Monthly Archives: February 2018

Commendable is the only word I can think of to describe the efforts of Florida high school students after the recent mass shooting. These kids may very well change the debate about gun control. They now have experience-driven passion and many of them are on the verge of adulthood giving their collective voice a growing feeling of efficacy.

But passion does not always breed logic or accuracy or soundness of ideas. After all, these students are still children even if the ugliness of their recent trauma has aged them substantially. And, like children, they tend to see only what is right in front of them. They see troubled and traumatized teens every day all around them. Rarely, though, do they see an AR-15 rifle, let alone one being used to kill their friends. For them, the shooter is not the problem. For them, the semi-automatic rifle is what is unfamiliar. The gun is the wild card for these kids in this tragedy. Take away the gun and, in their minds anyway, the troubled kid is otherwise harmless. read more

By the time you read this, Mitt Romney will have announced his candidacy for the United States Senate from Utah. He will win the seat being vacated by Orrin Hatch and he will win big. You might think that the Utah GOP under current party circumstances would welcome Romney’s decision. Instead, the state Republican chairman now holds Romney in contempt.

On the eve of Romney’s announcement, Utah GOP chairman Rob Anderson essentially called him a carpetbagger and compared him to Hillary Clinton. Anderson reeled off a host of complaints about Romney: read more

Consent or not to consent? That is the question for Utah legislators wondering how to address a new bill (HB 330) requiring the consent of both parties before a private conversation can be electronically recorded. Everyone knows how much fun secret recordings can be. We remember secret recordings of insider conversations, such as Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” comment and those guys that video taped Planned Parenthood admitting to selling baby parts. That stuff is juicy and shouldn’t we know those things? read more

State Representative Karianne Lisonbee and State Senator Curt Bramble have co-sponsored a bill protecting a baby from being aborted solely because it has or has been diagnosed with Down Syndrome (HB 205) – and it sounds altogether reasonable to me. Why should Down Syndrome be a death sentence? Or, if focusing solely on the feelings and rights of the mother, why does a personal preference outweigh the inherent dignity of a Down Syndrome child?

For the bill’s pro-abortion opponents, the biggest excuse in opposing the bill is the law. Since 1973, the law has stated that a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion outweighs any other factor involved in the abortion, even the baby whose life is to be terminated. So, on its face, current federal abortion laws are the excuse as to why House Bill 205 should be opposed. To subordinate a woman’s right to choose an abortion to any perceived rights involving the baby to be aborted is unconstitutional. What is there to misunderstand about a woman’s legal right to an abortion? read more