President Barack Obama stole a little Republican Convention thunder by spontaneously taking questions over the social media site Reddit. Mother Jones provides the full transcript.---

Top of the Alty World ]

“Read President Obama’s Reddit ‘Ask Me Anything’ Qs and As”—Mother Jones

Health experts are lining up against laws against so-called coerced abortions.—American Independent

ProPublica offers a reader’s guide to the mysteries of Mitt Romney’s tax returns.—ProPublica

Top of Alty Utah

Mia Love has raised considerable cash since her Republican National Convention speech but Jim Matheson isn’t worried.—Salt Lake City Weekly

A report finds carbon-dioxide emissions are on the decline in Utah and across the West.—KCPW

Despite KSL dumping the show The New Normal that includes gay a coupel looking for a surrogate mother, CW30 will air the show on weekends for Utah viewers.—Q Salt Lake

Democrat for U.S. Senate Scott Howell mumbles through education-policy specifics at a recent forum.—Salt Lake City Weekly

Rantosphere

Glen Warchol points out that Utah’s LGBT publication Q Salt Lake is in desperate need of funds or will have to fold by Sept. 4

“Q Salt Lake has been covering the gay/bi/lesbian/transgender and (so important in Utah) gay-curious scenes since Michael Aaron bet his second mortgage on it in the dark old days of anti-gay-marriage constitutional-amendment drives. Now, it's time to pay the piper. But at risk isn't just Aaron's little house in the Gayborhood, but a cohesive—and better yet, edgy— force in gay and progressive politics in general.”--Salt Lake Magazine

The Long View

Salt Lake City Weekly’s Stephen Dark exposes a toxic secret under a Sandy strip mall, a chemical leak that could poison the city’s groundwater wells and possibly harm area residents.

“‘Why don’t you notify the water purveyor so he can step up sampling?’ Sandy’s public utilities operations manager Larry Bowler asks. ‘It’s all about public safety—or it should be.’ When City Weekly showed Bowler the initial vapor figure of 22 million micrograms per cubic meter of air Wasatch Environmental had found in the soil beneath the dry cleaner, Bowler’s response was, ‘Holy smoke. That’s unbelievably high.’”—Salt Lake City Weekly