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.
Speaking before about 25 people in Carroll Thursday, Democratic presidential candidate Christopher Dodd said the U.S. war in Iraq will have a generational impact.
“We send 19-year-olds to die and we ask 2-year-olds to pick up the tab,” Dodd said.
The Connecticut senator, who became a father later in life, showed reporters photos of his two young children as he elaborated on his comments to the crowd at the Carroll Moose Lodge.
Dodd, who sits in single digits in the polls in an otherwise celebrity-lighted field led nationally by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, made the case that Iowans are traditionally immune to the pull of polls, the lure of the famous.
With 11 offices and 80 staff people on the ground in Iowa, Dodd argues that he can still make a move before the Jan. 3 caucuses.
“I’ve got a lot of room for expectations,” Dodd said.
Some of Dodd’s strongest comments in the event came when he criticized Clinton, a U.S. senator from New York, for voting in favor of a measure that identifies the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.
Dodd said the measure, passed overwhelmingly in the U.S. Senate, but without his vote or that of Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., another presidential candidate, sets the table for a Bush administration military move into Iran. Dodd noted that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., missed that vote as he was campaigning in New Hampshire.
“There’s a third choice,” Dodd said. “Here I am. I voted right that day.”
Dodd expressed concern that some of the other Democratic candidates, including front-runner Clinton, were reluctant to pledge a pullout of Iraq by 2013 in a recent debate.
“Even President Bush hasn’t talked about 2013,” Dodd said.
Dodd said he is uneasy with a federalization plan for Iraq developed by his friend Biden. Dodd argues the United States should not be involved in deciding the political climate in Iraq, “taking out crayons” and drawing lines as the British did.
In more criticism of the Bush administration, Dodd said the United States does not strengthen itself by eliminating the rights of American citizens or others with wiretapping, secret prisons, torture and what he called the politicization of the Justice Department.
“I fundamentally reject that idea,” Dodd said.
Dodd, a former member of the Peace Corps, is calling for a national service program that, among other things, requires volunteer work for high school graduation.
A son of Thomas Dodd, a U.S. senator and American lawyer at the Nuremberg Nazi trials, Chris Dodd heard President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech live.
“He asked a generation of us to be involved in something larger than ourselves,” Dodd said.
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