The thing that wouldn't leave

• Some powerful Senators, including Lyle Hillyard and Pete Knudsen, are talking about putting the full tax back on groceries. After all, when was the last time poor folks treated a lawmaker to a Jazz basketball game?

• Like some kind of undead creatures, deposed House Speaker Greg Curtis and former Rep. Mark Walker are haunting the Capitol — as a lobbyists. Curtis, a land development lawyer, turned out of office in November, was always an quasi-lobbyist, of course. But now he doesn't have lawmaker's duties to distract him from servicing his clients. Walker recently pleaded out to a charge that he offered a bribe to his opponent to drop out of the state treasurer's race.

• A package of gay-rights bills suffered its first defeat under the watchful eyes of Eagle Forum President Gayle Ruzicka and her flying monkeys Sen. Chris Buttars and LaVar Christensen.

• The Trib's Rebecca Walsh calls for an end to the annual pre-session legislator pilgrimage to the LDS HQ. A mouthpiece says, hilariously, the church just wants to "remind" lawmakers of its neutrality. One observer notes: "It not only looks like theocracy, it suggests there is a theocracy."

• Rep. Sheryl Allen decides that kids sending naked pictures of themselves on their cell phones is not so bad after all.

• What's the point of being a Utah lawmaker if you can't pass something that is unconstitutional? Senator/police chief John Greiner is back with his anti-public assembly, racial-profiling bill.

• Gov. Jon Huntsman delivers a cure for insomnia.