It was supposed to be the first of many Review-Journal in-kind contributions to the campaign to pass a Colorado-style TABOR law in the Silver State. But it ended up being a somewhat atypical demonstration that R-J demigod, state Sen. Bob Beers, occasionally makes things up.

You had to read to the end of reporter Ed Vogel’s long Sunday piece to find the exchange between Beers and state budget director Perry Comeaux, but it was worth the slog. Let’s just reprint the relevant parts for you here, and we’ll pick up at the end with our commentary.

BEERS: “Items that used to be in the general fund were moved elsewhere. We no longer have to count them.”

COMEAUX: “He will have to show me where we have taken programs out of the general fund. It hasn’t happened.” (The story confirms that, in fact, Beers was unable to identify such a program.)

BEERS: “I am not trying to argue with Perry. The fundamental question is whether we increase government spending faster than population growth and inflation should be decided by the Legislature or the citizens. Putting the question before citizens seems fair.”

VARIOUS THINGS & STUFF: No, the question is whether Beers tried to slip a blatant falsehood by Ed Vogel, and got caught red-handed. It’s little wonder Beers doesn’t want to argue with Comeaux, since Comeaux (unlike most of us in the media) knows what he’s talking about.

So let’s do the score: Beers, 0; reality, 1. Let’s keep that in mind when the campaign for the Beers-backed Tax and Spending Control (TASC) initiative starts showing up outside grocery stores and Home Depots in the next few months, shall we?

And let’s give a little credit to Vogel and the R-J for being willing to show that their idol sometimes has feet of clay. It’s the first remotely negative thing we recall ever reading in the morning paper about Beers.

So rocker Courtney Love admitted in court Friday that she had used drugs, thus violating her probation, when just a few days earlier, she declared in the pre-taped “Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson” that she’d been “clean and sober for a fucking year”?

You mean … she lied? To a TV audience, and to her good friend, Pam?

Color us disillusioned. Very disillusioned.

We were amused to read in the weekend Review-Journal that no one has yet come forth to challenge the “split-roll” property tax cap that limits tax increases to 3 percent for residential property and 8 percent for business and other types of land. Why would anyone challenge it, you ask? Well, only because it’s blatantly unconstitutional. (The always forgotten Nevada constitution says property in the Silver State must be taxed in a “uniform and equal” manner. Lawmakers sidestepped that little detail by doing what everybody in Nevada does when the law is inconvenient: ignoring it.)

In a shot across the bow of anybody even thinking of challenging the cap, Republican Assembly Minority Leader Lynn Hettrick says any businessman who challenges the cap might end up with property taxes far in excess of the 8 percent cap. Clark County Assessor Mark Schofield says he’s heard not one peep of complaint. And even the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce says it won’t challenge the cap in court, but will lobby for equal taxation at the 2007 Legislature instead.

Isn’t that ironic? The only issue the chamber gets right in years, and they’re not going to challenge it in court.

Why? Because the chamber, like everybody else, fears the backlash if its successful. The law would be invalidated, property taxes would shoot up overnight and the peasants would break out the torches and pitchforks. Is that worth standing on principle?

In a word, yes.

The Legislature knew this property tax solution was unconstitutional when lawmakers voted for it. (Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, who voted for the measure anyway, has admitted the same.) But lawmakers crossed their fingers and hoped against hope that bribing business owners with an 8 percent cap would buy them some peace.

If the Legislature wanted to cap property taxes, it should have done so equally, say a 6 percent cap for all property. That’s constitutional, and legal. Or, if the Legislature wanted to tax more valuable business property at a higher amount, it should have started the process to amend the constitution to allow for a split roll. (Titus, in fact, tried to do just that, but her resolution never made it out of the Senate’s tax committee.)

So instead, the Legislature did something it knew, or should have known, was unconstitutional, and thus every member who voted “aye” knowingly and willfully violated his or her oath to support the state constitution. That, we think, constitutes malfeasance in office, and is an impeachable offense.

But nobody is going to start impeachment proceedings, just like nobody is going to challenge a blatantly unconstitutional law. Instead, we march along with our heads in the sand, pretending that we still have a legitimate government. The masses are happy, since their taxes aren’t going up as much. And thus, our creaky system grinds on.

Then again, let’s be real. If this was challenged, the Nevada Supreme Court could pull another Guinn v. Legislature, where justices simply ignored the voter-approved constitutional provision that says you have to have a two-thirds vote in both houses of the Legislature to create or raise taxes. Yes, the justices — our constitution’s last line of defense — were ignoring the constitution long before it was cool.

What a joke.