Simple Utah Mormon Politics

Recent events show us how Gun-Free School Zones never really are gun free. If more people carry guns, then criminals would be much less likely to commit wanton violence. There have been a lot of school shootings lately. I'm just hearing that a school principal has been shot this morning. That would make 3 incidents in the past week, I think. Do you know what one thing in common each of these school shootings have? Every school shooting has been at a school where the shooter knew their was a gigantic chance that he was the only one at the school (besides maybe a police resource officer who's there sometimes) who had a gun. If adults were allowed to carry guns in schools, there would be fewer of the kind of wanton incidents that have been all the rage lately. The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms are alleging that laws creating gun-free school zones have "disarmed the wrong people and left our schools, and the children inside, vulnerable to this kind ...

At least when it comes to using government as a weapon of compassion, I have the compassion of the ogre. I will explain below why I think government cannot and should not be in the business of compassion. The force of government has caused many people to show less compassion to their fellow men. On the other hand, some of the best things happen when government is not compassionate. In such circumstances, individuals personally begin to display more compassion. One such instance of this happened recently in Utah when the governor asked the legislature to convene a special session in order to (among other things) provide special monies to pay for dental care for the disabled . If they didn't fund the governor's compassion project, it would make the legislators look even more heartless in a year where the budget surplus was projected to be at least $150 million. In spite of these political odds, the legislature did not grant the $2 million that 40,000 members of the disabled...

If we don't want to teach our children anything about faith and religion in the public schools, then we clearly should not teach them about The Theory of Evolution. The Theory of Evolution is every bit as much a religion of liberalism and a tenet of their faith as the creation story is of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Shinto, and many other religions. Public schools should be allowed to teach The Theory of Evolution, so long as they correctly identify it as a theory. Children are potential adults, and can make their own conclusions about whether The Theory of Evolution is a fact or not. If children can be taught one theory, then they are perfectly able to digest others. I hear from time to time that we all surely believe in evolution, because we can all observe that things change over time, people become generally taller, world records are broken in track and field and weightlifting on a regular basis, and similar such occurrences. This tactic is simple logical slight o...

Children thrive educationally when there are a variety of educational options open to them. An educator who tries to put stumbling blocks in the way of alternatives for children's education is actually encouraging children's educational failure. The Deseret News recently published an article about the tenure of Pat Rusk as president of the Utah Education Association . I don't know if Pat Rusk feels the way the article portrays, but the following paragraph in the article jumped out at me. the leader of the 18,000-member union also has friends, handing over dollars and manpower to one of Utah's strongest political arsenals that has helped block Republican Party-backed tax credits or vouchers for private school tuition in one of the nation's reddest states. Let me get right to the point. I can't, based on the above paragraph, cast aspersions at Ms. Rusk, but I do feel that anyone who feels proud of blocking other educational opportunities for children, such as ...

At first glance, it seems unfair for Utah to provide lower-cost, in-state tuition to non-resident aliens. But precautions are in place that make it more fair than it seems. In a March 2003 article on the Eagle Forum website, Phyllis Schlafly chastized four states , including Utah for contravening Federal Law by providing, lower-cost in-state tuition to illegal aliens. I have not studied the laws enacted by the other three states, but the Utah law makes a great deal of sense. In 2002, prior to the Eagle Forum article, the Attorney General of the State of Utah gave the opinion that Utah actually is in compliance with Federal Law in allowing in-state tuition to "nonimmigrant aliens". His letter to the President of the University of Utah on the subject is reprinted here. Most importantly, Utah is not allowed to provide in-state tuition to aliens if it violates Federal law. To wit, if it would provide the same lower-cost tuition to other groups of residents or foreign national...

Summary: Did any of the Duke Lacrosse players rape the stripper at the party in March 2006? I don't know. But I know a whole bunch of them were there. E. D. Hirsch wrote a book a few years back, called Cultural Literacy, about things we need to know in our culture to be able to understand and contribute to society. The problem is nowadays there are certain things that we don't need to know but that are foisted in our faces non-stop anyway, and make us less able to contribute in a meaningful way to society. There has been a running joke among my buddies and I here in Iraq. Almost anytime we get around a television we hear something on the news or on the sports channel about the Duke lacrosse team and an exotic dancer at some party last March. "Did you hear about this Duke thing?" we exclaim to each other as though the story hadn't bored us to death already in the last 3 months. "The lacrosse team supposedly raped a stripper!" "Wow, I hadn...

Summary: Licensure in many cases is simply a license for (1) people to do substandard work, (2) other people to be trusting of people that shouldn’t be trusted, and (3) groups of people to limit entry of others into their profession. In my opinion, licensing in most cases should not be required, but should be an option for people who choose it as a form of insurance that the good or service provided is trustworthy. Here’s what I mean… First, a couple of stories to set the stage. When I was a teenager, my father was on the city council in our town. He was frustrated one time about a man in town who refused to get a building permit to make modifications to his house. As I thought about it, I found myself on the side of the man who didn’t want to get the building permit. Later on, in a different town, I became a member of a city council. Every year, it came time to renew the licenses of every business in town. And nearly every year I asked for a discussion on why we required busin...