(Radio Iowa) – A group of national Democratic Party officials are discussing a plan that would dislodge Iowa’s Democratic Caucuses as the first event in the 2024 presidential nominating process. The Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee met Saturday. Panel member Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, says there’s “nothing written in stone” that says Iowa’s Caucuses and New Hampshire’s Primary should be first and she says no one who set up the current system in 1972 expected the two lead-off states to winnow the field of potential candidates. “The beginning is important, right? The early states are important,” she said. “…I think this will be a topic of rich discussion and we can start from scratch.”

Delaware Democrat Molly Magarik says the pages and pages of rules for how a caucus should be run aren’t welcoming to would-be voters. “Obviously there’s a lot of nostalgia and there’s a lot of: ‘This is how we do things,'” Magarik said. “…A caucus is incredibly intimidating to people.” Mo Elleithee, head of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics, experienced Iowa’s Caucuses as the traveling press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign. As a member of the D-N-C’s Rules panel, he’s urging the party to make sure the first set of early states hold primaries, represent the diversity of voices in the Democratic Party and will be battleground states in the General Election. “In my opinion and I’m sure we’re going to be talking about this more, three of the four current ‘early window’ states satisfy at least two of those criteria. One does not satisfy any of them,” he says, “at least in recent years.”

Iowa was considered a swing state in the first four presidential elections of this century, but not in 2016 or 2020. In a written statement, the Iowa Democratic Party’s chairman said Iowa plays an important role in the presidential nominating process and he will continue to fight for Iowa’s Democratic Caucuses to remain first. The chairman of the Iowa REPUBLICAN Party says he’s been assured by national party leaders that Iowa’s Caucuses will be the first event on the G-O-P’s 2024 presidential nominating calendar.

Davenport, Iowa – Authorities in Iowa says a former Fairfield man, 23-year-old Auston Jacobus Hummell, was sentenced January 26th to serve to 190 months (15.8-years) in prison, for Receipt and Distribution of Child Pornography. Following his prison term, Hummell was ordered to serve ten years of supervised release as well as pay $3,000 to each of his eleven victims – for a total of $33,000. He was also ordered to pay a $100 Special Assessment fee.

According to court documents, the investigation into Hummell’s activities began when the Mount Pleasant Police Department received a CyberTip from the Iowa Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. The CyberTip indicated files containing child pornography were uploaded from specific IP addresses and those IP addresses traced back to Hummell. After liaising with Kahoka Police Department in Kahoka, Missouri, a search warrant was issued for Hummell’s known residence and numerous electronic devices were seized. The devices contained over 120,000 images and videos containing child pornography. On June 21, 2021, Hummell pleaded guilty to the charge.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mount Pleasant Police Department, Kahoka Police Department, and the Iowa Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force investigated the case, which was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa as part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s “Project Safe Childhood” initiative, which was started in 2006 as a nation-wide effort to combine law enforcement investigations and prosecutions, community action, and public awareness in order to reduce the incidence of sexual exploitation of children.

Any persons having knowledge of a child being sexually abused are encouraged to call the Iowa Sexual Abuse Hotline at 1-800-284-7821.

(Des Moines, Iowa) – Officials with the U-S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa said this past week, a 48-year-old Des Moines man known as “Solo,” was sentenced to slightly more than 34 years in prison on January 13th, on firearms charges. After a three-day trial, Kenny Eugene Smart was convicted of possessing a firearm as a felon and possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. Smart was found in possession of that gun during the execution of metro-wide search warrants in November 2020. He had been prohibited from possessing firearms because of prior convictions for an Iowa felony drug crime and a federal felony gun crime, for which he spent more than 15 years in prison.

Smart had just been released from prison in June 2020 and was on federal supervised release when he was found with a gun in November 2020. Smart qualified under the United States Sentencing Guidelines as an Armed Career Criminal and, due to the crimes for which he was convicted, faced a mandatory 20-year sentence.

At sentencing, a victim testified that she had been raped by Smart. The government presented evidence that Smart raped another victim during the six months he had been out of prison. In imposing sentence, United States District Court Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger characterized Smart’s gun possession as aggravating because he possessed guns to intimidate others and coerce at least one of his rape victims. She also considered Smart’s conduct after he was federally indicted, which included an attempt to have another person take responsibility for the gun and he threatened the family member of a trial witness.

Smart received a 360-month sentence for his gun crimes, to be served consecutively to a 54-month sentence for revocation of his federal supervised release.

His case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the Des Moines Police Department, the Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement, the Iowa Department Public Safety, and multiple other state and federal agencies

A traffic stop in Montgomery County at around 4-p.m., Friday, resulted in the arrest of a woman from Pottawattamie County. According to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, Deputies stopped a vehicle driven by 23-year-old Kelli Perkins, of Council Bluffs, at the intersection of Highway 34 and Ironwood Road. Perkins was subsequently arrested for Possession of Drug Paraphernalia. Her bond at the Montgomery County Jail, was set at $300.