Free Republic

On Tuesday morning, a plane owned in trust by the Bank of Utah showed up in a very visible area of the Mehrabad Airport in Tehran, the capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran. What was it doing there exactly? Nobody knows, reports The New York Times. Under President Barack Obama, the United States has eased some of the long-standing punitive economic sanctions against Iran. Still, very little American — or European — economic activity is allowed inside the religious theocracy. The Bank of Utah is certainly no Wells Fargo. The Ogden-based community bank has all of 13 branches including...

A Utah businessman is rocking both state and national politics after claiming Utah Attorney General John Swallow helped him broker a deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make a federal investigation into his company quietly disappear, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. Jeremy Johnson was allegedly told that the price would be $600,000, and claims to have made an initial payment of $250,000 when he was slapped with a federal lawsuit. Now he says he wants his money back. The Salt Lake Tribune points out that Johnson has no way of knowing whether the funds actually made it to...

A Pleasant View, Utah high school teacher is now on paid leave after she asked her students to come up with a bunch of slang terms for their genitalia as part of a course called “Adult Roles and Financial Literacy.” The genitalia brainstorm session occurred on Friday at Weber High School. The teacher is Ashley Williams, reports The Salt Lake Tribune. “We had some students who reported to administration that a teacher was having an exercise where they were put into groups, male and female, to come up with names for genitalia,” Weber School District spokesman Nate Taggart told the...

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz threw his support behind T.W. Shannon in Oklahoma's GOP senate primary, The Hill reported. Shannon is a former state House Speaker. This was the first primary endorsement made by Cruz, who has a strong following among tea party-aligned Republicans. The endorsement allows him to honor his pledge not to back insurgents in primaries involving Senate GOP colleagues, The Washington Post reported. Shannon is in an open primary. A special election in November will fill the seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Tom Coburn two years before his term ends in 2016. Cruz plans to attend...

Police in Pleasant Grove, Utah, discovered over the weekend the bodies of seven dead infants in cardboard boxes, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. All seven of these babies were allegedly killed soon after being born by their own mother, a 39-year-old woman who has now been placed under arrest. The mother has been charges with six counts of murder. Police believe she committed these crimes over the course of a decade. This brutal loss of young life is shocking and deeply saddening. Yet as I read the story, I couldn’t help but consider this woman’s actions in the light of...

Warning follows threat from Harry Reid that grazing dispute 'not over' The chief of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association says his sources inside the federal government are warning that Washington’s weekend retreat in a dispute over grazing land in Nevada was just to distract and defuse – because a raid on the family’s ranch still is being strategized. And there probably would be violence involved, said Richard Mack, the former sheriff of Grisham County, Ariz. “I don’t think it would be possible” to launch a raid without violence, he told WND Monday. “I don’t the Bundys would lie...

ST. GEORGE – Gov. Brian Sandoval signed Assembly Bill 227 into Nevada law Tuesday, approving the creation of the Nevada Land Management Task Force. The signing of AB 227 makes Nevada the fifth state to look into the movement initiated by Utah lawmakers that urges the federal government to transfer management of public lands over to state control. In a press release issued by the American Lands Council, Nevada Assemblyman John Ellison, the primary sponsor of AB 227, said, “Gov. Sandoval and our state legislature have taken the first step in fulfilling our responsibility to our children and for the...

MANCHESTER, N.H. – The Republican presidential primary is up and running in New Hampshire, where conservative prospects lined up in Manchester Saturday for the first cattle call of the 2016 cycle. Speakers at the New Hampshire Freedom Summit, which was sponsored by Citizens United and Koch-backed Americans For Prosperity, included Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, all of whom would be top tier presidential contenders should they run. Donald Trump also spoke. Huckabee seemed especially determined to show he could compete for conservative votes against politicians like Paul and Cruz, who have each...

FULL TITLE: 'We were worried about the children': Neighbor claims mother-of-three arrested after ex-husband discovers SEVEN dead newborns in garage battle substance abuse problem up until leaving home A Utah woman is believed by police to have killed SEVEN of her own children over the past 10 years. Megan Huntsman, 39, of Pleasant Grove, secretly gave birth to the infants, killed them and then stuffed their tiny bodies into boxes stored in the garage, police said. The skeletons in Huntsman’s closet were exposed Saturday by her ex-husband who was cleaning out the garage of a home they shared until 2011,...

The 2,500-seat Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts sold out March 31 for an appearance by Jon Huntsman as part of the Philadelphia Speaker Series. Two days later, Huntsman filled Boston Symphony Hall. Another Huntsman appearance at UCLA later this month is sold out. Without the benefit of incessant media attention some early 2016 prospects have been receiving, Huntsman’s visions and his authentic, inspiring way of conveying them has been attracting, and resonating with, capacity audiences. At the Kimmel Center, Huntsman drew laughs in lowering his hand slowly to the floor, a metaphor for the impact on his 2012 primary...

Enterprise, UT (Reuters) - A Utah county, angry over the destruction of federal rangeland that ranchers use to graze cattle, has started a bid to round up federally protected wild horses it blames for the problem in the latest dustup over land management in the U.S. :snip: Wild horse preservation groups say any attempt to remove the horses would be a federal crime. On Thursday county workers, accompanied by a Bureau of Land Management staffer, set up the first in a series of metal corrals designed to trap and hold the horses on private land abutting the federal range until...

GOP Senate candidate Ben Sasse announced Thursday he raised more than $850,000 in the first quarter of the year, significantly more than his main challenger in the race. Sasse made the announcement on Twitter. Another Republican candidate, Shane Osborn, announced earlier this week he raised more than $550,000 in the first quarter of this year. Osborn is a former state Treasurer and Navy pilot and his main rival is Sasse, who serves as president of Midland University. Last week, conservative group FreedomWorks withdrew its endorsement of Osborn and said it would support Sasse instead. They are among four GOP contenders...

In a major blow to former Republican state Treasurer Shane Osborn’s candidacy for Nebraska Senate, national conservative group FreedomWorks is withdrawing its endorsement and backing his main primary rival, Midland University President Ben Sasse, instead. At issue, FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe said in a statement, is the unspoken support Osborn is believed to have from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “Both Osborn and Sasse are great people, and this was not a decision taken lightly. The question at the heart of this decision is, who would caucus with the Freedom Caucus, and who would fall in line with the...

Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins fears the dispute at Cliven Bundy’s ranch that has drawn protesters from across state lines might turn violent. So when Collins talked this week with a county commissioner in Utah who said others are coming so Southern Nevada to support the Bundys, he did what he usually does: He spoke his opinion without mincing words or worrying if he offended someone. Those comments are now making the rounds on social media and have attracted criticism from people ranging from Utah ranchers to his colleagues on the County Commission. It started when Darin Bushman, a Piute...

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that two militia members from Montana and one from Utah have arrived at Cliven Bundy’s ranch. “We need to be the barrier between the oppressed and the tyrants,” Ryan Payne of the West Mountain Rangers told the Review-Journal. “Expect to see a band of soldiers.” Payne said that militias from New Hampshire, Texas and Florida are likely to join and stand with Bundy and stay at his ranch. “They all tell me they are in the process of mobilizing as we speak,” Payne told the Review-Journal, adding that hundreds of militia members are expected. The...

If people were played here, when does the boycott of OKCupid start? A narrative is emerging that the entire Brendan Eich evisceration campaign was a public relations stunt by OKCupid. That narrative is emerging from the left, based on facts uncovered by the right.Chuck Ross of The Daily Caller was the first to report that the founder of OKCupid, who also is the CEO of Match.com, donated many years ago to an anti-gay marriage congressman: Sam Yagan, who is currently CEO of the Match Group, which controls OkCupid, donated $500 to Barack Obama in 2007 and 2008 back when he...

Former Sen. Alan Simpson, a Republican, is making the case for a “live and let live” approach to same-sex marriage in a new television ad buy targeting Western states, just as a federal appeals court in Denver prepares to take up the issue later this week. “Whether you’re gay or lesbian or straight, if you love someone and you want to marry them, marry them,” Simpson, of Wyoming, says in the spot. The six-figure buy, sponsored by the pro-gay marriage group Freedom to Marry, is slated to start airing on Tuesday on national cable channels, as well as locally in...

One of the Tea Party's top stars in Congress has penned an Obamacare op-ed co-bylined by Nebraska Senate candidate Ben Sasse. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sasse argue that Obamacare's failures offer an opportunity for conservatives to be a movement that represents solutions and stands on the side of working-class Americans. "Republicans cannot win the healthcare debate until we effectively communicate our solutions to the problems that plague working families," they write in Thursday op-ed in the Washington Examiner. The article comes two days after Obama took what was considered a "victory lap" to tout the 7.1 million Americans who...

A new bill seeking to curb Utah’s government-owned broadband networks incited anger among observers, indicating confusion remains regarding the policy—and the state of broadband. Promoting broadband is in the public interest, but government-run broadband networks like Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency—termed UTOPIA—are not the way to broadband paradise. In 2002, local government leaders commenced work on UTOPIA—the nation’s largest government-owned wholesale fiber operation—as a reaction to private telecommunications providers’ supposed unwillingness to make available high-speed broadband services. Altogether, 11 communities pledged approximately $500 million over several decades to back the bonds UTOPIA sold to finance network development. However, UTOPIA never...

Ted Cruz has argued nine cases before the U.S. Supreme Court in his lifetime, more than any other current member of Congress. Today, as a U.S. senator from Texas, Cruz is making a different kind of argument—one in the court of public opinion.On his Facebook page and in a statement released by his office, Cruz has declared his support for the families who own Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties in their First Amendment challenge of an Obamacare mandate.Oral arguments in both cases take place today at the Supreme Court.>>> Q&A: Tough Questions on Religious Freedom, Abortion Drugs“The Supreme Court...