Iowa was one of 38 states to get an “F” on its open records law, according to this front-page article in Thursday’s Des Moines Register.

“The question posed was: Do states have a good apparatus built to … make it easier to further a complaint short of litigating?” said Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. The group helped sponsor the study, which was conducted by the Better Government Association last year.

Sponsors of the study stressed the research attempted to measure how easy it was for citizens to obtain access to records, not the strength of state open records laws themselves.

There are a lot of interesting details in the article, so if freedom of information is a big issue for you, click the link.

The Register’s editorial board writes a lot about open-records law, and I give them credit for that. Unfortunately, under Gannett’s ownership, the Register hasn’t devoted nearly enough resources to solid investigative reporting.

I wish the editors were assigning more reporters to dig into the information that’s already publicly available.

This came through on the Sierra Club’s e-mail list:

Please call Representative Leonard Boswell’s office and ask him to cosponsor HR 39, a bill that would permanently protect the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  His Des Moines office number is 515-282-1909 and D.C. number is 202-225-3806.  All other Iowa Democratic members of Congress have already cosponsored HR 39.

Some facts:  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service calls the Refuge’s Coastal Plain “the center for wildlife activity” for the entire Refuge.  The Refuge provides vital habitat for some of America ‘s most spectacular wildlife. Polar bears, grizzly bears, caribou, wolves, and muskoxen are a few of more than 250 species that rely on the Coastal Plain for their survival.  Millions of birds, representing some 180 species, migrate to the Coastal Plain to nest, rear young, molt, and feed.  Birds from all 50 states and six of the seven continents migrate to the Refuge for summer.

The native people living near the Refuge are the Gwich’in (meaning “caribou people” in their language) and their livelihood and culture have been dependant on the Porcupine Caribou Herd, which gives birth on the Coastal Plain, for centuries. They refer to the Coastal Plain as the “Sacred Place Where Life Begins” and oppose drilling in the area and strongly support permanent protection. Impact to the caribou herd could mean a loss of their way of life.

Global warming is already threatening life in the Arctic and drilling for gas and oil will only accelerate the warming trend.

I can’t resist adding that if Ed Fallon were representing Iowa’s third Congressional district, this kind of action alert would be unnecessary. He would sign on to a bill like this in a heartbeat without needing to be nudged by constituents.

The answer depends on what state you’re looking at.

Recent polling suggests that Barack Obama has been running much better than Hillary Clinton against John McCain in states such as Iowa and Colorado.

However, that appears not to be the case in some other important swing states. Survey USA released three new state polls:

http://www.talkleft.com/story/…

In Ohio, Clinton beats McCain 50-44, but McCain beats Obama 50-43.

In Missouri, McCain leads Clinton 48-46 (within margin of error), and McCain leads Obama 53-39.

In Kentucky, McCain leads Clinton 53-43 and leads Obama 64-28. Obviously, Democrats are not going to carry Kentucky in the presidential race, but there may be some close Congressional races in that state. Who is going to be better for our down-ticket candidates?

For the record, I think both Clinton and Obama could beat McCain or lose to McCain. I have no idea who has a better chance of getting 270 electoral votes. I do think Obama runs a greater risk of losing in a Dukakis-style blowout than Clinton does.

Right now I’m pessimistic about either of them being able to win the general, in part because of the way our primary is now all about identity politics rather than issues.

On the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Stop the Arms Race Political Action Committee (STAR*PAC) endorsed Ed Fallon in the Democratic primary in Iowa’s third Congressional district.

From a Fallon campaign press release:

“STAR*PAC believes that Ed Fallon understands the challenges we face in the 21st century and is the best-equipped candidate to represent the Third District in the difficult times ahead.”

Additionally, they stated, “we remain concerned that Rep. Boswell has too often supported the Administration’s war policy by voting to authorize the war, and voting to continue funding without timelines for troop withdrawal.”

Fallon’s campaign will not receive any monetary donation from STAR*PAC, in keeping with his policy of not accepting funds from PACs.

The full release is after the jump.

As I’ve written before, I believe that some compromise must be found to seat delegates from Michigan and Florida at the Democratic National Convention.

By “compromise,” I don’t mean the Obama campaign’s proposal to give both Clinton and Obama 50 percent of the delegates from each state, which would disregard the will of the people. I mean a compromise that would reflect how Democrats in those states voted.

I was open to a re-vote, but that idea has been killed in Florida and appears less and less likely in Michigan.

Obama supporter Gordon Fischer celebrates the way they Obama campaign ran out the clock on re-votes.

Obama supporter noneed4thneed doesn’t see why Obama should back a re-vote in Michigan.

Obama supporter Chris Bowers made a much stronger case that Obama should want a re-vote in Michigan, since it would very likely allow him to wrap up the nomination in June rather than having things drag out to a floor fight at the convention.

To my mind, the key question should be not what is best for Obama, but the principle of counting people’s votes and the pragmatic need for Democrats not to alienate voters in two large states.

We cannot afford to go into the general election having angered Democrats in Michigan and Florida, particularly since both Obama and Clinton currently trail John McCain in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

New polls suggest that an overwhelming majority of Florida Democrats want their votes to be counted, and one-fourth of them may leave the Democratic Party if that does not happen.

Look, Obama fans, if you are so confident that your guy will hold on to his lead in pledged delegates and the popular vote, you should have been lobbying for re-votes. Now that a re-vote is off the table for Florida and possibly Michigan, you should be open to some compromise that reflects the way Democrats voted (such as cutting the number of delegates from each state in half).

This situation is screwed up, and many parties are to blame, but the rank-and-file Democrats in those states did not create this problem.

It will be suicide for Obama to go into the general telling Michigan and Florida voters, “I’m sorry, you broke the rules, I don’t care about letting you have a say in the primaries.”

On Wednesday, March 19, Ed Fallon is holding a town-hall meeting on Iraq and veterans’ issues from 8:30 to 9:30 am at the Old Fire Station #4, 1041 8th St., Des Moines.

I can’t go to this event, but if any Bleeding Heartland readers are able to attend, please put up a comment to let us know how it went.

Whether or not you can go to this meeting, how important do you think the Iraq war will be in the IA-03 primary?

Although it’s not the comprehensive overhaul of the bottle bill that I’d like to see, the draft bill that would expand the nickel deposit to bottled water, juice and sports drinks is still a step in the right direction.

I was encouraged to read Continue Reading...

Even I know that Al Qaeda is a Sunni extremist group, and Iran is governed by a Shiite regime.

According to the Washington Post, Republican presidential candidate John McCain hasn’t grasped that fact:

He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.” A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate’s ear. McCain then said: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”

It was a big mistake for Hillary Clinton to say a couple of weeks ago that McCain had passed the commander-in-chief threshold. Anyone who doesn’t even know the most basic information about our enemies in the Middle East is unqualified to be president. What have his staff and advisers been briefing him on in the Senate and on the campaign trail?

Over at MyDD, Jonathan Singer summarizes the reaction from around the blogosphere and points out that this was no slip of the tongue. McCain has been making the same erroneous statement for some time, demonstrating that he has no clue about the differences between Sunni and Shiite extremists.

MyDD user Steve M’s take on the situation is amusing.

UPDATE: Mark Kleiman was apparently reading my mind:

http://www.samefacts.com/archi…

Given McCain’s buffoonish performance in Jordan, wouldn’t this be a good time for Hillary Clinton to say, “Gee, I thought he was ready to be Commander-in-Chief, but it sure doesn’t sound like it. The least we should expect from the President is some basic knowledge about who our enemies are.”

I didn’t have a chance to watch it, but if you did, what did you think of Barack Obama’s major speech on race this morning?

The transcript is after the jump.

Which statehouse races are you watching especially closely this year?

As I’ve written before, I will be helping Jerry Sullivan, who is running for the open seat in House district 59.

I learned a few days ago that Ro Foege is retiring from House district 29. Nate Willems is running in the Democratic primary for that seat. You may remember his front-page posts last year at MyDD. I don’t know anything about the other Democratic candidate in that district.

Consider this an open thread for talking about interesting races and candidates for the Iowa House or Senate.

I encourage any and all Democrats running for the legislature to drop by and put up a diary here from time to time.

I missed this last week, but Daily Kos user mcfly brought it to my attention: a Republican has filed to run for Congress in Iowa’s third Congressional district.

Today, Clive Republican Kim Schmett announced his run for United States Congress in the 3rd Congressional District.

Schmett, 55, says the district needs a representative who will fight for lower taxes, fiscal responsibility and more quality jobs for Iowa workers.

“My goal in Congress is to rein in spending, so people can keep the money they have worked so hard to earn,” said Schmett. “They should be able to spend it on their families, not support a bloated government. For far too long, government has failed to weed out inefficiencies and waste. Congress just passed a Democrat budget bill that will cut the earned income credit in half and increase an average family’s taxes by $3,000 dollars. Too often, politicians forget that it’s the people’s money first, not theirs.”

Schmett, a veteran of the U.S. Army, is the executive director of the state association for children’s homes and shelters. He is the former director of the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals, and served as the chief of staff for former Congressman Greg Ganske.

Bleeding Heartland readers, I would be interested in your views on how the Iowa caucuses might have turned out differently.

Let’s assume that Barack Obama runs the exact campaign he ran last year in terms of strategy and execution, and has the same monetary resources he had available.

What, if anything, could other candidates have done to beat Obama in Iowa? Keep in mind that both Clinton and Edwards executed their strategies pretty well in Iowa (in my opinion), with

both of them getting more than 70,000 people to stand in their corners on January 3. That “should” have been enough to win, even if turnout had been “only” 50 percent greater than the previous record for Iowa Democrats.

Given the Obama campaign’s excellent strategy and execution, as well as their virtually unlimited monetary resources in Iowa, what could other candidates have done to win the Iowa caucuses?

These are examples of the kinds of questions I’m interested in:

Should Hillary have used Bill more, or used him less?

Would it have helped Clinton or Edwards to go negative on Obama?

Were there better methods Clinton could have used to identify and turn out supporters?

Was there anything Richardson could have done in the summer to build on the bump he got from his television commercials in May?

Would Edwards have done better if his stump speech and advertising had focused on different issues?

Should Edwards have spent some money on advertising in the summer, when he slipped behind Clinton in the Iowa polls, rather than keeping his powder dry?

Feel free to post your insights about these and similar questions on this thread.

Alternatively, if you have thoughts you’d rather keep off the record, please e-mail them to me at desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com, or e-mail me your phone number and I will call you to chat. I will keep your views confidential.

click on this diary by Daily Kos user PocketNines on “Delegate Math: Where We Stand After Iowa Redux.”

By the way, if you wade through the more than 200 comments on that thread, you’ll see that PocketNines agrees with me–it would not be “cheating” or “stealing” for superdelegates to support Clinton even if Obama fininshes the primaries with more pledged delegates.

I agree with Obama supporters, however, that right now Obama can make the stronger argument to the superdelegates.

Each of the 99 counties in Iowa held their County Conventions yesterday and Barack Obama cleaned up the number of delegates that move on to the district and state conventions.

Here are the results from the conventions…

Barack Obama: 52.1%
Hillary Clinton: 31.5%
John Edwards: 16%

It looks like pretty much every Edwards delegate that went to a new candidate went to Obama.

The final delegate count after the conventions is Obama 23, Clinton 14, Edwards 6.

To put this into perspective, Sen. Hillary Clinton netted nine delegates out of Ohio after her big win there, while Obama netted 7 delegates in Iowa, while Clinton lost one.

In a rare post not related to Barack Obama, Gordon Fischer put up a press release from Leonard Boswell’s campaign over at Iowa True Blue. (Note to the Boswell campaign: please start sending your press releases to desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com.)

The release notes that the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy recently gave Boswell a 100 percent 90 percent “A” grade for his work on behalf of the middle class. Boswell’s campaign also mentioned that a different group recently named him the most powerful U.S. representative from Iowa, and was ranked the 135th most powerful person among the 435 members of the U.S. House.

You can find more details about how the Drum Major Institute compiled its Congressional scorecard on middle class issues, as well as ratings for all 535 members of Congress, by clicking here.

The full text of Boswell’s press release is after the jump.

The national organization eQualityGiving, “The Online Donor Community for LGBT Equality,” has endorsed Ed Fallon in the Democratic primary in Iowa’s third Congressional district. A press release from Fallon’s campaign notes that eQualityGiving has endorsed only nine federal candidates this year, and that Fallon is the “only candidate in the nation to earn this endorsement twice.”

The full text of the release from Fallon’s campaign is after the jump.

Noneed4thneed is posting about the Marshall County Democratic convention over at Century of the Common Iowan.

If you've got a story to share about your county convention, I encourage you to comment on this thread or put up a diary here.

UPDATE: John Deeth has the story from Johnson County here (not many changes, as Edwards delegates did not realign):

http://jdeeth.blogspot.com/200…

Noneed4thneed says the Edwards delegates realigned in Marshall County, and 90 percent of them went to Obama:

http://commoniowan.blogspot.co…

There’s more info in this Iowa County Convention results thread at Daily Kos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

Ronald Brownstein wrote an interesting piece for the National Journal called “Wider Net, Leakier Boat.” His argument is that Barack Obama potentially could put together a broader coalition than Hillary Clinton, but he also runs the risk of losing a lot more Democrats to McCain than Clinton would. Key excerpt:

In a recent Pew Research Center survey, for instance, Obama carried independents against McCain by 6 percentage points, while McCain carried them against Clinton by the same amount; the difference mostly reflected Obama’s stronger showing among independents earning at least $50,000 annually. Other surveys, such as a Quinnipiac University poll in the key battleground of Pennsylvania, have found that Obama also swipes more Republicans from McCain than Clinton does.

This all tracks Obama strengths familiar from the primaries. But primary-season trends more troubling for Obama are also persisting. In the national Pew survey, and in Quinnipiac polls of Ohio and Pennsylvania, Obama lost more Democrats to McCain than Clinton did. In the Pew survey, Obama struggled particularly among the same blue-collar white Democrats resisting him in the primaries: Fully 30 percent of white Democrats earning less than $30,000 a year preferred McCain over Obama. Clinton would lose only half as many of them to McCain, the polls indicate. In the Quinnipiac surveys, Clinton likewise outpolled Obama against McCain among white women without college degrees, a key general election swing group that has overwhelmingly preferred her in the primaries.

Findings like these help explain why many Democrats think Obama offers greater potential rewards as a nominee, but also presents greater risks. If Obama runs well, he seems more likely than Clinton to assemble a big majority and trigger a Democratic sweep — not only by attracting independents and crossover Republicans but also by increasing turnout among African-Americans and young people.

But if Obama stumbles, he could face a greater danger of fracturing the traditional Democratic coalition by losing seniors and blue-collar whites to McCain, principally on security issues. Clinton’s reach across the electorate may not be as long, but her grip on her voters could be firmer.

I don’t seem able to get this argument across to some of the Obama supporters I know. Yes, he does better among independents and Republicans than Hillary, but he could lose a lot more seniors, women and working-class whites (and Latinos, though Brownstein doesn’t mention them) to McCain.

Obama has eight months to figure out how to improve his standing among the demographic groups that have favored Hillary in the primaries.

I was pleased to read in the Des Moines Register that Governor Culver is behind a more balanced, flexible and farsighted federal transportation policy:

Iowa Gov. Chet Culver joined Democratic members of Congress and business leaders Wednesday to announce the launch of a long-term push to improve the nation’s roads, bridges, water systems and transit.

Culver, representing the nation’s 28 Democratic governors, and the members of Congress said states, the federal government and private business must work together to improve the infrastructure.

“We need a national game plan,” he said after a two-hour meeting behind closed doors. “I believe it’s time for a bold, new, 21st-century national infrastructure plan of action.”

[…]

In remarks to the group, Culver said any plan must take into account not just roads and bridges but also public transit, passenger and freight rail, information technology, grids, trails and waterways. States must have as much flexibility as possible, given their varying needs.

Culver is smart to call for a comprehensive game plan on transportation, rather than just securing road-building funds for our state.

Investing more in alternatives to driving is good for the environment and will be essential if we are serious about reducing our carbon-dioxide emissions.

As the U.S. population ages, having better rail and public transit options will also improve the quality of life for seniors who do not drive.

There will be economic benefits too, especially if we are headed for $4 and $5 a gallon gasoline.

I hope that the governor will show similar leadership on improving our transportation planning at the state level.

As I have written before, the Iowa Department of Transportation’s TIME-21 plan takes a narrow and short-sighted approach, calling for extra investment solely in road-building. We should take a “fix-it first” approach to the road funds, devoting a greater share of funding to repairing our existing roads and bridges. We also need to invest in alternatives to driving, because reducing the vehicle miles traveled per capita needs to be part of our state’s response to global warming.

UPDATE: Just saw this interesting diary by Daily Kos user futurebird:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

key excerpt:

This graph shows how our government policies about parking, public roads, and tolls make driving a more attractive option for many people in US cities. This is why changing planning policy, eliminating parking lot requirements, increasing the gas tax so that fully covers the costs of highway construction and the other social and environmental costs of driving is so important for creating sustainable, inter-modal transportation systems in our cities.

Notice that, in an urban area, the total cost of both bus and rail systems is lower than the total costs of using a car. But when people make the choice to drive each day they tend to think about the out-of-pocket costs of driving (gas) rather than considering the indirect costs of car ownership, auto insurance and car maintenance. People are even less aware of the fact that the gas tax, at its current level, is not high enough to cover all of the costs of road maintenance. The environmental and social impacts of driving (such as the impact it has on public heath, and the cost of policing the roadways, recovering stolen cars, and dealing with accidents) are even harder to see.

Click the link if you want to see the graph.

Thanks, as usual, to Betsy Muse of BlueNC for the roundup. -desmoinesdem

After an unexpected absence last week, I’m back and so is the 50 State Blog Roundup.

How’s the tension at your favorite national blog community?  Take a break from all the nastiness and drop by your favorite state blog for a change.  Look in on our statewide and local races…..just stay away from the presidential primary threads.  They bring a whole new meaning to March madness!

After the jump are a few posts from last week and the roundup for March 14, 2008.