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 judicial retention election that resulted in three Iowa Supreme Court justices being removed from the bench was one of the most important elections in the entire country, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said during an interview with Christian radio host Steve Deace. Huckabee went on to say that when courts get out of line, the president and Congress must step up to put them back in place.
Huckabee, who said he is seriously considering another run for president in 2012 but won’t decide officially until well into next year, will be in Iowa on Sunday addressing The Family Leader, a new incarnation of the Iowa Family Policy Center that is led by former Huckabee adviser Bob Vander Plaats.
Asked about the judicial retention election, which saw Vander Plaats lead the successful campaign to oust the judges, Huckabee said Iowans spoke loudly.
“ It was not because the judges didn’t campaign — people can come up with any excuse they want. It was because people are sick of one branch of government thinking it is more powerful than the other two put together,” Huckabee said.
The founders considered the judiciary the least powerful branch of government, Huckabee said, because “it was less directly representative of the people.”
Huckabee joins another potential 2012 presidential hopeful, Newt Gingrich, in support of the ouster. Earlier this week, Gingrich told The Des Moines Register that now that three justices were removed from the bench due to the 2009 ruling that legalized same-sex marriage, the remaining four should step down.
Later in the interview, Huckabee was asked what role the president could play in keeping the courts in check.
“A president has certainly got to respect a ruling of a court, but if a ruling of the court is wrong, and you have two branches of government that determine that it’s wrong, then those other two branches supercede the one,” he said, later adding that when the president and Congress disagree with the court, they can address it “by constitutional amendment or by passage of further amplification of law. There are many means to do that.”
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