Hasn't the Utah Legislature driven off this cliff before? After they passed a ban of most elective abortions in 1991, Republican lawmakers decided that because Attorney General Jan Graham, a Democrat, was pro-choice, she could not be trusted to defend the new abortion law in court. At considerable public expense and after much partisan rancor, the Republicans hired outside counsel Mary Anne Wood, who had pro-life bona fides, to defend the law. Full Story

WASHINGTON - Some of my colleagues in the pundit business have become unhinged by the election results. The always diverting Maureen Dowd of The New York Times wrote the other day that ''the forces of darkness'' are taking over the country. The voters' confirmation of Republican-led government brings with it ''a scary, paranoid, regressive reality,'' Dowd said, with ''strains of isolationism, nativism, chauvinism, puritanism and religious fanaticism. Full Story

WASHINGTON - Conservative opponents of Sen. Arlen Specter's bid to become Senate Judiciary Committee chairman are flooding Republican committee members with calls demanding he be passed over. But Specter has also been making calls in an effort to cement his chairmanship, one official told The Associated Press. Full Story

If you are a TV critic, it's hard not to look at last Tuesday's election results and realize that you are covering a medium that's probably still out of touch with large segments of the country. Red-staters, security moms, conservative Christians - whatever label you pin on the people who helped give President Bush four more years, they are not the people you are likely to see showing up as sympathetic characters on ''Will & Grace,'' ''The O.C. Full Story

WASHINGTON - The Democratic Party emerged from last week's election struggling over what it stood for, anxious about its political future, and bewildered about how to compete with a Republican Party that some Democrats say may be headed for a period of electoral dominance. Democrats said President Bush's defeat of Sen. John Kerry by 3 million votes left the party facing its most difficult time in at least 20 years. Full Story

Looking at that extraordinary electoral map of the United States with all the liberal, quiche-eating, Kerry-supporting states of the Northeast and the West Coast colored Democratic blue while the "heartland" and the South were solid Republican red, the solution to the problem suddenly occurred to me. "Blueland" should join Canada. It is getting harder and harder for the two tribes of Americans to understand or even tolerate each other. Full Story

- Politics may make strange bedfellows, but one couple that didn't exactly hop under the covers this presidential election were the respective campaigns and civility. Even before an estimated 120 million Americans turned out to vote, voices on both sides of the deep political divide called for calm, reason and unity. These pleas were lost in a howling wind of distortions, rancor and personal attacks over everything from the Iraq war to gay marriage. Full Story

WASHINGTON - The 2004 presidential race and its aftermath have brought a new fusion between religion and politics. For the first time, vast numbers of evangelical Christians showed their clout at the grass-roots level without being organized by a national group such as the Christian Coalition or the Moral Majority. Full Story

Wednesday morning Americans everywhere woke up in Utah. Only 51 percent were happy about it. We're accustomed here to living in President Bush's 1950s-ish world. Many Utahns have never lived anywhere else (missions don't count), avoiding entirely the second half of the 20th Century, culturally speaking. A lot happened, let me tell you. But I digress. Still, Democrats here and elsewhere had hope. There was a sense on Nov. Full Story

Wednesday morning Americans everywhere woke up in Utah. Only 51 percent were happy about it.

We're accustomed here to living in President Bush's 1950s-ish world. Many Utahns have never lived anywhere else (missions Full Story

MADRID, Spain - Brown-eyed Nuria Ramos stood outside this city's 11th-century San Gines church one recent morning, sounding the warning that Spain's leftist government was driving the country into a moral abyss. Under one arm, the bubbly Christian youth volunteer cradled a stack of Bible literature. Full Story

By Stephen Hunt The Salt Lake Tribune It took just minutes Wednesday for the Utah Sentencing Commission to unanimously endorse "the concept" of an effective hate-crimes bill. Persuading legislators to enact a workable statute will no doubt be more difficult. But proponents of such a bill believe the time may be ripe. Utah's existing hate-crimes law is unenforceably vague. Full Story

WASHINGTON - With the Democratic Party splattered at his feet in little blue puddles, John Kerry told the crushed crowd at Faneuil Hall in Boston about his concession call to President Bush. "We had a good conversation," the senator said. "And we talked about the danger of division in our country and the need, the desperate need, for unity, for finding the common ground, coming together. Today I hope that we can begin the healing. Full Story

It took just minutes Wednesday for the Utah Sentencing Commission to unanimously endorse "the concept" of an effective hate-crimes bill.

Persuading legislators to enact a workable statute will no doubt be more difficult. Full Story

WASHINGTON - Never shy about its claims, the Bush White House sent Chief of Staff Andrew Card out at the ungodly hour of 5:39 a.m. Wednesday to assert that President Bush had won re-election by cinching the 20 electoral votes of Ohio. This time, the boast was better-founded than was the similar claim four years ago when Florida was still locked in a dispute that would eventually last 36 days and wind up in the Supreme Court. Within hours, John F. Full Story

In a resounding, coast-to-coast rejection of gay marriage, voters in 11 states approved constitutional amendments Tuesday limiting marriage to one man and one woman. The amendments won, often by huge margins, in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, Utah and Oregon - the one state where gay-rights activists hoped to prevail. The bans won by 3-to-1 in Kentucky and Georgia, 3-to-2 in Ohio, and 6-to-1 in Mississippi. Full Story

No matter who had won Tuesday's gubernatorial election, Utah's to-do list would be the same. Having ended up on the Huntsman rather than the Matheson refrigerator door, the list is a suggestion for what the state government's agenda should look like: l Education Funding: Both the juniors, Jon and Scott, emphasized raising additional revenues for education in their campaigns. Full Story

Republican Jon Huntsman Jr. declared the winner over Scott Matheson Jr. in the race for Utah governor, and Democrat Jim Matheson was winning in the Second Congressional District. The proposed ban on gay marriage was headed to victory by a wide margin. Full Story

BYU exit polls give Democrat Jim Matheson a clear lead in Utah 2nd Congressional District and project GOP candidate for governor Jon Huntsman Jr. beating Scott Matheson Jr. handily. The exit polls also show the anti-gay marriage Amendment 3 passing by a wide margin. Full Story

No matter who had won Tuesday's gubernatorial election, Utah's to-do list would be the same. Having ended up on the Huntsman rather than the Matheson refrigerator door, the list is a suggestion for what the state government's Full Story