Monthly Archives: February 2017

Utah is a liquor control state. In other words, the state heavily regulates the sale and consumption of liquor. Some states have more stringent regulations in place, including complete prohibitions in some counties within those states, but Utah remains a state that will tell residents and visitors when and where and how they can drink liquor.

Every legislative session there seems to be talk of new bills designed to either loosen these regulations or tighten them. Several years ago, the Legislature created what is now called the Zion Curtain requiring restaurants to separate where drinks are made from where they are served – the central idea being restaurants are not bars and a culture of alcohol should be contained to bar settings only. read more

A very smart article was posted on the website, The Imaginative Conservative, defending opponents of Muslim immigration. The article was prompted by Donald Trump’s executive order requiring a higher-than-usual standard for vetting immigrants from Middle Eastern countries, presumably to ward off the hoards of refugees fleeing that region – hoards that might include terrorists.

As you have heard, Trump issued an executive order on January 27 titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” The order includes numerous paragraphs of procedures for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to implement to ostensibly keep us safe from the “bad guys.” Invoking the horrific memory of 9/11, the order states, read more

As I listened to Donald Trump’s inaugural address my mind’s eye drifted back to the presidential campaigns of Pat Buchanan in 1992 and 1996. Full of spit and vinegar at the time, I was a big supporter of Buchanan. He was the Donald Trump of the 1990’s except that he had manners, he was gracious, he was intelligent and a real conservative.

Pat Buchanan was a newspaperman turned political operative who went from writing editorials for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat to writing speeches for Richard Nixon and then on to the Reagan White House. He was a conservative’s conservative – a no-nonsense voice in a sea of Establishment nonsense. He was not afraid to recall the conservatism of the past and condemn the neo-conservatism that began to assume power under the presidency of George H.W. Bush. read more