Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

Demos Have Dependency Agenda

WASHINGTON -- To dissect today's health-care debate, the crux of which concerns a "public option," use the mind's equivalent of a surgeon's scalpel, Occam's razor, a principle of intellectual parsimony: In solving a puzzle, start with the simplest explanatory theory. The puzzle is: Why does the president, who says that were America "starting from scratch" he would favor a "single-payer" -- government-run -- system, insist that health-care reform include a government insurance plan that compet...

Obama Stands Idly by While Iranians Fight for Liberty

WASHINGTON -- Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side. And what do they hear from the president of the United States? Silence. Then, worse. Three days in, the president makes clear his policy: continued "dialogue" with their clerical mast...

Bible and Foreign Policy

The Bible is a book about history, culture and international relations as much as it is about religion. That is why even the most liberal understand it can be discussed academically in public schools. Today, class, we are going to discuss what the Bible says about foreign policy. Did you know the United States has treaty obligations requiring us to go to war to protect Japan and South Korea if North Korea invades either one of them?

Media Moguls Must Learn to Embrace New Technologies

Talk to filmmakers and media executives about the Internet -- the biggest tectonic shift in the entertainment industry since the advent of cable -- and they typically gripe about two things. Consumers, they say, predominantly seem to want to watch short video clips, and the economic models for earning a decent return on Internet content are still hazy. About 15 years after Americans started exploring the Web, there's still anxiety about the business potential of digital entertainment and a re...

Indians Teach Valuable Lesson About Living a Simple, Peaceful Life

The recent dust-up over ancient relics has me putting a human face on the people who create such things. In a display case in my front room sits a small basket that possesses magical qualities. This basket has the ability to transport me, like a time machine, to a different world, a paradise where people live a simple, peaceful life.

Iranians' Use of Twitter Shows Its Real Social Value

Do I really care that someone has a Britney Spears song stuck in her head or that some stranger is "super full after breakfast," or even that Arizona Sen. John McCain is excited about his new Ford Fusion hybrid? Do you?

Pros, Cons of Utah Going with Open-Primary System

One of the reasons Utah's election seasons are so long is that in contested intra-party races, candidates must prepare for party caucuses in March of the election year. That means candidates begin wooing delegates sometimes nearly two years before the actual election. Wouldn't it be better just to hold an open primary election in mid- to late summer and eliminate the caucuses and conventions? Webb: No. If you want to make Utah elections a playground controlled by powerful incumbents, the rich...

Western World has Unraveled Into an Age of Decadence

What I have attempted to do in these several columns over the past few weeks is to synthesize and describe the observations and analyses of numerous authors on what happened to Western civilization, how and why. Today, we will look at the rather pessimistic diagnoses of some of these writers. For some years now, notable historians, philosophers and other scholars such as Jacques Barzun, John Lukacs, Alasdair MacIntyre, Pierre Manent and a host of others have diagnosed and chronicled the rise ...

Palin has Become an Industry

Amid the gloom of the recession, one growth industry stands out - - Sarah Palin. Normally, a losing vice-presidential candidate plucked from obscurity immediately returns to obscurity, especially one from an out-of-sight, out-of-mind place like Alaska. But the governor's celebrity has only grown, and she is on the cusp of the ultimate in celebrity -- becoming a one-namer, simply "Sarah," like Cher and Bono.

Global Warming Is Real

DeLoa Sharp's claim (Readers' Forum, June 18) that there is "absolutely no scientifically proven basis for the premise that man can affect what the climate does" is absurd. Our libraries are full of carefully compiled and critically reviewed scientific research that makes it clear that global warming is real, is caused by human activity and is significantly and rapidly changing the world's climate. The research conclusions of dozens of respected scientific organizations such as the American G...

'Humor' Upsetting

I was stunned as I read Scott D. Pierce's column (June 17) on Sarah Palin. Is he telling me that if Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity told sexual jokes about his 14- or 18-year-old daughter, he would just chalk it up to comedy? What happened to fatherhood and manhood!

Why Print Cruel Photos?

Your front page photo (June 18) shows Trejon Fite's mother and friend weeping over the tragedy they are experiencing. Could someone explain why you continually print cruel pictures of weeping loved ones? Are such photos really news? Mark L. Heyrend

Healthy Hot Dogs?

There is a radio commercial with a great message -- sort of. Craig Bolerjack is inviting all men to an upcoming Bees game to learn seven steps to better health, which will be available to us, appropriately, during the seventh-inning stretch. He goes on to say that it's "dollar dog night" and "what's better than a hot dog at a ballgame?"

The Health-Reform Challenge

All sides in the politically charged debate over health care ought to at least agree on the extent of the problem. They can start with the fact that health care costs more per capita in the United States than it does in most of the rest of the industrialized world, and that this is not only unacceptable, it is unsustainable. Then they ought to agree that the large number of uninsured Americans -- about 46 million according to estimates -- adds to the runaway costs. Many of these people use em...

Best Wishes to Dads

On Father's Day, we often think of the legacy our dads have passed on to us. Sometimes values can be passed on by a positive action. This is remembrance of deeds that are worthy of imitation. Other times a child can learn not to follow in the old man's footsteps. This can be healthy as well. But what does a father learn from his child?

Immigrants Cherish U.S.

Steven Goold says, "In the past, the majority (of immigrants) would take two to three generations to learn 'the language' and become assimilated" (Readers' Forum, June 16). I strongly disagree. From 1950 to 1974, I lived and worked in, or near, New York City. While some elderly folks had a tough time letting go of the "old country" and language, I encountered hundreds of immigrants who learned English and became "Americanized" as quickly as they could. Yes, they continued to speak the "mother...