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An Iowa faith group formed earlier this year to promote judicial independence and religious freedom in Iowa is planning a series of four educational forums during the month of July. Faith in Iowa, which held an initial public meeting in February , hopes to empower people of faith in northeastern Iowa to speak out on the issue of marriage equality and the importance of the Iowa Judicial Branch. While still in the throws of organizing, the group led a demonstration in March to counter-balance a Cedar Rapids visit by Bob Vander Plaats, chief executive of the religious conservative and anti-gay organization The Family Leader.

Much has been made of the New Hampshire man, William Kostric, who showed up outside President Obama’s health care speech in Portsmouth Tuesday with a loaded gun

As Art Allen reported yesterday, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is a proponent of a video game-style of hunting, where hunters shoot animals, like wolves and bears,

Since announcing his bid for the 2012 Republican nomination for president, former Sen. Rick Santorum has not been shy about touting his anti-abortion views, which he’ll be discussing next week at the National Right to Life conference in Jacksonville. # An anti-aborton rights stalwart, Santorum has long been vocal in the charge to ban partial-birth abortions, and was the primary sponsor of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1997 during his time as a U.S

Michele Bachmann was the target of harsh criticism Tuesday after she asserted that the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine could cause mental retardation. For once, people from both sides of the political spectrum, health professionals and advocates for people with disabilities all agreed: Bachmann got it very wrong. Bachmann made her remarks immediately following Monday’s tea party debate

Last year’s devastating spill of nearly a million gallons of tar sands crude oil into the Kalamazoo River is having an impact on the public’s perception of the safety of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline as the federal government nears a final decision on the project. The Calgary Herald reports : Calgary-based TransCanada Corp., now attempting to get approval for construction of its proposed mega-pipeline from Alberta to Texas Gulf Coast refineries — the $7-billion 2,700-kilometre Keystone XL — acknowledges the impact the Enbridge spill and others have had on industry.

Revelations Monday that Houston-based Anadarko may be sitting on up to a billion barrels of oil along Colorado’s Front Range immediately raised concerns about the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing in an area of increased residential growth in recent years. Anadarko plans to step up oil drilling in the Wattenberg Field over the Niobrara Shale formation, mostly in Weld County. Estimates put the overall revenue flowing into Colorado at $4 billion a year

As the State Department considers a proposal to extend the Keystone pipeline all the way to the Gulf Coast of Texas, the first phase of the project has been shut down by the Department of Transportation after the 12th leak in the pipeline in its first year of operation.

I asked the American Civil Liberties Union’s Chris Anders, a military commissions opponent, to react to Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson’s indication that

Vice Adm. Robert Harward, a former senior officer with the Joint Special Operations Command and U.S. Joint Forces Command, arrived in Afghanistan in late

The Florida Family Association logo (Pic floridafamily.org ) The home improvement chain Lowe’s has been hit with a popular backlash following its decision to pull ads from TLC’s All-American Muslim , a reality show centering on the lives of Muslims living in a Detroit suburb. Though reps for Lowe’s have said the company pulled the ads due to “strong political and societal views” from many individuals, a conservative Florida group is at the center of the controversy.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation issued today a proposal to toughen greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards for

Today, the Treasury and Housing and Urban Development Departments released April data on the Home Affordable Modification Program, the Obama administration’s

In a major surprise, President Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize this morning. The Nobel Committee cited his extraordinary efforts to strengthen

What happens when a state bypasses the federal government and enacts its own immigration laws? It’s well known by now that Arizona lost substantial convention business and has racked up huge legal bills defending the state’s laws

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida’s executive director, Howard Simon, appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show last night to talk about a host of personal freedoms he says Gov. Rick Scott has infringed upon since taking office early this year.

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) have an op-ed in the Washington Post this morning cheering President Obama for his emerging Afghanistan

USDA officials want to reassure farmers with crop insurance that recent flooding events along the Missouri River is considered a natural event, which will be covered. “The flooding happening now is the result of extraordinary amounts of rainfall this spring and winter snow runoff, which is a natural cause of loss and is covered by crop insurance. We’ve spoken to the crop insurance companies and they assure us that they have adequate staff with additional adjusters sent as needed to help settle claims as soon as they can get into the fields,” said William Murphy, administrator of the USDA’s Risk Management Agency, which oversees the federal crop insurance program

Of course, both candidates have played fast and loose with the facts in their individual quests to become the most powerful man in the world. At a rally in

If you missed it yesterday, Heritage Foundation’s president Ed Feulner’s pushback on President Obama -- who gave the conservative think tank credit for