Almost two years ago, even before the pre-campaigning for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination began, Philip Barlow, the Leonard Arrington Professor of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, got a surprising phone call from a very powerful Mormon who happened to be a USU alum.

It was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Reid exchanged pleasantries, although the two men had never met. Then Reid ripped into Barlow about an article Barlow had been quoted in.