POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - There’s no grand theme at work here. Rather, it’s the weekly column as slap-dash tour of interesting flashpoints, a circumspect approach sacrificing unity for interest and cohesion for sheer effect. Unless you’re Gabriel Garcia-Marquez...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - “To express oneself badly is not only faulty as far as language goes, but does harm to the soul.” According to Plato, those are the words of Socrates in the dialogue of Phaedo. How right the man was. But keep your distance. Drop a line from...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Most people can’t tell the difference between Valentine Strasser and Valentine’s Day or Sierra Leone and Sierra Madre, so who gives a monkey’s butt about what happens in West Africa? Well, the people of Liberia have wanted our help since...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Conservatives chortle in derision whenever the left talks about “the military-industrial complex” between sips of high-octane coffee. Yet it was a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who coined the phrase during a 1961 speech: “In...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - During all the huff and noise following the dreaded release of Jon Krakauer’s book Under the Banner of Heaven, one subtle but not small point was missed: The LDS Church ought to be grateful. Not for Krakauer’s book, of course, but the timing...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Moralists and people without faith in capitalist economies can heckle and jibe Adm. John Poindexter after he officially resigned his Pentagon post. The man who lied to Congress regarding a grand scheme that actually paid terrorists off in attempts to...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - That’s all, folks. After more than a decade of gracing local television newscasts with his perfectly coifed hairpiece, Gov. Mike Leavitt is leaving the big taco stand of Utah for the plush environs of a top bureaucrat’s office as head of the...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - During the days of empire, the Chinese coined a famous joke about the British. “Why did the sun never set on the British empire?” the Chinese asked. “Because God could never trust the British in the dark!” If only America’s...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - The Utah state GOP convention last Saturday must have been a blast. In a state where Democrats can get lumped with rapists and child abusers (no, really!) and the true action involved Republican hair-splitting over who’s a conservative, you’ve...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Ah, Labor Day. A time to remember union forbearers who fought for the 40-hour work week. But is that sort of nostalgia even warranted? Now that the day has past, let’s reconsider: & ull; One of the fastest growing areas of civil litigation...