Shortchanged: It's 2007, four decades since the bras started burning and 87 years since women won the right to vote in the United States. But the concept of equal rights is still not being applied to the payroll. The average woman in the U.S. earns 77 cents for each dollar earned by a man in the same occupation, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released last month. And in Utah, where women make 71 cents to a man's dollar, the discrepancy is even worse. It's been said before, but needs saying again: Equal work is deserving of equal pay. If America can't fully embrace that ideal, then America isn't all we crack it up to be.

Down on Hatch: Sometimes it's better to remain silent and be thought a Bush administration shill, than to open your mouth and erase all doubt. That's an aphorism that Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, needs to memorize. While other senators rightly threw daggers last week, Hatch lobbed softballs, defending the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration at a congressional hearing probing the accidents at the Crandall Canyon coal mine. You would think, with nine men dead, that Hatch would defend his constituents, instead of the president and the agency director he appointed, who have helped burden them with so much grief.