Miller defends the new rules as a “balance between ensuring voting integrity and preventing voter suppression,” I share the Des Moines Register’s view that Schultz’s proposed procedure “could prompt some legitimately registered voters to withdraw their registration to avoid risking criminal prosecution.”