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.
Fred Phelps and members of the Westboro Baptist Church, a fundamentalist splinter group from Kansas that travels around the country staging hate-filled protests, will be in Des Moines on Saturday, and a local counter protest has been organized.
Ralph Siddall of Drake University’s Department for the Study of Culture and Society said the church is planning to protest his school’s law school symposium on same sex marriage. When his students heard this “they wanted to organize something to show their disgust with [the church's] beliefs. They put together a Facebook peaceful counter-protest, with confirmed guests now nearly 550.”
The group will also sell T-shirts and accept donations at the rally, with funds going to One Iowa, the state’s largest LGBT-rights group, and to the family of a Marine killed in Iraq who sued Phelp’s church for picketing the funeral and was ordered to pay the protesters’ court costs. Protesters will also be encouraged to donate a dollar every time church members “use hate speech, and/or for every sign they have using hate-speech.”
Phelps and his church are monitored as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center. The organization has 71 confirmed members, 60 of whom are related to Phelps. According the church’s Web site, they also have protests planned for two Des Moines synagogues where they plan to convey their message that “that God hates you for killing Jesus Christ.”
The counter protesters will meet at the Drake Law School, 2621 Carpenter Ave. in Des Moines, at 7 a.m.
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