Opinion

Late last year, the legislative auditor general released an audit that was highly critical of the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (DABC). The audit revealed mismanagement and possible criminal malfeasance by the former department director, Dennis Kellen.

The governor asked for Kellen's immediate resignation and appointed Francine Giani, currently the executive director of the Department of Commerce, to temporarily head the DABC and clean-up the department. Subsequent legislative audits released earlier this year have suggested the need for greater internal audit controls. The Legislature also commissioned a study by Bonneville Research, which presented suggestions in November 2011 on how the DABC could more efficiently manage its operations by applying retail principles.

This was the week Mitt Romney should have sealed the Republican presidential nomination. He was expected to win Tuesday's caucuses in Colorado, to win or tie in Minnesota and to do credibly well in Missouri. Instead, the former Massachusetts governor managed to lose all three contests to Rick Santorum, a candidate who has spent most of the campaign stuck near the bottom of the polls.

The latest embarrassment from President Barack Obama is more than an embarrassment. It's an assault on faith that begins with a 2,500-page health care bill enacted with no one expected to read it except the bureaucrats paid to translate its obscurities into thousands more pages of regulations.

After a prolonged look at a phrase that could have been interpreted multiple ways, the president and the masters of your life in the Department of Health and Human Services bypassed the sensible and decreed we are now in the age of mandated contraception coverage, one step closer to Utopian bliss.

Too bad the brief but seismic split between Komen for the Cure and Planned Parenthood didn't explode in time for the Jan. 22 anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Yet another intimate portrait has just emerged about one of the most prominent and pivotal world leaders of the early 1960s, arguably the most dangerous and highly charged years of the Cold War.

An iconic hero for many, thanks to his charismatic personality and demonstrated courage, this former head of state is also controversial thanks to personal behavior, which can only be described as reckless.

Editor,

The national debt stood at less than $700 billion when Senator Hatch took office in January 1977. By the time President Bush left office in January 2009, the debt had ballooned to more than $10,600 billion. How many times in those 32 years did Senator Hatch vote to approve a budget that was not balanced and then vote to increase the national debt to pay for it?

Editor,

As a concerned parent and a melanoma skin cancer survivor, I was present when The tanning ban bill was presented to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee last Thursday.

Melanoma is becoming an epidemic among our young people. It used to be a disease seen in older people and has now become the second highest cause of cancer for those in ages 15-39. The risk of melanoma increases 75 percent with tanning bed usage before the age of 30. My surgical oncologist tells me that many of his patients are young people and many of them die.