Link:

WASHINGTON - "Souls Along the Way," the love song Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch wrote for political rival Sen. Ted Kennedy and his wife a few years ago, has found its way to Hollywood in the box office hit "Ocean's 12."

The song didn't make the CD version of the soundtrack to the hip heist thriller, but Hatch said he's thrilled it's included in the movie. "Ocean's Twelve" is the latest success of Hatch's second career as a songwriter, one in which he has earned thousands of dollars in royalties as he hobnobs with stars and manages to persuade some well-known artists to perform his works.

"Souls Along the Way" can be heard in the background of a scene in which Las Vegas casino boss Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) crashes a wedding party to demand the gang of crooks repay his stolen loot. In a subliminal reference to Hatch, the groom at the wedding is Virgil Malloy (Casey Affleck), one of the "Mormon Malloy" brothers from Utah.

Hatch wrote the song for Kennedy and his wife, Vicki, as a surprise and sprang it on his liberal counterpart when the two were having an argument on Capitol Hill. Kennedy played a demo tape of the song on a sailing trip he took with his wife to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary, and the couple called Hatch from aboard the boat to tell him how moving the song was.

A song more recently emerging from Hatch's prolific pen - he collected $33,000 in royalties from his music last year - is "Unspoken." It is the title track of the latest CD by contemporary Christian music star Jaci Velasquez, a Grammy nominated 23-year-old artist who won the 2002 Latin Billboard Magazine Award for Female Pop Album of the Year.

This seems fairly odd - the Senator is in the position of regulating an industry in which he is an admittedly avid participant.