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. Department of Justice filed its highly anticipated lawsuit against Arizona’s immigration law Tuesday, after months of criticism of the law from the White House and immigrant rights advocates.
The main thrust of the suit is that Arizona overstepped its bounds by enacting immigration legislation. Because immigration is already regulated under federal law, the suit alleges that Arizona’s decision to take the issue into its own hands violates the supremacy clause of the Constitution, which sets federal law as the “supreme law of the land,” and has been used to nullify state laws that run up against federal law.
The lawsuit argues that Arizona’s law hurts the federal government’s ability to meet its objectives in dealing with immigration:
S.B. 1070 pursues only one goal – “attrition” – and ignores the many other objectives that Congress has established for the federal immigration system. And even in pursuing attrition, S.B. 1070 disrupts federal enforcement priorities and resources that focus on aliens who pose a threat to national security or public safety. If allowed to go into effect, S.B. 1070’s mandatory enforcement scheme will conflict with and undermine the federal government’s careful balance of immigration enforcement priorities and objectives.
The suit also references “humanitarian concerns” such as “fear of persecution” and aid for the victims of national disasters in arguing that Congress “holds exclusive authority for establishing alien status categories and setting the conditions of aliens’ entry and continued presence.”
This method of argument may be frustrating for the 50 percent of Americans who think more needs to be done to curb illegal immigration. Obama’s push for immigration reform has no specific timetable and has not yet won Republican support. Frustrated with a lack of federal momentum, many states have decided to take up the issue.
If the Department of Justice is successful in shutting down the new Arizona law, it would be a major blow against state efforts to curb immigration. And they might have help from a case already on the Supreme Court docket: The Court decided last week to consider a different case on Arizona immigration law. In that case, the Chamber of Commerce is attempting to use a similar argument to overturn a 2007 Arizona law that punishes businesses for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling on that case in its next term.
Arizona’s SB 1070 is set to go into effect July 29, but the government is seeking an injunction to delay implementation until the case is resolved.
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