I'm sure some lawmakers will have a problem with this: The State School Board wants $275,000 to "preserve and revitalize" Utah's indigenous languages.

Educators argue that in San Juan School District where students were immersed in Navajo classes, they significantly narrowed the achievement gap with white students.

Salt Lake City District official Janice Jones Schroeder, an American Indian, lobbied for the language program:

"The more you deny bills like this, you deny us as human beings," Schroeder said. "We're tired of being marginalized ... Our kids are not succeeding nationwide, in Utah and the schools I work for ... because we've been denied those rights ... to be who we are."

But since when has that kind of argument worked on Utah's lawmakers?

I say, do it for national defense. Need I remind patriotic Utahns of the heroic "code talkers?" These Marines, recruited from the Navajo reservation, communicated in their native language, totally baffling the Japanese — their cryptologists never broke the "code." Thousands of Marines owe their lives to the Navajo language.

Last I heard, al-Qaida has not issued an Arabic-Navajo dictionary.

*Tell it to the Marines.