WALSH: Do we have to claim the Utahns in D.C.?

We enthusiastically made Bush's Brain our own as he swept into the White House. Rove, the Republican mastermind and Olympus High School graduate, was something to be proud of. Besides, his proximity to the Oval Office might be useful to loyal red-state voters.
But Rove isn't anything to boast about these days. And neither are the rest of our native sons who went to Washington seeking glory, only to belly flop in scandal soup.

Kyle Sampson is just the latest to trip and conk his noggin on the pedestal.

~snip~

Jay Bybee, a star of BYU's law school/training camp for right-leaning attorneys and good GOP soldiers, penned the Bush administration's "torture memo." In 2002, then-assistant U.S. Attorney General Bybee provided the legal reasoning for soldiers at Abu Ghraib to torment Iraqi prisoners. A year later, Bybee was whisked onto the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals - a lifetime appointment - with bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate and a letter of recommendation from then-George Washington University Law School Dean Michael Young, now University of Utah president.


Current Utah U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman and former U.S. Attorney Brent Ward had bit parts in the scandal. While working for the Senate Judiciary Committee, Tolman added language to the Patriot Act that allowed the attorney general to replace U.S. attorneys without Senate approval - a change senators yanked last week. And Ward, the nation's porn czar, whined to Justice Department officials that now-fired U.S. attorneys in Arizona and Nevada would not prosecute smut cases.

and there is more here: http://www.sltrib.com/ci_5517137?source=rss