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.
Dave Leach, a Des Moines anti-abortion activist and confidant to the man convicted earlier this year of murdering a Kansas abortion provider, will be the Republican candidate for state Senate in district 31.
Leach will be running against Democratic incumbent Matt McCoy, the first openly gay member of the Iowa General Assembly. McCoy has served in the Senate since 1997. The Des Moines district has twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans.
Des Moines anti-abortion activist Dave Leach appears in one of a series of Web videos arguing that killing doctors who perform abortions is justified, and that judges should allow the theory to be argued in court.
Leach publishes a newsletter called “Prayer & Action News,” which advocates the doctrine of justifiable homicide in the case of abortion doctors. One of its contributors was Scott Roeder, the man convicted of murdering Kansas abortion provider George Tiller last year. After Roeder’s arrest, Leach told The Iowa Independent that while he will not “advocate” that anyone go out and kill someone who performs abortions, his “mind remains open on the question.”
Eventually, Leach drafted a legal brief on Roeder’s behalf, arguing that he killed Tiller in order to prevent future abortions. He even helped organize an online auction to assist in paying Roeder’s legal defense. Leach also redrafted a document called “Defensive Action Statement 3rd Edition,” which states the belief that juries should be allowed to rule on whether Roeder was justified in killing Tiller. The statement was signed by 21 anti-abortion activists, three of whom are serving prison sentences for actions against abortion providers.
The judge in the case ultimately ruled out Leach’s legal defense strategy, and Roeder was convicted of first-degree murder.
Since the conviction, Leach has kept in constant contact with Roeder, eventually releasing to the media a 10-minute interview he conducted with Roeder where he said he had no regrets for what he had done and little sympathy for the family of his victim.
Leach’s history of anti-abortion activism goes back more than a decade. In the mid-1990s, Leach’s association with the accused killer of a Florida abortion doctor helped persuade U.S. marshals to guard the Planned Parenthood clinic in Des Moines.
In the January 1996 issue of his newsletter, Leach published the Army of God manual, which advocates the killing of the providers of abortion and contains bomb-making instructions. Because of this, he was fired from his job as a writer for an Ankeny newspaper.
In 2002, he tried to air videotape of patients entering a local Planned Parenthood clinic on public-access cable TV. Mediacom Communications Corp. decided it would not allow him to air the footage.
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