Salt Lake Crawler

A Canadian researcher is threatening one of Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff's favorite hot-button issues: Teen "sexting" as child pornography.

Peter Cumming, an associate professor at York University in Toronto, completed a study that shows that sending nude cell-phone photos between teens is about as criminal as "playing doctor or spin-the-bottle." It's obviously much safer, Cumming says, than actually having sex.

Cumming says adults need to chill out about sexting and not equate it with child pornography. It "defies common sense," he says, to label sexting teens sex offenders.

This sensible attitude, of course, flies in the face of Shurtleff's shtick (porn-fighting raises big campaign bucks in Utah) and he lashed out at the Canadian libertine:

Children playing doctor or spin-the-bottle don't risk having millions of people, including child predators, looking at their nude photo from now until the end of time.

Besides, Shurtleff's supporters see spin-the-bottle as a gateway activity to orgies. And children practicing medicine without a license? Don't even go there.

Taking chutzpah to a new level, Mayor Ralph is trying to spin his Library Square-cop shop debacle as an experiment in "transparent" government. We need to take a "leap of faith" with him, he says:

[The public] must be more patient when they are consulted early in a project, as in the case of the public safety complex, because, as might be expected ... all of the potential issues have not yet been fully explored and the final decision has not been made.

The public is being "consulted early?" Oh, please, Ralph, don't play us for saps. Former and current council members, the architects of the Main Library, the Library Board and Rocky aren't honked off because they were consulted too early — it's because they were not consulted at all and now find themselves trying to halt a freight train that will roll through one of the city's few gems.

Councilman Luke Garrott says the public figures "most of the process is done already."

This is not the right way to build political will among the electorate.

Either come clean with us, Ralph, or get a competent spin doctor.

Until then, Salt Lake City Weekly's Bill Frost offers some spin suggestions to Ralph sell the public security HQ, including:

"It´ll have a Trader Joe's!"

 

 

Here's something you don't see everyday. A Deseret News columnist ripping the mostly Mormon Legislature for destroying families — Mormon families.

Columnist Jerry Johnston writes that SB81 — which would crack down on illegal immigrants by deputizing Utah cops as immigration agents and require employers to confirm the residency of workers — will force LDS Latino wage earners to send their families home, while they stay in Utah to earn desperately needed money.

I hold Utah lawmakers responsible for breaking up good LDS families and forcing young American citizens out of their native land.

Johnston may go too far when he compares Utah lawmakers — Sweet bejeebus! — to 19th-century anti-Mormon bigots.

Our flint-hearted Utah legislators looked a lot like those frightened 19th-century Illinois and Missouri lawmakers who drove my ancestors out of Nauvoo. Those politicians didn't understand my people, so — filled with fear — they drove the Saints "across the river."

Utah lawmakers' efforts are futile, Johnston says. The LDS immigrants, undocumented though they are, will win:

They wanted to be in Utah more than Utah lawmakers wanted them out. They had weathered tribulations with good humor and without malice toward those who persecuted them.

CNN radio reports that Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch acknowledges that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor will likely be approved by the Senate — hardly news if you consider the Judiciary Committee and the Senate are controlled by Democrats.

If there are no otherwise disqualifying matters here, it appears to me she will probably be confirmed.

But he warns the Democrats should be patient with the process because Republicans on the Judiciary Committee want ample time to sift Sotomayor's rulings.

If the Democrats don't overplay their hand and don't try to rush this too much, the process will go well, they'll be better off, she'll get confirmed.

Finally, Hatch, unlike Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, is willing to give Sotomayor the benefit of the doubt on allegations that she is a racist.

I don't agree with that. And frankly, I think it's a little premature and early, because she hasn't had a chance to explain some of these comments that she's made.

 Bob Henline, a freelance columnist for the Tooele Transcript Bulletin who wrote a column about a duct-tape repaired truck full of EnergySolutions toxic waste, only to have it rejected, will no longer write for that newspaper.

Editor Jeff Barrus says he ended the paper's relationship with Henline because the columnist violated the confidentiallity of the workplace by discussing the column with me. For the record, I tracked down Henline about his rejected column, he did not come to me.

I called Barrus, who had this to say about the incident:

• Barrus had not asked for the column on the leaky truck. Thus he did not "kill" the column, he simply declined to run it.

• Barrus says the Tooele Transcript runs many stories and editorials that scrutinize EnergySolutions and its operations. You can search here and judge for yourself.

• Barrus confirmed that the paper has not printed one word on the leaking-toxic-truck-repaired-with-duct-tape-story — a story so improbable (they fixed a toxic-waste truck with duct tape?) that it went national. He says the paper "missed" the story. 

We miss stories. When we miss them, we tend to move on.

Yet, he rejected Henline's column that would have filled that gap because he wanted "more variety" from Henline.

• Barrus says has no qualms that he, a newspaper editor, could be accused of stifling free expression by axing a columnist for having talked to a reporter.

There are some confidences in the workplace that need to be respected.

Finally, Barrus said that I should have called him before I published my blog item (even though I included his explanation of rejecting the column because he wanted more variety.)

As a blogger, I can't call every source, every time I run an item. But, in this case, Barrus deserved an opportunity to defend himself, which is why I called him before I wrote this update.