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.
Last night, sandwiched between the Democratic and Republican presidential debates in New Hampshire, CNN hosted the “Sojourners Presidential Forum” on the campus of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The forum, organized by the Rev. Jim Wallis, was broadcast as a part of CNN’s “The Situation Room.” Jim Wallis is the author of “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong, and the Left Doesn’t Get It,” and the head of the Sojourners Social Justice Ministry.
John Edwards, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were invited to share their thoughts on religion, faith and politics. The forum was moderated by CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien, and each candidate was given exactly 15 minutes to respond to questions from a panel of religious leaders.
In his book and work as an activist, Wallis argues that faith and politics are interchangeable and this relationship shouldn’t be simultaneously exploited and ignored in public political discourse and subsequent action. Wallis’ goal is to make both the religious communities and the government more accountable to key values espoused by Jesus, yet neglected and/or ignored in the public and political discourse. For example, poverty is mentioned thousands of times in the Bible, but, as Wallis pointed out at during the forum, was not brought up once in last night’s Democratic debate.The following are excerpted highlights from the forum:
John Edwards on Gay Marriage
O’BRIEN: Do you think homosexuals have the right to be married?
EDWARDS: No. Not personally. Now you’re asking about me personally. But I think there’s a difference between my belief system and what the responsibilities of the president of the United States are. It is the reason we have separation of church and state. And there are very good people, including some people that I’m very close to me, my daughter who is sitting in the front row here tonight, feels very differently about this issue. And I have huge respect for those who have a different view about this.
So I think we have to be very careful about ensuring that the president of the United States is not using his belief system and imposing that belief system on the rest of the country
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