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.
Don McDowell, communications aide to Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley, called me a few minutes ago to explain why he owns BranstadForGovernor.com. He says it has nothing to do with his boss, who is “aggressively exploring” a run for governor, or with former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who is also considering becoming a candidate.
McDowell says he buys and sells domain names at home in his spare time, and that’s all this was.
It’s a practice sometimes called “domain name speculation.” It’s somewhat common, though intellectual property lawyers have done a good job of going after folks for squatting on the wrong name in recent years, so it’s not as common as it used to be.
Here’s a written statement McDowell sent me:
The registration of this particular URL has nothing to do with Sen. Paul McKinley or his exploring of a run for governor of Iowa. Completely outside of my duties in the Senate Republican Leader’s Office on my own personal time, I sometimes buy and sell URLs as part of some outside consulting and online work that I do in my spare time. In no way did Senate Republican Leader Paul McKinley have anything to do with this purchase that I made awhile ago on my own time and with my own resources. There is absolutely zero correlation between my personal purchase of this URL and Senate Republican Leader Paul McKinley or my duties in his office.
I followed up by asking McDowell if he would sell the domain name to Branstad if he decides to run. He said he definitely would.
That means that if Branstad is running for governor, he’s even more behind online than I originally thought.
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