These are the prepared remarks for delivery by President Barack Obama for the Memorial Service for the Victims of the Shooting in Tucson, Arizona. When available we will post the exact text as given.

This is one of the most remarkable speeches given by one of the most remarkable speakers in modern history. We will be posting the video shortly.

“To the families of those we’ve lost; to all who called them friends; to the students of this university, the public servants gathered tonight, and the people of Tucson and Arizona: I have come here tonight as an American who, like all Americans, kneels to pray with you today, and will stand by you tomorrow.

There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts. But know this: the hopes of a nation are here tonight. We mourn with you for the fallen. We join you in your grief. And we add our faith to yours that Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other living victims of this tragedy pull through.

As Scripture tells us:

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.

On Saturday morning, Gabby, her staff, and many of her constituents gathered outside a supermarket to exercise their right to peaceful assembly and free speech. They were fulfilling a central tenet of the democracy envisioned by our founders – representatives of the people answering to their constituents, so as to carry their concerns to our nation’s capital. Gabby called it “Congress on Your Corner” – just an updated version of government of and by and for the people.

That is the quintessentially American scene that was shattered by a gunman’s bullets. And the six people who lost their lives on Saturday – they too represented what is best in America.

Judge John Roll served our legal system for nearly 40 years. A graduate of this university and its law school, Judge Roll was recommended (more…)

Chinese Officials Perturbed By Selection

Nobel Peace Prize-winning Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo dedicated the award to people killed in the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests, reports said on Monday, while Chinese media said the prize showed the West feared China.

The rival responses to Liu’s award, announced on Friday, have laid bare the raw tensions between China’s ruling Communist Party and critics, at home and abroad, pressing for democratic change.

Those tensions still draw on sensitive memories of 1989.

Liu, serving 11 years in jail for campaigning for democratic transformation of China’s one-party state, told his wife Liu Xia the award was a tribute to citizens killed that year when troops moved in to crush the protests centered on Tiananmen Square in central Beijing.

“This prize goes to all of those who died on June 4, 1989,” he told her, according to Norway’s Dagbladet newspaper, citing a message from Liu Xia after she visited him in prison.

State-controlled Chinese newspapers countered that the prize to Liu, once reviled by Beijing as a traitorous “black hand” behind the 1989 protests, showed a prejudiced West afraid of China’s rising wealth and standing.

“The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to ‘dissident’ Liu Xiaobo was nothing more than another expression of this prejudice, and behind it lies an extraordinary terror of China’s rise and the Chinese model,” said the Global Times, a popular Chinese-language tabloid that has led the media charge against the Nobel decision.

If Liu’s calls for a multi-party democracy in China were followed, a commentary in the paper said: “China’s fate would perhaps be no better than the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and the country probably would have quickly collapsed.”

The China Daily, one of the government’s main English-language mouthpieces, said the award was “part of the plot to contain China.”

The Nobel exposed “the deep and wide ideological rift (more…)

By MALCOLM RITTER

and KARL RITTER

The Associated Press

October 6, 2010 12:14AM

New York • It is the thinnest and strongest material known to mankind — no thicker than a single atom and 100 times tougher than steel. Could graphene be the next plastic? Maybe so, says one of two scientists who won a Nobel Prize on Tuesday for isolating and studying it.

Faster computers, lighter airplanes, transparent touch screens — the list of potential uses runs on. Some scientists say we can’t even imagine what kinds of products might be possible with the substance, which hides in ordinary pencil lead and first was extracted using a piece of Scotch tape.

Two Russian-born researchers shared the physics Nobel for their groundbreaking experiments with graphene, which is a sheet of carbon atoms joined together in a pattern that resembles chicken wire.

Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of the University of Manchester in England used Scotch tape to rip off flakes of graphene from a chunk of graphite, the stuff of pencil leads. That achievement, reported just six years ago, opened the door to studying what scientists say should be a versatile building block for electronics and strong materials.

And the world takes another step forward. These Russian born scientists are working at the University of Manchester in socialist England.

The research project has undoubtedly been financed by taxpayer funds, another achievement of good government.

The anti-government crowd will be swarming all over this government sponsored discovery to get patents on new products that will all flow from this government research project, and then they will take their exorbitant earnings and spend campaign money to elect anti-government candidates so that the government will damn well never have any more research projects at taxpayer expense.

The anti-government crowd is nuts.

“It has all the potential to change your life in the same way that plastics did,” Geim, 51, a Dutch citizen, told The Associated Press. “It is really exciting.”

Michael Strano, a chemist at MIT, said trying to predict its uses (more…)

Cael Sanderson, 159-0

(This column was written in 2006 and published in Fairways Magazine)

As children we all choose heroes.

We took personal ownership of our chosen heroes. They were ours. We protected them. We fought for them. We cheered them and defended them. And our heroes were always better than anyone else’s heroes and there were even arguments about it. And when they won we were proud, and their success enhanced our own self value, and in fact, there was a certain unrealistic transformation taking place wherein we actually felt that our support was helping them succeed.

When we discovered that one of our friends also shared our same heroes, then we suddenly realized that our friend was not only a friend, but a friend with very good sense.

My first big hero was Jackie Robinson. After that they came in bunches, including Bob Cousy, Bill Russell, Roy Campenella, Ted Williams, and Yogi Berra. New stars would come on the scene, Roger Bannister, Bob Beamon, Mohammed Ali, John Wooden, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan. The ones we chose remained our heroes and it took a lot for any other would-be-heroes to bump our originals off the top perch. One of the new ones who has moved right to the top is Tiger Woods, whose composure, grace, and determination are unmatched in golf today.

My heroes were mostly athletes. Subconsciously they were divided into two groups, the ones who were far away we would never know personally, and the ones who defended the home turf and who could be seen and touched, such as dynamic duos Arnie Ferrin and Vern Gardner, Mel Hutchins and Roland Minson, and Stockton to Malone.

As a kid I remember lying on the floor by the radio listening with my dad to the voice say “Let’s go with Utoco to the basketball game,” and cheering whenever the Aggies, Utes, and Cougars were playing.

Time moved on and the hero list grew, and to the top of the list went Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. It grew closer and closer to home with Merlin Olsen, L.J. Silvester, Max Perry, Cornell Green, Bill Munson, (more…)

By Jim Kuhnhenn and Daniel Wagner

Associated Press

Published: Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010 9:03 p.m. MST

WASHINGTON — Challenged by a skeptical special commission, top Wall Street bankers apologized Wednesday for risky behavior that led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. But they still declared it seemed appropriate at the time.

The bankers — whose companies collectively received more than $100 billion in taxpayer assistance to weather the crisis — offered no regrets for executive pay that is now likely to increase as a result of their survival. They did say they are correcting some compensation practices that could lead to excessive risk-taking.

The tension at the first hearing of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was evident from the outset.

“People are angry,” commission Chairman Phil Angelides said. Reports of “record profits and bonuses in the wake of receiving trillions of dollars in government assistance while so many families are struggling to stay afloat has only heightened the sense of confusion,” he said.

Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, took the brunt of the questions, especially on his firm’s practice of selling mortgage-backed securities and then betting against them.

“I’m just going to be blunt with you,” Angelides told him. “It sounds to me a little bit like selling a car with faulty brakes and then buying an insurance policy on the buyer of those cars.”

Way to go Chairman Angelides. You couldn’t have described it better. Now what will Congress do about it? Nothing!! This is all show. The politicians are bought by the bankers. There will be no (more…)

by Kathy Stephenson

Salt Lake Tribune

Kim Peek, the Murray man who inspired the 1988 movie “Rain Man,” died Saturday of a sudden heart attack.

Peek, 58, was likely the world’s most famous savant, enduring mental handicaps while at the same time possessing extraordinary gifts of memory and recall.

“He had a depth and breadth of knowledge and a memory that was just unbelievable,” said Daniel Christensen, a professor with the University of Utah’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. “He was unique. I don’t know if there will ever be another person quite like Kim.”

In recent weeks, Kim Peek had suffered from an upper respiratory infection, his father, Fran Peek, said Monday afternoon. Peek had been retaining water, gaining nearly 30 pounds. Water pills did not seem to ease the situation.

Peek was born on Nov. 11, 1951. At 9 months, doctors said he was severely mentally retarded.

“They told us we should institutionalize him because he would never walk or talk,” Fran Peek said. “But we refused to do that.”

By 16 months, Peek demonstrated extraordinary abilities. He could read and memorize entire volumes of information.

“He could find anything he wanted to. He read all of Shakespeare, the Old and New Testaments,” Fran Peek said.

An MRI later showed that his brain lacked a corpus callosum — the connecting tissue between the left and right hemispheres. Peek said his son’s brain lacked the normal filtering system for receiving information. The condition left him able to retain nearly 98 percent of everything he read, heard or watched on television. The average person only retains about 45 percent.

As both a child and adult, Peek’s favorite place was the library, where he devoured books at a confounding rate. At the time of his death, Peek is believed to have committed at least 9,000 books to memory. He could recite so many gigabytes of facts that people often called him Kim-puter. NASA made him the subject of MRI-based research.

Peek, who was shy and withdrawn, spent most of his early years among his family and friends. However, his life took a swift turn in 1984, when he met screenwriter Barry Morrow. Peek’s personality impressed Morrow, who wrote the screenplay for “Rain Man.” The movie, starring Dustin Hoffman (more…)

And another one bites the dust. So much for the ’sanctity of marriage.’ The Republican Party has become a hiding place, a closet, for hypocrites. They pompously wear their religion on their sleeve and condemn gays while preaching the sanctity of marriage. When they are forced out of their hypocritical closets it makes their preaching ‘as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.’ I Corinthians 13:1

From Herald Staff and Wire Reports

After going AWOL for seven days, Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday in a bombshell news conference he had secretly flown to Argentina to visit a woman with whom he was having an affair.Wiping away tears, the 49-year-old governor stood in the Statehouse and apologized to his wife and four sons, saying he would step down as head of the Republican Governors Association.”I’ve been unfaithful to my wife,” he said during an emotional speech in which he ruminated aloud with remarkable frankness on God’s law, moral absolutes and following one’s heart.

The Fort Lauderdale native, who had been recently mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2012, ignored questions about whether he would step down as governor of the Palmetto State.

As a congressman, Sanford voted in favor of three articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, citing the need for “moral legitimacy.”

The governor’s affair deals yet another blow (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 David Espo

Associated Press
9:06 p.m. MDT

WASHINGTON — A former campaign aide to Sen. John Ensign confirmed her involvement Wednesday in an extramarital affair with the conservative Republican, lamented his decision to “air this very personal matter” and said she eventually would tell her side of the story.

An attorney for Cindy Hampton and her husband, Doug, issued a statement on their behalf as Ensign phoned in his resignation as a member of the Senate GOP leadership. The senator’s aides refused to return phone calls seeking additional details about a dalliance that pushed the 51-year-old Nevada lawmaker’s political career to the brink of disaster.

An Associated Press review of federal records showed Cynthia Hampton, 46, received a promotion and a pay raise around the time of the affair at one political entity controlled by Ensign and a pay raise at a second. Her husband was an employee in Ensign’s Senate office.

Ensign told a hastily arranged news briefing on Tuesday he had an extramarital affair with a woman on his campaign payroll, and it lasted several months, ending last August.

Let it be noted that Senator Ensign was highly critical of President Clinton and supportive of impeachment, and has always been vociferously against gay rights for ‘moral’ reasons, and was also a voice that called for the resignation of Idaho Senator Larry Craig for his gay dalliance.  Also, Ensign is a member of the publicly self-righteous Promise Keepers and other religious groups. He is another high profile religious hypocrite standing in the way of gay rights. Out with him—he should resign, not his leadership post, but his seat in the senate, not for adultery–but for being such an enormous hypocrite.

The disclosure resurrected questions about a two-week period in 2002, when Ensign abruptly dropped from public view. A person familiar with that episode, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Tuesday the senator told a close associate the absence followed an earlier affair.

In Las Vegas on Wednesday, lawyer Daniel Albregts issued a statement that said “Doug and Cindy Hampton (more…)

This letter appeared in The Salt Lake Tribune, May 30, 2009. Several writers responded and those selected letters are published below.

If the safety of President Barack Obama’s wife and children depended on the extraction of information from terrorists, and he did not use enhanced interrogation techniques if needed to get that information, then he is neither a man nor a true father, nor should he be president of the United States.

We are all endowed with the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the government of the United States was instituted to secure these rights. And it is immoral not to use enhanced interrogation techniques in order to protect us and to secure those rights.

Gary Russon

Salt Lake City

Torture’s Costs

Gary Russon believes that it is immoral not to use “enhanced interrogation” to protect our unalienable rights (“Rights by interrogation,” Forum, May 30). I suggest (more…)

Now that the California Supreme Court, in a 6-1 ruling, validated Proposition 8, last fall’s voter-approved constitutional amendment forbidding same-sex marriage, it is interesting to examine the tactics and public conduct of the gay activist community.

Ironically, this powerful and well-funded gay lobby continues to use rhetoric to promote hate speech, encourage social protest and incite harassment of individuals or groups who oppose their agenda. The Californians Against Hate Web site, an archetype for gay activism (www.californiansagainsthate.com) continues to utilize false implication and exaggeration to impugn anyone who dares oppose them as hatemongers.

An example of this rhetoric is its “dishonor roll,” a comprehensive listing of donors who supported Proposition 8. It includes a specific charge to “Boycott A-1 Self Storage Company” and maliciously targets well over 300 other individuals and organizations who made generous donations supporting Prop 8.

An orchestrated attack against those who support a ban on same-sex marriage has included protest, vandalism and aggressive defamation. This attempted demonization may elicit public attention, but is transparent and disingenuous.

Can you imagine the firestorm of outrage that would erupt if sincere individuals in the gay community were targeted and assailed in an analogous manner?

Doug Roper

Sandy

Watts Cookin’ comment: This article reveals the culprits who were the root cause of the financial meltdown of this country. The people who were running these organizations should be cleaning toilets the rest of their lives, but too many of them remain anonymous. Their names should be posted for all to see. Their actions should affect their reputations. This blog will be revealing these names as they become publicly available.

The top subprime lenders whose practices are largely blamed for triggering the global economic meltdown were owned or bankrolled by banks now collecting billions of dollars in bailout money—including several that have paid huge fines to settle predatory lending charges.

These big institutions were not only unwitting victims of an unforeseen financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves, but enablers that bankrolled the type of lending that has threatened the financial system.

These are among the findings of an analysis of government data on nearly 7.2 million “high-interest” or subprime loans made from 2005 through 2007, a period that marks the peak and collapse of the subprime boom. The computer-assisted analysis also reveals the top 25 originators of high-interest loans, accounting for nearly $1 trillion, or about 72 percent of such loans made during that period.

(more…)