When was the last time Utah voters were asked to decide whether a particular substance or compound should be considered medicine and approved for prescription use?

Perhaps a better question is, should such a thing ever be left to a democratic process? Don’t we usually allow qualified researchers to study potential drugs to know whether they work and how they should be prescribed?

In 1987, the New York Times editorial board, of all people, said the best minimum wage would be $0. 
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“The idea of using a minimum wage to overcome poverty is old, honorable - and fundamentally flawed,” it said. “It's time to put this hoary debate behind us, and find a better way to improve the lives of people who work very hard for very little.”

The subject may have been Senate Republicans and the secret health care bill some of them were working on, but Arizona Sen. John McCain tapped a different nerve Tuesday.

The bill, he said, was so secret that he hadn’t seen it, “nor have I met any American that has.” Then he added this, “I’m sure the Russians have been able to hack in and gotten most of it.”

Well, of course. “The Russians already know about 

The first thing I noticed about China, where I spent the last two weeks on vacation, is that the economy is almost exclusively cash-based.
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Whip out a credit card at a fast-food restaurant and watch the puzzled looks on the faces of cashiers. It will almost match the puzzled look on yours when you realize “combo meal” means you get shrimp and egg custard with your order. A popular credit card slogan asks what’s in your wallet, but you had better have cold-hard Yuan in yours if you want to eat in Beijing.

Would you like to know before you cast your ballot whether your favorite candidate is the kind who would body slam a reporter?

Careful — I’m not asking whether you support or oppose body slamming reporters, just whether you would like to know this before voting. (But please, let me put on a bike helmet and strap a pillow to my back first, if you don’t mind.)

Montana’s recent special election kerfuffle, in which a last-minute bit of bad behavior may have been negated by ballots already in the mail, has made even ardent vote-by-mail advocates swallow hard.

When it comes to self-driving cars, we’re in that awkward in-between stage.

Fancy new cars lull us to sleep as they keep themselves centered in the lane and adjust their speeds to traffic, leaving us free to stare at the countryside or do whatever.

But “whatever” won’t hold up as an excuse in court.
Get into an accident and watch how quickly the manufacturer argues it was your fault for not grabbing the wheel or braking soon enough.

The folks running the Salt Lake City Library system face a tough sell. They want the city to raise taxes for its library system at a time when libraries, like so many other things in the modern world, are being redefined by the age of the Internet and mobile devices.

They may get their wish. The city council, not voters, will decide whether to raise the share of property taxes that go toward the library by the requested 21 percent, or perhaps by some smaller amount. The public will get to share its opinions at a hearing.

But underlying this request is a much larger question. Is it ethically proper for governments to raise taxes to build new facilities without also, at the same time, covering the cost of operating and maintaining them?
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In recent years, the city opened two new library braches —Glendale and Marmalade  — without any budget for maintenance. 

Question: How do you stop moderates from rioting?

Answer: You don’t. Moderates, like Canadians and Scandinavians, do not riot.

And therein lies the challenge.

Richard Davis — a personal friend who writes a political column for the Deseret News — wants to rally the moderates. Donald Trump’s America may provide him a rare historical moment when moderates are, indeed, exercised. Then again, how could we tell?

Davis and Jim Bennett, the son of late former Republican Sen. Bob Bennett and also a Deseret 

If you live in Utah, you are less stressed than you would be in 46 other states. Your mileage may vary, of course, depending on how many assignments you may have with a volunteer organization, such as a church, or how many little ones you may be chasing around the house while trying to do other things.

It also, apparently, depends on how you feel about 

Marcus Hutchins is a true 21st century hero.
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After all, it’s only right that, in a century too strange for any of us to logically explain to our great grandparents if we were miraculously given an hour to converse with the dead, a lifesaving hero should be a thin young guy in Britain with curly hair and little formal schooling who types away in a room with a half-dozen computer screens.