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Air traffic controllers locked in a staffing dispute with the U.S. government are upset about a dress code and have shown their displeasure in high-flying fashion, with some men protesting by wearing women's clothing. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's dress code, instituted in September, bars jogging outfits, halter tops, shorts and jeans. Approved clothing items include dress slacks, casual shirts with collars and sweaters. Midnight-shift workers are exempt. "From our point of view, not a big deal," FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro said. But a few times in the last year, male controllers have worn dresses or kilts to work, the...

The immigration-reform bill was supposed to be a defining moment for the old guard. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy could establish a new civil rights legacy to rival his brothers'; Sen. John McCain could show leadership and accomplishment by standing up to his party's base; and President Bush could secure a major domestic achievement for his second term. Instead, the young guns — a small, wily group of junior Republican senators, most of them with less than a full term in the upper chamber — sent the bill into a tailspin, tying Democratic leaders into legislative knots and earning enough opposition...

An activist group says Utahns are living beyond their means, or beyond its "ecological footprint." Deseret Morning News Graphic As recently as 1990, residents were within the state's footprint, but by 2003, they were in "ecological overshoot." The group Utah Vital Signs examined the amount of the world's resources used by residents in a nine-month study. The study, "Utah Vital Signs 2007: The Ecological Footprint of Utah" was released on Wednesday. It is posted on the Internet at utahpop.org/vitalsigns. Utah Vital Signs, which is a project of the Utah Population and Environment Coalition, released the report Tuesday during a press...

Calling Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney "a great friend," Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson on Monday told a national radio audience that the former Massachusetts governor is not the same man he once was, at least not ideologically. Rocky Anderson Anderson, in New York City to speak in favor of impeaching President Bush at a meeting of the Society for Ethical Culture, appeared on Democracy Now!, a syndicated radio program that is broadcast on more than 500 stations across North America, including KRCL in Salt Lake City. Anderson told host Amy Goodman, "This is not Mitt Romney. If you...

WASHINGTON - Prominent Mormon supporters of Sen. John McCain's presidential bid were outraged at a campaign worker's attempt to link the LDS Church to terrorists. Chad Workman, the Warren County, Iowa, chairman of McCain's campaign, addressed a gathering of Republican activists in April and questioned whether Mormons were Christians. But he went much further, discussing an article alleging the LDS Church helps fund Hamas, and associating the treatment of Mormon women with the Taliban, according to a report in Thursday's Boston Globe. Workman's comments were a direct attack against rival presidential candidate Mitt Romney, whose membership in The Church of...

John McCain's presidential campaign has apologized to Republican rival Mitt Romney for comments about the Mormon church allegedly made by a volunteer earlier this year. The incident dates to a meeting of Iowa Republican activists in April, where McCain's Warren County chairman, Chad Workman, is alleged to have made negative comments about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Mormon faith. Romney is a Mormon. A participant at the meeting said Workman questioned whether Mormons were Christians, and he referenced an article alleging that the Mormon church supports the Islamic militant group Hamas. The participant talked to...

Implies link to terrorists, Taliban-like persecution of women WASHINGTON - Prominent Mormon supporters of Sen. John McCain's presidential bid were outraged at a campaign worker's attempt to link the LDS Church to terrorists. Chad Workman, the Warren County, Iowa, chairman of McCain's campaign, addressed a gathering of Republican activists in April and questioned whether Mormons were Christians. But he went much further, discussing an article alleging the LDS Church helps fund Hamas, and associating the treatment of Mormon women with the Taliban, according to a report in Thursday's Boston Globe. Workman's comments were a direct attack against rival presidential candidate...

In response to heightened public interest in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has posted a link on its Web site to a detailed account of one of the ugliest events in Utah history. "Sept. 11 marks the anniversary of the 1857 massacre of some 120 California-bound emigrants in southern Utah," notes the site, LDS.org. "An article by Richard E. Turley Jr., the managing director for the Family and Church History Department, will be printed in the 2007 Ensign magazine, but you can read it online now." That note carries a link to the...

I have just finished reading a deeply disheartening book by my friend Professor Akbar Ahmed. Dr. Ahmed is the former Pakistani high commissioner to Britain and member of the faculties of Harvard, Princeton and Cambridge, current chair of Islamic Studies at American University -- and is in the front ranks of what we Westerners call the moderate Muslims, who we are counting on to win the hearts and minds of the others. I first met Professor Ahmed shortly after Sept. 11. He, his friends and I broke bread several times and discussed the condition of Islam and the West. He...

This September marks the 150th anniversary of a terrible episode in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On September 11, 1857, some 50 to 60 local militiamen in southern Utah, aided by American Indian allies, massacred about 120 emigrants who were traveling by wagon to California. The horrific crime, which spared only 17 children age six and under, occurred in a highland valley called the Mountain Meadows, roughly 35 miles southwest of Cedar City. The victims, most of them from Arkansas, were on their way to California with dreams of a bright future. For a...

GOP Sen. Sam Brownback apologized to two top leaders of the LDS Church on Tuesday after a staffer on his presidential campaign used her personal e-mail to circulate anti-Mormon materials. The staffer's e-mail was seen as an affront to fellow Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, whose Mormon religion may be an obstacle in the 2008 race for the White House. Brownback personally apologized to Romney on Monday. Tuesday, Brownback, who says the e-mail should never have been sent and who reprimanded the staffer for the move, called Elder Russell M. Nelson and Elder Henry B. Eyring of The Church of...

You knew this would happen. In this the era of Mitt "The Mormon Candidate" Romney, Mormons are being put under a microscope like never before. It's as if the national media have discovered some strange new species inhabits the planet, and now they are holding it up to the light, shaking it, prodding it, observing it, asking it questions. Is it normal? Is it a cult? Is it Christian? Does it get angry when you ask it about polygamy? Let's see what happens when we ask it about the Mountain Meadows Massacre? Does it really hold family home evening? What...

Fred Thompson on Tape   [Peter Robinson] On Monday, former senator Fred Thompson spent half a day at the Hoover Institution, discussing policy with a roomful of Hoover fellows. In this, my first encounter with Thompson, I was hugely impressed—hugely. He proved relaxed, likeable, determined, warm, funny, and—a trait not always seen in candidates for high office—humble. (He reached into his briefcase, pulled out a three-ring binder, and then spent the entire session taking notes as assiduously as a college student.)When we broke for lunch, Thompson and I sat down for a brief interview. To take a look at the man...

A writer who thinks Rudy is the GOP's only hope in 2008 recently wrote to me, "I think most of the pundits are missing something. Rudy has a distinctive voters profile (think JPod, Derb). That is 25-30 percent of the GOP. So long as he has three main rivals and some spare change opponents he wins. The only way he loses is if two of the three main rivals disappear. Unlikely to be Romney with his money. McCain out of pride will hang in at least to NH and SC. It's only in a two man race that Rudy is beatable."...

Sometimes it’s the little things that suggest a campaign has, at least for now, weathered the Obama storm and is moving smoothly into the summer. Hillary Clinton’s Tuesday morning press conference, announcing her endorsement by Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, had a multitude of those little omens. 1. Few if any defections of consequence. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and opportunism hath no representative like a New Jersey politician. (Think of former Sen. Bob Torricelli, creator of the Torricelli rule that limited the use of CIA sources with checkered human-rights records, ripping into the Central Intelligence...

It’s hard to think of a more dreadful action against the Almighty than the orgy around the golden calf, while Moses received the tablets of the Law. No wonder, then, that Moses ordered the Levites to draw their swords and kill all the idolators. Yet, as our rabbi reminded us last Sabbath, many Jewish scholars believe the Israelites en route to the Holy Land performed an even greater sin when they believed ten of their twelve spies who said that the inhabitants of the land of Canaan were too strong, and that any effort to conquer them was doomed to...

Some of the nation's leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in May 2007 for the Pew Forum's biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life. Richard Bushman, an emeritus professor at Columbia University and author of several books about Mormon history, discussed the relationship between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and American politics over the past two centuries. He addressed Mormonism's shift from 19th-century radicalism to 20th-century conservatism and the significance of this religious heritage for presidential candidate Mitt Romney. A lively question-and-answer session with journalists followed his presentation. Other Forum resources on The...

IDAHO FALLS — Though the Bible is central to every Christian faith, relatively few adherents understand the complex history of how it came to be, the part it played in fomenting the religious fervor that culminated in America's founding, and the foundation it laid for the future of English literature and language. A fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Four fragments of the scrolls are in the exhibit. A cuneiform clay tablet dating from 2000 B.C. is on display at museum. The Tyndale Bible, circa 1526. Several of the earliest copies of different Bible versions are on display.Museum Of Idaho...

A little advice for President Bush: Watch your rhetoric against opponents of the immigration bill. Be understanding of those who oppose it. Why? Well, in part, because they include some of the people who still love you — and that band is not getting any bigger. I give the above advice even though I’m mindful of the old line about what free advice is worth. And here is one more admonition: Not everyone who opposes the immigration bill is blind to the need to have some sort of solution — a solution to our immigration problems. Not everyone has his...

Responding to pointed questions about her recent PBS documentary, "The Mormons," filmmaker Helen Whitney said Friday the criticism she gets most is over her insistence not to label the people she interviewed on camera as either Mormon or not. Helen Whitney It was a conscious choice, she said, "and I stand by it.... I wanted each of you to listen with your heart and not give anyone more or less credence because they were Mormon or not," she told hundreds of people attending the annual meetings of the Mormon History Association in the Salt Lake Hilton. Whitney said she has...