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 federal lawsuit seeking to overturn California’s ban of same-sex marriage is nearing its end with closing arguments set for Wednesday, and the eventual verdict could have implications around the nation.
National Public Radio reports Tuesday that plaintiffs want federal Judge Vaughn Walker to rule that California’s Proposition 8 — passed by California voters to outlaw same-sex marriage — is a violation of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to due process and equal protection. The judge is expected to rule in their favor, NPR says, but the question will be how broad the ruling will be.
For years, gay-rights groups fought to keep same-sex marriage cases out of the federal courts for fear they’d ultimately lose if the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
If [Judge] Walker strikes down California’s ban on gay marriage, he could do it in a way that sweeps away anti-gay-marriage laws throughout the nation. But he could issue a narrower ruling, one affecting only states like California and Washington, where same-sex couples already have broad legal rights but can’t get married.
In other words, Walker could decide that differentiating same-sex and opposite-sex couples in name only is simply discriminatory.
Same-sex marriage became legal in Iowa last April, when the state Supreme Court struck down the state’s Defense of Marriage Act, ruling that it “violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution.”
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