If you heard an odd noise Wednesday morning, it was very likely the orgasmic cry of ecstasy from the Las Vegas Review-Journal as their favorite politician, state Sen. Bob Beers, proposed cutting the Government Services Tax on car registration in half. Beers, who is running for governor, recycled the idea from 2001, when he and then-Assemblyman David Goldwater proposed taking that money and directing it toward schools.

This time, Beers wants to leave the money in your pocket, to the tune of $150 million next year alone. Local governments, which get the portion of the tax Beers is proposing to cut, “won’t miss the money,” Beers said, according to the story in today’s R-J.

According to Beers, Clark County wouldn’t see $29 million in tax money, although Clark County’s finance director George Stevens says the number is really around $52 million. And while Beers says the county can afford it, county spokesman Erik Pappa says budgets are a lot thinner than Beers claims.

Democrats hovered perilously close to rebutting Beers, but ultimately choked. State Sen. Dina Titus said she’d have to see the actual language of the proposal, but then added it was “irresponsible” to cut money from agencies that provide first-responder services like police and firefighters. If it’s “irresponsible,” then why do you need to see the language, senator? Greg Bortolin, spokesman for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim Gibson, said a cut in funds translates into a loss of “services.”

Hmmm. Perhaps we can help the Democrats, with our brand new Apple iTrans Universal Translator. Let’s see, we go under “Source Text,” type in Beers’ remarks and click on “conservative-to-English,” and - presto! - we have our solution. It turns out what Beers is really saying is this:

“I believe that it’s a good idea to cut funds from the budgets of police, firefighters, local road-building, construction inspectors, child-welfare workers and public health employees despite the fact that we live in the fastest-growing area in the country, all because I want to starve the beast that is government regardless of the potential consequences to its citizens. And, by framing it as a tax cut without discussing those consequences, I think I can get over on taxpayers, because they rarely think “assault on badly needed public employees” when I say things like “tax cuts.” In short, I think they are stupid, gullible and easily misled.

Wow, that Apple iTrans Universal Translator kicks ass! That was a good investment.

“This is going to be a campaign of ideas, not a popularity contest,” Beers told the R-J’s Erin Neff, after she asked if he was concerned that nobody knows him. “I will continue to provide my ideas about how to keep tax dollars in the hands of Nevadans.”

We’re all for a campaign of ideas. But let’s just be honest about what those ideas are, shall we?

• Looks like former U.S. Senate candidate Richard Ziser is still bitter about his 2004 landslide loss to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. The Review-Journal’s poll showed 53 percent of Nevadans think Reid is doing an “excellent” or “good” job, and 28 percent rate him as “poor.” (And keep in mind that this is after the R-J has been giving Reid an editorial and letter-page pounding so severe that it led the senator to declare he won’t speak with the paper’s reporters.) But results among Republicans were, predictably, not as good, and Ziser, who guided the anti-gay marriage Question 2 to victory in 2000 and 2002, could not resist taking a big gulp of Fruit Punch-flavored Hatorade.

“If 51 percent of Republicans in the state of Nevada think that he [Reid] is doing a poor job, that tells me there are a lot of Republicans who made a mistake when they voted in November,” Ziser told the R-J. (Reid won with 65 percent of the vote to Ziser’s 31 percent, but, even worse, some rural Republicans actually elected “none of these candidates” over Ziser in GOP primaries in 2004.)

Pollster Brad Coker got it right in his reply: “I think a lot of Republicans voted for him [Reid] because of who his opponent was. I think voters preferred Reid to Ziser. I think if they were asked today to make the same choice, they would make the same choice.”

One final note: Ziser is no longer vice-chairman of the state Republican Party. A new slate of officers was elected at the central committee’s recent meeting in Sparks, and Ziser was not among them. The new vice-chairman is Paul Willis of Pahrump. But don’t worry, Ziser’s not out of public life entirely: He’s taken over at the helm of Nevada Concerned Citizens, a religious conservative group.

• Speaking of Reid, congrats to our buddy Sean Sinclair, Reid’s former campaign chief, who’s headed to Boston to manage the gubernatorial campaign of Democrat Tom Reilly. (No, not that Thom Reilly, who has an extra “H” in his name.) Sinclair was going to manage the campaign of would-be governor Richard Perkins, who dropped out of the race last month. Prior to that, Sinclair managed the 2002 campaign of Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski.

• And finally today, President George W. Bush “reluctantly” accepted the withdrawl of White House Counsel Harriet Miers’ nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, says CNN. Let the record show that this nomination was killed not by Democrats, but by the very conservatives that are supposed to make up Bush’s base. Despite appeals for trust from his peeps, it’s clear the right-wing have begun to eat their own, starting with the main man.

A possible result: Bush may nominate someone that his conservative, religious base will readily accept, someone who has a documented track record of being conservative, setting up a vicious fight in the Senate over confirmation. All Bush really needs - amidst an unpopular war, scandal, investigations and poor poll ratings - is a victory. But it looks more elusive than the fictional weapons of mass destruction that led us to Iraq in the first place.

In the annals of journalism ethics, it’s a Class-B misdemeanor. But for a publication that so often touts its commitment to ethics, it was a surprising development: The Review-Journal posted a different headline on a small graphic announcing poll results about Iraq war support than the one published in the newspaper.

Credit one of our favorite bloggers, Hugh Jackson, and his Las Vegas Gleaner for catching the scoop, since he’s all electronic. (We at Various Things & Stuff still own a typewriter, and we read the R-J in its paper form.)

That’s why the little headline we saw read “War in Iraq.” We had no idea that the online version carried the much more Fox News-esque “Defending Freedom.”

Jackson handles the issue perfectly, so check out his remarks for yourself. (The link is above.)

The general rule of thumb on these things is that the Internet version of a story or graphic should exactly mirror the printed version, although some newspapers offer longer version of stories on their websites, or additional content — like audio or video clips — that simply cannot be offered in the print version.

But to have a neutral version in print — “War in Iraq” is totally innocuous — and a slanted version on the web — “defending freedom” assumes that we are, in fact, defending freedom, rather than staying the course on a presidential error that has cost 2,000 lives — is simply wrong and unethical.

We checked again today, and the “Defending Freedom” version was still archived on the R-J website. Our headline: Shame & hypocrisy. And we’d put that in print and on the web.