This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Salt Lake City resident Gene Martinez received a robocall from white supremacist William Johnson that slammed Mitt Romney for denouncing Donald Trump and praised the GOP front-runner for his "nationalist views."
Martinez is Latino and one of the people Johnson would deny citizenship because of his ethnic background.
Martinez served in the Vietnam War in the 1960s. Johnson, a BYU graduate, served a Mormon mission in Japan.
Biographies of Johnson, head of the American Freedom Party, note the California corporate attorney has used separate identities to support his white-supremacist agenda. Under the identity of James O. Pace, he wrote a book in 1985 advocating a constitutional amendment (the "Pace Amendment") that would repeal the 14th and 15th amendments and deport almost all nonwhites from the United States. It would ban from citizenship and permanent residency people who are not of the white European race and specifically singled out as ineligible those whose ethnic backgrounds are Latin American, African-American, Mongolian, Asian, Middle Eastern, Semitic, Near Eastern or American Indian.
So not only is this Trump supporter — who told The Salt Lake Tribune he paid $6,000 for the robocalls — lobbying a Latino American Vietnam vet to support a policy that would ban that vet from U.S. citizenship, he proselytized people in Japan whom he deems unworthy to be citizens of his country.
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The orchestrator • It turns out, as The Tribune reported Tuesday, Sky View High School's choir was inadvertently duped into participating in an anti-government rally at the Utah Capital by supporters of LaVoy Finicum, the Arizona rancher killed in a clash with police in January in Oregon.
Finicum was one of the ranchers illegally occupying a federal wildlife refuge to protest Bureau of Land Management policies.
The choir members were touring the Capitol and testing its acoustics with their songs when they were asked to sing the national anthem to the protesters gathered outside.
Republican activist Cherilyn Eagar emceed that protest. The former GOP congressional candidate and head of the nonprofit American Leadership Fund also took charge at the Finicum funeral, alerting reporters about the protocol to follow and when and with whom interviews would be allowed.
I mentioned Eagar in a recent column when, as a substitute LDS seminary teacher at West High, she told the students that the U.S. is not living the covenant of the biblical Abraham and, as a result, is jeopardizing the promises God made to his people; that sin brought about 9/11 and the militant Islamic State group, as well as volatile stock markets; that gays and people who choose not to have children are endangering population growth; and that the federal government is taking over the land.
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Freudian slip? • State Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, is sponsoring SCR9, which would declare pornography a public health crisis.
The resolution has passed the Senate and last week had its first House hearing before the Health and Human Services Committee.
When Weiler presented his measure, he asked Pamela Atkinson, a community activist and advocate for the poor, to testify about the social problems caused by pornography.
But Weiler's mind must have been wandering. When his witness approached the microphone, he introduced her as Pamela Anderson, one of Playboy's most popular centerfold models.
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Absentee voting? • Many Republican-led states have adopted measures to make it more difficult to vote, with more stringent identification requirements to prove citizenship and residency.
Idaho, or at least one of its lawmakers, seems to be going in the opposite direction.
Utah Rep. Patrice Arent, D-Millcreek, received an email Monday at her Utah legislative email address from Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, urging her to vote for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in Tuesday's GOP presidential primary — in the Gem State.
Maybe she could pick up a lottery ticket on her way to the polls.