Organized labor is engaged in a furious multi-front legislative war in Illinois, and more skirmishes may be on the horizon.

Trade and industrial unions are hoping to mitigate major damage from proposed workers' compensation reforms. Teachers unions are trying to fend off what it considers to be some egregious education reforms. And public-employee unions are warily eyeing a potential new battle against a well-known foe that their counterparts in other states have had to face in the recent past. Looking at the battlefield right now, you'd probably never know that the Democrats held onto power in last month's elections.

Before Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, unleashed full-body-imaging scanners and "enhanced" pat-downs on American airline passengers, she subjected Arizona drivers to red-light cameras. In August 2008, Napolitano, then the governor of Arizona, instituted a statewide system of 200 fixed and mobile speed and red-light cameras, which were projected to bring in more than $120 million in annual revenue for the state. She was aided in this endeavor by the Australian corporation Redflex Traffic Systems.

Two years later, after widespread complaints that the cameras intrude on privacy and are primarily a money-making enterprise for the state (income actually fell short of the projections because people refused to pay their fines), Arizona put the brakes on the program. And while other states - including Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, West Virginia, and Wisconsin - have since followed suit, many more municipalities, suffering from budget crises, have succumbed to the promise of easy revenue and installed the cameras. (Davenport began using red-light cameras in 2004.) As the Washington Post notes: "A handful of cities used them a decade ago. Now they're in more than 400, spread across two dozen states. Montgomery County started out with 18 cameras in 2007. Now it has 119. Maryland just took the program statewide last month, and Prince George's is putting up 50. The District started out with a few red light cameras in 1999; now they send out as many automated tickets each year as they have residents, about 580,000."

Iowa Republicans hope that a nationally broadcast GOP presidential debate they've scheduled for August 11, 2011, in Ames will up the stakes for the Iowa Straw Poll two days later.

"We wanted to make sure it's bigger and better and more prominent than it's ever been before," Republican Party of Iowa chair Matt Strawn said Thursday in a conference call with reporters, less than an hour after announcing the two events.

The Iowa Straw Poll has historically been considered the critical first test of grassroots support for Republican presidential candidates in the first-in-the-nation caucus state.

However, the future of the Ames Republican straw poll was cast into doubt in June 2007 after former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Arizona Senator John McCain decided to skip the key event leading up to the caucus.

That's something the Iowa GOP hopes to avoid this time around.

Governor-elect Terry Branstad says budget cuts in the upcoming year will include reductions in the Iowa governor's office staff and security detail, and he will ask other state agencies to make similar cuts.

Branstad did not specify the number of positions that will be eliminated in his office, but said that he would have only one legislative liaison instead of two. He also said he would likely not fill some deputy-chief-of-staff positions. He said reducing his security detail will allow the state to put more state troopers on the road. He also said he'll lead by example with a goal of cutting the cost of state government by 15 percent over five years to align state spending with ongoing revenues.