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.
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The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Republican gubernatorial hopeful Terry Branstad addressed the idea that President Barack Obama is a Muslim on Monday in an interview with The Des Moines Register, saying “I take the president at his word that he’s a Christian.”
Branstad, who discussed his own interfaith heritage (his mother was Jewish), declined to comment directly on statements made by Republican National Committee member Kim Lehman, who said first on her Twitter account and then in several interviews that she believes Obama is secretly a Muslim and that he admitted it in a speech he delivered in Egypt.
But Branstad’s quote about taking the president at his word, which was buried at the bottom of The Register’s Tuesday story, is almost identical to U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s statement on NBC’s Meet The Press that raised eyebrows among those who felt it was intentionally cagey. Several commentators believe it was an attempt to avoid controversy while still appealing to those who doubt the president’s Christian faith.
On his influential blog for Politico, Mike Allen titled a blurb about McConnell’s quote, “SIREN — OR SHOULD WE SAY ‘DOG WHISTLE?’” Jonathan Chait of The New Republic said McConnell’s words were a way of “putatively siding with the truth so that he can’t be pilloried by the media, while subtly suggesting that he is open to the views of Americans who think Obama is Muslim.”
John Dickerson at Slate said, “What you didn’t hear McConnell say was that the whole notion that Obama is a Muslim is ridiculous because by any standard we use to evaluate the religious beliefs of our leaders, President Obama is a Christian. Nor did he go on to say that any politician who tries to benefit from this urban legend—by courting either Islamophobes or conspiracy nuts who think Obama is engaged in some kind of systematic deception—should be ashamed of himself.”
And Sam Stein at the Huffington Post said McConnell’s words, “not only invited the type of skeptical coverage he received Sunday morning but will further spur claims that the GOP doesn’t mind having this image of Obama spread.”
Defending McConnell’s choice of words, Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review said if he were asked the same question as McConnell, “I would have given a very similar answer, and I think many other Christians would too.”
A recent Pew poll found that a third of Republicans incorrectly think Obama is a Muslim. Branstad’s campaign did not respond to a request for further comment.
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