Buzz Blog

“Support the Troops” Charity Move America Forward promises to send care packages to overseas military, but the small print shows they also divert donation money to PACs and political consulting firms.


Top of the Alty World

“Pro-Troop Charity Misleads Donors While Lining Political Consultants’ Pockets”—ProPublica

The White House is looking to delete pseudonyms from a report on torture that critics fear will make the public report difficult to read and understand.—McClatchy

A former Obama spokesperson dishes on the President's toxic relationship with the media.—Rolling Stone

Neil DeGrasse Tyson speaks out on GMOs, big agriculture and more.—Mother Jones

Top of Alty Utah

Utah Politico Hub analyzes the anti-Common Core lawsuit filed by the libertarian-leaning Libertas Institute.—Utah Politico Hub

A report shows a Salt Lake County Justice program meant to unclog the courts may also be speeding up recidivism with offenders.—Salt Lake City Weekly

The Legislature's point man on liquor legislation is stepping down to head the Utah Tax Commission.—Utah Policy

A Utah State University professor argues that beavers are not a nuisance but a vital part of the state's eco-systems.—RadioActive!

Rantosphere

Stephanie Lauritzen explains how critics on all sides are making too much noise over nothing in regards to the trailer for the controversial Fifty Shades of Grey movie.


“Fifty Shades of Grey didn't rise to international success because women secretly want to be dominated by men who tell them what to do in and out of the bedroom, therefore negating feminism. Suggesting that feminists are lying about their desire for equality because they secretly read BDSM erotica on their Kindles is like suggesting religious people are lying about their devotion to God when they visit a doctor who cures them with science. Sex, in any form, sells, and antibiotics cure infections, regardless of one's relationship with feminism or religion.”—Salt Lake City Weekly

The Long View

Part two of CW's series on the Lafferty brothers looks at how their extreme politics helped inform their religously-motivated crimes and how their politics have now been embraced by hard-right conservatives.

"While time has frozen for Ron inside the Utah State Prison’s maximum-security wing, the political landscape has caught up to his defiant anti-government stance—boycotting taxes, business licenses, even speeding tickets—in the decades since the 1984 killings.

The take-no prisoners, make-no-compromises marching orders of Tea Partiers in Congress has divided not just Congress but the Republican Party itself. In just the past few months, militia members used guns to keep federal officers off the Nevada ranch of folk hero Cliven Bundy in defense of his right to break the law and not pay grazing fees, and in Las Vegas, a couple went on a shooting spree in order to kick-start a revolution, with cops—puppets of the federal government—as their target.

Ron’s crimes may have landed him on the violent end of this extremist spectrum, but his viewpoints are right in line with many hard-right politicos and conservative pundits, and he trots out his own talking points as if he’s a veteran politician.

“What happens when the servant becomes the master, and the master becomes the servant, is that we’re right back where we were before the [American] revolution,” Ron says of patriots like himself. “They used to call them sons of liberty, then they called them sons-of-bitches … now it’s worse. They call them terrorists.”—Salt Lake City Weekly