cross-posted at Bleeding Heartland

If Congressman Steve King hadn't already won the "jackass award," someone would need to give it to him for the way he behaved at a House Judiciary Committee hearing this week.

It's no secret that King isn't interested in the Congress serving as a check or balance on executive power. As we saw just a few weeks ago, King believes former White House spokesman Scott McClellan could have "done this country a favor" by keeping his mouth shut about alleged lawbreaking and lying in the Bush administration.

Apparently not satisfied with his efforts to sidetrack the McClellan hearings, King used one parliamentary trick after another on Tuesday to prevent Democrats on the Judiciary Committee from effectively questioning Douglas Feith, the former number three Pentagon official.

The Associated Press article, "McCain Hasn’t Ignited the Passions of Evangelicals," offers a glimpse of conservative Christians' rather tepid response in a very Republican region of Iowa to Sen. John McCain's candidacy. Dave Mulder, a retired professor from Northwestern College in Orange City, remarks:

I think people here genuinely believe that George Bush and his Christian faith was very sincere.... People have said that when they talked to him, he took time to let them know how much that Christian belief meant. For McCain, I just don't think there's that same enthusiasm

After the flip: An editorial commentary--and something of a correction to the AP article--from me, who attended Northwestern College:

cross-posted at Bleeding Heartland

Barack Obama's campaign held kickoff events in 15 Iowa field offices yesterday, coinciding with the first statewide canvass of the general election campaign. In addition, the Obama campaign plans to open at least two more field offices in Iowa.

The Des Moines Register published an alphabetical list of cities and towns with Obama field offices. In this diary, I group the offices according to Congressional district.

If 17 field offices sounds like a lot for a medium-sized state like Iowa, keep in mind that Obama had at least 40 field offices here before the caucuses in January.

Also, the Iowa Democratic Party has in effect shut down its "coordinated campaign" for getting out the vote, which means that Obama's field offices will coordinate GOTV for all Democratic candidates in the state.

I don't know how to write about this, but I'm going to try anyway.

I've been following the discussion on immigration for over a year, and there are a lot of complexities to it and a lot of back story.

But this story is so terrible that I don't think you need to know all the details of the law or intricacies of how we got to where we are in the United States as far as our broken immigration policies are concerned.

This story is about an essay written by Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas, a certified Spanish interpreter for federal courts, who was present at the ICE raid in Postville, Iowa.

I found out about this essay in a circuitous way.  I first read the entire essay at The Sanctuary where Duke had it up in its entirety.  Immediately after reading it, I rebooted the essay and found he had removed it ... turns out Dr. Camayd-Freixas had asked him to refrain from posting it after finding that the New York Times was going to do a front page story on it.  Duke and other pro-migrant bloggers complied.  Now that the story has been published, the essay is once again up at The Sanctuary.

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July. Jacob saw his first real fireworks display and loved it at first. We were watching from the 12th floor of a building right on the waterfront, so it was spectacular. Unfortunately, he was coming down with a fever and by the end was pretty unhappy. He is fine again now.

This was a big week, both locally where my friend qualified for the ballot for NYC's Sept. 9th primary election, and nationally where Obama's surge continued even as the Democrats once again showed less spine than we would like them to. More below.

• The 50-state strategy, Iowa example:

  According to reports filed the Federal Election Commission on June 20, the Republican Party of Iowa had only seven salaried employees on staff, compared to 28 for the state Democrats (however, many of those employees were reassigned to work strictly for the Obama campaign). Since those reports were filed, the GOP announced the hiring of Nathan Treloar to serve as the state party's communications director.

  State filings paint a more ominous picture. According to expenditure reports filed with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board, as of May 20 the Republican Party of Iowa had no paid staff focusing exclusively on state races, while the Iowa Democratic Party had an additional 27 salaried employees.

• Ed Kilgore doesn't think Obama's FISA vote was calculated, because if it was, it was one hell of a miscalculation.
• "Clinging" versus "whining". Guess which one makes big news, and which one doesn't.
• Awesome! The more wingnutty Lieberman gets, the easier the call to boot him from the Democratic caucus in 2009.
• Ha ha ha ha ha. And truth:

  Nothing illustrates the extent to which "conservatives" have so much absolute nothing going on nowadays is how hard it's gotten to make fun of them.

  But there's still this.

• Okay, we're angry at lots of Democrats for their FISA positions. But this is a long-term movement, and one way we build is by electing better Democrats. Here's where some of our best challengers stand on FISA. Many of the best are just as pissed as we are, and yes -- they still have to be elected. But they're not afraid of Republican attack ads that will come anyway.
• The public is tuning out McCain.

  Despite greater parity in the coverage devoted to each candidate, Obama remained by far the most visible candidate in the eyes of the public. Seven-in-ten Americans (71%) named Obama as the candidate they've been hearing the most about in the news in the past week or so. Roughly one-in-ten (11%) named John McCain as the most visible candidate in the news during this period; a number largely unchanged since early June.

• Larry Sabato:

  An early-summer mapping simply has to assume that the election will be basically competitive, let's say with the winner receiving 52 percent or less of the two-party vote (with all third party votes excluded from the calculation). If one candidate's proportion of the vote climbs above 52 percent, then virtually all the swing states will move in his direction, coloring the toss-up white states either Blue or Red. Not even the most optimistic McCain analyst believes such a sweep can happen for the GOP in 2008. A McCain victory by any margin will have to be considered an upset, given historical precedents about the incumbent presidential party losing in bad economic times and when the sitting president is so roundly disliked. Therefore, a McCain triumph will be accomplished with a narrow Electoral College majority. A toss-up state sweep, if it happens, is very likely to be a Blue tide.

• We still don't have a lot of women in the U.S. Senate. 2010 could change that.
• Now that the Executive Branch has essentially told us that they can ignore congressional subpoenas, why should anyone ever answer one of those again? Seems to me that Congress has essentially abdicated that power.

Trei Brundrett is a Democratic activist and super-techie from Texas who traveled to Iowa in early 2004 to help the Howard Dean for President campaign.  The following interview was completed as part of research for Netroots Rising on July 25, 2007.

In Iowa, I didn't go with the Texas Rangers, I went on my own a week before the caucus and stayed until the day after the caucus. I connected  online with people that were going to be there but I didn't know anyone with the campaign there. There were some people from New Mexico that we knew from canvassing before.

On July 4 I marched with volunteers and staff for Jerry Sullivan, Democratic candidate in Iowa House district 59.

We don't hear much about state legislative races on national blogs, because it would be overwhelming to keep up with what's going on all over the country.

But you should get involved on behalf of a good Democrat running for your state's Assembly, House or Senate. Here's why.

It is difficult to feel good this 4th of July given the mess the Bush/McCain Republicans have led this nation into. This year alone 438,000 people who lost their jobs. We are well into the Bush's SECOND recession (first president ever to preside over two recessions) with almost no recovery between them. We are officially in a bear market. Food prices are rising worldwide. Oil is at record highs suggesting Americans will have a very, very tough winter. The deficit is WAY above where it has ever been before and no end in sight. And I am not even going into the inept, idiotic and completely useless Bush/McCain Iraq war.

The Republican party and the Republican brand are in trouble.  Big trouble.  We all already know this with the anti-Republican sentiment nearly as high as the pro-Democratic sentiment nationwide.  

Our Presidential candidate is up nearly six points in polling averages.  Nearly all of our national groups are outfunding their Republican counterparts (where are you, DNC?) and the Republicans are retiring at a record rate rather than attempt to serve in the minority after a hard-fought battle -- if they even win back their seats.

And if you want more evidence, look below the fold for the changes by the Cook Political Report released today.

The state of Iowa has been hit with a double-barreled gut punch in the month of June.  Multiple days of torrential rainfall in June triggered massive flooding considerably worse and further-reaching than the historic floods of 1993.  As of yesterday, 77 of Iowa's 99 counties were declared Presidential disaster areas.  Making matters worse, the nation's top corn-producing state has lost nearly 20% of its corn crop on a year where corn prices are soaring due to increased demand.  It's hard to even appreciate at this point the magnitude of the negative effect that the events of June 2007 will have on the state of Iowa.  With all that said, lawmakers and special interest demagogues in the state of Iowa are holding firm in their insistence that the current state of crisis has to take a backseat to a more pressing concern....being as cruel as possible to Iowa smokers as quickly as possible.  The statewide smoking ban passed into law barely 60 days ago is to be foisted upon us strictly on schedule on July 1, with the whole state distracted from solving its real problems by the mass confusion surrounding the monstrous ban.

How you can help those that have been flooded out.

First an anatomy of the Great Floods of 2008, in my untrained, but observant, view.  The Floods began around Thanksgiving of 2007.  How is this??  Quite easy, that's the first snow fall we had in my part of the world.  For the next three months there was measurable snow fall every other day to every third day and snow continued into March.  In Cedar Rapids, the airport (the official measuring location and well to the south of town) measured around 63 to 64 inches of snow for the season.  

In a 'normal' year there would be between 30 and 35 inches of snow and there would be a significant January Thaw.  However, this year, the thaw didn't really occur.  We did have a brief thaw, but not a 'real' one.  Normally, at least half of the snow would melt off during the January Thaw.  Then Spring came.  And its rains.  It rained darn near every day in the months of April and May (or at least it seemed that way).

My photos of the flooding:
http://good-times.webshots.com/...

Read on....

Strange week. Saw my first McCain ad this week...and it is clear he is running as a Democrat. Healthcare, alternative energy, environment...all Democratic talking points. We have gone from Democrats feeling like they have to run as Repub-Lite to Republicans trying to hide behind a Democratic facade. You even have a Republican running for Senate in Oregon trying to claim (falsely) that Obama supports him. This is desperation for the Republicans! It sounds like racist attacks have failed them, though I am sure they will try more as time goes on.

Meanwhile yet more polls show Obama ahead in Virginia and Missouri, tied in Florida, AHEAD IN INDIANA (wow!) and within 1-2 points of McCain in North Carolina, Alaska and Georgia. Each and every one of these states was solid Bush in 2004. Now they are either leaning Obama or effectively tied.

but I don't care right now.

I just received one of those awful Republican & racist themed crappy chain emails from a person that I love & cherish dearly, my favorite aunt. This email was also sent to several family members, friends & strangers to me.

After I had read it and the steam stopped coming out of my ears, I hastily fingered out (I admit it ... I can't type, but I could compete in the world's fastest one finger typist competition) response & then hit the "reply all" button.

going on regarding what politicians and other people have been saying about this current flooding and what they said after the federal flood about New Orleans and those it impacted. I was cynical enough and had had my suspicions as I noticed that something was missing.

To wit: Nobody, even though some of the currently-affected communities along the Mississippi which had also been affected in the flooding of 1993 have been flooded again, has been telling the folks in these communities that they should not rebuild......

Now that I have your attention, there’s a 20th Century story I’d like to tell that may assist those coping with flooding disasters in the 21st Century. The title of the diary refers to a promise citizens of Dayton, Ohio made to themselves while trapped by floodwaters in the tops of their homes.

I've posted some of this information in comments to diaries related to the current flooding situation in Iowa. But I thought it important to put it all together so anyone interested in how a community might protect itself from flooding could explore an option that doesn't include being completely dependent upon the Federal government.

I sure hope McCain isn't paying his staff much money cause man do they stink at their job.  Granted they have a tough job of making McCain look young, hip, smart, energetic, enthusiastic, smart, oops said that one already...

This camp can’t go a single day without falling on their face, flip-flopping on an issue, or just saying something so stupid it hurts to read.

cross posted on my site OurHispanicVoices.com

...and spent a few months hanging around with friends in Iowa City, back when I was a kid. Thus, the recent flooding has been heavy on my mind...