The worst kept secret in town is that the Republican Party of Iowa will have a new Chairman by the close of business Saturday when the State Central Committee meets in Des Moines this weekend.

Ray Hoffmann, the current Chairman, is rumored to be resigning or retiring from his position. Hoffmann has served on the State Central Committee for a number of years and is in the middle of his second two year term as Chairman. Astute observers have noticed that Hoffmann has had limited presence during the media frenzy of the Iowa Straw Poll and Caucuses and think that it was an indication that he has either has checked out or on his way out as Chairman.

To my knowledge there are three active candidates running to fulfill the time remaining on Hoffmann’s term: Ted Sporer, Dave Jamison, and Stew Iverson.

Ted Sporer is currently the Chairman of the Polk County Republican Party, Iowa’s largest county. He also has been a fixture on the State Central Committee for a number of years which can be a seen as a weakness or strength. Sporer is like a like a fly who has been locked in a dark closet deprived of light, and the media is his bug zapper. Sporer is always willing to zing a Democrat, which always makes him a good interview.

Sporer’s chances of being elected: Slim

Dave Jamison is the Treasurer of Story County. Jamison has served on the State Central Committee, and also heads an organization of county elected officials. Jamison resigned for the State Central Committee this past summer and has been replaced with fellow Story County resident, Matt Randall. On a personal note I find it hard to believe that the State Central Committee would elect Jamison chair after resigning just a few months ago. It just doesn’t make any sense to me.

Jamison’s chances of being elected: Poor

Stew Iverson is the former Majority Leader of the Iowa State Senate. After the 2004 elections the Control of the State Senate was split 25-25. He was ousted as Republican Leader in the fall of 2006 and replaced by Mary Lundby. The Lundby led Senate lost 5 additional seats giving the Democrats a 30 to 20 advantage in the Senate.

Iverson is normally seen as a victim. While he is not perfect, he does know how the legislature works, and how to raise money. He is also someone who would probably add instant credibility if elected.

Iverson’s chances of being elected: Good

While it is easy to focus on who the next chair could be, I’m actually more interested in discussing what skill sets the above candidates can bring to the State Party. Sporer brings a boxer’s mentality who wants to go in to battle with the Democrats. Jamison brings a focus to the county level elections which some think our party is lacking, and Iverson brings knowledge of legislative issues and personalities, as well as some ties to the fundraising community. By the end of the day I think he has the votes needed.

The other question that deserves some thought is what other changes will the new Chairman make at the Party?

Looking for other views on this subject? Check out Grant Young or Don McDowell.

There’s another very interesting article in the Register today, this time dealing with the Iowa Lottery’s refusal to cooperate and turn over records to the state Ombudsperson’s office after concerns arose about potential fraud taking place in the lottery system.

It seems that there has been some convenience store clerks who have mysteriously won lottery prizes numerous times over a relatively short period of time. The Register outlines some ways this could very easily happen.

I think it’s utterly ridiculous that the Iowa Lottery is refusing to cooperate with this investigation. Innocent people/agencies/organizations don’t have anything to hide. I also find their reasons for withholding the requested records ridiculous. Such reasons include:

1. The Ombudsman’s investigator would get certain access codes that would allow him to rig the lottery in his favor (oh really, you mean like the codes that convenience store employees have, which is part of the problem that needs to be investigated?)

2. The Ombudsman’s office doesn’t have jurisdiction to request said records (huh… I guess the lottery staff are legal experts now. Shouldn’t they want to help make sure everything is on the up and up?)

3. The Lottery is concerned about the cost of the investigation for taxpayers (and yet they weren’t so concerned during the Touchplay fiasco when taxpayers were getting stuck with the bill to settle the lawsuit brought on by the Lottery’s greedy Touchplay excursion).

I hope the legislators stick to their guns and find out what the Lottery is trying to hide.

So, according to the Register, there was a bit of a ruckus today at the Capitol when five Republican legislators passed out copies of a book that claims global warming is a natural, cyclical phenomenon that isn’t necessarily caused by humans. The rabble-rousing culprits were Reps. Dwayne Alons of Hull, Ralph Watts of Adel, Chuck Soderberg of Le Mars and Jamie Van Fossen of Davenport and Sen. Jerry Behn of Boone.The book is entitled, “Unstoppable Global Warming - Every 1,500 Years” and is authored by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery.

The Register says without attribution, “Most scientists generally agree that global warming is a real phenomenon caused largely by human pollution. Scientists say it threatens thousands of species of animals and they predict continued melting of polar ice caps and flooding of coastal regions that could displace millions of families throughout the world.”

But is this true? Well, if you’ve heard Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth,” you probably think so. But when I read this, I was reminded of an ABC News 20/20 story by John Stossel I saw a few months back, and I was able to find the written version of it on the 20/20 website.

I specifically remembered Stossel sitting down with a group of 4 well-known scientists who took issue with Al Gore’s statements that the debate on global warming is “over.” Stossel reports:

I interviewed some scientists who say the debate is by no means over. John Christy and Roy Spencer won NASA's Medal for Exceptional Achievement for figuring out how to get temperature data from satellites.

"We all agree that it's warmed," Spencer said. "The big question is, and the thing we dispute is, is it because of mankind?"

Climate changes, they say, always has, with or without man. Early last century, even without today's huge output of carbon dioxide, the Arctic went through a warming period.

These scientists also had harsh criticism for the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). According to the 20/20 piece, this is the group that won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Al Gore. Some of the scientists interviewed by Stossel had worked with this group in the early stages of its report. These scientists point out that most people in the group are not even scientists, but rather environmental activists appointed by various governments.

When the IPCC report came out, it included the names of all members of the commission. The problems was, some of those members, including Stossel’s interview subjects, did not agree with the findings and resigned from the commission. One in particular discussed the fact that, despite his resignation, he was still listed as a “contributing author” of the report, and had to sue to get his name removed from the report.

Here’s the kicker, despite these scientists’ lengthy resumes and achievements, the pro-global warming crowd resorts to insults when these people don’t agree with them. Here’s how Stossel puts it:

Those who call [the global warming believers’] extreme projections into question are compared with Holocaust deniers and accused of being paid off by big business. I've questioned the extreme global warming predictions in the past, and for that I've been branded a "corporate toadie" and a "flat-earther." I don't mind being called names, but is this what the global warming debate has come to? One side saying, "Shut up. Dissent should not be heard?"

The truth is, that while everyone agrees that the earth has warmed, lots of good scientists don't agree that it's mostly our fault, and don't agree that it's going to be a catastrophe. So when Gore says, "The debate is over," I say, "Give Me a Break!"

Let's hope the Democrats quoted in the Resister don't take a "Shut up... dissent should not be heard" attitude. If they do, they just might miss the truth in the process.

By Emily Geiger

Today, there was a Sanctity of Life rally on the west steps of the Capitol Building. It’s a memorial remembering the 35^th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

I’ve seen numerous blog posts on the “pro-choice” side of this issue today. One in particular caught my eye. It’s a story about a woman who was helped by an abortion clinic counselor stand up to pressure from her family and fiancé who wanted to have an abortion and told her she had a choice, and she could have the baby if she wanted, which she did.

This is in stark contrast to every other story I’ve heard on this topic. I’ve heard many women who have had abortions speak, and they always say they were never told the truth. They weren’t told about options other than abortion. They were told that the baby was really just a blob of tissue. They were not told that their baby had a heartbeat at 18 days after conception. They were not told that they would hear their babies being torn apart, or that they would smell the chemicals burning their baby’s flesh. They were not told about the guilt and the psychological trauma that the majority of woman who have abortions suffer for the rest of their lives.

As much as I care about this issue, having been fortunate enough to have led what many consider to be a sheltered life,  I can’t talk from personal experience about what abortion really does to women. But, the other day on the radio, I heard a speech from a woman who has been in this situation. She was speaking at a Prayer for Life rally two years ago, and what she said literally left me sobbing as I was driving down the road. If you want to listen, you can find the speech within the podcast found at this website (labeled “2^nd Annual Sanctity of Life Show”). The entire podcast is worth listening to, but the most powerful part comes in the last 10 minutes. Maybe you don’t want to listen to this, but you need to listen to it.

For those of you too lazy to take some time and listen, here’s a transcript that tells the truth about abortion and abortion providers from someone who has been there.

My name is Jennifer. I’m going to talk briefly about an experience I had with the morning after pill, but I also want to talk about what happened to me when I had my abortion.

I used to be pro-choice until I suffered the consequences and realized that it’s actually a poor choice. I was lied to and I believed that abortion was completely safe, that it was safer than giving birth to a baby at nine months.

When I was 15, I had an accident because I was not making mature decisions, and I was having sex before I should have. And I went down to Planned Parenthood thinking that they would help me [by] giving me the morning-after pill. And, when I got there, they proceeded to give me the pills, and when I got home, they told me to take the rest of the pills. When I proceeded to take the rest of the pills, I had a reaction 30 minutes later and ended up in my bathroom vomiting and bleeding so much that I couldn’t even keep my eyes open. I started screaming for my mom, and I fainted on the bathroom floor.

My mom came downstairs and found me passed out in my own blood and vomit and did not know what to do for me because no one had told her that I had taken the morning-after pill. If I had not come to, she would have never known to be able to tell the emergency staff what had happened to me to be able to save my life.

Then, when I turned 18, because I was still making bad choices, I became pregnant. This time I decided I wanted to have the baby. I did not want to give up the baby. I did not want to have the morning-after pill, and I did not want to have an abortion.  My boyfriend told me that, if I did not have an abortion, he would not stay with me, and that I would not have a place to live.

When I got down to Planned Parenthood, they went ahead and went through with the procedure. They did not tell me what it would be like. If I had nothing to be ashamed of, why didn’t they tell me the truth? I wanted to know what I was doing. My child had feet and hands. Why does Planned Parenthood think that they can change word from baby to fetus, and it is no longer murder?

Planned Parenthood lies. They are not there to help young women. They separate a young woman from her parents, and a baby from its mother. I am ashamed to say, I laid on a table and allowed a stranger to rip part of my soul out of my body. This was not what I wanted. This was not a sane choice I made. I went through with it, and they sent me home on a birth control shot. They did not set me up for a two-week check-up. I was told if I began hemorrhaging, I should go to the emergency room, not come back to Planned Parenthood.

So I began cramping. For two weeks, I cramped and did not stop bleeding. I went to Planned Parenthood and told them something was wrong. They told me it was normal and that I should go back home and keep taking my pain medication. I went home, and that night I awoke at two in the morning with tremendous pain. I went into my boyfriend’s mom’s room and stood with a blood-soaked towel in between my legs. All I could say was that something was wrong.

She rushed me to the ER, and they did an unltrasound and said that part of the tissue was left in my cervix. My cervix did not clamp shut completely, and there was an infection. A doctor, a real doctor, did an emergency D&C, and I was in the hospital for two days on IV medication to try and get rid of the infection that I had in my cervix.

I was left with severe scar tissue on my cervix. I went on to find out six months later I had cervical cancer cells on my cervix, and I should not have been on birth control without a pap smear, which Planned Parenthood did not ever do before putting me on the birth control shot.

I had a miscarriage a year later when I chose to get pregnant. I had a hard labor with my son when I finally did have a baby because my cervix would not dilate normal[ly] from all the scar tissue.

I can tell you of all the physical scars I have from this abortion, but none of it compares to the gut-wrenching, sick feeling I carry in my soul. The pain is so deep, it may never heal. I would give anything for those nine months. I would gladly share my life and my body with my child for nine months.

I can still see my child. I carry the pain in my soul, and I will carry it for the rest of my life. I still have visions of what my baby would be. She runs and she plays in my dreams. She has curly blond hair and beautiful blue eyes. Something needs to change for the women that will never look into their child’s eyes and fall in love… For the child that will never take his first step into his mother’s arms… for the woman who will never hear the word, Mama, because an abortion left her barren.

There are no planned parents that come out of Planned Parenthood, only empty arms and cradles.

Here is what Roe v. Wade has done in our country:

50 million dead babies.

86% of abortions are done for matters of personal convenience.

Less than 2% are done because the life of the mother is at stake.

Less than 1% are done because of rape or incest.

With the Super Bowl on February 3^rd, just 2 days before Super Bowl of American Politics on February 5^th, I’m wonder if any of the Presidential candidates will run Super Bowl Ads? Now, I’ll admit I’m not an expert on media placement, or if ad space is even still available, but the idea has been bouncing around my head for weeks so I thought I’d share it with all of you.

First and foremost the cost of running a Super Bowl ad will make every campaign cringe as 30 second ads went for 2.6 million bucks last year. The trick to pull off a political ad for the Super Bowl is to make it memorable, something people will talk about the day after the game, which would generate a ton of web traffic. The worst thing you could do is run a normal political ad. At the very least a campaign would need to run a Bill Richardson job interview ad, but even that wouldn’t do it in my opinion.

I was going to write much more on this subject but I see the AP has already beaten me to the punch.