Despair is worse after hope is briefly ignited. I don’t know about you, but I was elated earlier this spring when it seemed as if Donald Trump and COVID-19 were gone, and Joe Biden appeared to be getting the nation rapidly back on track.
To understand what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s select committee investigation of the Capitol Hill events of Jan. 6 is all about, a good place to begin is with the sentencing hearing last week of Paul Hodgkins.
If you wonder what Republicans are accomplishing in Washington, look no further than the Senate Armed Services committee, where a majority of them voted to create the predicate for drafting women into the military.
Job Corps changed my life. It’s as simple as that. It taught me that investing in yourself is one of the smartest things you can do in your life. I didn’t have a good home life growing up, and in my junior year of high school I was told that I could no longer stay at my parents’ home. I deci…
In October 2020, 14 people were arrested in Michigan and accused of being participants in a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The governor had imposed draconian restrictions on religious, travel and commercial activities as a means, she claimed, to stem the spread of COVID-19. All of her…
We know that the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected women: The Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah reported that from 2019 to 2020 in Utah, jobs held by women declined at a rate more than double that of men, and unemployment rose more for females than males. But what of the women who stayed employed? How have they been affected, especially if they have children?
A stack of books on my desk where I’ve worked at home for a year and a half holds my laptop camera at just the right level to create an eye-to-eye view for Zoom meetings. It also reflects some of my reading of 2020. While most people are ready to put 2020 far behind them, these books are, fo…
We all just enjoyed another grand celebration of Utah’s pioneer heritage. This year’s festivities more than made up for last year’s lack when we were forced to pioneer our way through COVID’s imposed abstinence from all things celebratory.
WASHINGTON — Nearly half a year into Joe Biden’s presidency, his effectiveness remains subject to real and potential hindrances. The COVID-19 pandemic is a reality, but the continued efforts of his defeated predecessor to turn back the clock also intrude on Biden’s ambitious agenda.
Speech suppression is a habit that the Biden administration and its liberal supporters can’t seem to break. Many staffers may have picked up the habit in their student years: Colleges and universities have been routinely censoring “politically incorrect” speech for the last 30 years. As Thom…
Many of us spent the pandemic months obsessing over how our mug looked on Zoom and other video-chatting services. Poor lighting was a torment, and the lack of sunshine and exercise produced what’s been dubbed “lockdown face.”
Former President Donald J. Trump recently filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Miami against the Big Tech companies that have denied him a platform. He has targeted Twitter and Facebook, whose media platforms he had used with spectacular success before and during his presidency to ad…
In the Southwest U.S., one of the driest regions in America, we’re no strangers to drought. Water scarcity is at the core of our existence. It’s only with proper management of fresh water in states like Utah, Nevada and Arizona that we can sustain large populations with rapid population growth.
As a kid, whenever my mother caught me complaining about anything, she’d say, “Cheer up, it could get worse.” She’d usually follow this with, “So I cheered up, and sure enough ...”
Every policy wonk will tell you that after you live in Washington long enough, you start seeing the same issues reemerge on a regular basis. Common ones are praise for the magical ability of government spending to help pay for itself during recessions and handwringing over the myth of middle…
The CDC recently reported that 67% of Americans have at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 51% of adults are still unvaccinated, and almost a quarter of adults probably or definitely will not get the vaccine. Thus, the significant percentage of unva…
Even setting aside the abuse of power widespread in religious denominations today — sexual abuse scandals, for one — churches diminish themselves by means of a badly tarnished understanding of Western religious life, and thus do no small amount of disservice to their congregations.
Did you know that Black people are not going to be allowed to vote in America anymore? At least in states controlled by Republicans. Sounds a bit unlikely, but that’s a conclusion you might have come to if you took seriously what President Joe Biden said in Philadelphia Tuesday.
I love the Olympics, but my favorite will probably always be the 2001 games when the winter Olympics came to Salt Lake City. I got to see the opening ceremonies — sort of — and they were fantastic.
If this is Joe Biden when he’s forceful and passionate, the country is better off with the passive and detached version.
”No person ... shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” — Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Declaring their independence from British rule 245 years ago, the American colonists held “these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” They went on to announce, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
America has so many regulations that today, often the only way to do something new, to create something great, to prosper is to ignore rules.
On Independence Day, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox argued that politics is supplanting religion in America. “Politics is becoming sport and entertainment in our country,” he said. “Everything is political. It is a huge mistake, and it’s caused us to make bad decisions during this pandemic and in oth…
On a recent flight from Texas to North Carolina, a woman came so unglued that she tried to open the plane’s door. The flight crew had to bind and gag her with duct tape. This was an extreme example of a disturbing trend in air travel: People are becoming unruly or even hysterical.
Consider this a PSA (public service announcement) for summer vacation traveling:
As in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973, the year our prisoners of war came home, America did not lose a major battle in Afghanistan.
I like to apply free market analysis to American politics. Within established laws, politicians compete for votes and are rewarded for maximizing voters’ preferences. As in economics, there are sometimes market failures, but mostly the system seems to be self-regulating.
Two-time Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously articulated a three-tiered framework of human knowledge. First, there are “known knowns,” he explained. These are the things “we know we know.” Second, there are “known unknowns,” the things we know that “we do not know.” And, third, the…
Tennis superstar Naomi Osaka is the world's best-paid female athlete. She made an estimated $60 million last year. The 23-year-old is on top of the tennis world, but is her refusal to honor the rules set by that world justified?
Critical race theory (CRT) is probably not the answer; it is too ill-defined and academic-sounding for most people. On the other hand, public comments of some political leaders seem to indicate they may not fully understand the question. When people say things like, “No matter your social cl…
Politicians say they pass laws to “protect Americans from big business.”
I did a dumb thing the other day. I asked my daughter, now in her 20s, if she had any examples of parenting mistakes that would be entertaining for this column?
We have been celebrating freedom a lot over the last few weeks. Juneteenth became a federally recognized holiday this year, commemorating the emancipation of African American slaves.
It’s on. California will vote on whether to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sept. 14.
Can we be done with the hoax? If you fell for it, that’s fine, no one’s going to blame or judge you for it. Plenty of smart people fell for it. But now that the evidence is growing steadily, year after year, about the true nature of things, I urge you to drop the pretense and join with us in…
I have been slow to post these thoughts because many of my fellow Idahoans and many of my coreligionists will take offense, but I have never let controversy get in the way before, so here goes.
So far, the bipartisan infrastructure deal is going through the normal life cycle of such proposals — alive, dead, revived, uncertain.
A funny thing happened on the way to California’s collapse. It didn’t happen.
Would carrying a gun make you feel safer?
This weekend, I spent time at a virtual conference on engineering studies — a field that attempts to reflect on engineering and society. The conference started by hosting the movie “Black Panther.” For those who don’t know, the Black Panther is the leader of the fictional and technologically…
In the event that a group of U.S. senators cannot agree on committing enough money to a bipartisan infrastructure plan, Democrats are reportedly considering a $6 trillion plan of their own. It would probably be best described as a package full of progressive items wrapped in magical thinking paper.
This world is filled with good people. Really good people who do right things at the right time to make other people’s lives better. And a few who don’t.
On Tuesday, Brooklyn Borough President and former police captain Eric Adams took the lead in the New York mayoral race with 32% of the Democratic primary vote, 10 points more than progressive Maya Wiley, who had the endorsement of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s seemingly fruitless pursuit of bipartisanship with Congress has scored an initial breakthrough in a surprise deal with Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and a handful of Republicans on infrastructure repair and renewal across the country.
Give Charles Murray, longtime scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, credit for courage. Again and again, despite outrageously unfair attacks, he has returned to the public arena and persisted in telling unwelcome truths. In his meticulous prose, with charts and tables so elegant as t…
Conversion therapy is a harmful practice still conducted by mental health professionals, unlicensed ministries, or life coaches within the United States. Conversion therapy is a destructive form of therapy attempting to alter one’s sexual orientation or gender identity by employing psycholog…
WANTED: Trained security professionals to deal with elevated levels of crime and mayhem at risk to their own life and limb, while getting called racist oppressors and potentially thrown under the bus by elected officials.
The dispute over whether Roman Catholics who facilitate abortions should be permitted to receive the Blessed Sacrament appears to be coming to a head as President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a public Roman Catholic and public abettor of abortion, continues to attend Mass regularly and receive.
Last week, I debunked three myths about capitalism. Here are four more:
If it’s been awhile since you’ve taken a look at your internet service, it may surprise you to learn that you can get much higher speeds for the same price as your current service. But once you start your research, you may be on your way down a rabbit hole where providers are vying for your …
