Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
With the Iowa Supreme Court set to hand down a ruling that could overturn Iowa’s ban on same-sex marriage, opponents have already begun to mobilize for what they expect to be a difficult process to amend the state’s constitution to define marriage as a union of one man and one woman. But events this week remind us that not every constitutional amendment requires a hard-fought battle.In Iowa, amending the constitution requires an amendment to pass both chambers of the legislature in two different general assemblies, and then it has to win the support of Iowa voters on a general election ballot. Many other states require only the last step — a ballot initiative — before an amendment is written into the constitution.
Iowa social conservatives have attempted to introduce a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage for several years, but Democrats have successfully blocked it from coming up for a full vote. Supporters of same-sex marriage rights say that Iowa’s relatively difficult amendment process helps ensure that, if the Supreme Court issues a ruling that is favorable to same-sex couples, a constitutional amendment that would reverse the ruling would take years to write into law.
But not every constitutional amendment becomes such a political hot potato, and some constitutional amendments move forward with almost no controversy attached.
Just this week, a proposed amendment that would devote a portion of a future sales tax increase to natural resources projects received its second round of approval from the state legislature, winning by wide margins in both the House and Senate. In 2010, it will be on the general election ballot for voters to approve.
And just last year, Iowans approved the so-called “idiot” amendment, which removes the word “idiot” from the state constitution’s voter eligibility requirements. That may not have been the most cleanly executed example of passing a constitutional amendment in Iowa, but the actual amendment did not spark much controversy.
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