For those following the Susan Boyle drama across the pond, we now know that she did NOT end up winning Britain’s Got Talent.

That’s a shame…Will Susan Boyle end up having any type of career now?

I often sympathize with you conservatives on this one. We get all the good comedians, actors, bands, and filmmakers. You guys get Chuck Norris and comedian chairman Michael Steele. Political satirist PJ O’Rourke is an exception to that standard, though, and his speech to the Australian Broadcaster’s Association (via ForaTV) is pretty entertaining.

In a very candid interview that is surprising many, U.S. Gen. David Petraeus told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum, among other things, that the U.S. violated the Geneva Convention, and said that the U.S. should hold true to its values because that’s what we’re fighting for, going so far as to say that we should try Khalid Sheikh Muhammad in a court of law.

I loved the interview, for a recap and to view it, click the link and head on over to Crooks and Liars for all the scoops.

Gen. Petraeus: US violated Geneva Convention, the court of law could try terrorists: we made mistakes after 9/11: Close Gitmo | Crooks and Liars.

A very interesting link, emailed to me from a friend:

The key finding of this report is that location matters, and can affect the true cost of housing when transportation costs are factored in. For more information see The Affordability Index: A New Tool for Measuring the True Affordability of a Housing Choice.

[...]

In 2006 the Center for Housing Policy published a report The Heavy Load: The Combined Housing and Transportation Burdens of Working Households using H + T data compiled by CNT for working families in 28 metros.

In early 2008, CNT expanded the H + T Index to include neighborhood-level data for 52 U.S. metropolitan areas, again with support from the Brookings Institution. This effort resulted in an interactive mapping website where users could see H + T results at the neighborhood level, with additional information on auto ownership, transit use, housing density and other community characteristics. Also in 2008, CNT was a co-author with Carrie Makarewicz, doctoral candidate at UC Berkley, on the report Estimating Transportation Costs by Characteristics of Neighborhood and Household, published by the Transportation Research Record, the Journal of the Transportation Research Board.

At the height of the gasoline price peaks in the summer of 2008, CNT added maps for the 52 metros on the H + T website, showing how rising gasoline prices adversely affected vulnerable auto dependent neighborhoods.

Take a look at the Salt Lake City to Ogden region here.

Throughout his campaign for the White House, Barack Obama consistently undercut the furor of “identity politics,” even calling them a “major distraction” at one time. Yet this week, with the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as the “first latina” Supreme Court Justice, this country’s obsession with race has reached its peak. Much of the hububaloo predictably comes from the mainstream media, which enjoys trumpeting race more than anything.

But really, it is apparent that the substance of Sotomayor’s nomination has been mostly lost, and not just by those pesky, mood-killing Republicans who can’t leave the subject alone.

This article in Politico portrays this best:

Hispanic leaders across the country, many of whom attended the White House announcement, praised the appointment swiftly and in the strongest terms, and Republican leaders signaled an awareness of the political sensitivities by avoiding any suggestion of disrespect for the first Latina nominee to the nation’s highest court.

“The picture of an African-American president standing next to a Hispanic woman as his first choice for the Supreme Court — that picture is the worst nightmare for the Republican Party,” said Fernand Amandi, a Florida pollster whose firm, Bendixen Associates, surveyed Hispanic voters for Obama’s presidential campaign.

“The numbers, the symbolism and now the acts of the Democratic Party and this Democratic president underline and underscore the very bleak outlook for Republicans, where the…fastest growing demographics in the county are leaving them,” he said, noting that surveys earlier this decade suggested broad hunger among Hispanic voters for a court pick.

But the same reason that makes the nomination so politically powerful — the new president’s strengthened connection with Hispanics and women — also makes it risky in some parts of the country and for some Democrats facing tough elections in 2010. The unmistakable element of raw identity politics is one that Obama explicitly and implicitly disavowed during his campaign for president, and it runs counter to the approach the party has employed in building its House and Senate majorities.

What is being lost here is that Sonia Sotomayor is being nominated for a position in the Supreme Court of the United States of America, a post which used to demand a strict apolitical attitude from its associates; their task, to interpret the Constitution of the United States and its various laws.

Instead, as we have seen time and time again with the Left, there is a blatant disregard for the independence of this position in American government. Instead, we are hounded by the race and “historic nature” of this nominee, instantly framing the discussion over Sotomayor’s race and racial attitudes instead of her actual credentials. And that is the crux of it all, to the Left, her race is the fundamental strength of her credentials!

Despite Obama’s pledge to rise above identity politics, Democrats have embraced them and heralded them in order to support a Supreme Court pick. And of course, as the mainstream media constantly reminds us, many Republicans are to blame too. Instead of focusing on the credentials of Sotomayor, conservative Republicans are getting twisted up inside the blaring injustices of Democratic identity politics; they are essentially taking the bait and risking looking like racist ignoramuses.

But it still leaves the issue of identity politics. Is this a good thing for the Supreme Court, and more importantly, is this good for the country. Personally I tend to agree with Froma Harrop in the Seattle Times:

Identity politics are not good for the country or for the groups they purport to advance. This is not to undercut Sonia Sotomayor, who, as the news reports all start out, is the first Hispanic nominated to the Supreme Court and, if confirmed, would be the third female justice. From what we know about her so far, she seems qualified for the job.

But turning such appointments into political payback for an ethnic group or gender makes an unseemly spectacle. It undermines real achievements and infantilizes the candidate.

The important part of Sotomayor’s time at Princeton wasn’t her struggle as a Bronx-raised, working-class Puerto Rican among the Ivy League flowers. After all, Sotomayor did attend a good private Catholic high school. (And had she been born of poor Chinese immigrants, little fuss would have been made of her academic success.) The essence of Sotomayor’s Princeton experience was that she graduated summa cum laude and went on to Yale Law School, where she was an editor on the law journal.

In recounting Sotomayor’s “extraordinary journey,” though, President Obama treats her as a daughter, not a colleague. His mention of her girlhood passion for Nancy Drew mysteries draws sweet laughter from the audience. And he repeatedly refers to Celina Sotomayor as “Sonia’s mom.”

Could you imagine a formal nomination speech that talked of John Roberts’ mother as “John’s mom”? And would anyone note that the chief justice enjoyed “Winnie the Pooh” as a boy, which he probably did?

When President Bush named his two male Supreme Court nominees, he invariably called them “Judge Roberts” and “Judge Alito.” Sotomayor is every bit as much a judge, but Obama calls her “Sonia.”

As in: “Well, Sonia, what you’ve shown in your life is that it doesn’t matter where you come from, what you look like or what challenges life throws your way — no dream is beyond reach in the United States of America.” That hackneyed line would feel right in place at a high school graduation.

Obama no doubt reasons that he has picked someone whom the Republicans would not dare attack, given their recent poor electoral showing among Latinos. Embedded in this assumption is that Hispanics vote as a unit and on ethnic grounds.

I wonder when minority groups will stop allowing the Democratic party to exploit them and oggle over their accomplishments as if they were in fact juvenile and incapable. I am happy that for many people, Sonia Sotomayor represents progress, but I tend to believe it would be better to identify progress according to real legal expertise. Fortunately, Sotomayor does have a lot of legal experience, which should be the real foundation of the debate over her qualifications, not her race.

- Marc

Truman Madsen, a pillar in the LDS community just passed away this week at the age of 82. Madsen helped to build the LDS Church up by forging intellectual alliances in academic communities throughout the world, providing facinating lectures on the Presidents of the Church and other Mormon historical figures, and by humbly devoting his time to serving others in his community.

Many LDS members will never fully comprehend the impact that Madsen has had in their lives, directly or indisrectly. Madsen, while never a general authority of the Church, has represented his faith in the presence of prestigious academics and heads-of-state from all over the world.

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

Some years ago, Truman G. Madsen agreed to give a series of lectures about Mormon founder Joseph Smith at Brigham Young University’s annual Education Week. At the time, Madsen and his family were building a cabin in Brighton, so he would work all morning in Big Cottonwood Canyon, then drive to Provo, change out of his overalls, dash into the Marriott Center and deliver a lively, stimulating lecture without a single note.

“It just came pouring out of him,” Barney Madsen said. “It was part of him, in his bones.”

Such spontaneity and speech-making were hallmarks of Madsen, a Mormon essayist, speaker, historian and philosopher who pioneered interfaith dialogue and influenced a generation of LDS thinkers. The 82-year-old died of cancer Thursday at his Provo home.

Madsen’s lectures on Smith were an instant hit, widely reproduced and distributed among members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“My father fought for Joseph, defended Joseph and loved Joseph,” Barney Madsen said Thursday.

Madsen was born Dec. 13, 1926, in Salt Lake City, the second of three sons of Axel A. and Emily Grant Madsen and a grandson of LDS Church President Heber J. Grant. He was fascinated by Mormonism and how LDS teachings compared to other faiths. He studied the history of ideas, and particularly of philosophy, earning an undergraduate degree at the University of Utah and a doctorate at Harvard University.

a revered teacher at BYU, where he held the Richard L. Evans Chair in Religious Studies. He also directed BYU’s Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies and was a guest lecturer at Northeastern University, Haifa University and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.Reaching out to the nation’s top religion scholars, Madsen sponsored several BYU symposia on comparative religion, later published as Reflections on Mormonism, The Temple in Antiquity, and Chosenness and Covenant in Judaism and Mormonism.

Among his volumes on Mormon thought are: Eternal Man; Christ and the Inner Life; Four Essays on Love; The Highest in Us; The Radiant Life; Five Classics ; and a biography of LDS authority B.H. Roberts.

As far as Mormon academics are concerned, only Dr. Hugh Nibley has made the kind of contribution that Madsen had over the years. The LDS community will miss Madsen.

- Marc

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is blasting a study from York University that claims “sexting” — the act of sending pornographic images of youth over cellular networks — is no worse than children playing spin-the-bottle or playing doctor.

“Children playing doctor or spin-the-bottle don’t risk having millions of people, including child predators, looking at their nude photos from now until the end of time,” says Shurtleff. “No matter how the professor spins it, the fact is that minors sending nude photos, images or videos are engaging in the production, manufacture and distribution of child pornography.”

The study from York Professor Peter Cumming claims that sexting is “relatively harmless.”

Of course in Utah, there’s been a vigorous campaign against sexting since several cases of it have popped up in recent years.

While I’ve thought that kids engaging in sexting shouldn’t be something that leads to criminal charges against the kids, I do agree with Shurtleff that the act of sexting isn’t something harmless, and certainly it shouldn’t be something that society comes to accept as the new “spin-the-bottle.”

There are serious concerns if the images that are “sexted” get out into the cyberworld where the kids — certainly having no bad intentions — lose control over the content.

Jerry Earl Johnston has a column in the MormonTimes about how many good LDS families will be broken up when SB81 goes into effect next week.

Now, while excuse the fact that he explicitly ignores the good non-LDS families who will be broken up, because this was from the Mormon Times, I think it’s a good opportunity again to revisit how short-sighted, how hypocritical, how inhumane, and how ignorant the Utah Legislature was with their passage of SB81.

It didn’t need to happen.

And one thing that Johnston pointed out in his column, and it really is ironic, is that the members of the Legislature, forcing a group of people out of their state, looks a hell of a lot like the lawmakers in Illinois and Missouri in the 19th Century who forced a group of people called “Mormons” out of their areas.

I’d say I hope Utah’s lawmakers will continue to sleep well at night knowing they’ve broken up many good families, both LDS and not, but I’m thinking most of them won’t even care that they’ve done something as inhumane as they have.

They’re calling it “Mine.”

When I signed up for Mine a couple of months ago, I was mainly looking for a laugh. The new magazine from Time Inc. seemed like a gimmicky, goofy effort to save a beleaguered industry: Time wanted to print a magazine just for me! First, I had to choose several popular Time publications and answer a few odd questions about my interests. (“Which do you crave more—sushi, or pizza?”) Then, every two weeks, I would get an issue, curated just for me, filled with articles from different magazines. The process seemed hopelessly anachronistic, like if the horse-and-buggy industry decided to compete with cars by letting me pick my buggy driver. Doesn’t Time know that I already have a way to get a magazine tailored to my interests? The Web isn’t just faster and cheaper than print; it also doesn’t need to know what I ate for dinner in order to let me read exactly what I want to at any time.

Turns out my skepticism was misguided. I’ve received two issues of Mine, and I love it. Unlike a lot of the publications that slip into my mailbox each month, Mine is full of stories that I actually feel like reading.

Read the rest of Slate’s review here.  And is this the future of print media?  I still enjoy magazine subscriptions, but increasingly, what I like to read for entertainment, and what I need to read to stay informed is available online.  I’ve wondered for some time now if it’s simply nostalgia and/or habit that keeps me subscribing to the local paper and a few glossy mags.  I still enjoy reading the papers every morning (especially in the backyard, summertime), but often what I read, I’ve already read elsewhere by the time I flip the printed pages open.

Would an “al a carte” approach give someone like me (and probably you) reason to keep the paid subscriptions up to date?

Last week we talked about the principal at Copper Hills High School, Todd Quarnberg, who decided to pull copies of the school’s award-winning literary magazine, Chasms because of perceived inappropriate material inside it.

Well, Quarnberg has released the magazine as long as students bring a parental permission slip with them when they want to purchase their copy.

The Trib’s story features what I think are some golden quotes from Principal Quarnberg.

“I’m very protective of my kids and the way they’re judged by the community,” Quarnberg said. “Sometimes kids publish or write things without seeing the ramifications of what it may do.”

I’m glad that the principal is acting as a nanny for these 16-18-year-old kids who actually may BENEFIT from learning a few lessons about real life.

For some reason I really, really doubt that anything these kids published in this magazine would destroy their lives, or even leave a lasting impact. In fact, the benefits of publishing something and seeing a negative reaction, or more likely, the benefits of publishing something and having people appreciate the artfullness of it, far outweight Quarnberg’s perceived need to protect these kids from themselves.

I feel bad that Quarnberg can’t treat his soon-to-be adults as soon-to-be adults. I know that I wouldn’t be likely to go and ask my parents to sign a permission slip for me, as a junior or senior in high school, to buy a literary magazine. This isn’t Playboy or Hustler, it’s the work of these kids peers, and it’s a truly ridiculous story.

The financial times are tough for everybody, and the next victim of decreased revenues may be the Utah Festival Opera Company, at least that’s what Director Michael Ballam told the Cache County Council earlier this week.

To keep this from being the UFOC’s last season, the opera company is going to need an additional $400,000 to supplement its $3 million budget. Ballam was at the Cache County Council Tuesday asking for help.

The immediate reaction of many is to balk at the county bailing out the opera company to the tune of $400,000, but the decision is certainly worthy of discussion.

The UFOC is the largest tourism draw in the valley, and some estimates have it bringing in $10 million in benefits to the local economy, although it’s hard to exactly quantify that. The economic benefit is certainly in the millions, even if you’re low-balling estimates.

So should there be a bailout of the UFOC? We’ll talk about it tonight.

Additional source:  Utah Festival Opera in trouble?: Nonprofit seeks $400,000 in taxpayer dollars to survive (HJ)

This D-News op-ed argues it is.

The collectivism of the 19th-century prophets would be derided as socialism today.

Obama acknowledges that capitalism and free markets serve certain goals of society well, but they need to be tempered with a greater collective goal of making sure the “winners” of a capitalistic society actually add value to a society as a whole. For example, it can be surmised that in a purely capitalistic system, the right of the producer to maximize profit by spending the least amount of money or attention on reining in externalities like effluents and pollution is justified because this profit maximization leads to a higher return on shareholder equity. This rise in value would then presumably be reinvested in some other value-increasing enterprise.

Where the founding prophets and Obama converge is in realizing that externalities like pollution do have cost that is borne by the community without compensation. They both agree that the producer does have the right to a profit, yet this profit must not come at the uncompensated expense of the community as a whole. Hence I find Obama’s cap-and-trade centered environmental policy well in line with the values of the pioneering founders of the great state of Utah.

Thanks to Jared Smith and Paul White for joining us on KVNU tonight. Here is a link to the UtahConcealedCarry.com discussion. Please consider writing a letter to a member of the Logan Municipal Council asking them to eliminate the antiquated laws.

Often the abortion debate is dominated by extremes: the godless liberals vs. the religious fanatics. Well realistically, most Americans don’t fit either stereotype; in fact, it may surprise some that a majority of Americans consider themselves to be “pro-life.”

I found this op-ed piece to be of particular interest, therefore. David Harsanyi, a self-proclaimed atheist, explains why he is now, “pro-life,” but not completely in favor of banning abortion:

As an atheist and a secular kinda guy, I practice moral relativism regularly. Still, I’ve always struggled mightily with the ethics and politics of abortion. Apparently, I’m not alone.

A new Gallup poll claims that for the first time since 1995, when the question was first asked by the organization, most Americans consider themselves to be “pro-life” rather than “pro-choice.”

The straightforward question asked of participants was this: “With respect to the abortion issue, would you consider yourself to be pro-choice or pro-life?” Fifty-one percent responded that they were pro-life and 42 percent said they were pro-choice. These percentages are the reverse found in the same poll in 2006.

What happened? Is it possible that the nation has undergone a gigantic attitudinal shift on the fundamental issue of abortion in only three years’ time? Logically, it seems that the entire framing of the debate has become antiquated and far too simplistic for the questions we face. Anecdotally, I would say it’s possible.

I know I’ve changed my views.

After a life of being pro-choice, I began to seriously ponder the question. I oppose the death penalty because there is a slim chance that an innocent person might be executed and I don’t believe the state should have the authority to take a citizen’s life. So don’t I owe an nascent human life at least the same deference? Just in case?

You may not consider a fetus a “human life” in early pregnancy, though it has its own DNA and medical science continues to find ways to keep the fetus viable outside the womb earlier and earlier.

But it’s difficult to understand how those who harp about the importance of “science” in public policy can draw an arbitrary timeline in the pregnancy, defining when human life is worth saving and when it can be terminated.

The more I thought about it, the creepier the issue got.

Newsweek, for instance, recently reported that 90 percent of women whose fetuses test positive for Down syndrome choose an abortion. Another survey showed only a small percentage of mothers even used the test. So what happens when 90 percent of parents test their fetuses? Does it mean the end of the disease or are we stepping perilously close to eugenics?

What about future DNA tests that can detect any “defects” in a fetus? What happens when we can use abortion to weed out the blind, mentally ill, the ugly, or any other any “undesirable” human being?

Recently, Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare ruled that women are permitted to abort their children based on the sex of the fetus. In the United States, a woman can have an abortion for nearly any reason she chooses. In fact, a health exemption for the mother allows abortions to be performed virtually on demand.

If you oppose selective abortions, but not abortion overall, I wonder why? How is terminating the fetus because it’s the wrong sex any worse than terminating the fetus for convenience’s sake? The fate of the fetus does not change, only the reasoning for its extinction does.

Now, I happen to believe (as the civil libertarian and pro-life activist Nat Hentoff once noted) that the right to life and liberty is the foundation of a moral society. Then again, I also believe a government ban on abortion would only criminalize the procedure and do little to mitigate the amount of abortions.

Obviously, these are a few of the complex and uncomfortable issues to ponder. So maybe this poll tells us that the dynamics of the abortion debate are about to change, that Americans are getting past the politics and into the morality of the issue.

Then again, it’s entirely possible that I’m just projecting.

- Marc

h/t to @MarshallT (Marshall Thompson) for this.

Join us, @KVNUftp at the Logan Tweetup event on June 2. #LoTweet

Just a thought on Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling in California.

There’s been a lot of talk about whether gay marriage should be allowed under the equal protection clause of the Constitution. I don’t want to say anything about that specific argument.

But please tell me how in California, with the Supreme Court recognizing the 18,000 same-sex marriages that already occurred, how they’re allowed to continue their marriage (with recognition from the government) with new same-sex couples not being able to get married. Is this equal protection?

My understanding of equal protection is that over time, people will be afforded the same protection under the law irrespective of gender, race, color or creed.

How is gay marriage not Constitutional in California, but being married to someone of the same sex is?

2+2=5 in the Golden State.

Abortion: It is quite possibly the most divisive issue in our society today. Generally, when it is brought up in discussion, the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” sides battle ferociously until their arguments become falacious and founded in slippery slopes, fear and half-truths all crafted to make them feel better about their arguments.

It happened again today on our show when my esteemed co-hosts, Marc and Jason, got into a point-for-point battle over abortion that symbolized so well the nationwide dialogue on this topic: There’s a lot of shouting, a lot of both sides not listening to each other, and little being accomplished.

So it was interesting for me tonight as I was listening to some national radio and abortion was a topic being discussed. I listened and pondered my own feelings about abortion, and came to a few conclusions.

1) There are absolutely, unequivocally circumstances where abortion should be legal for a woman to choose. These cases include rape, incest, sexual assault and incidences where the health of the mother would be hurt if she carried the pregnancy to full term.

2) Both sides of the argument need to concede that neither will get everything they want in the end, and they’ll have to make some sacrifices, some of which may conflict with their moral judgments.

3) There needs to be a major national dialogue on what to do with future abortion policy, and this dialogue should consist mainly of women (because us men will never truly understand the intimacy of the issue and difficulty of making the ultimate decision on an abortion.)

There’s no doubt this is a tough issue. If the question is, “Do you think killing babies is bad?” then the answer, for me, is obviously yes. But as mentioned in point 1 above, there are circumstances where I think abortion is a necessary option to have on the table. The other side of this issue, though, is if we were to outlaw all abortions except for those that occur in instances of sexual assault, etc…, then we certainly create a black market for abortions that will be very dangerous to women.

The reality is, women have been seeking abortions for thousands of years, and will continue to seek them into the future. If a woman (let’s say it’s a girl who was impregnated because she failed to practice proper birth control/condom use/whatever) decides she wants to abort her pregnancy, and is dead set on doing it, she will find a way to accomplish it. Like it or not, this ill-advised pregnant girl can do something drastic to cause her own miscarriage of the child, and could potentially do so at the expense of her health.

Abortion is an ugly issue. But it’s not something that we can illegalize and expect to go away. While I don’t like introducing other issues into this equation for comparison, I want to have you consider gun control. If we outlaw guns, the conventional wisdom is that only bad people will have guns (in this case, only bad abortions will be performed), but if we legalize guns, we can educate good people as to proper use and limit crimes.

While certainly the two issues are far from being mirrors of each other, look at the parallels. As I mentioned, women will get abortions if they want to irrespective of the legality of it. I believe it is possible to allow abortions in extreme cases and have them as a last resort option in other cases after a woman is fully educated about the consequences, as long as we couple this with policy to do our best to educate women so as to prevent the eventual need for an abortion, and to make the instances where they must happen as safe as possible.

Abortions will happen, whether we like it or not, we must turn to make as few of them happen, and make those that must happen as safe as possible. We can also further define where the ones that do happen are allowed. For example, third-trimester and likely second-trimester abortions should be off the table completely. I’m fairly confident that a victim of sexual violence will have made their decision prior to the third month.

It’s difficult, but we must engage in a serious conversation, not one where passionate epithets are cast back and forth and we paint this exclusively as a moral issue or a personal liberty issue. This must be considered in the realm of reality, not in the fictitiously idealistic world of politicism.

Tuesday, May 26th
From: Aaron Petterborg
To: Tyler, Marc, Jason
Subject: possible topic for discussion on KVNU

Hello!

We’re heading up a pro-immigrant lobby group consisting of LDS people, Missionaries for Compassion toward Immigrants, most of whom happen to be returned missionaries. To be honest, we’ve been looking for some publicity. Being that the issue is very important to Utahns (so say a couple of polls), I think this might be a fun topic of discussion for your show. To get a general idea of what we’re after as an organization, here’s our charter:

http://aaronrp.freeshell.org/charter.pdf

It’s very Mormon, very inundated with religious jargon, but that’s the point. We basically want to appeal to LDS people on the grounds that current immigration law is too strict to be in agreement with the missionary program of the LDS Church. We’re unhappy with Senate Bill 81 that is officially implemented into the Utah Code on July 1. Since returned missionaries have a great deal of social capital and perhaps social authority in this state, we want to “cash in” on that and get people thinking that perhaps their political views are in conflict with their religion. Our premise for existence is basically that our religion is more important than our political views. That said, we’re avoiding any ‘left/right’ banter and keeping our returned missionary image as ideal as it can be, with ‘conservative’ dress and appearance and politeness. We’re doing a lot of organizing through Facebook.com, so feel free to check out the group page (you don’t need to be a Facebook.com member to see it):

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=56466718201

I hope we can stay in touch, and I would love to be a part of a discussion some time. Let me know if this sounds appealing to you.

Thank you,
Aaron Petterborg

One of Utah’s premier blogging senators, Steve Urquhart of St. George, has a nice post up now calling California the M.C. Hammer of states.

Sen. Urquhart draws an interesting line between California’s financial crisis, the possibility of them getting a bailout from the feds (and as a result, every other state in America becoming eligible for a bailout because every state has to be treated the same) and how term limits negatively affect the state.

I think he makes some good points, but for another look on California, we turn to Roseanne Barr. (Her blog is hilarious/borderline nuts).

What kind of a leader blames/penalizes poor children for the mess his friends have made of the economy? What kind of a politician campaigns on promises to balance the budget and makes it 100 times worse? What kind of a punk heads the smearing and re-call of a democratically elected democrat governor, and then shovels the money from the state budget away from those he bullshitted into voting for him by sponsoring a phony “olympics for the black and brown kids” scam, into the pockets of pete wilson’s criminal co horts and calls that “business”?
You are a union busting actor who helps bankers steal from widows and orphans. Arnold, you are a disgrace to this country who should never allowed your nazi ass to immigrate here!

I love California. It’s sad to see it crumbling as it is.

From CNN.com: California high court upholds same-sex marriage ban.

Somewhat surprising ruling here, as many some expected the court to overturn Prop 8. Marriages performed prior to the election in California will still be recognized.

The anti-Prop 8 crows is up in arms today. According to Aaron Falk at the Deseret News, there will be a protest tonight in Salt Lake City at 6:30.