Salt Lake Tribune Stories

The Salt Lake Tribune is doing well at not hiding its' viewpoint. It is perfectly fine that newspapers are liberal, conservative, communist, libertarian, gay, straight, Christian, Muslim, Agnostic, Atheist, or whatever. Just don't lie about what you are.

It seems that The Salt Lake Tribune is firmly against whatever the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints wants to do in developing Salt Lake City, is in favor of "alternative lifestyles", supports the UEA, and is against the death penalty.

The LDS Church owns some business interests and lots of downtown land in Salt Lake City, not unlike the Vatican in Rome, Italy. That's just the way it is. Part of the development includes two new shopping malls built in the same location as two old shopping malls. Part of the plan includes a second story sky bridge between the two structures over Main Street. The overall budget for the project is more than $1 Billion. Salt Lake International Airport has a Sky Bridge between the short term parking area and the airport. So something that is good for the City is not good for private developers.

The Salt Lake Tribune, under the guise of celebrating "Architecture Month" in April, published an editorial from an architect that is four-square against the sky-bridge. They have also printed an article against it claiming that people must be too lazy to go down, cross the street and go up again while noting that Rocky Anderson doesn't want to sell the "air rights" to The Church. If any other developer were coming to down town to spend that kind of money to revitalize downtown, these same obstacles would likely not be in the way. The Salt Lake Tribune was against the Main Street Plaza project in the past too.

Maybe Rocky Anderson could sell the air rights at an over-inflated value like he did with the easement on the Main Street Plaza. The land rights for the Plaza were sold for $8 Million which was the fair market value of the land. To just buy the public easement part remaining, Salt Lake City received more than ten times the assessed value of the easement between The Church and private contributions with The Church paying $100,000 more than the appraised value. The City received cash and land worth more than $5 Million for the easement.

Actual Headline: "'Devil worshiper' execution on hold", by Pamela Manson, presumably not related to this Manson. The subject of the article is Von Lester Taylor who killed two women at a mountain cabin and then doused a third person in gas while lighting the cabin on fire. During the shooting, a 16 year old started praying and Taylor told her to stop because he is a "devil worshiper". No word about whether Taylor continues to profess his devotion to Beelzebub. There are allegations that Taylor also has brain damage. The article itself is somewhat sympathetic to Taylor, an admitted (he pleaded guilty) murderer. The article is lacking in sympathy for the family of the victims and the 16 year old girl who witnesses the murders. Why not a headline like "convicted murderer's execution on hold"?

How about "PTA ad for gays attacked"? National PTA magazine ran an ad for the PFLAG scholarship program. Bountiful High School PTA wrote a letter complaining about the ad because they did not think it was appropriate for those types of ads to be in their magazine. The Salt Lake Tribune decided to make a story about it and whip up hysteria about persecution of the gays (is it OK to write that because the Tribune did it first?) with a parting shot at asking the Bountiful High PTA to apologize for daring to exercise their First Amendment Rights:

When Utah Pride Center Executive Director Valerie Larabee read the Bountiful letter, she was appalled.
"My immediate concern was for the safety of the kids at Bountiful High School," she said, noting that the letter had initially been posted online on the Bountiful High School Web site. "If you're the maligned population and your administration doesn't do anything to counter that kind of rhetoric, then you're not going to feel safe."
The letter was removed from the Bountiful Web site once Principal Ryck Astle realized it was there. A student had raised concerns about the letter, Astle said.
"We're there to take care of students," he said. "We're not there to advertise pro or against anything."
Larabee would like to help educate the school and PTA about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered students and see the group apologize to the student body for posting the statement online.
"They can have whatever opinion they want, but having that in a public place where students have access to it is completely inappropriate," she said.

Or in other words, 'you can't say that in public'. It appears that the Tribune would rather have someone else state their opinion which the Tribune agrees with rather than just writing it themselves.

The Tribune has also come out against the free market of ideas and all sides exercising their political rights in the public forum. In establishing public policy, parties on all sides of an issue will often result to trickery of one kind or another, within the guidelines of the law. Sometimes illegal measures are used too, but not always. Apparently using your political clout against something the Tribune agrees with is inappropriate. In an editorial titled "People power: Is voucher law result of sleight of hand?" the Tribune staff is upset about political tricks that are perfectly legal. House Bill 148 is the law people are seeking a referendum on. From the article:

Now Utahns for Public Schools is working feverishly to gather the 92,000 signatures required to put HB 148, the most far-reaching voucher law in the nation, to a vote of the people. That would be the people who have consistently opposed vouchers conveying public money to private schools.
As expected, Republican voucher supporters are working just as hard to undermine the referendum petition drive and the constitutionally protected right of the people to reject a law they don't want.
They say House Bill 174, which makes minor amendments to HB 148 and includes most but not all of the same provisions, is sufficient to implement the voucher program even if the referendum succeeds. Maybe so. Maybe not. That will be up to the courts.

What about the "constitutionally protected right" of Republicans to participate in the political process? Maybe there is some provision allowing the politically correct groups to participate in the referendum process unopposed that the Tribune alone is aware of. Good thing they are here to inform us of it. Also, the Tribune supports litigating any issue they disagree with instead of letting the political process take care of issues. The U.S. Supreme Court, our new overlord, has already determined that voucher programs that allow people to attend private religious academies is not violative of the "separation of church and state". What is left to litigate? The State has decided to engage in a perfectly legitimate exercise that could introduce large scale competition with the public schools. It is possible that inartful drafting of the legislation may lead to a lawsuit, but it appears that the Tribune simply supports a lawsuit just for the sake of continuing to fight the issue.

This is just a short survey of http://www.sltrib.com/ taken today. It appears that The Salt Lake Tribune is not generally a paper worth reading unless you agree with their world view, just like any other paper you may or may not decide to read.

Comments Welcome

We Need to Speak Up (and Pray)

War with Iran seems to be inevitable.

FoxNews has Sean Hannity at least accepting war with Iran as an appropriate response to the 15 hostages taken from the British Navy. It was also reported that British Sailors were told to not rescue the 15 as they were in the process of being detained by Iranian authorities. If you watch the video, notice in the bottom right corner of the screen an image calling the situation "Iran Hostage Crisis" Day 4.

The most notorious Iran Hostage Crisis was when they took control of the U.S. Embassy and held people hostage for 444 days (until Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1981). The embassy staffers were mostly non-military and non-combatants.

The media voices are not actively calling for war with Iran, but they are floating the notion out there like it is a good thing to do. Alan Colmes was pointing out that Iran claimed it was a territorial water dispute vs. an act of war and he was demonized as "carrying water for Iran". Some people don't even want the other side to be heard. The trends are leaning toward war with Iran.

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial that holds the U.S. Constitution in distain. That column essentially advocates for a military response to bring Iran to the negotiating table because they "respect force" and:

that Iran was at its most diplomatically pliant after the United States sank much of Tehran's navy after Iran tried to disrupt oil traffic in the Persian Gulf in the late 1980s. Regimes that resort to force the way Iran does tend to be respecters of it.

They balance this part with noting that force would not guarantee Iran's complaince. According to the WSJ, actually following the U.S. Constitution is helping our enemies. From the article:

Another possibility: sufficiently bloodying Coalition forces in Iraq to hasten their withdrawal. The mullahs might even hope any fighting would embolden Democrats to do Tehran's bidding by passing legislation that forbids the Administration from attacking Iran without prior Congressional permission. Such a plank was contained in the supplemental war spending bill that passed the House last week until cooler heads removed it.

"Congress shall have Power . . . To declare War". Art. I, Sec. 8, U.S. Constitution. The President's part of war is stated in Art. II, Sec. 2:

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.

So if Congress requires the President to have congressional approval to engage in an Act of War, that is doing the bidding of Iran. In one sense, that could be true. If Iran has a Constitution, hopefully they would follow it too, just like any nation should. You would like to think that constraining the power of the President to his constitutionally described powers would be doing the will of the people of the United States.

There is significant and divine wisdom in requiring Congress to declare war. The House of Representatives is answerable to their constituents every two years which is also the longest amount of time that appropriations for military spending are allowed under the Constitution. If the people do not support the war, then Congress can call the troops back or cut funding or something. If the President goes to war, he is actually more politically isolated from the people and can carry out the war with less political pressure than the House of Representatives faces with re-election only happening every four years and a limit of two terms. Careerist politicians in the House have more to lose in supporting an unpopular war when they have control over the funding and declaring of it.

Please pray for our leaders.

Comments Welcome

Utah Waits For a Fourth Seat

An unconstitutional bill was in the House. It would give a representative in the U.S. House to Washington D.C. and another representative to Utah. The problem is that D.C. is not a State, and members of the House of Representatives must be elected from states.

Article I, Sec. 2 of the Constitution says the Representatives are elected by the people of the several states.

Article I, Sec. 4 of the Constitution requires States to choose the manner of electing Representatives and Senators.

Article I, Sec. 8 created the District of Columbia and gave Congress the power to regulate a 10 square mile area that is now the seat of our government.

No provision for the District of Columbia to have a voting member of Congress. Although the 23rd Amendment gave them the right to an Electoral Votes for President. They now have three electoral votes.

But that is not why the bill was defeated.

The bill was defeated for the very same reason why almost anything gets done in Washington D.C., politics. According to the Washington Times, some clever parliamentary action defeated the bill in committee. This is an example that is clever, enlightening, and sickening.

In a committee meeting, a Republican representative made a motion to amend the bill to not only allow D.C. and Utah to have one more representative, but that while we are respecting notions of fairness and a right to representation we should also respect the right to bear arms. The amendment would have repealed the very heavy handed ban on firearms in Washington D.C.

This put several of the Democrats on the committee in a difficult position. Some of them were elected on a promise that they would fight for gun rights. If they vote against the amendment to repeal the gun ban, then it looks like they are anti-gun. If the vote for the amendment to repeal the gun ban, it will make the bill impassable in the House.

They decided to postpone the vote on the amendment indefinitely. The bill is dead, and because of politics, not a desire to do what is right or to follow the right procedure, or even for respect of the constitution. A win is a win.

The Constitution should be amended if they want to give representation to Washington D.C.

Comments Welcome

Do I really want a clarification from the President?

(Note: many of the links contain bad words because they quote the President of the United States in an unedited fashion. They may also contain other bad words because of the lack of restraint of those authors and the passion these quotes invite.)

I had heard some vague rumblings about something like this, but it was not until today that I decided to find out if it was true and I found out that it is true. I tried to find some kind of rebuttal, denial, or some other kind of clarification, but after the first 40+ hits from this site not showing anything to mitigate the story, I gave up looking.

I also wanted to find out if this was true too, and it is.

These two things together are at the least mildly troubling and have also caused me to wonder what other people I have been mistaken about.

President Bush speaks Conservative. He speaks it very well. But when the Republicans were in control of the House, Senate, and the Presidency, there really seemed to be no program or expense they didn't like. In the words of President Reagan "we could say they spend money like drunken sailors, but that would be unfair to drunken sailors." (It has been noted that the President already swears like a sailor, mostly in private.)

What troubles me the most is the President's attitude about the Constitution and his own role and power as President.

The first thing I refer to comes from a meeting in November of 2005. The President was in a meeting with Congressional leaders discussing renewal of the Patriot Act. There was some resistance from Congressional leaders concerned about the Constitutionality of the Patriot Act and also about political fallout. This was the President's response according to this article (edited for your sensitivities and emphasis):

"I don't give a [g-d-]," Bush retorted. "I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."

"Mr. President," one aide in the meeting said. "There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution."

"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just a [g-d-] piece of paper!"

The article claimed verification from three people at the meeting, at least one of which was an aide to the President.

This quote is disturbing because it shows the President's attitude about the Constitution which he took an oath of office to uphold and protect. It also reveals a confusion about the role of the President. He is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Not the Commander-in-Chief of everything.

Another difficulty with the President's attitude and choice of words that "It's just a [g-d-] piece of paper", is the conflict with LDS Doctrine that the Constitution is actually a God-Blessed and Inspired "piece of paper".

The second thing was President's attitude about Donald Rumsfeld, from CNN's website:

"I listen to all voices, but mine is the final decision," he said. "And Don Rumsfeld is doing a fine job. He's not only transforming the military, he's fighting a war on terror. He's helping us fight a war on terror. I have strong confidence in Don Rumsfeld.

"I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."

By itself, this is not a problem, but when added to his attitude about being the President and Commander-in-Chief, so "do it my way" it seems a little sinister. I have heard other leaders at least mention how they bear responsibility for their decisions, but President Bush only emphasizes his power to make decisions.

The combination of President Bush's statement about the Constitution, how he is the Commander-in-Chief, and the Decider seems to indicate an attitude of Power without Responsibility. Not even a responsibility to follow the Constitution as opposed to being the Decider in Chief.

With regard to the President's statement about the Constitution as just a piece of paper, The Idaho Observer noted:

President Bush even commented that Dick Cheney is one of his best friends because he doesn’t read about their private conversations in the press the next day.

The truth is that President Bush is right, in a practical sense: The Constitution is just a piece of paper that was superceded by the 14th Amendment and replaced by U.S. Code. However, blatant irreverence for that sacred document is unbecoming of a president.

If they mentioned the role of the Supreme Court I might be inclined to agree with that statement. As I mentioned in a previous post, the current U.S. Government bears very little resemblance to the Constitution.

President Bush is not a friend to the Constitution, even though he has sworn an oath to protect and uphold the Constitution.

Your comments are welcome.