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.
During the 2009 General Assembly, Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley pushed for legislation asserting Iowa’s sovereignty under the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Now, it appears the Chariton Republican is hoping to make sovereignty an issue in the fall campaign.
In a 10-minute video posted to his campaign website, McKinley makes the case for Iowa to “re-assert the 10th Amendment” and “stand up for freedom, liberty, self reliance and personal responsibility.” Similar efforts have taken shape in other states in response to federal health care reform legislation, but McKinley originally drafted and introduced his bill before health care was passed.
McKinley’s legislation doesn’t call for secession from the union, only that the federal government “cease and desist, effective immediately, enacting federal mandates on the states that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.”
“It’s a resolution that expresses a sentiment that we are seeing increasingly on the part of Americans,” McKinley said in the web video, later adding that their is a “disconnect between the government and its citizens.”
The Republican Party of Iowa brought in Tom Woods, author of a recent book on the subject of nullification, to address the state party convention last month. He argues that if states simply refused to enforce provisions of some federal laws, such as the individual mandate in health care reform legislation, they could justify the refusal using the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says states retain all powers not specifically given to the federal government.
But that idea just isn’t so, according to U.S. Supreme Court historian and University of Texas law professor Lucas Powe.
Article VI of the U.S. Constitution declares federal law the supreme law of the land, Powe told the Texas Tribune, and nullification is typically advocated by only two groups of people: “Nutcases, which is much more typical, and people who are losing at the federal level and resent the fact that they are losing,” Powe said, adding, “If you believe in nullification, you don’t believe in the constitution.”
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