POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Pope John Paul II, worried about Italy’s declining birth rates, tells the Italians to start producing more bambinos. Russian President Vladimir Putin tells a French journalist with nosy questions about Chechnya to go get circumcised. The meaty,...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - With Saturday’s University of Utah match against Brigham Young University behind us, and bickering over Main Street Plaza before us, word has it that the Salt Lake Valley is a seething cauldron of Mormon and non-Mormon tensions. Wrong. Very wrong....

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Everyone knows that Christmas is simply a weigh-station for America’s commercial and stock-market appetite. We’re better off getting our political chops in shape. And next year’s legislative session promises to be a whopper, with lots...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Reading letters to the editor has never been so much fun. This weekly paper has had its share of hum-dingers, but nothing compared to the fury unleashed on the city’s dailies. The Salt Lake Tribune has proudly run the more outlandish missives....

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - This being the holiday season, and with the Utah legislative session nary one month away, it’s time to get all cozy and warm in the inversion-plagued bubble that is the Salt Lake Valley. As a one-time only special, this column will be light on politics,...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Let us bow our heads in disgrace and disgust as this nation closes out one of the worst years on record. Yes, you heard right. One of the worst, absolute worst years on record. You want proof? As every publication from Maine to the corner of California...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - A persistent claim against this column is that it doesn’t deal enough in local events. Fair enough. This space could deal in the currency of hanky-panky surrounding local council meetings, nincompoop legislators, pipsqueak workers in the public...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - So the vengeful masses are seething in a blind rage ever since outgoing Gov. George Ryan, who just happens to be a Republican, commuted every last Illinois death sentence. That’s 167 lives that won’t see death row. Ever since it was reinstated...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - In Britain, it’s the comedians and anyone with a sharp wit who get admiration and applause. In France, it’s intellectuals and authors the likes of Bernard-Henri Levy who get the hot babes and an 18th-century palace in Marrakech. Here in America,...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - This column wouldn’t be the first to point out that, for reasons due mostly to money, the United States cares more about exporting our culture’s more cheesy byproducts rather than echt American culture. Of course, some people would argue that...