My favorite Utah story. Setting: Maryland's Eastern Shore, a farmhouse. I'm sitting on the front porch with a woman born and raised in Salt Lake City, though not a Mormon. Ahead stretches a dirt driveway to the highway, where the mail box is located about 100 yards away. Suddenly visible in the distance, two figures with bicycles coming down the driveway. They are very far away -- and yet the woman beside me suddenly exclaims, "Oh my God! Mormon missionaries!" What, what? She tells me the two figures approaching us are Mormon missionaries. They're not yet "an inch tall" -- how can she tell? The bikes. And they wear white shirts. They keep approaching and when they finally arrive, yep, she's right. Mormon missionaries, who weren't impressed when I invited them to join us in gin and tonics. But I was forever impressed that she could spot them from such a distance. Very impressed indeed.
PROVO, Utah - Vice President
Dick Cheney told Brigham Young University graduates on Thursday to savor second chances and be prepared for the unexpected throughout life in a commencement address that stirred up protests in one of the nation's most Republican states.
On a campus where dissent is unusual, about 100 people protested quietly ahead of Cheney's arrival, holding signs reading: "Mormon for peace" and "Make soup, not war."
Utah voters have consistently supported the administration, delivering
President Bush his largest margins of victory in any state in 2000 and 2004. In the county that is home to the university, about 85 percent of voters chose the GOP ticket in 2004.
But the war in
Iraq has weakened support for the White House. Cheney critics at BYU have questioned whether he sets a good example for graduates, citing his role in promoting faulty intelligence and his involvement in the
CIA leak scandal, |
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