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.
The U.S. House’s version of the defense bill has a provision that could jeopardize a hard-won effort to repeal the military’s ban on open gay service: a second engine for the F-35 fighter jet. Obama has publicly threatened to veto the bill because of the engine, and he has the backing of his defense secretary, Robert Gates.
But U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is an opponent of the provision in the bill to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and a supporter of the engine. In an interview with The Cable’s Josh Roin, he basically laughed off the veto threat.
He also linked the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to the administration’s fight to end development of a second engine model for the F-35 fighter plane. Obama and Gates have promised to veto Skelton’s defense policy bill if Congress insists on adding more than $400 million for the engine, which the military says it doesn’t need.
If Obama wants to repeal the law, he won’t want to follow through on his very clear threat to veto the bill over the fighter engine, Skelton suggested.
“It’s rather interesting, because there’s an item in the bill called ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ that the president thinks keenly strong about. Now will he veto a bill that has that in it?,” Skelton wondered aloud. “I’m sure that goes through the creases of his mind.”
Now, the Senate version of the bill doesn’t contain funding for the second engine of the plane. So the magic of the House-Senate conference could bring the bill to Obama’s desk without anything veto-provoking within it.
But that doesn’t answer the political calculation that Skelton is raising. If the bill comes to Obama’s desk with the engine money in it, what’s the priority? Keeping a promise to the gay community or keeping a promise to his defense secretary?
Meanwhile, here’s Rogin’s account of just why exactly Skelton opposed placing a repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the defense bill. Was it to preserve Secretary Gates’ timetable for receiving the perspective of a Working Group he convened on how to repeal the ban before any legislative action, as many of the provision’s opponents desired? Apparently not:
“What do mommas and daddies say to a seven-year-old child about this issue? I don’t know,” Skelton said. “I think it would be a family issue that would concern me the most. … What they might see in their discussions among the kids.”
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