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.
One of the so-called “Gitmo Nine” Justice Department lawyers facing scrutiny from Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is man named Tony West.
West, the associate attorney general for the civil division of Justice, defended John Walker Lindh, the California rich kid sentenced to 20 years back in 2002 for aiding the Taliban. You can learn about West’s connections to Lindh by simply Googling him.
Grassley was just quoted by CNN saying that he isn’t attacking anyone’s patriotism, he just wants disclosure since he says the Justice Department won’t divulge the names of the nine Justice Department lawyers who directly represented suspected-terrorist detainees. But when West went before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 10, 2009, for his confirmation hearing — a committee on which both Sessions and Grassley sit — neither of them so much as asked West a single question, let alone a question about representing Lindh. (The transcript of the hearing is on Nexis, which is where I found it.)
Again: It’s barely even due diligence to find West’s representation of Lindh. Here’s a livechat West did with The Washington Post about the case in 2002. The very first sentence of his National Journal profile mentions Lindh. And yet, given the chance to ask West about precisely the issue that so concerns Grassley and Sessions now, both refused to ask.
As Adam Serwer at the American Prospect noted Thursday, both Grassley and Sessions voted to confirm West, a man they now intimate is disloyal to the country he serves.
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