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.
Reversing course from a policy put in place under the Bush administration, same-sex couples will be counted as married in the upcoming 2010 census.
It was announced last summer that because the federal government could not legally recongnize same-sex marriages, same-sex couples would go uncounted. But last week, the new administration of President Barack Obama announced that DOMA did not prohibit information gathering, and thus, the couples would be included in the survey.
From the Associated Press:
One issue is that some same-sex couples in civil unions or domestic partnerships already identified themselves as husbands or wives, both in the 2000 census and in the annual American Community Survey that the bureau produces each year. So the bureau needs to figure out a way either to separate those couples from legally married couples in the next census, or to create a new designation to capture both groups. …
… Currently, if two people of the same gender in one household check “husband,” the data is rejected by the tabulation software for the American Community Survey and not included in the published information.
Since the last Census in 2000, Iowa, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire have legalized same-sex marriage.
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