Salt Lake Crawler

Full-auto killers — The killers of a retired BYU professor Kay Sherman Mortensen may have been after his machine gun arsenal. Says a neighbor: "Kay was fairly well armed. He figured the country was kind of going to hell in a hand basket and he was preparing for it."

“Much was accomplished”— Ambassador to China and former co-chair of the McCain campaign Jon Huntsman is in a new position of defending Barack Obama, at least the president's China trip. Huntsman spoke at Peking University, saying the U.S. will regain its economic leadership role, but must cut its long-term deficit and export more.

No more shapeshifting — Mike Huckabee, famous for his feud with Mitt Romney, says Mitt's chameleon ways are a voter turn off. "Mitt Romney just needed to be Mitt Romney. If he'd have been who he was, rather than trying to out-be who everybody else was, I think he could have possibly got the nomination."

Step up for torture — Jay Bybee, federal judge, BYU alum and torture memo author, has quietly set up a legal defense fund to pay for his defense if he is pursued by the Justice Department's internal ethics unit. A report trashing Bybee is expected out later this month.

Ethics farce heads for Lege — Political skeptics are underwhelmed, to say the least, by the ethics reform bill that will go before the Legislature. Says one blogger: It’s exactly what one would expect from arguably the most corrupt state legislature in the country:  window dressing.

Paperwork slam dunked — Karl Malone has been offered for consideration by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.