Shooting Season
Nothing like a patch of warm weather to bring out the guns. Recent weeks have brought a series of horrifying shootings to the mean streets of Salt Lake City and Ogden. July 6 saw the death of a 7-year old in a drive-by gang shooting. An adult and two 16-year-olds were charged. July 13 saw a man seek out and shoot dead two Ogden prostitutes before walking into the police station to turn himself in. And it isn’t just thugs doing the shooting. A security guard ended a July 9 argument with a homeless man on West Temple by pulling his properly permitted concealed weapon and shooting his adversary in the chest, killing him. Barring stricter gun regulations in Utah, fall can’t come soon enough.
Fiddling Digits
Mark your calendars. August is Digital Television Transition Awareness Month. The commemoration comes courtesy of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who recently convinced his colleagues in the U.S. Senate to tackle the pressing national problem of lack of digital awareness. Hatch noted that Salt Lake City has a high percentage of households still relying on older analog TV sets, which may need reconfiguring to receive digital broadcast signals due in 2009. It is likely most won’t notice the transition. Maybe Hatch knows something we don’t. Like the digital switchover will really install a two-way signal so the NSA can spy directly into our living rooms. Worse, it could signal a plan by songwriter Hatch to expand his crooning into digital television.
Calendar Kibosh
A Las Vegas man was excommunicated from the LDS Church for his “Men on a Mission” calendar featuring 12 months of returned Mormon missionaries sans shirts. Calendar creator Chad Hardy was summoned to a meeting with elders to discuss “conduct unbecoming” just as his 2009 calendar was going to press. Some of his former models also have fielded inquiries from church leaders. Not to tell anyone who should be a church member, but the shirtless missionary calendar seems like the best advertisement the Mormons have had in years. Hardy says he wasn’t being disrespectful, just trying to lighten up his church’s buttoned-down image. Maybe it’s just too soon to loosen the tie.
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Chaffetz's Constitution, Health Care Reform, Utah's Economy & Claire Geddes' Return
Congressman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, is cosponsoring legislation that would deny citizenship to children born in the United States to noncitizen parents, reversing long-standing law that everyone born in America is a citizen.
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Stimulated
If you don´t like the federal stimulus yet, wait a few months.
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Skinny Utahns, Camp Williams' Data Center & BCS Busters
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