No, I’m not talking about the “high-priced Los Angeles call girls” surveyed by Playboy Radio, who ranked Chet Culver the fourth most “doable” governor.

I am talking about yesterday’s ruling by the California Supreme Court granting full marriage rights to same-sex couples.

Iowa Republicans know they have their work cut out for them this year and are not in a strong position to retake the Iowa House or Senate.

Conservatives in California are trying to get a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage on the ballot for November. If the initiative does get on the ballot, this will be a recurring national news story for the next six months.

I would not be surprised to see Republican candidates all over the country seize on this issue to try to direct the voters’ attention away from the many failures of the Bush administration, including the war in Iraq.

Even though the California Supreme Court is dominated by Republican appointees, the GOP will cite the gay marriage issue as a reason not to elect Democrats. There will be many news reports about gay couples traveling from around the country to California to be married. I expect that Democratic candidates will be put on the spot about whether Iowa should recognize those marriages, or whether Iowa judges should follow the logic of the California ruling.

If you are running for office in Iowa, be ready to address this issue.

On the plus side, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has said he respects the court ruling and opposes the ballot initiative. In effect, he has taken himself out as a future Republican presidential candidate (even if Congress were to amend the constitution to allow foreign-born citizens to serve as president).

Meanwhile, the advocacy group One Iowa, which is working to secure marriage rights for same-sex couples in our state, has a petition you can sign if you support their goals and oppose any constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

I’ve put the full text of the petition, along with the rest of the e-mail I got yesterday from One Iowa, after the jump.

The campaigns of Congressman Leonard Boswell and challenger Ed Fallon put out very different statements about ethanol on Thursday.

This isn’t the first time the candidates have clashed over agriculture policy. In general, Boswell is happy with our federal farm policies and touts how hard he is working to keep them the way they are.

Fallon would like to see a shift toward more support of local food networks and sustainable agriculture, as well as more regulations to address the economic, public health and environmental problems caused by confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Join me after the jump for more discussion of the ethanol issue.

Someone has urged me not to pay much attention to the electoral vote trackers

on the front page of MyDD, because in some respects they differ from state polling averages you will find at pollster.com or at Real Clear Politics.

Jerome Armstrong, the founder of MyDD, addressed concerns about the electoral vote tracker in this post:

As it says, when you click on either of the map counters of EV’s:

“This Electoral Vote Map is updated constantly to forecast the 2008 Presidential election based on the latest available state polling.”

The very latest poll in each state, without weighting or averaging.

There isn’t a bias as to the pollster, if you see the poll listed as credible on Pollster.com, or RealClearPolitics.com, it’ll be included. But, if the latest poll is tied, then the result remains the same as the previous latest poll.

This is a forecast made by the very latest poll. If you see a mistake, perhaps a poll was missed that is the latest, then point it out, and one of the admins will make the change.

The forecast isn’t a prediction of the election, but a simple up-to-the-minute poll temperature of the state polling.

(update) And yes, you can edit the map yourself, as one user explains:

1) When you first log onto mydd, it populates the two maps with the most recent single poll for each state.

2) If you then click on the map and change it (for example, you don’t believe that Hillary would lose WA to McCain), the numbers update to your settings – now it becomes like an EV calculator

3) The next time you log on, or refresh the page even, the counters go back to their poll-generated state.

Polling averages (for instance, of the five most recent polls in a state) are great when you have several polls taken within a short period of time, as we’re likely to have this fall.

But I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to average the last five polls in a state if that takes you back a couple of months.

Some people have objected that the MyDD tracker recently showed Iowa in Clinton’s column against McCain. That was based on a Research 2000 poll taken on April 22 and 23, which showed her slightly ahead of him, 43-42. Currently, the most recent poll is from Rasmussen on May 13, which showed McCain beating Clinton in Iowa 45-42. As you can see if you click over to MyDD, Iowa is now red for McCain against Clinton.

You may prefer polling averages to whatever the latest poll says, and I will too, once we start getting more frequent releases of state polls. For now, I think that MyDD’s methodology is sound.

Armstrong is probably the blogosphere’s most prominent Obama critic, and Clinton supporters usually dominate the recommended diary list at MyDD, but I encourage you not to write off everything you see at that site, even if you don’t like Clinton. Anyway, front-pager Jonathan Singer is a big Obama advocate.

I agree with Congressman Bruce Braley that federal agencies need to investigate Agriprocessors, the company operating the meatpacking plant in Postville where nearly 400 workers were detained during an immigration raid on Monday.

It is hard to believe that a company could be unaware that some 40 percent of its workforce may consist of illegal immigrants.

Click the link about to read Lynda Waddington’s whole report for Iowa Independent. Here is a particularly important passage:

“Until we enforce our immigration laws equally against both employers and employees who break the law, we will continue to have a problem with illegal immigration,” Braley said.

According to Braley, just three employers were fined for breaking immigration laws in 2004. Last year, following Bush administration promises “to make employer enforcement a priority,” Braley says 92 employers were arrested, but only 17 fined out of the six million employers in the U.S.

“Naturally, the sheer number of arrests made by ICE during Monday’s raid raises questions about Agriprocessors, Inc.’s knowledge of possible violations of employment and immigration law.”

For his efforts, Braley received the same answer as members of the media have received when asked about a possible or ongoing investigation. “Federal officials would not comment on the possibility of an investigation into Agriprocessors for possible violations of the law,” he said Wednesday evening.

An official at the Iowa Labor Commission has confirmed that Agriprocessors was under investigation for possible child labor and wage law violations at the time of the raid. No one would comment on the possible impact the raid would have that investigation.

On a related note, I completely agree with this letter to the editor, which the Des Moines Register published on Thursday:

From the May 13 paper, “Orthodox Jews…gather across from the Postville plant.” “Ari Berkowitz, a 15-year-old Hasidic Jew, was hanging out with a handful of friends.”

I trust that we will also be seeing captions such as “Southern Baptists watch a baseball game,” and “Jane Doe, a Pentecostalist from West Des Moines, was at the mall yesterday.”

– Sondra Krueger Feldstein, Bondurant

When the Swift plant was raided in Marshalltown last year, media reports didn’t go out of their way to identify the owners and operators of the plant as Methodist, Catholic, or whatever.

Calling attention to the religion of the Agriprocessors’ owners may give the misleading impression that their faith was related to possible legal violations.

The Des Moines Register’s editorial board met separately with each of four Democratic candidates seeking to run against Tom Latham in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district. It will probably be another week or two before that newspaper endorses a candidate.

In the meantime, the news report on the interviews focused on their general agreement regarding the Bush administration’s tax breaks for the wealthy.

I would think that fourth district Democrats need to know more about the differences between these candidates. Are there any significant federal policies on which they disagree? Which committees would they want to serve on in Congress? Would they have a different strategy for running against Latham, or bring a unique strength to the table in the general election?

As I’ve written before, I am staying neutral in the IA-04 primary, but the winner will get $100 from me. I would love to get Latham out of Congress this year, or at least make him work so hard that he seriously considers retiring before the 2010 election.

As Memorial Day nears and the death toll continues to climb in Iraq, most Democrats are united in our determination to extract our troops from Iraq safely and swiftly.  As important as withdrawing our troops is how we care for the troops upon their return home.  Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking with retired veterans at the Iowa Veterans Home in Marshalltown about exactly that – how America should, and can, honor our veterans.  

Paul Street has published a thought-provoking piece at Black Agenda Report: The Deeper Racism in Iowa: Beneath the White Obama Craze.

I recommend clicking through and reading this whole article, but here are some passages that illustrate the argument he is making:

Barack Obama’s January 3rd Democratic Caucus victory in Iowa demonstrated that a Black man – or, at least, this particular Black man – could attract winning numbers of white voters. The candidate’s supporters claimed Iowa signaled a new day, that “race doesn’t matter” anymore in the United States. They are in a fantasy of denial. Not only does race remain imbedded in American social relations, but Iowa is especially afflicted with the compulsion to throw African Americans in prison more frequently than any other state. “Liberal” Iowans, proud that their state began a cascade of Obama victories, find it more difficult than ever to face up to the racism that distorts all cross-racial interaction in their cities and towns.

Interestingly enough, you don’t see many if any white liberal Iowa City Obama supporters involved in efforts to fight and overcome routine institutional racism and racial harassment in their city and state.

Given the purported anti-racism behind their support for Obama, they seem remarkably indifferent to – and ignorant of – Iowa’s status as the nation’s leader in disproportionate black imprisonment.

Some of the black and liberal students here find this a paradox.  I have a different perspective. Two days before the heavily Caucasian Iowa caucus, one forthcoming and self-critical caucus-goer and neighbor told me something I’d been suspecting for some time. Obama, he said, was “a way for liberal and moderate whites around here to pat themselves on the back for not being too prejudiced to vote for a black guy.”  But it was all premised, he agreed, on Obama being a “good,” that is non-threatening, middle-class, academic-friendly, and “not-too fiery black” – one who seemed unlikely to confront institutional white supremacy in any way more meaningful than attaining higher office. Like the racially accomodationist, white-friendly media mogul and mass Obama marketer Oprah Winfrey (who came through Iowa to stump for him a few weeks before that state’s critical Caucus), Obama capitalized on middle class whites’ rejection of openly bigoted “level-one” (state-of-mind) racism only because he reassured them he would honor their refusal to acknowledge and confront the continuing power of deeper, “level two” (state-of-being) – societal and institutional – racism in American life. I have spoken with local middle-class whites for whom loving the “good” (bourgeois) black Obama is the other side of the coin of hating the “bad” and “underclass” blacks who are becoming more evident in Iowa City.

The town’s white liberals don’t seem interested in tackling the deeper institutional racism that lives on beneath the surface while they congratulate themselves for being willing to back a certain non-threatening kind of black candidate. They certainly don’t want to look closely at the unpleasant picture of how racial and class oppression produce  pain and inequality in their own schools, neighborhoods, and community. They respond very well to what Black Agenda Report’s Glen Ford has identified as Obama’s “strategy to win the White House” by “run[ning] a ‘race-neutral’ campaign in a society that is anything but neutral on race.” As Ford notes, “the very premise – that race neutrality is possible in a nation built on white supremacy – demand[s] the systematic practice of the most profound race-factual denial, which is ultimately indistinguishable from rank dishonesty.”

I would like to hear your views on this piece, especially if you are an Obama supporter and/or an Iowa City resident.

Hello to the Bleeding Heartland community!  I'm Tyler Olson, representing Iowa House District 38 in Cedar Rapids (you can see my full bio here).  I wanted to introduce myself and express my appreciation for the discussion about how we are going to keep Iowa moving forward.

I just finished my first term in the legislature, and will be announcing my re-election bid shortly.  I'll make sure to post the announcement when it happens, but for now I'm posting my end of session update.  I'm also looking forward to providing updates on both my campaign and other House races as we move through the summer and fall.  Thanks, and look forward to hearing from you!

Marc Hansen’s latest column for the Des Moines Register is about non-smokers who plan to start going back to various restaurants and bars after the public smoking ban goes into effect on July 1.

I know that was true for me after the Waveland Cafe went smoke-free last fall.

Although Hansen’s column is mainly anecdotal, studies in other parts of the country have shown that smoking bans are not bad for businesses.

Consider this an open thread on how the smoking ban will affect where you go out to eat or drink (whether or not you smoke).

Polk County supervisors are going to spend more time reviewing the options for addressing the needs of the overcrowded courthouse before putting another referendum before the voters. Click the link to see some options being considered.

Given the way the April 29 vote turned out, there was little chance that Polk County voters would approve the same plan this November in any case.

It is unfortunate that poor planning and mismanagement of other projects involving the county have created such an atmosphere of public distrust. The courthouse proposal was a sensible approach to meeting real needs of the judicial system.

I figured that if John Edwards hadn’t endorsed by now, he would wait until all of the states had held their primaries, but he proved me wrong today.

The video of his speech endorsing Barack Obama, as well as his interview on Larry King Live this past Monday, can be found here in NCDem Amy’s diary.

I find it interesting that they chose Michigan as the venue for the big endorsement rally. Obama may realize that he could be in some trouble in Michigan, since he didn’t campaign there before the January primary and didn’t get behind any re-vote plan for the state.

The timing of the endorsement stepped on Hillary Clinton’s big victory in West Virginia yesterday. Still, I am glad that Edwards paid tribute to Hillary today as well:

It is very very hard to get up every day and do what she’s done. It is hard to get out there and fight and speak up when the odds turn against you. What she has shown is strength and character and what drives her is something that each and every one of us should appreciate. She cares about working people…men and women in Iraq…she is a woman made of steel and she is a leader in this country not because of her husband but because of what she has done…When this nomination battle is over, brothers and sisters, we must come together as Democrats and in the fall stand up for the future of America to make America better. We are a stronger party because Hillary Clinton is a Democrat…and we will have a stronger presidential nominee in the fall because of her work.

I don’t think Edwards is a good match for Obama as a VP candidate, but I would like to see him out there campaigning for Obama in the coming months. I believe that he could help Obama in states such as Michigan and Ohio.

According to the electoral vote counter on the upper left side of the front page at MyDD, John McCain is currently projected to defeat Obama 290-248. Obama would win the Kerry states minus Wisconsin, Michigan and New Hampshire, plus Iowa and Colorado–not nearly enough.

Ironically, Hillary is currently in a much stronger position against McCain, even though she has in essence no chance of winning the Democratic nomination anymore. The electoral vote counter for her, on the upper right side of the front page at MyDD, has her beating McCain 291-247. Hillary would be projected to win the Kerry states minus Wisconsin and Michigan, plus Ohio, Florida and Iowa.

UPDATE: At MyDD, Josh Orton notes that Elizabeth Edwards was not up on the stage with her husband tonight. One might interpret this to mean that she disagrees with the endorsement (she has already said she prefers Hillary’s health care reform plan). However, my hunch is that she is limiting her overnight travel away from their two school-age children. There was no compelling need for her to be there. After such a long campaign, during which the kids traveled with Elizabeth much of the time, she may just prefer to be at home.

At TalkLeft, Big Tent Democrat had high praise for Edwards’ speech and made an interesting point I hadn’t thought about:

John Edwards, populist hero with a proven record of connecting with white working class voters has vouched for Barack Obama. Does Kentucky buy it?

The Kentucky contest, previously a foregone conclusion for the Media, now becomes a test. For Barack Obama. He needs to go in to Kentucky, WITH John Edwards, and fight for their votes. He needs to show he cares about the voters of Kentucky. Particularly white working class voters. An interesting development indeed.

My money is still on a Clinton blowout in Kentucky next Tuesday.

I got an e-mail from Ed Fallon’s campaign that contrasts Fallon’s “personal commitment” to transportation by bicycle with Congressman Leonard Boswell’s “photo-op” Bike to Work event on Monday morning:

Ed has been riding his bike as a consistent form of transportation for years. It’s his way of demonstrating his personal commitment and responsibility for reducing his carbon footprint.

The e-mail then shows a photo of Fallon “arriving by bike at his campaign office in the February snow,” as well as a photo of Boswell riding his bicycle on Monday, which the incumbent e-mailed to constituents:

Personal commitment or photo op?

You decide!

Speaking of Bike to Work Week, Fallon will be at the Handlebar Happy Hour on Friday at 5 pm at the El Bait Shop, 200 SW 2nd St, Des Moines.

Now, do I think Fallon would represent me better in Congress because he rides a bicycle regularly? No, but I do have confidence that because of this experience, he understands the need to make our roads more bike-friendly.

I know many people who are afraid to run errands on their bikes, but would consider it if there were bike lanes on more streets in the Des Moines area.

Although Boswell has served on the House Transportation Committee for some time, I have not seen any commitment from him to promoting “complete streets” that encourage travel by foot and by bicycle as well as by car.

I don’t care how often Boswell uses his bicycle as long as he gets behind the Safe and Complete Streets bill that Representative Doris Matsui recently introduced in the House. Tom Harkin has already introduced a similar bill in the U.S. Senate.

To everyone who worked hard toward the passage of a law expanding health insurance coverage for Iowa children, which Chet Culver signed yesterday.

To the Iowa Council for International Understanding, which has posted translations of Iowa voter registration documents on its website in light of a court ruling that bars the Secretary of State’s office from providing information in any language other than English.

To Senator Chuck Grassley for looking into the spending practices of six tax-exempt “media-based ministries,” despite a large-scale public relations campaign accusing him of “religious McCarthyism.”

To Iowa Independent blogger Dien Judge, who was just appointed to the Monroe County board of supervisors, a position he will hold for the next six months.

And to Iowa City Council member Ross Wilburn, the bicyclist who won Johnson County’s annual Bike-to-Work Week Bike-Bus-Car race.

Put up a comment if you know of someone else who deserves congratulations this week.

Hillary Clinton trounced Barack Obama in West Virginia. With 95 percent reporting, she has 67 percent and he has 26 percent. Clinton received approximately 140,000 more votes than Obama. I don’t know why John Edwards was still on the ballot in WV, but he seems to have gotten almost 7 percent of the vote.

In her victory speech, Hillary mentioned Dalton Hatfield, an 11-year-old from Kentucky who sold his bike and video games to donate about $400 to the Clinton campaign. This prompted an Obama supporter to post an idiotic diary at Daily Kos, suggesting that Hillary had “sunk lower” than Richard Nixon did when he delivered his famous “Checkers” speech in 1952.

Clinton supporter Trix had the ultimate comeback:

 Something tells me that… (11+ / 0-)

Recommended by:

   Rimjob, dhonig, wader, desmoinesdem, homogenius, Lying eyes, rcald, Mikesco, Barry in MIA, lineatus, Namtrix

if this were a story about a kid selling his bike to donate the proceeds to Obama, you’d be going on and on about how inspiring Obama is to children.

Hillary Clinton turned me into a newt. I got better.

by Trix on Tue May 13, 2008 at 08:13:56 PM PDT

On the Republican side, John McCain only managed about 76 percent of the vote in WV, with 10 percent going for Mike Huckabee and 5 percent choosing Ron Paul.

I have to agree with isucyclones94, though, who commented in the previous thread that Democrat Travis Childers’ victory in the special election in Mississippi’s first Congressional district is the biggest story of the night.

This is a district with a partisan index of R+10, and the Republicans worked hard to link Childers to Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright:

Yet Childers won by a margin of 54-46. I totally agree with Jonathan Singer’s take on this outcome:

  1. I don’t want to go so far as to say that this is the end of the Republican Party, because it’s not. But this is as bad news as the GOP could possibly get at this point. They lost a district that leans 6 points more Republican than the nation as a whole in Illinois in March. They lost a district that leans 7 points more Republican than the nation as a whole earlier this month in Louisiana. Now they lost a district that leans 10 points more Republican than the nation as a whole in Mississippi. If they can’t win in Mississippi’s first congressional district, where can they win?

  2. The Republicans tried to make this election about two people: Barack Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And despite running this type of campaign, they lost. While it is true that Childers distanced himself from his party (and implicitly from Obama), the fact is that the Obama/Wright smears simply DID NOT WORK. The Republicans are going to have to get a new game plan, and the establishment media are going to have to get a new meme. Sorry folks.

The head of the National Republican Congressional Committee didn’t even try to spin the loss (click the link for his full statement).

Also, in the Democratic primary for the open U.S. Senate seat from Nebraska, netroots hero Scott Kleeb beat Tony Raimondo by a large margin, 68-25. Kleeb came pretty close to winning Nebraska’s third Congressional district in 2006, despite a very strong Republican tilt in that district. Raimondo is a Republican who switched parties just so he could run for the U.S. Senate. Good for Kleeb.

In a state as red as Nebraska, Republicans are favored to hold this Senate seat, but Kleeb will make them work for it.

The demographics are horrible for Obama, and he has hardly campaigned in the state, while Clinton has spent a lot of time there.

I’m going with 62 Clinton, 38 Obama.

For good on-the-ground reports about the campaign, read diaries by “Carnacki”:

http://www.mydd.com/user/Carnacki

The tv ad Obama ran in West Virginia can be viewed here:

http://link.brightcove.com/ser…

It’s not a bad ad, but I don’t like the halo around his head when he’s standing in front of the cross. I understand why he wants the cross in there, to combat rumors he is a Muslim, but I find the halo irritating.

At least he didn’t run on “clean West Virginia coal”!

Put your predictions for today’s primary results in the comments.

Yet again, Republicans are trying to sneak an amendment benefiting oil companies into otherwise good legislation. This time they are trying to use the Flood Insurance Bill as a vehicle to open up the last portions of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling.

This action alert went out on the Sierra Club e-mail list today:

This is an urgent alert: As soon as tomorrow (Tuesday), the Senate will vote on an amendment to the national Flood Insurance Bill offered by Senator Mitch McConnell (KY) and co-sponsored by Senator Pete Domenici (NM) that threatens polar bears and other wildlife.

Rather than addressing high oil prices and dependence on foreign oil by moving toward better alternatives and practical solutions, this amendment promotes more drilling in more places for more oil profits.

This is not a solution, it’s a sell off. Please take action right now…

1. Make the call. Either today or tomorrow morning, please call your Senators at one of the numbers below:

   * Tom Harkin – (202) 224-3254 or (515) 284-4574 – http://harkin.senate.gov/c/

   * Charles Grassley – (202) 224-3744 or (515) 288-1145 – http://grassley.senate.gov/pub…

If you are calling after 5:00 PM or before 8:00 AM Eastern time, please be sure to leave a message.

The rest of the action alert is after the jump. It includes more information and talking points for you to use when you make the call.

If you can spare some cash for a good Democrat, today or tomorrow would be an excellent time to donate.

May 14 is the last day of the current reporting period, and the media as well as the Republican Party will be scrutinizing those fundraising totals to figure out where the strong and weak candidates are.

So far during this reporting period, I’ve donated to five candidates for the Iowa legislature:

Jerry Sullivan

Eric Palmer

Elesha Gayman

McKinley Bailey

Nate Willems

Speaking of Nate, here is an update on his campaign that I received by e-mail recently:

Today I am putting online Natewillems.com.  I am calling it a “1.0” because the site is still in its infancy.  It covers the essentials, though, and should give you a sense as to what is motivating me to run to represent House District 29.  Please take a moment to visit http://www.natewillems.com

May 14th is the last day this campaign’s first reporting period.  These early reporting periods are the most crucial to my campaign.  Though this seat has been held by a Democrat for 12 years, the Republicans will look at any open seat as a potential opportunity to take a seat back.  I need to raise as much money as possible in these early reporting periods to dissuade the Republicans from investing heavily in District 29.

We are very close to having raised $30,000 in the first two months of this campaign.  Please consider making a contribution today through my ActBlue account:

https://secure.actblue.com/con…

Of course, we do still have a regular mailbox: Citizens for Willems, P.O. Box 213, Lisbon, IA 52253.

Many of you have already donated.  I thank you again very much for your donation, but ask that you consider making another contribution to get us past this $30,000 goal.  

Many of you are intending to donate at some point and I ask you to make your contribution now.  

There are thousands of doors yet for me to knock on and countless people to meet.  With your financial support, I can spend more time knocking on doors and less time raising money.  https://secure.actblue.com/con…

Don’t forget, take a look at www.natewillems.com

Thank you very much.  I look forward to seeing you again soon.

Nate

—

(319) 929-4543

Please find a good Democrat and make a donation today.

For whatever reason, Congressman Leonard Boswell’s campaign website (http://www.boswellforcongress.com) doesn’t seem to list upcoming events in the district anywhere, so I don’t always know when he plans to be in town. (Please correct me if there’s a page on the site I have missed–I’ve looked for an events calendar.)

Most candidates are happy to publicize upcoming local events. Maybe Boswell doesn’t want to call attention to his visits to the district because they undercut his claim that he is too busy working in Washington to debate Ed Fallon.  

I know he had a Bike to Work week event in Des Moines on Monday morning, and I heard he had some kind of event at Prairie Meadows the same day, but I don’t know if it was a campaign appearance or a fundraiser.

If you have heard about an event Boswell is holding in the district, please post a comment or a diary.

Not long ago Amtrak released the results of a feasibility study on a passenger rail link between Iowa City, the Quad Cities, and Chicago. (Later this year the next phase of the study will examine extending passenger rail to Des Moines as well.)

A few days ago, Congressman Bruce Braley (IA-01) introduced the 2008 Amtrak Reauthorization Bill, which (according to a press release from Braley’s office)

includes language to create a new, $500 million per year “State Capital Grant Program.”  The program would award federal grants to states to pay for the construction of new passenger rail service between US cities.

Projects that could apply for funding under this program include proposed passenger rail service between Chicago and the Quad Cities, the Quad Cities and Des Moines via Iowa City, and Chicago and Dubuque.

The bill also includes a Braley-sponsored provision mandating a Federal Railroad Administration study into the viability of the widespread use of biolubricants in freight and passenger rail as an alternative to petroleum-based lubricants.  The University of Northern Iowa’s National Ag-Based Lubricant Center (NABL) is located in Iowa’s First District.

The full text of the press release is after the jump.

I appreciate Braley’s leadership on this issue and wonder why my own Congressman Leonard Boswell hasn’t made passenger rail service between Chicago and Des Moines more of a priority in his work on the House Transportation Committee. My family would love to be able to take a train to Chicago. It would be much easier for us than traveling by car or plane with two small children.

Expanding passenger rail will also help us reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and will be more cost-effective as the price of oil continues to rise in the long term.

Kudos to everyone who helped make this happen:

150 IOWA LUTHERAN CHURCHES TO GO GREEN

The churches of the Southeast Iowa Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America are first denominational organization to join Iowa Interfaith Power & Light

Des Moines, IA – Under the leadership of Bishop Phil Hougen and his synod council, the 150 churches of the Southeast Iowa Lutheran Synod (SE Synod) have become the first denominational organization to join Iowa Interfaith Power & Light (Iowa IPL).  Iowa IPL is part of a national network of faith-based organizations mobilizing the religious community to become leaders in the fight against global warming.  The Synod commitment will provide each church in the partnership with training in how to become a “Cool Congregation,” an Iowa IPL stewardship program that helps solve global warming one family at a time.

What an incredible step. Not only will these churches raise awareness about global warming in the faith community, but they are likely to significantly reduce the carbon footprints of thousands of Iowa families.

The full text of the press release from Iowa Interfaith Power and Light is after the jump.

By the way, Iowa Interfaith Power and Light is currently searching for an executive director. Click here for the job listing.