Free Republic

For at least half a century, the party of Lincoln has battled charges that it is racist, sexist and anti-immigrant. Today, voters from a conservative state made those arguments a little bit harder to make. In Utah, Mia Love became the first black Republican woman — and first Haitian American — elected to Congress. For the GOP — a house divided that faces significant demographic hurdles to winning the White House in 2016 even as it celebrates President Obama’s shellacking — this was huge. A party threatened with extinction among African Americans and immigrants now has someone to brag about...

White, white, white. In nearly every room Love enters as she stumps her way across Utah’s 4th District on a quest to become the first black female Republican in Congress, she is not just the only black person there. She’s the only person of any color, unless you count farmer tans. This 39-year-old, Brooklyn-born daughter of Haitian immigrants and former mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, seems completely at home in a crowd of mostly old white dudes. What’s more, she gets a warmer reception here than when she made a speech at the University of Chicago Law School in 2013....

Mia Love, bidding to become the first black Republican woman to win a congressional seat in 160 years of the Grand Old Party, was trailing Democrat Doug Owens in early unofficial returns Tuesday evening in Utah’s 4th District race.

SALT LAKE CITY -- A Utah couple and three of their children found dead in their home last month were likely poisoned, their bodies found together in a locked room with cups next to each of them, and empty bottles of methadone and nighttime cold medicine in a trash can. Police in Springville aren't saying who killed the family or whether one of the parents might have been involved. Toxicology results have not determined an exact cause of death, but search warrants obtained Wednesday say the family was likely poisoned.

A man accused of killing two sheriff's deputies and wounding two other people in a bloody chase through Northern California was arrested nearly a decade ago in Utah, but authorities didn't connect him with his criminal past or previous deportations.

Students at a Mapleton Junior High School in Utah County were asked to take inventory of the things inside their family medicine cabinet and then turn that list into their health teacher. A parent, Onika Nugent, was not pleased with the assignment, so she posted the assignment on Facebook and sent a note to the teacher and the principal. She shared a portion of the letter she sent school officials: “I said, ‘Although it may be a good idea for parents to do an inventory of their medicine cabinet, I believe it is inappropriate for students to counsel their parents,...

The Facebook page of a cop killer, Marcello Marquez: https://www.facebook.com/marcelo.marquez.3910 And the woman arrested with him, Janelle Monroy, age 38: https://www.facebook.com/janelle.monroy.3 Please do not repost her photo because she has a minor child in the photo with her. He doesn’t deserve that.

Public Enemy No. 1 for rural Utah sheriffs just happens to be a fellow peace officer: Dan Love, the Bureau of Land Management’s special agent in charge. Elected law enforcement officers from Nephi to Blanding call him an arrogant and dishonest bully who has little regard for local authority and dodges accountability, derailing a collaborative approach to police work on the state’s federal lands. Love reportedly just laughed when Garfield County Sheriff James "Danny" Perkins relayed ranchers’ complaints about federal officers removing plastic feed tubs from the range and threatening the ranchers with litter citations. He drew early controversy during...

Two groups fighting for traditional marriage say they'll continue to speak up for the majority of Utahns who agree marriage is only between a man and a woman. The Coalition of African-American Pastors and the American Leadership Fund went to Utah's State Capitol asking them to fight with them....

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected gay-marriage appeals from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin, in essence allowing lower courts to legalize same-sex couples. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an institution that has vigorously opposed gay marriage for some time now, conceded that the political battle over marriage is over. “As far as the civil law is concerned,” the Mormon church admitted, “the courts have spoken.” Actually, nothing is over until God says it’s over. At least, this is my understanding of how religion operates. So though I don’t want to accuse Mormons of being a...

On October 14 feminist speaker Anita Sarkeesian canceled a speaking engagement at Utah State University upon learning that state law forbids the university from banning concealed carry on campus.

The 4th Congressional District race between Mia Love (R) and Doug Owens (D) is tightening a little with about 3 weeks to go until election day. The latest UtahPolicy.com poll conducted by Dan Jones and Associates finds Love with a 9-point lead over Owens. 9% are undecided.

A group of horseback riders drew stares, honks and a few handshakes and high-fives along Redwood Road Thursday, hooves clattering on pavement in a protest ride of federal land management policies. The Utah trek of the Grass March Cowboy Express hit Salt Lake City and continued east up Parleys Canyon, with Tooele County Commission Chairman Bruce Clegg and Utah Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, riding in tandem. With them they carried a mail pouch sporting a letter demanding the resignation of a BLM field office manager who ordered grazing reductions in Battle Mountain, Nevada, and petitions from rural Utah counties...

Rather characterized the current state of journalism using the term interregnum — “the old order is gone, but the new order is not yet in place.” The major concern for the future of journalism, he said, is how it will be financed in a way that provides the audience with quality, integrity-driven content in the years to come. ... Rather also noted that the measure of journalism and those who cover it is the level and quality of service provided to the public. Commercial enterprises that report the news hold the public trust, he explained, and doing so with integrity...

Two Utah congressmen say the public needs more time to weigh in on a "sweeping" proposal to designate more than a half-million acres as critical habitat for the Western yellow-billed cuckoo. Republican Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Chris Stewart are among 17 members of Congress who urged U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe to extend the comment period on the designation beyond Oct. 14. "While we oppose this listing proposal, we find it completely unacceptable that the (agency) has proposed only 60 days of public comment with no public hearings, effectively shutting out meaningful comment on a sweeping critical...

Folks, when I saw what the Democrats are doing to this American black woman in Utah, I had to sound the alarm. Black Republican Mia Love is running for Congress in Utah. Love's liberal opponent and the Democrats have pulled out all the stops, launching a hate website against her, “No love for Mia,” and a $300,000 smack-down ad campaign trashing the sister. Meanwhile, hypocritically, they accuse Republicans of having a war on women. Folks, it amazes me that Democrats, the MSM, and liberals continue to get away with their scam, portraying themselves as champions of minority empowerment.

he Supreme Court has turned away appeals from five states seeking to prohibit same-sex marriages, paving the way for an immediate expansion of gay and lesbian unions. The justices on Monday did not comment in rejecting appeals from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. The court's order immediately ends delays on marriage in those states. Couples in six other states should be able to get married in short order. That would make same-sex marriage legal in 30 states and the District of Columbia. But the justices have left unresolved for now the question of same-sex marriage nationwide.

***SNIP*** At 26 weeks pregnant, Taylor was determined to prolong the delivery for as long as possible, but her liver started failing. Luke was born weighing 1 pound 15 ounces. Doctors whisked him away to the neonatal intensive care unit at Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City before his mother, who was taken directly to the intensive care unit, father or any of his five siblings were able to spend time with him. Shortly after the delivery, Taylor’s children and her husband, Nate, were brought in to say their final goodbyes to her. Doctors said she had only 24...

Kansas – A federal judge has decided a lawsuit challenging increased federal regulation of economic activity and land use in the area that is habitat for the Lesser Prairie Chicken will be litigated in Oklahoma and not transferred to Washington, D.C., Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said today. The decision yesterday by U.S. District Judge James H. Payne is the second time in the last two months that the federal judiciary has rejected an attempt by the federal government to move the litigation from Oklahoma to Washington, D.C. “This is good news for Kansas,” Schmidt said. “It means our case...

For generations, the people of the Four Corners region have battled the federal government over collecting and selling Native American artifacts. Then agents persuaded a local dealer to go undercover. Operation Cerberus Action was supposed to expose a lucrative trade in stolen antiquities. Instead, it tore a hole in a Utah town. In the high country of the Navajo reservation, a family walked through the pinyon pines, combing the earth for the remnants of a vanished civilization. Their breath steamed in the morning air. Dr. James Redd wandered away from his wife and daughter for a few minutes, then called...