Before Sen. Arlen Specter jumped ship from the Republican Party, it was becoming more and more likely that the veteran senator wouldn't be fend off GOP challenger Pat Toomey.

Now, Toomey is being utterly written off, including, it turns out, by the vice-chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Orrin Hatch.

"I don't think there is anybody in the world who believes he can get elected senator there," Hatch told The Hill, a newspaper covering Capitol Hill.

Not exactly the ringing endorsement you would expect from a guy whose job it is to get Republican Senators elected, and not a sentiment that will be likely to show up on Toomey's campaign literature.

Hatch went on to tell the paper that the party should look for "someone who can win there."

Way to root for the home team, senator.

-- Robert Gehrke

Labels: Arlen Specter, orrin hatch, Pat Toomey

Sen. Orrin Hatch spoke Tuesday at a conference for the Motion Picture Association of America and had the crowd rolling in laughter after giving them the top things people wouldn't know without the movies:

-- During all police investigations it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once.

-- If being chased through town you can usually take cover in a passing St. Patrick's day parade. At any time of the year.

-- It's easy for anyone to land a plane providing there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.

-- The ventilation system of any building is a perfect hiding place. (No one will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building you’d like without difficulty.)

-- If you need to reload your gun, you will always have more ammunition even if you haven't been carrying any before now.

-- You're very likely to survive any battle in any war unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.

-- A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.

-- If a large pane of glass is visible, someone will be thrown through it before long.

-- When paying for a taxi, don't look at your wallet as you take out a bill -- just grab one at random and hand it over ... It will always be the exact fare.

-- A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of a baseball stadium.

-- Medieval peasants always had perfect teeth.

-- All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they're going to go off.

-- It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are visiting.

-- It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts -- your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors.

-- Police Departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite.

Hatch -- whose balance of the speech was loaded with talk of protecting America's intellectual property, i.e. action-packed movies, and cracking down on those people who steal copyrighted material -- totally swiped all of those jokes. A quick Google search finds those movie quips on about 24,000 sites. It's unclear who the original author was, but Hatch made 'em zing.

-- Thomas Burr

Labels: orrin hatch

I was a little surprised that Rep. Jason Chaffetz's favorite word to say on the House floor wasn't "cot." After all, the freshman Utah Republican loves to talk about how he sleeps on a folding bed at his office to save himself cash. But, no, "cot" doesn't even show up in his top 30.

Chaffetz’s favorite word is apparently "country," according to the new Sunlight Foundation Web
site Capitolwords.org, which ranks the words every member of Congress
said in the Congressional Record in the last year.

Rep. Rob Bishop's top word is "energy," followed by "river," and then "land," while Rep. Jim Matheson is fond of saying "blue," probably in reference to the fiscally conservative Blue Dog group that he's a part of. Then again, "dog" ranks in at No. 15 on Matheson's
list, so who knows why he's so partial to the color.

Sen. Orrin Hatch likes to talk about "oil" and "tax" and "health," but "service" and "country" pop into his Top Ten as well. As for Sen. Bob Bennett, his most used words are, "percent," "oil" and "tax," in that order.


-- Thomas Burr

Labels: Bob Bennett, Jason Chaffetz, Jim Matheson, orrin hatch, Rob Bishop

Coming on the heels of tax problems with three Obama administration nominees, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, didn't take kindly to the latest flub from Sasha Obama: not reporting $136 in allowance money.

"Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about," Hatch threatened the 7-year old. "You will not walk away from this, Ms. Obama."

OK, actually he didn't say that. The Onion made it up.

The best line: Hatch "pressured Sasha to enumerate her expenses, estimated that the first daughter spent more than 20 percent of her earnings on opulent gowns for her dolls and on sour candy. The remaining funds were reportedly funneled into a large piggy bank the first daughter kept secret."

-- Thomas Burr

Labels: orrin hatch, Sasha Obama

The Senate lauded the liberal lion Ted Kennedy when it passed a bill co-sponsored by he and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch to boost the ranks of America's service corps. The bill was renamed the, "Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act."

But Kennedy also made a point to congratulate Hatch for coming up with the measure in the first place.

"We also owe an immense debt to Senator Hatch, whose idea this legislation was," Kennedy said on the Senate floor. "I know when we work together, our friends on both sides of the aisle get suspicious, but as always, we came up with a bipartisan product the Senate can be proud of, and we made it stronger by working through our disagreements."

-- Thomas Burr

Labels: Kennedy, orrin hatch

The Trib has published two stories about how conservative Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, at the behest of singer Carly Simon, intervened to help rapper/convicted drug dealer John Forte land a get-out-of-jail card.

But here's one from the New York Post worth looking at.

The article is headlined, "Carly: How I hatched plot to free pal," though it's not clear whether that was a play on words just to get the lawmaker's name in.

In an interview with the Post, Simon told the paper Hatch was "key in getting the president to act" to commute Forte’s sentence. The singer, who recorded the senator/songwriter's "Are you lonely here with me?" said Hatch "couldn't have been more terrific during this entire process."

Meantime, conservative bloviator Tucker Carlson, uses the Hatch/Simon/Forte incident to argue for a more deliberate process in granting presidential pardons and commutations -- and oh, by the way, putting Scooter Libby on his "should pardon" Christmas list.

You can read the too-tightly-bowtied one's take here.

Forte could be released after serving 8 years of his 14 year sentence next week (Dec. 22.) Maybe other news outlets in Utah will finally use that development to finally cover the story. But don't count on it.

-- Dan Harrie

Labels: carly simon, john forte, orrin hatch, rapper

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch said he was unaware that his son was on the team of attorneys defending the "Blackwater Five," former members of the military hired as security guards who are alleged to have killed Iraqi civilians.

Brent Hatch, a Salt Lake City-based attorney, is representing the group, which includes Donald Ball, of West Valley City.

The defense attorneys argued unsuccessfully to move the federal case to Salt Lake City, instead of Washington, D.C. The thinking is that a more conservative state would benefit the defendants. Hatch, the attorney, may have some unique insight here.
Hatch, the senator, has been instrumental in the presidential appointments of the federal judges in Utah and the U.S. Attorney representing the state.

Apparently, Hatch didn't talk to Hatch leading up to the hearing.

"He is one of the best lawyers in the country and he doesn't talk to me about what he does, nor do I ask him," said Hatch, the senator.

-- Matt Canham

Labels: blackwater, orrin hatch