Majority Leader Reid, Madam Speaker Pelosi;

I write to you as a concerned American and as a concerned Democrat.  Last night, as Senator Reid pointed out in his written response to President Bush’s speech, the President intends to run out the clock, leaving the hard decisions to the next President.  However, what has also become clear is that the Democratic Leadership and many others in Congress lack the same courage, the same will, as the President to make the hard decisions.  

Being employed in Utah in the build up to the 2002 Winter Games one of my responsibilities was to monitor news outlets for information that could impact my companies ability to do business (particularly since 2 of our facilities were adjacent to Olympic facilities.)  Because of that need to monitor the media I registered for the daily Fox News e-mail, my inbox has suffered since.  Normally I delete them without ever looking at them, but today the headline caught my eye, intrigued I opened it to read the headline story:   Is Atheism a Growing Trend in the U.S.?

Today I received the following letter from Senator Hatch outlining his position on NSA warrentless wiretapping.  Sadly I can not find the original letter I sent to the Senator.  

Of the thoughts I can remember, I asked what has come of a country that started with the courage of "give me liberty or give me death" and has evolve to a nation of Pat Roberts and the sentiment of "you don't have any civil liberties when your dead."  

I also asked the Senator what happened to the party of small government, and the party that wanted to get the government off our backs.  Why does that party now seek to get into our e-mail, phone calls, and bedrooms?

Text of Senator Hatch's response below...

Utah has just completed hosting a meeting of the nation's mayors who were in the state to discuss global warming and what could be done on a local level to address the issue.  Coinciding with this visit Utahs conservative morning newspaper The Deseret Morning News (Link,  about); conservative television station KSL(Link, about), and Polling outfit Dan Jones & Associates(Link) conducted a poll (Link)  of  624 Utahn's. The following question in particular struck me as surprising.

What do you think is the primary cause of global warming?
19% say natural fluctuations in earth's climate. 50% say it's human caused burning of fossil fuels, mostly from our cars and power plants. 19% say it's a combination of the two.

This means that a significant number of conservatives in this state are not on board with the Bush Administration talking point that there is no proof that humans contribute to global warming.