Sorry for the delay, blog fans, but we at Various Things & Stuff have been knee-deep in our cover story about the Las Vegas monorail. If you haven’t read it, it’s worth a visit back to the CityLife homepage when the piece is posted later this afternoon. If we do say so ourselves.

Plenty of stuff has been happening, however. Let’s take the tour in round-up format:

• Stop the presses, but we agree with Mayor Oscar Goodman on the academic medical center issue. The latest wrinkle is a proposal by the Nevada Hospital Association, which wants to pump money into the university system’s medical school to beef up practice in specialized areas. The hospital association plan does not call for building a new academic medical center.

Goodman, who came up with the concept of the academic medical center, is somewhat irked, but in his irkedness, has a legitimate point. “We’re talking about apples and oranges. The issue of an academic medical center with centers of excellence is not being addressed by the Nevada Hospital Association. They just don’t get it.”

Goodman went on to note that more money in the medical school is great, but that’s not at all what he’s been talking about. Goodman plans to team up with the University of Pittsburgh’s academic medical center to bring state-of-the-art specialists to Nevada in a brand-new building, at a cost of between $450 million and $750 million. The upshot: We’d have better medical care from Day One, and fewer people would have to leave the state to get care.

Meanwhile, university Chancellor Jim Rogers seems to be enjoying the competition between the two ideas, although he did call this one right: The hospital association’s proposal is just turf-protection, he said. And we agree with that as well.

• Gov. Kenny Guinn won’t call a special session to temporarily suspend the state’s gasoline tax, as suggested by state Sen. Bob Beers, who’s running to replace Guinn next year. Apparently, there was no interested in Beers’ idea, although he says he’ll try to persuade Guinn to give him another campaign issue … uh, make that persuade Guinn to grant hardworking taxpayers a relief from the heavy jackboot of The Man.

• From the Failing Upward Department, Rossi Ralenkotter, the executive director of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority got a whopping 5 percent raise and $40,000 bonus, despite a mini-scandal that cost at least $118,000 in legal fees to resolve. (Ralenkotter signed over rights to the slogan “what happens here, stays here” for $1 to the LVCVA’s longtime advertising agency, R&R Partners. The controversy, broken and driven by Las Vegas Sun columnist Jeff German, resulted in an investigation by a San Francisco law firm that — shocker! — cleared R&R and Ralenkotter of wrongdoing, but recommended policy changes.)

Even if Ralenkotter did nothing wrong, the way he did nothing wrong — signing over rights to the slogan without telling the board, publicly or privately — lent the appearance of scandal to the issue. Instead of reproval, however, Ralenkotter got a big raise. He’ll make $276,250 for the year ending June 30, not counting his $9,000 vehicle allowance. Must be nice to be in the convention business!

• Exoneration? Check! Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins is ecstatic over an administrative law judge’s ruling that he didn’t violate the federal Hatch Act, which bans government workers who deal with federal funds from partisan political activity. (Perkins, at least for right now, is a deputy chief of the Henderson Police Department, not to mention a potential candidate for governor.)

It’s probably not a surprise, after the judge last month canceled oral arguments from Henderson’s lawyers and the federal Office of Special Counsel, which prosecutes Hatch Act violations.

The judge ruled that the city acted properly when it devised a Hatch Act compliance program that sought to remove Perkins from supervision of all federal funds. Although it’s nearly impossible to do entirely, the city program got the amount of federal funds under Perkins purview to a miniscule amount.

But the ruling was a pain for Perkins, who had to pay $35,000 out of campaign funds to reimburse the city for legal fees, after Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson, who is also running for governor against Perkins, raised questions about the costs. And Perkins had to hire his own lawyer, and endure lots of shots in and from the media while he resolved the issue.

Now that it’s resolved, however, we hear that Perkins is planning to formally announce for governor. It was probably wise for him to wait, since nothing takes the wind out of your sails in a campaign than a ruling that you’ve broken federal law. Opponents might still mention the case, but the ruling takes it off the table as a real or enduring issue.

• Seize this! The Review-Journal followed up on a story that appeared in CityLife this week, revealing that Boulder City is trying to seize a nearly $300,000 home after the owner pled guilty to misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance, i.e. marijuana.

(Cops, including a SWAT team from Henderson, found six plants in the home of Cynthia Warren in a raid. Boulder City residents can sleep safer tonight, baby.)

But after Warren entered a “no contest” plea to the charges, the city decided to seize her house, under the doctrine that allows authorities to seize property that is the fruit of a criminal enterprise.

“In the drug world, this thing is probably nothing. But in a town of 15,000 people where we have one or two children die every year because of controlled substances, it is a big deal to us,” said Boulder City’s City Attorney Dave Olsen.

Lay aside that that statistic sounds fake to us — 10 to 20 dead kids in the past decade — nobody died as a result of Warren having marijuana in her house. Nobody even knew anything about it until the SWAT team showed up.

And Olsen, according to the R-J report, by veteran court scribe Glenn Puit, is a drug-user himself, having entered a similar no-contest plea to DUI charges in 2004. Why did Boulder City not seize Olsen’s car, since he clearly represents a greater threat to Boulder City’s kids than Warren’s plant life?

District Court Judge Michael Cherry has the case, which is a good thing, since Cherry has a reputation for fairness. And in this case, a misdemeanor conviction should not result in a fine that costs a woman her house.

• That’s it for catch up, folks. We’ll have more for you tomorrow. But until then, why not check out the recently re-launched blog of our friend and colleague Rick Henderson? Rick formerly worked at the R-J as an editorial page writer, and he’s got an eye for good stories. Plus, as a libertarian conservative, Rick’s the perfect antidote for the liberal ranting of Various Things & Stuff.

Check him out at www.deregulator.blogspot.com.