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.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal (D-Council Bluffs) will face a battle to be re-elected in 2012, conservative activist Bob Vander Plaats speculated Tuesday night, but has not decided if his group, The Family Leader, will lead the charge to ensure the Leader does not return to the state Capitol.
“I think Sen. Gronstal has huge re-election battle,” he said, adding that “a lot of senators will. Any time you suppress the voice of the people as they have, there are consequences.”
Vander Plaats, a three-time gubernatorial hopeful, that led a campaign in 2009 and 2010, predominantly funded by out-of-state and anti-gay rights religious groups, to oust three Iowa Supreme Court Justices — Chief Justice Marsha Ternus, and Justices David Baker and Michael Streit — from the bench in the 2010 election. The trio were part of a unanimous 2009 decision, Varnum v. Brien, that struck down a legislative ban on same-sex marriage as a violation of the state’s equal protection clause.
The future of marriage and judicial retention was the topic of an Iowa Public Television program, “Iowa’s Marriage Battleground,” which aired Tuesday night and will again at 7 p.m. tonight. As marriage is debated in New York, the Hawkeye State and the Varnum decision has once again been thrust into the spotlight.
Vander Plaats was one of four panelists on the program, which also included Tamara Scott, the head of the Iowa branch of Concerned Women for America, Iowa Sen. Matt McCoy (D-Des Moines) and Connie Ryan Terrell, executive director of the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa and board member of Justice Not Politics.
McCoy, a long time state politician, is openly gay.
“Every loving couple has the right to get a marriage license,” he said Tuesday on the program.
McCoy and Ryan Terrell also opposed claims from Vander Plaats that the Iowa Supreme Court overstepped its bounds when it unanimously upheld gay marriage. The decision gained national attention, and also incited movements to overturn the law or to allow state residents to decide by popular vote.
“Their decision was correct and consistent with Iowa history on civil rights,” McCoy pointed out, referring to 19th-century legal decisions rejecting slavery in Iowa. “To say we have not heard from Iowans on both sides would be untrue. We are in a position today where we’re pretty satisfied that both sides have been heard.”
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