Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, loves the Utah Jazz so much he skipped a (really boring) Senate hearing he was supposed to chair Tuesday.
He stayed in Utah Monday night to cheer on his team.The Jazz's series-clinching win over the Los Angeles Lakers ended too late for Hatch to catch a flight back to Washington, D.C., so he could arrive in time for a Tuesday morning hearing. The hearing was on a law needed to implement a just-ratified treaty banning chemical arms.
So he missed the not-so-scintillating discussion by lawyers about how the treaty affects intellectual property rights and Fourth Amend-ment constitutional rights.
Shucks, he could have been here instead of in Utah at a thrilling overtime playoff game.
Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., substituted for Hatch at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, noting somewhat gravely that Hatch was unable to attend, without offering further explanation.
When Hatch's staff was asked why, they said it was because he chose to attend the Jazz game after a conference for seniors that he had sponsored in Utah earlier in the day.
However, Hatch, who often wears basketball ties to show his love for the Jazz, will have plenty of opportunity, however, to dive quickly back into the chemical arms treaty implementation issue.
Kyl said the Senate hopes to pass it before the Memorial Day recess at the end of the month - and a line of lawyers, senators and businessmen outlined some problems with it Tuesday that still need to be resolved.
For example, Kyl said many worry the treaty, which guarantees access to anyplace that international inspectors desire, could violate constitutional guarantees against searches without warrants.
But Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General Richard L. Shiffrin suggested changes in implementing legislation to allow issuance of criminal search warrants to businesses that won't voluntarily allow such inspections.
Other witnesses also want to ensure that international inspections and compliance forms won't be used for corporate spying. And some want to find ways to compensate businesses who lose trade secrets through the inspections.
The Senate last month ratified the treaty to ban the storage, manufacture or sale of chemical arms.
Utah's Deseret Chemical Depot (formerly the North Area of Tooele Army Depot) stores 43 percent of the nation's chemical arms and is in the process of incinerating them.