Posts on Civility from last night's Sutherland Institute's Blogger Briefing

The Sutherland Institute held a blogger briefing last night where Utah Republican Chair, Dave Hansen and myself had the opportunity to speak with Utah bloggers on civility.

Here are a few posts that were inspired from last night's event:

Pursuit of Liberty (David Miller) Civility in Politics

Simple Utah Mormon Politics (Frank Staheli) I'm Right...and You're Stupid. How Civil is Utah Politics?


Just and Holy Principles (Matthew C. Piccolo)“Look what you did you little jerk!”

Thanks to the Sutherland Institute, the Utah bloggers, and United States Senate Candidate Sam Granato for being part of this discussion.

The Voice of Treason?

Well, this should be interesting...

SL Trib Opinion: Red Flag on Vouchers

Public Forum Letter
Article Last Updated: 09/29/2007 12:33:03 PM MDT

What perfect irony! Part 4 of the Sutherland Institute's pro-voucher "essay" (which was published as paid advertising on Page A18 of the Sept. 23 Tribune) faced another large ad for "$99 Cars."

I hope that all Tribune readers have taken the time to go through the full text of HB148 that was printed in the Sept. 19 Tribune. There are several red flags that we all need to be concerned with. Prominent are: Parents accepting the tuition "scholarship" automatically are refusing services pursuant to the Federal Individuals With Disabilities Act; the State Board of Education must "cross-check enrollment lists of scholarship students, school districts, and youth in custody to ensure that scholarship payments are not erroneously made," and the board must also "investigate complaints and convene administrative hearings for any alleged violation" concerning the board's right to deny a private school permission to enroll "scholarship" students, or its right to interrupt or withhold disbursement of "scholarship" payments.

The last two flags should be neon red, since they will no doubt require the creation of an entirely new bureaucracy to comply.

But what does one expect when one buys a $99 car?

John R. Peterson

Salt Lake City

SLTrib: Sutherland Institute's historical argument full of holes

By Thomas G. Alexander

If I were an officer in the Sutherland Institute, I would raise questions over the historical research in "Vouchers, Vows, and Vexations: The Historic Dilemma Over Utah's Education Identity," (Paul Mero, Sutherland Institute, 2007) that purports to relate the history of Utah's public and private schools in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Had the author bothered to read some of the secondary literature on the topic, he would have come to a much different conclusion.

Click here for the holes.

* THOMAS G. ALEXANDER is the Lemuel Hardison Redd Jr. Professor of Western American History at Brigham Young University, emeritus, where he taught for 40 years. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Utah, Western, Mormon and environmental history.