The scandal surrounding the Iowa's film-tax-credit program was a hot topic at a meeting this week of the legislature's Government Oversight Committee, with lawmakers and the media eager to get answers but leadership saying committee discussion now could impede the investigation.

"If the leadership was different, we'd be taking it up today," said Representative Ralph Watts (R-Adel).

Representative Vicki Lensing (D-Iowa City), co-chair of the Government Oversight Committee, said this isn't a political issue and agreed that the panel has a responsibility to taxpayers and the legislature to find out what happened.

America is starting to pay too great a price for the increased security since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and anger has become too much a part of public life, retired General Colin Powell said at a motivational seminar Thursday attended by approximately 15,000 people in downtown Des Moines.

"We are starting to pay too much for our security," said Powell, a four-star general, former U.S. secretary of state, and former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Foreign students who normally come to our universities are not coming. It's too hard to get a visa ... so we are losing this contact with the rest of the world. We are losing money, also."

With passage of two Farm Bills behind him and the nation in the midst of a debate over health-care reform, U.S. Senator Tom Harkin's decision to give up his chairmanship of the Senate Agriculture Committee disappointed but didn't surprise Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey.

"While there are still issues in front of the ag committee, it's not the same as if there's another Farm Bill just around the corner," Northey said in an interview with IowaPolitics.com. "With all the action on health care right now, I would certainly understand why he'd look to be involved over there."

Harkin this week gave up his ag chairmanship to instead lead the Senate Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions (HELP) Committee.

Democrat Curt Hanson defeated Republican Stephen Burgmeier by 107 votes Tuesday in a special election for Iowa House District 90, according to unofficial results from the Iowa secretary of state.

Hanson tallied 48.9 percent of the votes to Burgmeier's 47.5 percent, allowing Democrats to retain their 56-44 majority in the Iowa House. Hanson replaces Representative John Whitaker (D-Hillsboro), who resigned to serve as state executive director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency.

The Iowa Racing & Gaming Commission will not promote a new casino in Polk County - or anywhere else - but will move forward with plans to hear proposals from five other counties whose voters have approved new gaming facilities, commission members said Thursday.

"We owe it to those five counties to give them the best shot and the best look and that's how we will proceed," said Commission Chair Greg Seyfer at a meeting at the Riverside Casino & Golf Resort.

Commissioner Kate Cutler added that it's not the board's role to encourage communities to apply for new gaming licenses. "We're not going to promote additional applications," she said. "That issue should be put to rest."