While many Americans dread tax day, April 15 holds a silver lining for political junkies: the chance to read the latest federal campaign finance reports. Follow me after the jump for details on the money raised and spent by Iowa’s five U.S. House incumbents and five challengers between January 1 and March 31. Note: at this writing, Dave Loebsack’s primary challenger Joe Seng had not filed a quarterly report with the Federal Election Commission. I will update this post if one appears. He may not have raised enough money yet to trigger reporting requirements.

Click here for the latest voter registration numbers in Iowa’s four new Congressional districts.

I try to ignore the bogus controversies and fake outrage that dominate cable television news coverage, but the big to-do over Hilary Rosen saying Ann Romney “never worked a day in her life” is on my mind this weekend.

A multi-media exhibit on Iowa’s role in the Civil War opens today at the State Historical Museum of Iowa.

The Des Moines Register is losing another group of longtime fixtures in the newsroom. Publisher Laura Hollingsworth announced on Friday the 13th that ten writers and editors are among 13 employees who accepted the Gannett Corporation’s early retirement package.

Some people with big megaphones in the Iowa Republican world are still not sold on Mitt Romney for president.  

Thank Gannett for small favors: the successive rounds of newsroom layoffs at the Des Moines Register have spared Clark Kauffman. He’s been tenacious in covering flawed oversight of Iowa’s nursing homes. On Thursday, Kauffman reported on a recent act by Governor Terry Branstad that worries national advocates for senior citizens.

The U.S. teen birth rate reached “a historic low in 2010,” according to data released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control this week. Iowa was among 47 states where the birth rate for teenagers fell significantly from 2007 to 2010, and Iowa’s rate of 28.6 births per 1,000 teenagers was ranked 34th nationwide. More details are after the jump.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller was one of 16 state attorneys general to file a federal antitrust lawsuit yesterday against Apple Inc. and three major U.S. publishers. The complaint alleges that the publishers and Apple conspired to raise prices on electronic books, causing consumers to be overcharged by more than $100 million. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a similar lawsuit against Apple and two publishers in a different federal court.

You’d think the USDA would see the flaw of logic in letting the people who make the food inspect the food and decide if it is actually safe to eat.

The USDA has decided in its infinite wisdom, despite pink slime and a few other debacles of the food industry, to test a program allowing chicken companies to check their own livestock and decide whether or not the chickens are safe to eat.

Here’s your mid-week open thread: all topics welcome.

After the jump I’ve posted three photos of bellwort, a yellow flower that can bloom between April and June in Iowa. Like everything else, it came out early this year.

Competing rallies about lean finely textured beef took place on the Iowa State University campus yesterday. Governor Terry Branstad, Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds, and Representative Steve King were among the speakers at a rally supporting continued use of the additive used in some ground beef. Before that event, some family farmers joined activists at a rally to “to protest the collusion between industrial meat production and our political system.”

It’s time for a new Bleeding Heartland thread about lean finely textured beef, known to detractors as “pink slime.” A dozen links to news and commentary about this controversy are after the jump.

A senior staffer for the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation confirmed this week that plaintiffs will appeal a Polk County District Court’s ruling dismissing their challenge to an important water quality regulation.

I thought Governor Chet Culver was late to the party when he endorsed Barack Obama a month after the 2008 Iowa caucuses. At that time it was still unclear who would prevail in the Democratic primaries. In contrast, there’s no suspense left in this year’s GOP nominating process. Governor Terry Branstad finally declared today that Republicans should “coalesce around one candidate.”

Meanwhile, Rick Santorum is holding a press conference this afternoon to announce that he is ending his presidential campaign.

The Iowa Senate approved a broad education reform bill yesterday on a party-line vote of 26 to 24. Details on Senate File 2284 and the floor debate in the upper chamber are after the jump.

I’ve also included the latest news on efforts to stop Iowa school districts from starting the academic year before September 1. If state lawmakers don’t act on that proposal, Governor Terry Branstad may try to force the issue.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit challenging Iowa’s merit selection system for judges. Follow me after the jump for background on yesterday’s ruling.

A conference committee of Iowa House and Senate members has yet to determine whether the Iowa legislature will allocate $5 million over two years to rebuild the dam at Lake Delhi in Delaware County. However, it’s already clear that more worthwhile lake restoration projects in Iowa will go without funding next year thanks to money set aside to rebuild the Delhi dam.

A Sioux City jury awarded Republican State Senator Rick Bertrand $231,000 over a television commercial that attacked him shortly before the 2010 general election. It is rare for a defamation case based on political advertising to succeed, for reasons explained below.

UPDATE: Governor Terry Branstad suggested on April 9 that this verdict has got him thinking about suing the Democratic Governors Association over their 2010 campaign materials. Details are at the end of this post.

LATER UPDATE: Incredibly, Bertrand is appealing this verdict in order to seek punitive damages as well as the compensatory damages the jury awarded. More comments below.

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

If you are celebrating Easter or Passover, I hope you’re enjoying the spring holiday with friends or family. I tried an Italian haroset recipe for last night’s Passover seder–the recipe is after the jump.

UPDATE: Senator Chuck Grassley caused a bit of an uproar in the Twitterverse Saturday with this bon mot:

Constituents askd why i am not outraged at PresO attack on supreme court independence. Bcause Am ppl r not stupid as this x prof of con law

SECOND UPDATE: CBS news legend Mike Wallace has died at age 93. Morley Safer remembers his former colleague, and CBS posted other reflections, photos, and video clips at that link.

A Polk County District Court jury returned a guilty verdict this afternoon in the trespassing trial of Hugh Espey and David Goodner. According to the Des Moines Register, jurors deliberated for nine hours before reaching a verdict. It was the second prosecution of Occupy protesters arrested last October on the state capitol grounds. Last month a Polk County jury acquitted former State Representative Ed Fallon on the same trespassing charge, accepting his First Amendment defense.

Background on this week’s trial is after the jump. UPDATE: Defense attorney Sally Frank is likely to appeal. Scroll down for details.

Cedar Rapids city officials received good news on two fronts this week: the Federal Emergency Management Agency approved $13.8 million to cover flood damage to the city’s hydroelectric plant in 2008, and the Iowa legislature approved a bill to help local governments fund flood mitigation efforts.