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.
Ted Sporer, a Des Moines attorney and veteran GOP strategist, was so upset by a group of British protesters who last week criticized former prime minister Tony Blair that he used a derogatory slur against homosexuals to attack them.
However, Sporer says he was unaware that the term he used was considered an anti-gay slur.
On his Twitter account, Sporer called the protesters “pillow biters” who don’t live up to the legacy of British leadership.
The pillowbiters protesting the great Tony Blair aren’t fit to cumber the streets walked by either of the Churchills (John or Winston).
According to Urban Dictionary, the phrase “pillow biter” is “a slang and highly derogatory term for gay males. It was likely inspired by the notion that a male engaged in anal sex would be face-down into a pillow, biting into it.”
Sporer said he was not familiar with that definition of the phrase. He said he used the term to mean “one who cowers in their bed, chewing their pillow in the grip of mortal terror, rather than confront the intruder at the door. Put another way, it describes those who cannot choose fight over flight no matter how dire the threat or noble the cause.”
Those who take exception to his use of the term are further examples of “the thought police’s latest application of ‘Rules for Radicals’ and the suppression of competing thought,” he said.
Sporer served as chairman of the Polk County Republican Party from 2001 to 2009 and on the Republican Party of Iowa State Central Committee from 2002 to 2008. He is a regular guest on Steve Deace’s drive-time radio program and is occasionally still active in political campaigns, most recently as a public supporter of 3rd District Republican Congressional candidate Brad Zaun. He ran an unsuccessful campaign to become chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa in late 2008.
“Thank you for the opportunity to exercise my First Amendment rights so as to prevent an erroneous mis-attribution of poor motives or taste to my earlier description of the cowardly British anti-war movement,” Sporer said.
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