Former Republican Governor Terry Branstad raised $1.55 million in the two and a half months after the start of his campaign and had $1.36 million left at the end of the year, while Democratic Governor Chet Culver raised $2.15 million in the past 12 months and ended the year with $2.59 million in his campaign chest.

"These fundraising numbers posted by the two governors forebode a very vigorous and spirited statewide campaign ahead," observed Pete Jeffries, senior counsel for Republican Jim Nussle's 2006 gubernatorial campaign.

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." - James Madison

Over the course of his first year in office, Barack Obama has shown himself to be a skillful and savvy politician, saying the things Americans want to hear while stealthily and inexorably moving forward the government's agenda of centralized power. For example, in one breath, Obama pays lip service to the need for greater transparency in government, while in another, he issues an executive order that will result in even more government secrecy.

He is aided in this Machiavellian mindset by a trusting populace inclined to take him at his word and a mainstream media seemingly loath to criticize him or scrutinize his actions too closely. A perfect example of this is the media's relative lack of scrutiny over Obama's recent transformation of Executive Order (EO) 12425 from a document that constitutionally limits the domestic activities of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) to one that establishes it as an autonomous police agency within the U.S.

Iowa is likely to retain its first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses in 2012, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller -- a member of the Democratic Change Commission -- announced following the December 30 report of the commission.

The 2012 Iowa caucuses will be held in early February 2012, along with caucuses or primaries of Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, Miller said at a Statehouse news conference.

"A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls -- with no principles, rules, or theories to define either. Since the introduction of controls necessitates and leads to further controls, it is an unstable, explosive mixture which, ultimately, has to repeal the controls or collapse into dictatorship." -- Ayn Rand, "The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus," 1965

The Republicans, it seems, often cannot do anything right -- and, now, we are hearing that directly from the mouth of no less an authority than the chair of the Republican National Committee himself. Michael Steele, in his new book Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda, is convinced that Republicans have "screwed up" for the most part since Ronald Reagan was president.

Well, there's certainly no doubt of that. From Bush Senior's violation of his now-famous "Read my lips: no new taxes" pledge to Bush Junior's bogus "weapons of mass destruction" invasion of Iraq, the Republicans have presided over, and been directly responsible for, some of the most explosive and imperialistic growth of government in history -- while, it should be added, enjoying a majority in both houses of Congress from 2003 through 2007.