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.
Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty will reportedly sit down next month with The Family Leader, a social conservative organization that includes the Iowa Family Policy Center, The Des Moines Register reports Tuesday.
The group is hoping to make these sit downs with potential 2012 hopefuls a regular occurrence in order to “expose our base of supporters to potential presidential candidates,” Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of The Family Leader, told the Register. Pawlenty is widely expected to make a run for the Republican presidential nomination.
In addition to being an influential voice in Iowa’s social conservative movement, The Family Leader is also no stranger to controversy. In the past, the group has publicly argued that homosexual activity is “more dangerous for individuals who engage in it than is smoking,” and because Iowa lawmakers won’t pass an amendment ending legalized same-sex marriage, there will be “dramatically higher rates of HIV and syphilis in Iowa.”
And as the LGBT blog Good As You pointed out last week, The Family Leader is providing a seminar to churches around the state designed to help teach pastors about the “second-hand effects” of homosexuality, with lessons like “gay sex kills,” “homosexuality is not hardwired,” and “the public health crisis of same-sex activity.”
Chuck Hurley, president of Iowa Family Policy Center, argued last year that any religious leader who supports legalized same-sex marriage is “confused at best and blatantly evil at worst.” Later, while campaigning for the ouster of three Iowa Supreme Court judges who joined in the unanimous decision that legalized same-sex marriage, Hurley said the state needs laws that outlaw homosexual acts.
“Sodomy was called a crime against nature for centuries,” he told Radio Iowa’s O.Kay Henderson this week.
Danny Carroll, another prominent member of The Family Leader, argued over the weekend that same-sex marriage would likely lead to “multiple arrangements (polygamy), or marriage will lose all significance.” It’s an argument made by Bob Vander Plaats shortly before the judicial retention election.
“In their own opinion they discriminated against people who want to be polygamous,” Vander Plaats said at a forum hosted by Simpson College and The Iowa Independent. “They discriminate against people who want to be bisexual – one man, one woman. They discriminate, in their own opinion, against someone who wants to marry their own child.”
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