Mark Shurtleff, former Utah State Attorney-General, and a leading GOP amnesty advocate, was arrested Tuesday and charged with corruption for accepting gifts from rich businessmen, according to a story in the New York Times.
Shurtleff's Republican successor, John Swallow, was also arrested on similar charges. Both proclaimed their innocence.
They were accused, writes the Times, of "trading favors and access to rich businessmen and improperly accepting money, golf getaways, and rides on private planes and a luxury houseboat."
Neither the long Times story, nor a shorter one on the same subject in the Washington Post, mentioned the pro-guestworker, pro-amnesty position of Shurtleff, which, sadly, is par for the course for these papers.
Shurtleff long advocated "the Utah Solution" to the immigration problem, which revolved around an impossible-to-implement arrangement between Utah and a state in Mexico to ship guestworkers from the latter to the former.
Since immigration is a federal program, nothing happened with the proposal. He also played a key role in that state's decision to grant driver's licenses to illegals.
Shurtleff , who served 12 years as the state AG, was at least twice a featured speaker at the pro-amnesty annual meetings sponsored by the Migration Policy Institute, where his proposals were loudly applauded.
One wonders if the luxury houseboat was on Great Salt Lake or some other body of water. That variable, like the immigration matters, was not discussed by the two papers.