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.
The convicted killer of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller tells a Des Moines activist that he has no regrets and has little sympathy for the family of his victim.
In a 10-minute interview with Des Moines anti-abortion activist Dave Leach, Scott Roeder says reports that he asked for God’s forgiveness shortly after shooting Tiller last year are incorrect.
Scott Roeder (mugshot)
“Obviously I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “So I would not have to ask forgiveness.”
Roeder was convicted Jan. 29 of shooting Tiller to death last May. He faces life in prison when sentenced on March 9.
In discussing his trial, Roeder was highly critical of those who sought to keep the issue of abortion out of the proceedings altogether, saying it was like asserting that the trial for abolitionist John Brown was not about slavery.
Two Des Moines talk radio hosts, Steve Deace and Jan Mickelson of WHO-AM, made similar comparisons shortly after Tiller’s murder.
“My beliefs were that the lives of unborn children were being taken by abortion,” Roeder said. “How you can keep that out of the trial is beyond me, because that was the one entire motive for the action that was taken.”
The fact that Roeder made his first public comments to Leach is not surprising. Leach, who publishes a newsletter advocating the justifiable homicide of abortion providers, helped draft a legal brief for Roeder arguing that he killed Tiller to avoid what he perceives as the larger harm of abortion. He also kept in regular contact with Roeder since his arrest, even organizing other anti-abortion activists to attend his trial for support.
Shortly after Roeder’s arrest, Leach told The Iowa Independent that when human law conflicts with God’s Laws, “we ought to obey God rather than man.” He later told The Des Moines Register that he is personally no danger to abortion providers because he doesn’t know enough about guns to do any harm.
In the mid-1990s, Leach’s association with the accused killer of a Florida abortion doctor helped persuade U.S. marshals to guard the Planned Parenthood clinic in Des Moines.
In the January 1996 issue of his newsletter, Leach published the Army of God manual, which advocates the killing of the providers of abortion and contains bomb-making instructions. Because of this, he was fired from his job as a writer for an Ankeny newspaper.
In 2002, he tried to air videotape of patients entering a local Planned Parenthood clinic on public-access cable TV. Mediacom Communications Corp. decided it would not allow him to air the footage.
The 10-minute interview with Roeder was posted on YouTube.
Follow Jason Hancock on Twitter
Do you know where to vote on Election Day? Do you know what to bring with you? Get comprehensive voter information for your state here.
Sign up for our email newsletter