This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
What a difference an election cycle makes.
Two years ago, FreedomWorks was all aglow over bouncing incumbents from the 2010 race and replacing them with candidates the super PAC deemed "real conservatives."
One of its crowning glories, according to FreedomWorks, was defeating three-term Utah Sen. Bob Bennett in the 2010 Republican Convention because, well, Bennett was actually known to talk cordially to Democrats from time to time.
Blasphemy!
Bennett was replaced by tea partyer Mike Lee, and the rest is history.
Now, FreedomWorks has worked feverishly and spent boatloads of cash to defeat six-term incumbent Orrin Hatch.
But this year has been different.
Not only were the hundreds of thousands of dollars FreedomWorks spent to send voluminous fliers sliming Hatch to Republican state delegates ineffectual, when the name FreedomWorks was brought up in recent weeks during focus groups consisting of GOP delegates, the response was chilling.
One focus group leader said it was like someone had just spouted a vile obscenity.
It's so bad that someone anonymously put a fake video on YouTube that made it appear 4th Congressional District candidate Mia Love was heartily endorsed by FreedomWorks.
The video has constant images of Love with graphics stating how much she is favored by FreedomWorks.
In other words, someone was trying to hurt Love's campaign by associating her with FreedomWorks.
Members of Love's campaign were so concerned that they contacted FreedomWorks and were assured the super PAC had nothing to do with the ad.
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Obscene marathons? • When a computer user in a Salt Lake County library tried to call up the map of Saturday's Salt Lake City Marathon, he was blocked. When he sent an inquiry as to why, he got a message from the library system's Internet security company that the site he was trying to access was pornographic.
Must be those skimpy shorts the racers wear.
Craig Near, public relations coordinator for the Salt Lake County Library, said when he accessed the map from The Salt Lake Tribune's site, he got it just fine.
The user, he said, must have Googled "Salt Lake City Marathon" and accessed it through a different server.
The security company's explanation: While the server he accessed does not host exclusively pornographic content, "our review found a significant amount of pornographic entries spanning from explicit photos to erotic literature. Since the site does not host this adult content in a specific section, we had to place the entire site into our Pornography library."
In other words, if you didn't get the map from sltrib.com, you might not have gotten it at all.
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User-friendly Utah • The Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control's website has a feature curious users can click that says: "How do I comply with Utah liquor laws?"
A useful site, right? Because, heaven knows, a visitor might need some help in understanding Utah liquor laws.
But when you click on the site, you don't get simple bullet points that say, for example, "don't drink and drive," or "don't walk down the street with an open beer," or "don't go into a bar if you're 17 years old."
Nope.
What comes up is a list of Utah's liquor laws as they appear in the state code. You get 40 of them, and all you see is the number of the law in the Utah code and the title.
So, 32B-1-204 is one of those listed, with the title "Powers of Local Authority."
Or you might scroll down to 32B-1-303, "Qualifications related to employment with the department."
Or if you want to get really jazzy, click onto 32B-1-505, "Sexually oriented entertainer."
Once you find a title you like, you can click it and the entire section pops up. And you know how easy it is to read the Utah State Code.