Dear Cardinal Mahony,

I saw your recent blog post entitled Judge Vaughn Walker Got it Wrong, in which you wrote:

[Walker's] decision fails to deal with the basic, underlying issue–rather he focused solely upon individual testimony on how Prop 8 affected them personally. Wrong focus.

There is only one issue before each of us Californians: Is Marriage of Divine or of Human Origin?

Judge Walker pays no attention to this fundamental issue, and relies solely upon how Prop 8 made certain members of society “feel” about themselves.

Those of us who supported Prop 8 and worked for its passage did so for one reason: We truly believe that Marriage was instituted by God for the specific purpose of carrying out God’s plan for the world and human society. Period.

That may be what you and many others believe about marriage, but that belief has no standing in court. Judge Walker was not placed on the bench to decide whether laws and conduct in the United States match up to the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, or other religious writings. His job is to measure the disputes that come to his courtroom against the laws and constitution of the United States of America.

Period.

Maybe even Exclamation Point.

The sacred text for Judge Walker is the US Constitution, and nowhere in the Constitution and its twenty seven amendments is (more…)

By Bernard Condon

The Associated Press

Updated: 06/12/2010 11:47:24 PM MDT

New York » Jonis Assmann doesn’t know how derivatives work, but he’s counting on them to help bring in next year’s soybean harvest in Brazil.

Assmann is not alone in his confusion, even though trade in many items we buy every day would slow or even stop without derivatives. The financial instrument even touches the outcomes of Utah Jazz basketball games.

But they also got much of the blame for the financial meltdown, so it’s no wonder they’re the target of a regulatory overhaul that a congressional conference committee took up last week.

The legislation could affect everything from a cup of coffee to the gas in your car. Here’s the story of one derivative.

–

Hedging bets » Assmann is perpetually worried he will run short of cash if prices for his crops fall. So he tries to pay for some of his supplies at the start of the growing season with a fixed amount of soybeans that will be collected at the end.

His suppliers don’t want to take on the risk of falling prices, either. But last month Philadelphia chemical maker FMC Corp. agreed to send Assmann all the insecticides and herbicides he needed in exchange for a third of his expected harvest.

Making the barter possible was a separate derivative that FMC, without Assmann’s knowledge, got a bank to design. That side bet is designed to make sure FMC won’t lose a penny if soybean prices fall.

“They seem very complicated,” Assmann, 39, said when told about the derivative. “A poultry company here lost a lot of money in derivatives. I don’t fully understand them.”

Derivatives are private bets between two parties on how the value of assets such as crops or measures such as interest rates will change in the future. Most aren’t traded on exchanges, and (more…)

By Boyer Jarvis

Updated: 02/25/2010 05:26:05 PM MST

The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board on Feb. 20 bravely endorsed civil unions for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters (”Equal rights: We can have marriage, civil unions,” Opinion).

In this op/ed piece, Boyer Jarvis, Utah’s caretaker of civil rights, praises the Tribune for ‘bravely’ endorsing civil unions, and then gently prods all of us to take the more courageous step to full equality—marriage.  He reminds us that separate isn’t equal and that we shouldn’t settle for half-steps.

Because I have taken the trouble to learn a little bit about the long history of the custom of marriage, I am willing to assert that marriage was civil before it became religious. At first, marriage was a way for two separate factions (two families, two tribes, two fiefdoms, two commercial enterprises, two empires, etc.) to unite and gain strength by marrying the daughter of one faction leader to the son of the other faction leader. When churches became significant elements of society, they quite naturally made the uniting of a woman with a man a basic part of their religious creed and practice.

By the 16th century, churches apparently had become the primary manager of marriage, and when Henry VIII could not obtain the Pope’s approval for his divorce from Catherine, King Henry ended his allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church and established the Church of England. Churches and religious leaders were important contributors to the public life of Colonial America, but the Founding Fathers were careful to exclude (more…)

Published on Sunday, February 21, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

This is a very good read. It’s long, but worthwhile. Take the time to read it and you will be glad you did.

A Good Week For Science — and Insight into Politics

by George Lakoff

Over the past couple of weeks, the NY Times has been reporting on results from the cognitive and brain sciences that confirm past research in those fields partly by me and partly by my community of colleagues. What makes this of general, not personal, interest is that the scientific results are especially important for understanding what has been going wrong for the Obama administration and for liberals generally, and what has been going right for conservatives. I’m going to start out with some science, and get on to the politics after brief discussions of three important NY Times articles and what they mean scientifically.

It’s always satisfying for a scientist to see his or her predictions proved right experimentally (which happens often) and actually discussed in the press (which happens rarely). As a cognitive scientist and linguist, it’s been a good couple of weeks for me and my colleagues, especially in the NY Times.  Experiments are hard to do and I celebrate all the experimenters cited.  Experiments are also hard to report on, and I praise the journalists at the Times for a fine job.

Metaphor and Embodiment

Back in 1980, Mark Johnson and I, in Metaphors We Live By, demonstrated the existence of metaphorical thought and argued that metaphor and other aspects of mind were embodied. That book, and our 1987 books, my Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things and Mark’s The Body in the Mind, helped to start a cottage industry in the study of embodied cognition.

The experimental results confirming our theories of embodied cognition (more…)

The Man with a Plan

Someone’s in charge, right?

By D.P. Sorensen

Columnist for City Weekly

If we are willing to cut God (by the way, does anyone know what his last name is?) some slack, we could say that he just wasn’t paying attention when the earthquake struck Haiti last week, taking the lives, by latest estimates, of some 100,000 souls in that island paradise. Proof that he does pay attention, at least part of the time, came in the form of his intervention in 2008’s election, when, according to Sarah Palin, her selection as the Republican vice presidential candidate was “God’s will.”

The fact that God smiled on Sarah Palin, but not on the 100,000 Haitians, raises some troubling questions about God’s basic competence. Even if we do cut him some slack, and allow that he was (more…)

(This was taken from the website of Humanists of Utah and was credited to George Washington. It’s worthy of attention.)

-Associate yourself with persons of good character. It is better to be alone than in bad company.

-Think before you speak.

-Accept corrections thankfully.

-Be not obstinate in supporting your own opinion.

-Do not repeat news if you know not the truth thereof.

-Speak not evil of the absent.

-Do not reprove or correct another in anger.

-Do not curse or revile anyone.

-Let your conversation be without malice or envy.

-Yield the place in front of the fire to the latest comer.

-Jog not the desk on which another reads or writes.

-Speak not injurious words either in jest or in earnest. Scoff at none although (more…)

Tribune Editorial

Updated: 12/11/2009 12:20:29 AM MST

It has come to this.

Utopia, the ill-starred fiber-optic network in which 10 Utah cities are enmeshed, is hemorrhaging cash. Those cities already are on the hook for millions of dollars in pledges of sales tax revenues to back the system’s debt. Utopia could begin to call on those pledges just as cities face budget crises caused by the recession.

Now the Utopians have come up with a new scheme: create special service districts to finance the system. But the folks in Brigham City, who apparently are the first to participate in this new model, have discovered an ugly catch.

The service costs $3,000 upfront. Or you can pay $25 a month for 20 years, which adds up to $6,000. But if you choose the payment plan, the special service district will place a lien on your home.

Customers in Brigham City have complained that salesmen didn’t tell them about the lien when they signed up for the monthly payment option. Now both Utopia and the city say that it’s too late for customers to back out.

This is just the latest unpleasant surprise that Utopia has sprung, and it may not be the last.

It wasn’t supposed to work out this way. When backers proposed the network in 2002, (more…)

Tiger Woods said Friday he is taking an indefinite leave from golf to try to save his marriage, the biggest fallout yet from two shocking weeks filled with allegations of rampant extramarital affairs.

“I need to focus my attention on being a better husband, father, and person,” Woods said on his Web site.

Woods and his wife, Elin, have been married five years and have a 2-year-old daughter and a 10-month-old son.

The announcement came two weeks after Woods crashed his SUV into a tree outside his Florida home, setting in motion a stunning downfall for the world’s No. 1 player who for 13 years rarely made news off the golf course. One woman who said she had a 31-month affair with Woods shared a voice mail that she said Woods left her two nights before his Nov. 27 accident.

“I am deeply aware of the disappointment and hurt that my infidelity has caused to so many people, most of all my wife and children,” Woods said. “I want to say again to everyone that I am profoundly sorry and that I ask forgiveness. It may not be possible to repair the damage I’ve done, but I want to do my best to try.”

Woods has not been seen in public since the accident.

He gave no indication when he might return in what could be a pivotal year as he pursues the record 18 major championships won by Jack Nicklaus. Woods, who did not win a major (more…)

by Sean Means

Salt Lake Tribune

The debate over gay marriage — and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ role in passing California’s anti-gay Proposition 8 — is coming back to Utah.

“We’re bringing the pain of this home,” said Reed Cowan, who directed “8: The Mormon Proposition,” which will have its world premiere next month in Park City at the Sundance Film Festival.

Cowan’s documentary is one of more than 50 titles announced Dec. 3 in the festival’s non-competitive slate.

“It’s really well done, and it’s really thorough,” festival director John Cooper said. “[Cowan] goes very deep, into the Mormon Church and its relationship to the anti-gay-marriage movement, all the way back almost before it really started, all the way back to the ’90s.”

The movie chronicles the 2008 campaign for Prop. 8, which overturned a court decision to allow same-sex marriage in California. In the film, Cowan tracks the LDS Church’s (more…)

Published on Tuesday, December 1, 2009 by The Daily Beast

Worse Than Enron?

Wall Street’s big banks are playing dangerous new accounting games—and this time taxpayers are on the hook for hundreds of billions. Nomi Prins uncovers a scandal in the making.

by Nomi Prins

Enron was the financial scandal that kicked off the decade: a giant energy trading company that appeared to be doing brilliantly-until we finally noticed that it wasn’t. It’s largely been forgotten given the wreckage that followed, and that’s too bad: we may be repeating those mistakes, on a far larger scale.

Specifically, as the largest Wall Street banks return to profitability-in some cases, breaking records-they say everything is rosy. They’re lining up to pay back their TARP money and asking Washington to back off. But why are they doing so well? Remember that Enron got away with their illegalities so long because their financials were so complicated that not even the analysts paid to monitor the Houston-based trading giant could cogently explain how they were making so much money.

After two weeks sifting through over one thousand pages of SEC filings for the largest banks, I have the same concerns. While Washington ponders (more…)

Published on Wednesday, December 2, 2009 by Media Matters for America

Another Afghanistan Conflict for General McCaffrey to Disclose

by Matt Gertz

Yesterday, Media Matters pointed out that MSNBC has repeatedly hosted NBC News military analyst and retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey in recent days. McCaffrey has used his appearances to criticize possible “deadlines” to the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan and highlight the importance of training the Afghan security forces. But at no point have McCaffrey or the MSNBC anchors hosting him disclosed a substantial conflict of interest McCaffrey has with regard to the U.S. government’s presence in Afghanistan and focus on troop training: McCaffrey serves on the board of directors of  DynCorp International — a company under contract to provide support to U.S. bases in Afghanistan for up to five years, as well as to train a portion of those security forces McCaffrey is calling  ”the center of gravity of the entire war.”

NBC and MSNBC should be ashamed, and it also brings into question the integrity of McCaffrey. What frauds! Why is he on these boards? Because he is being paid for his contacts and influence within the Pentagon. And we worry about the drug trade in Afghanistan! How about weeding out our own corruption first? How about firing all the mercenaries like the corrupt (more…)

BY JOHN CONYERS JR.

This week marks an important anniversary that will go unnoticed in many corners. Ten years ago, a little known Depression-era law known as the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed. It passed with large margins in both houses of Congress and was signed by President Bill Clinton. On Wall Street, the titans of capitalism cheered while it went unnoticed by most Americans that an important guard against financial instability and conflict of interest had been wiped away.

The Glass-Steagall Act had a simple premise: America’s banking sectors and investment houses need to remain separate to prevent banks from gambling on the stock market with our savings. President Franklin Roosevelt knew that banks, like other institutions, could not be trusted to police themselves. After witnessing the widespread failure of financial institutions in the Great Depression (more…)

(This letter was written by Will Carlson, who has been Manager of Public Policy of Equality Utah and is leaving for a full time position with Sam Gill in the SLC prosecutor’s office. His well written letter is worthy of a read by everyone.)

Dear Equality Utah Supporter,

One of my friends who majored in gender studies once asked of me “what does it mean to you to be a man?” If you haven’t had the privilege of meeting a gender studies major, you might not recognize the trap that had just been set for me. Whether I talked about biology, psychology, ideology, or sociology, there was no way that I could answer my friend’s question without seeming specious.

So often in my life, especially during my time at Equality Utah, I’ve been asked questions that I wasn’t quite sure how to answer. Whether it was a legislator asking if he could sponsor LGBT friendly legislation and still be re-elected, or a parent asking how the law could justify protecting one of her children but not the other, or a transgender Utahn who called to say she was about to lose her job because of her gender expression and asked what her (more…)

By Carrie A. Moore

Deseret News

Published: Monday, Nov. 16, 2009 9:48 a.m. MST

Many Americans have become so effective at covering themselves from the sun that they don’t get enough Vitamin D, which may be putting them at increased risk not only for cardiovascular disease but for depression.

That’s the finding of a new study of more than 27,000 patients tracked by researchers at Intermountain Medical Center, who found that healthy levels of Vitamin D contribute to a strong and healthy heart.

This advice should be taken to heart. As we generally get the necessary amounts of vitamins in our normal diet it is not suggested that we should just dose up on vitamins, but in the case of Vitamin D it should be added to our diet through a supplement, especially in the winter months.

The sun is the greatest source of Vitamin D and we need to expose our skin to the sun as much as possible without burning. Sunscreen will prevent skin cancers, but they may very well reduce significant benefits from sunshine and thus increase the risk of other cancers, heart disease, and depression. The  sun is critical to all forms of life on earth and we shouldn’t be hiding from it. Lap it up without burning! That’s a tough balancing act for light skinned people and they may need to resort to higher dosages of Vitamin D3 pills.

They also found that inadequate Vitamin D levels may significantly increase the risk of stroke, heart disease and death — even among those who’ve never had heart disease.

The study’s findings were to be presented Monday at the American Heart Association’s annual scientific conference in Orlando, Fla.

Researchers also found a lack of Vitamin D may contribute to depression in both men and women.

(more…)

By Judy Fayhs

Salt Lake Tribune

A group of earth scientists at conservative Brigham Young University has sent a stinging rebuke to state lawmakers on their recent handling of climate-change science.

The 18 scientists wrote the governor and legislators Oct. 26, urging them to “consider separating the science from the policy issues.” They challenged lawmakers for giving the “fringe” position of a climate skeptic equal weight to that of the broad, scientific consensus that climate change is happening, largely because of human activities.

“We have no specific political agenda to support but agree that whatever action is taken, it should be informed by the best available scientific evidence,” the scientists said. “We encourage our legislators not to manipulate the scientific evidence to suit any political agenda.”

The scientists sent the letter five days after the Public Utilities and Technology Interim Committee heard from Roy Spencer, an Alabama climatologist who doubts human activities are largely responsible for climate change, and Jim Steenburgh, chairman and professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah.

Summer Rupper, a BYU climate scientist, led the (more…)

Washington » Utah Gov. Gary Herbert pulled together various sides in public-lands disputes when he recently created his Balanced Resource Council, and now he is attracting the attention of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

Herbert says Salazar has requested to meet with the council, which includes liberals and conservatives who have been on opposite sides over public-lands use.

The council is led by former Salt Lake City Mayor Ted Wilson, a Democrat, but also includes two former Bureau of Land Management directors and state Rep. Mike Noel, a Republican who has fought for more access to federal lands.

Governor Herbert’s appointment of Ted Wilson, a prominent Utah Democrat, to lead the panel was a noteworthy effort for bipartisanship and will assure an objective and thorough discussion of the issues. It is in the mold being exhibited at the national level by President Obama and Governor Herbert is to be commended for assuring that diversity of opinion will be heard. It gives the panel much greater credibility than it would otherwise have.

Herbert said after a meeting with Salazar (more…)

by Cathy McKitrick

Salt Lake Tribune

Members of the grass-roots group, Utahns for Ethical Government, took their reform message to Capitol Hill Wednesday, unveiling a ballot initiative they hope will accomplish what legislators have not yet done themselves.

Former lawmakers Kim Burningham and David Irvine — both Republicans and vocal opponents of the now-overturned school voucher law — led the charge to tighten existing ethics policies.

“Our system is riddled with laws and the absence of laws, which not only allow but encourage unethical behavior in our Legislature,” said Burningham, a state Board of Education member.

Burningham cited Utah as one of 10 states that lack an independent ethics commission. Instead, lawmakers police their own. He also decried the absence of caps on campaign (more…)

Published on Sunday, October 25, 2009 by The New York Times

In Defense of the ‘Balloon Boy’ Dad

by Frank Rich

FOR a country desperate for good news, the now-deflated “balloon boy” spectacle would seem to be the perfect tonic. As Wolf Blitzer of CNN summed up the nation’s unrestrained joy upon learning that the imperiled boy had never been in any peril whatsoever: “All of us are so excited that little Falcon is fine.”

Then came even better news. After little Falcon revealed to Blitzer that his family “did this for the show,” we could all luxuriate in a warm bath of moral superiority. No matter what our own faults as parents, we could never top Richard Heene, who mercilessly exploited his child for fame and profit. Nor could we ever be as craven as the news media, especially cable television, which dumped a live broadcast of President Obama in New Orleans to track the supersized Jiffy Pop bag floating over Colorado.

Or such are the received lessons of this tale.

Certainly the “balloon boy” incident is a reflection of our time – much as the radio-induced “War of the Worlds” panic dramatized America’s jitters on the eve of World War II, or the national preoccupation with the now-forgotten Congressman Gary Condit signaled America’s pre-9/11 drift into escapism and complacency in the summer of 2001. But to see what “balloon boy” says about 2009, you have to look past the sentimental moral absolutes. You have to muster some sympathy for the devil of the piece, the Bad Dad. And you can’t grant blanket absolution to those in the American audience who smugly blame Heene and television exclusively for the entire embarrassing episode.

It would be lovely, for instance, to believe that cable audiences doubled in size that afternoon because they were rooting for little Falcon’s welfare. But as Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler would say on Weekend Update at “Saturday Night Live,” “Really?!?” Many of those viewers were driven by the same bloodlust that spawns rubberneckers at every highway accident: the hope of witnessing the graphic remains of a crash, not a soft landing.

It would also be nice to think that the “balloon boy” viewers were the innocent victims of a dazzling Houdini-class feat (more…)

From Politco.com
By: John Bresnahan
June 17, 2009 02:41 PM EST

The son of the couple at the center of the sex scandal that has engulfed Sen. John Ensign was being paid by National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2008 at the same time his mother was having an affair with the Nevada Republican.

Both Doug and Cynthia Hampton were already working in senior positions for Ensign when their son Brandon Hampton was hired to do “research policy consulting” for the NRSC in March 2008.

The younger Hampton, 19, was paid $5,400 before he left the Ensign office in August last year, Federal Election Commission records show.

That means during March and April 2008, three members of the Hampton family were working for Ensign. Both Doug and Cynthia Hampton stopped working for Ensign at the end of April 2008.

According to people familiar with the matter, Ensign’s affair with Hampton took place between December 2007 and August 2008.

A trusted political aide, Cynthia Hampton served as the treasurer (more…)

By Paul McDonnold Dallas

Christian Science Monitor

Published: Sunday, June 14, 2009 12:32 a.m. MDT

Is capitalism fatally flawed?

Recessions, like hurricanes, leave wreckage behind — bankrupt businesses, high unemployment and sometimes even tattered philosophies.

The philosophy of economic conservatism has long been one of unquestioned deregulation. Conservatives have considered it as a way of unhooking government leashes that the economy strains against, setting it free to run (more…)