Salt Lake Crawler

USA TODAY discovers that Utah's Orrin Hatch and President Barack Obama (and, I like to remember, Malcolm X) agree on one thing: Mohammed Ali is the greatest. Ali actually came to Utah in 1988 to campaign for Hatch. Orrin says it demonstrates Ali's "unique ability to recognize when others shared his goals, even if their party affiliation would suggest he was barking up the wrong tree."

Momentum builds — A phalanx of 35 former Legislators and a former governor are backing a grass-roots initiative for an independent ethics commission that GOP lawmakers are fighting at every turn. Former state Sen. Karen Shepherd says current legislators "want to maintain control over what is known about their workings. They do not welcome outside scrutiny. Nobody who has ever had power gave it up willingly. Period."

What ethics problem? — Naturally Utah’s GOP has officially adopted a resolution opposing the initiative that is currently in petition stage.

BCS, evil incarnate or what? — The Bowl Championship Series has hired George W. Bush's former press secretary, Ari Fleischer, to help fend off a formidable group led by Sen. Orrin Hatch with its new Playoff PAC that wants to end the BCS's control of college bowl games.

Circling a limping Bennett — Fred Lampropoulos, businessman/political dabbler is grabbing the baton from Mark Shurtleff to try to take down woefully moderate Sen. Bob Bennett in a primary. Lampropoulos, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2004, is joining a handful of  right-wing attackers who sense vulnerablity in Bennett's support of the government stimulus package, his love of earmarks and his dimly remembered "socialistic" alternative health-care reform bill.