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.
Eleven minutes after voting in favor of cloture on the Senate immigration bill, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback changed his mind—and his vote—to oppose cloture, MSNBC reported earlier today. Now it seems that the Brownback campaign has changed its mind again, this time on a press release it produced just days ago. On Tuesday, June 26, the campaign released a statement after Brownback voted in favor of cloture. The statement originally appeared here. It’s now gone, but was cached and can be seen here.
In a press release that still does exist, Brownback explained his vote today against cloture: “I became convinced along with many of my colleagues on the floor that this version of the immigration bill was not, and would not become the vehicle that would fix our broken system as I had hoped.”
Or perhaps he became convinced that if he continued to support the current immigration bill, he would continue to be hammered by conservatives and the other ’08 Republican hopefuls. Indeed, in a previous interview, Tamara Scott, a prominent Iowa social conservative and head of the Iowa chapter of Concerned Women for America, called Brownback “a solid senator [though] there does seem to be some concern with his immigration stance when I talk to people.”
Though his recent vote against cloture will please some conservatives, there is the potential that a) conservatives won’t believe Brownback’s commitment to the issue considering his lengthy support of the bill and b) that he will be seen as a flip-flopper, just another pandering politician. We'll see if conservatives are able to make up their minds.
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