Free Republic

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Mormon-church-backed anti-discrimination bill that protects LGBT Utah residents and religious rights received final approval at the state's Republican-controlled Legislature on Wednesday. The House of Representatives voted 65-10 to pass the bill, which was only unveiled last week. The Senate passed it Friday. The bill earned a rare endorsement from the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which helped fast-track the measure through the Legislature. Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican and member of the church, has said he'll sign the bill.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A vote by Utah lawmakers to bring back executions by firing squad is the most dramatic illustration yet of the nationwide frustration over bungled executions and shortages of lethal-injection drugs. Utah and several other states are scrambling to modify their laws on the heels of a botched Oklahoma lethal injection last year and one in Arizona in which the condemned man took nearly two hours to die. Meanwhile, Texas executed a Mexican mafia hit man Wednesday evening with its second-to-last dosage of drugs.

Mesa County commissioners have thrown their first jab in a growing fight against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the department’s decision last November to list the Gunnison sage-grouse as a threatened species. Commissioners on Monday approved and signed a notice of intent to sue the federal government for listing the Gunnison sage-grouse as threatened and for designating a critical habitat for the bird in western Colorado and eastern Utah. The notice of intent to sue claims the listings are improper because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service noted the Gunnison sage-grouse population in the Gunnison Basin is “stable...

A mystery arose from the rescue: The police officers who entered the water say they heard a voice calling for help. The mother was dead, but the officers said that they heard an adult's voice calling to them. "The four of us heard a distinct voice coming from the car," Warner told CNN. "To me, it didn't sound like a child's voice." The voice gave the rescuers a surge of adrenaline needed to push the vehicle upright, he said. The mother was dead. The child was unconscious, but her eyelids were fluttering, and the rescuers knew she was alive, Warner...

The Utah officers cannot explain it, but a mysterious voice that appeared to come from a wrecked car led them to the rescue of an unconscious 18-month-old baby that had been trapped for 14 hours.

Forty-seven Senate Republicans are signaling in an open letter to Iran and the White House that a deal over Tehran’s nuclear program will be at risk once President Obama leaves office. “It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system,” the senators wrote in the letter, which was first reported by Bloomberg. “Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution — the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices — which you should seriously...

SPANISH FORK, Utah (AP) — A baby survived a car crash in a frigid Utah river after being strapped in a car seat upside-down for about 14 hours before being found by a fisherman, officers said. The 18-month-old girl's condition was upgraded from critical to stable but critical condition at a Salt Lake City hospital, but her 25-year-old mother, Lynn Groesbeck of Springville, was found dead in the car, police said Sunday.

No one in American life is more committed to religious liberty for all than the Latter-day Saints. We disagree strongly on crucial matters of faith—including the question of what the gospel is and what the church is, even over the question of who and what God is. But we work together for religious liberty, because we can have those debates while simultaneously agreeing that we ought to have the freedom to have them without government interference. We don’t have to agree on whether Joseph Smith was right about golden plates to agree that Thomas Jefferson was right about inalienable rights....

The Utah compromise contains way too much legalese for me to comprehensively evaluate it today. But reading the bill, and the response to it from the gay-rights establishment, leads me to say, sincerely and from the bottom of my heart, something I never expected to say: Thanks, Human Rights Campaign.

Utah lawmakers introduced a landmark bill Wednesday that bars discrimination against gay and transgender individuals while protecting the rights of religious groups and individuals. The measure has a rare stamp of approval from the Mormon church and stands a high chance of passing in Utah, where the church is based and many state lawmakers and the Republican governor are members of the faith.

According to findings from The Tombstone Marshal’s Office (TMO), a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officer was mistaken for a man impersonating an officer.. On January 28th, while traveling east on Charleston Road, a sixteen year old driver reported to the Tombstone Marshal’s Office that she observed a male driver in a white truck look at her as he passed and then turned around and begin travelling eastbound behind her before pulling her over with emergency lights flashing on the dashboard. The female advised that she pulled to the side road and the male exited his vehicle and approached her...

WASHINGTON—The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to move Loretta Lynch, President Barack Obama ’s nominee for attorney general, to the Senate floor for a final confirmation vote. The committee approved the nomination of Ms. Lynch, currently Brooklyn’s U.S. Attorney, by a vote of 12 to 8. Republican Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Orrin Hatch of Utah joined all of the committee’s Democrats in voting yes. Ms. Lynch has so far generated little animosity from Republican senators, even those who ended up voting against her. Many praised her work as a prosecutor and some said...

Two prominent House committee chairs are “deeply disappointed” in Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler for refusing to testify before Congress as “the future of the Internet is at stake.” Wheeler’s refusal to go before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday comes on the eve of the FCC’s vote on new Internet regulations pertaining to net neutrality. The committee’s chairman, Representative Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), and Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton (R., Mich.) criticized Wheeler and the administration for lacking transparency on the issue.

An activist who was using his position on Colorado’s oil and gas task force to push for a New York-style ban on oil and natural gas development has given up on the fringe proposal for lack of support, according to documents released by state officials overnight. The proposal’s demise is yet another defeat for national anti-fracking groups in Colorado, such as Food and Water Watch and the Sierra Club, which are desperately trying to reboot their failed campaign for an effective statewide oil and gas development ban. It’s also a reminder of how outside of New York, the “ban fracking”...

Mesa County commissioners on Tuesday directed Mesa County Attorney Patrick Coleman to draft a notice of intent to sue the federal government over the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s listing of the Gunnison sage-grouse as a threatened species. Gunnison County filed its own notice of intent in December to bring civil action against the Fish and Wildlife Service for, the county believes, improperly listing the bird as a threatened species and naming Gunnison County and acreage in a handful of other Colorado and Utah counties, including Mesa, as critical habitat for the sage-grouse. Mesa County decided to follow with its...

Establishment Republicans are reportedly trying to convince former Utah Governor and failed 2012 presidential candidate Jon Huntsman to oust Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) in 2016. CNN’s John King said on Inside Politics that national establishment leaders in the business community will join state establishment leaders to try to convince President Barack Obama’s former Ambassador to China to challenge Lee. King noted that Huntsman’s deep-pocketed dad (Huntsman Sr., though, did pony up funds to his son’s campaign down the stretch–perhaps because he saw the writing on the wall.) does not like Lee (Huntsman Sr. is reportedly upset his cancer institute did...

LAYTON — Two men suffered just minor injuries when their plane crashed into a golf course Saturday morning. The plane — which has been identified by Layton city as a single-engine Cessna — went down at the Valley View Golf Course at 2501 E. Gentile Street just after 10 a.m. Witnesses reported seeing the plane's wing clip a tree before it landed upside-down near a sand trap on the course. Both the pilot and his male passenger made it out of the aircraft with minor injuries, according to Layton police. The pilot was released at the scene, while the other...

A state-level campaign to rein in the federal government by calling an unprecedented convention to amend the U.S. Constitution is gaining steam, picking up support from two high-profile Republicans as more states explore the idea. Coburn, a legendary government-waste watchdog, announced this week that he has joined the effort by becoming a senior adviser for the group Convention of States Action, which wants states, not just Congress, to pass constitutional amendments. Article V of the Constitution states amendments can be ratified either by Congress or by states if two-thirds of them petition Congress to call a convention. Then, any amendment...

ACTION: Contact your Senators and urge them to cosponsor S. 477, the Firearms Manufacturers and Dealers Protection Act of 2015. Operation Choke Point a Threat to the Second Amendment About a year ago, the Second Amendment community was rocked by news that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) had teamed up with Attorney General Eric Holder to utterly destroy firearms manufacturers and dealers by cutting off all credit and banking relationships with them.For its part, the FDIC categorized gun and ammunition sales as a "high-risk business," lumping it in with drug dealers, pornographers, and Ponzi scheme operators -- all of...

A hotly contested proposal that resurrects Utah’s use of firing squads to carry out executions narrowly passed a key vote Friday in the state’s Legislature after three missing lawmakers were summoned to break a tie vote. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted 39-34 Friday morning to approve the measure, sending it to an uncertain fate in the state’s GOP-controlled Senate. Leaders in that chamber have thus far declined to say if they’ll support it, and Utah’s Republican Gov. Gary Herbert won’t say if he’ll sign it. […] (Rep. Paul) Ray argues that a team of trained marksmen is faster and...