PARTY LINES: Should there be a ‘John Browning’ holiday in Utah? By Todd Weiler, Republican

 

Like most Americans, I enjoy a good holiday. Especially those of the three-day weekend variety. Last week, Sen. Mark Madsen briefly vetted a proposal to have the state commemorate gun-maker John Browning on Martin Luther King Day. Madsen’s proposal didn’t exactly get off the ground. (It was a lead balloon.)

Even a legislature that has never quite embraced the civil rights holiday thought it was a dumb idea. Utah finished 50th in the race to name a state holiday after King, after initially snubbing him in favor of a generic Human Rights Day. After finally relenting in 2000, the Legislature began its work on the holiday each year.

Madsen’s idea to honor a gun maker in conjunction with King was in poor taste considering the civil rights leader was shot and killed by an assassin. In his defense, Madsen thought Browning would be a good fit since he was born in January and his automatic pistol design helped America win World War I.

Not quite ready to let this one go, Madsen said that since the Brownings were Mormon pioneers, he will consider July 24th for a joint celebration. In our current political climate, I would not support any legislation to create a state holiday to honor Browning.

At the risk of being labeled a racist, I will admit that it has always struck me as odd that our former presidents collectively share one single holiday — while King has been awarded his own.

As significant as the civil rights movement is, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, etc. have each respectively merited less than 3 percent of President’s Day.

Although King was far from perfect (like the rest of us), he has become a symbol of something much greater than any single life. In a very real sense, MLK Day has become a part of this nation’s penitence of its past sins.

But I have to admit that Madsen has got me thinking. Who else deserves a holiday? As I type this column on my computer, I am thinking that “Bill Gates Day” has a nice ring. But that wouldn’t be fair to the iPod or the iPhone, would it?

More close to home, maybe we could celebrate Philo Farnsworth on Superbowl Sunday? How ‘bout an Eliza R. Snow Day whenever school is cancelled after a big storm.

Larry Miller and Steve Young could be candidates. What about an “Osmond Day” to correspond with each season premier of American Idol? OK, that may be stretching it a bit far.

I have never been a fan of the so-called message bills.

In these trying times, we need our elected officials to focus on what matters most: balancing the budget, educating our children, and developing the economy.

PARTY LINES: What does the recent terrorist attack say about U.S. security? By Todd Weiler - Republican

While most of us were enjoying the Christmas holidays with our families, Umar Farouk Abdulmutall was attempting to blow up Flight 253. Fortunately for everyone involved, his attempt was foiled. But preliminary indications suggest that the 23-year-old Nigerian has connections with a Yemen-based al Qaeda faction.

Obama, who already faced criticism for his plan to close Gitmo and transfer some of the prisoners to Yemen, was caught vacationing in Hawaii as events unfolded. Some are upset that he waited three days, went to the gym and played tennis before issuing a statement. On Monday, speaking from a clubhouse, Obama said: “The American people should be assured that we are doing everything in our power to keep you and your family safe and secure during this busy holiday season.” He then headed to the course to play a game of golf.

During the 2008 campaign, Obama promised preemptive strikes against terrorists, to escalate the Afghan war, pump massive funds into counterinsurgency campaigns, and to keep Bush’s anti-terrorism surveillance methods mostly intact. But a year later, Joe Lieberman blames Obama for lax security, terrorist watch breach, and faulty al Qaeda intelligence.

I think that this early criticism is a bit harsh. Just as presidents should not take credit for everything good that happens, they cannot be automatically blamed for everything bad. Although I am not convinced this attack is Obama’s fault, some in Congress contend that he has shut them out of intelligence briefings and ignored their requests for updates.

Last month, Rudy Giuliani called Obama soft on terrorism for deciding to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed on U.S. soil, and said it would increase the security risk to the city. “What the Obama administration is telling us loud and clear is that both in substance and reality the war on terror from their point of view is over,” Giuliani said. “This seems to be an overconcern with the rights of terrorists and a lack of concern for the rights of the public.”

This week, Dick Cheney accused Obama of being in denial: “It is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of Sept. 11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war. . . . President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war.”

Although there is no evidence that we are less safe today than a year ago, I hope that Obama will answer last week’s wake up call and make appropriate adjustments.

PARTY LINES with Republican Todd Weiler: What does the TCU-Boise State match up say about the BCS?

I have to give it up this week to Rep. Jim Matheson. He really captured the moment in his reaction to the BCS’s decision to pit TCU against Boise State on New Year’s Day. “I don’t know if we should call it the Fiesta Bowl or the Kids’ Table Bowl, because I think these two upstarts were put at the kids’ table to play their own game,” he said. Matheson is right on.

The BCS is based on the false premise that the best team in the nation will invariably emerge from one of eight elite conferences. All other conferences are inferior and therefore incapable of producing a national champion. Over time, the BCS has been bullied into allowing undefeated teams from the lesser, unworthy conferences to play in one of the four most-profitable bowl games (if they meet certain criteria). While the BCS made the correct, and historic, decision to invite two non-BCS teams to go bowling this season, it subsequently cheapened the experience for both of them in an attempt to protect its own. TCU could have beaten Texas, Cincinnati and maybe even Florida. That was a risk the BCS committee was not willing to take. So it punted.

When Utah, Boise State and Hawaii got invited to play with the big boys after their undefeated regular seasons in prior years, they actually got into the game. And the team from the BCS-blessed conference lost three out of four times. Utah won twice. BSU pulled off a miracle overtime win. But Hawaii got exposed as the proverbial over-ranked team who hadn’t really played anyone.

This year, Texas (from the pitiful Big 12 Conference) hasn’t beaten a team ranked in the Top 20 all season. And when it played Nebraska, ranked 22, the Longhorns came up short when the clock ran out of time. After convincing the officials to turn back time a second or two, Texas kicked a game-winning field goal to win 13-12. And the reward for playing its worst game at the end of the season? That’s right, the Longhorns secured a slot in the national championship game.

Unlike a year ago when the Horned Frogs muffed what would have been a game-winning field goal as time ran out, TCU decidedly beat Utah and every other team it played this year. But the BCS cannot withstand another embarrassing shellacking like Utah put on the Crimson Tide. So TCU got cheated.

The current BCS system is, dare I say it, un-American. It reeks of big money, back-room deals by the good old boys. But politicians need to do more than offer witty sound bites. Talk is cheap. Although Obama threatened to “throw his weight around” to get a playoff, a year later things appear to have gotten worse – not better. I have no doubt that the BCS will ultimately be brought down. The only remaining questions are: When? How? And by whom?

Bob Van Velkinburgh responds to Todd Weiler's position on climate change

The following a response to Republican Todd Weiler's Davis County Clipper column titled, Is rising disbelief over global warming alarming or good?, was submitted by Davis County Democrat, Bob Van Velkinburgh. 

I know Todd Weiler and he is a pretty good country lawyer, but he is no scientist. Todd's article in the Davis Clipper, November 5, approaches the subject of global warming in a lawyer-like way. Quoting reputable journals and magazines is supposed to give credence to his argument that there is no such thing as global warming. Measuring temperature changes sixty years ago to support his idea of global cooling ignores the advancements in climatology technology. We cannot ignore the clearly evident changes we see in receding glaciers all over the world, the breaking up of the Antarctic ice shelf, and the dying coral reefs which are caused by increased acidity of our oceans (due to absorption of carbon dioxide). In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that the panel, consisting of hundreds of scientists and reviewers, "asserts with near certainty-more than 90 percent confidence-that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human activities have been the main causes of warming in the past half century."

If nine out of ten doctors told you that you have cancer, are you going to believe that the one doctor who said you don't have cancer is right? Thus, if over 90 percent of the scientists polled confirm global warming and that it is caused by human activity, who are you going to believe? While Todd is entitled to his opinion, he is not entitled to his own facts. So Todd, don't quit your day job.

Bob Van Velkinburgh

The Davis County Clipper's Party Lines: Do you think Christians are being deprived of freedom of speech?

By Todd Weiler - Republican

Having just re-read the text of Elder Dallin H. Oaks’ remarks last week to the students at BYU Idaho, it struck me that a critic would have to stand upside down and shut one eye to see anything offensive in them.

Instead, the liberal media has misquoted and taken Oaks out of context. If you were to rely solely on media reports, you would believe that Oaks equated the 2008 persecution of California Mormons with the 1960s treatment of southern blacks.

But in an address exclusively about religious freedom, Oaks referred to gay marriage as an “alleged civil right” and used the backlash over Proposition 8 as one example of how people have been intimidated merely for exercising their right to vote, as follows: “[T]hese incidents of violence and intimidation are not so much anti-religious as anti-democratic. In their effect they are like the well-known and widely condemned voter-intimidation of blacks in the South that produced corrective federal civil-rights legislation.”

The analogy was limited to the fact that in both instances, anti-democratic voter intimidation methods were employed.

Oaks never suggested that “the vandalism of church facilities and harassment of church members by firings and boycotts of member businesses and by retaliation against donors violence” was on par with the violence and intimidation that was directed at blacks in the South.

Instead, Oaks used the civil rights analogy to emphasize that society has already judged that people should not be punished simply because they chose to participate in a democracy. “These incidents were expressions of outrage against those who disagreed with the gay-rights position and had prevailed in a public contest,” Oaks said.

Oaks suggested that people can learn to disagree without meanness and contention. He maintained that differences should be civilized and consistent with constitutional principles.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Obama-loving, liberal-leaning Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. Olbermann single-handedly proved Oaks’ point when he nominated Oaks for a bronze medal in the “worst people in the world” award. Olbermann suggested that because Mormons were on the wrong side of integration and polygamy, Oaks should “shut the hell up” on subjects like gay marriage.

But Oaks said it best: “[W]e must not be deterred or coerced into silence by the kinds of intimidation I have described. We must insist on our constitutional right and duty to exercise our religion, to vote our consciences on public issues and to participate in elections and debates in the public square and the halls of justice. These are the rights of all citizens and they are also the rights of religious leaders.”

Oaks is right on.

When churches or their members speak out on public issues, they have a right to expect freedom from retaliation. People who seek one public policy or another are not violating the constitutional mandate to separate church and state. Faith and religious principles promote good morals in a democracy, which improves the democracy.

Political Spyglass: Todd D. Weiler says:

Show respect for vice presidency

Although Cheney's selection has been divisive, it has also facilitated a thoughtful debate about his career and the war in Iraq -- which is precisely what an academic institution is suppose to do. This exchange of opinions would not have occurred if the university had invited a church official or some unknown academic egghead.

Academic egghead?



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