One week ago, news media outlets received letters from the Transportation Security Administration denying their requests to
quickly obtain access to a video of Rep. Jason Chaffetz's TSA encounter at Salt Lake International Airport in September.

The TSA said the media outlets hadn't provided enough evidence that the surveillance video qualified to be rushed out through the Freedom of Information Act. Of course, four days after the TSA denied the expedited processing, it publicly posted the video -- at 10:01 p.m. Eastern Time Friday.

The Tribune is continuing its quest, however, to obtain the full, unedited video that might yield better answers of what actually took place at the airport that day when Chaffetz says he was singled out for additional screening. Perhaps the TSA will post that video online at some point as well.


-- Thomas Burr

The venerable D.C. publication Congressional Quarterly singled out Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch on Monday for his inconsistent comments about the nonpartisan financial estimates generated by the Congressional Budget Office.

In short, Hatch has said CBO is spot on when the analysis backs up his position and way off when it doesn't.

On Sept. 16, Hatch responded to the analysis of a health-care bill by saying: "Let's be honest about it: CBO has never been right." But just last week he trumpeted CBO's analysis of medical-malpractice reform, which found that caps on lawsuit awards would reduce health-care spending.

"This response from the CBO," Hatch said, "confirms that there is a growing problem regarding the costs of health-care lawsuits."

-- Matt Canham

Last week we wrote about President George Bush's quick pop-in to Central Utah for a hunting trip.

Election watchers may have been surprised to learn that President Barack Obama suffered a 260,000-plus-vote defeat in Utah to John McCain during this week's primary in the race for, uh, president.

It's the gospel truth, according the Salt Lake County Clerk's Web site, which contained a link Tuesday night to the state's ballot results for electoral happenings across Utah.

Trouble was, the results were almost a year old. They still showed McCain picking up 63 percent of the state's presidential vote, compared with Obama's not-so-spectacular 34 percent. The unofficial tally even showed Obama losing in Salt Lake County -- a loss that later turned to a win when the county released its canvassed results.

As for the county's 2009 primary results? They were correct -- except for a technical snafu about 9:30 p.m. that prematurely suggested the county had counted all of its ballots when it hadn't.

The glitch didn't affect the final vote tallies, which hit computer screens just after 10 p.m.

In his memoir "True Compass" the late Sen. Ted Kennedy gives a somewhat revealing look at his unique life as a member of one of the nations most famous families and as one of the nation's most widely-known politicians.

But not once in 507 pages does he mention his friend Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch.

He wrote about Adolf Hitler, Ho Chi Minh and Jimmy Hoffa. He touched on Martin Luther King, John Kerry and Mary Jo Kopechne. He gave all kinds of insight into his famous brothers.

But Hatch's name never appears.

In comparison, Hatch mentions Kennedy in six places in his own biography "Square Peg", which he published in 2002.

I asked Hatch's office to respond and all I got back was "No comment."

To be clear, the Kennedy family did ask Hatch to speak at the televised service the night before the funeral Mass. And Hatch appeared in all kinds of national publications, radio shows and TV programs in the days after Kennedy's death, talking about his "Odd Couple" relationship with Kennedy.

They co-sponsored hundreds of pieces of legislation together, notably the Children's Health Insurance Program and most recently the Serve America Act. Kennedy devotes one paragraph to the Serve America Act only saying "we finally passed a national service bill that will triple the size of AmeriCorps."

The only Utah politician mentioned in Kennedy's book is the Democratic senator Hatch beat to win his seat back in 1976 -- Frank Moss.

At the age of 28, Kennedy paid his own way (at then President-elect Kennedy's request) to join Moss and two other senators on a four-week trip through Africa.

-- Matt Canham

House Speaker Dave Clark, who used to play wide receiver during his days at Brigham Young University, jumped at the chance to catch the Cougars play Oklahoma in Dallas last Saturday.

Although the trip was arranged by contract lobbyist Dave Stewart, the speaker says he paid for his plane fare and ticket out of his own pocket.

Under the new legislative ethics rules, Clark couldn't have taken a ticket to the game worth more than $50 -- and standing-room only tickets were selling online for $64. Good seats cost several times that much.

The whole trip cost about $2,000 and a handful of legislators were invited, but Clark appears to have been the only one who took the trip.

The Speaker said he was glad to go, especially after the Cougars won the game over the then-No. 3 Sooners. And he marveled at the giant screen television hanging in the center of the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium, where he said you could see beads of sweat under quarterback Max Hall's helmet.

-- Robert Gehrke

 Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch was called away to eulogize Sen. Ted Kennedy at a service in Boston today, so he didn't preside over an economic forum at Utah Valley University as scheduled.

But former Republican presidential hopeful Steve Forbes and Sen. John McCain's leading economic adviser Douglas Holtz Eakin were there.

 They promised to delve into all kinds of serious and difficult-to-answer economic quandaries, but one of the hardest questions to answer is this: Was this a campaign event or an official action taken by a federal lawmaker?

 Hatch's office says the Senate Ethics Committee signed off on the event and the senator advertised it to local chambers of commerce, business and civic leaders using taxpayer-funded mailings, known as franking.

 But the money to fly and house Forbes and Holtz Eakin is coming out of "officially coordinating funds." That is Senate shorthand for campaign contributions.

 Hatch billed the two-hour event as a way for the public to give him input "that I can arm myself with for the fight in Washington." But instead of holding a town hall meeting, which federal lawmakers traditionally do in August, he brought in outside speakers, who could be expected to play well in front of a conservative crowd.

 And the event clearly wasn't some sort of scholarly look at the economic conditions, with stated topics as "Are entitlement programs a cancer on our future?"

 Hatch is not paying Forbes or Holtz Eakin to attend and neither are participating in fund-raisers afterward, said Hatch spokeswoman Heather Barney.

 The senator's office approached UVU about hosting the gathering, which prompted the university's president to respond in an email that "Christmas has come early."

 UVU is only forking over $900 for the event, mostly to broadcast the forum on the campus network and provide refreshments.

Administrators are not paying speaking fees or asking the senator for any special help, though in emails among themselves they did mention earmarks Utah's federal lawmakers have helped them with and the possibility of sending interns to the Washington offices of Utah's members of Congress.

 For UVU's Office of Ethics, which is the main sponsor, the event is a way to show a skeptical community that they indeed hold events that span the political spectrum.

"This event will show that the ethics center does far right programs with pizzaz!" Elaine Englehardt, a special assistant to UVU's president, said in an email.

-- Matt Canham