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.
An e-mail sent from a girl in Letts, Iowa, that described racial and often violent comments made by her classmates toward President-elect Barack Obama was printed this week by Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher.
Mitchell, who has been chronicling anti-Obama incidents, declined to publish the girl’s name or address.
“I’m not sure who to email on this, but there have been several derogatory things said about Obama in our school, and one of them got a student suspended. I go to a school in a little town called Letts, Iowa. We are pretty down home, country road farm kids out here. But never, in my 11 years at the school, have I ever heard the conversation take such a negative turn.
“The remark that the student was suspended for was this, ‘Well, it’s called the White House for a reason. We need to get that God damn N—– out of there.’
“There were other remarks, mostly by students who hunt. They were discussing how far a shotgun could shoot, and decided that they could get to a high enough vantage-point to shoot Obama from at least 2 miles away, without anyone ever knowing where the shot came from. ‘Another Kennedy’ they were saying.”
There are, unfortunately, more incidents documented in the column. Iowa Independent has not confirmed that a student was suspended in Letts, a community of roughly 400 people.
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