It turns out that moss has been growing under the computer here at Various Things & Stuff: The rolling stone cliche that we claimed today as the final word on the Rolling Stones Ticketgate mini-scandal was actually one of the first words, used by the journalist who broke the whole mess in the first place. Our friend and colleague Anjeanette Damon of the Reno Gazette-Journal used the phrase on her new blog, Inside Nevada Politics, as you can clearly see for yourself by following the link.

Our apologies for the mistake, and for not keeping up on Damon’s posts. Rest assured, she’s now bookmarked near the top of our daily reading, very near Maxim.

And Spyapalooza continues! Attorney General Alberto Gonzales went to Georgetown Law School to defend President George W. Bush’s decision to order the National Security Agency to tap the phones of Americans talking to suspected al Qaida members overseas, all without the bother of a getting a warrant. We’ve never been to law school, but we have seen lots of legal shows on TV, and thus we feel we’re as qualified as any of the G-town kids to comment on Gonzales’ comments.

First, he said, a 15-day “grace period” — in which the government can tap phones without warrants to its heart’s content, so long as officials seek a warrant thereafter — shows Congress knew it would be essential to be able to tap phones in wartime quickly, he said. (The law governing the wiretaps was passed after abuses of wiretapping by the intelligence community.)

He’s right about that. So why isn’t the administration taking advantage of this “grace period” and working within the law? An excellent question, if we do say so ourselves! And that leads us to…

The second point, which is that Gonzales said Bush administration officials went to Congress 1 1/2 years ago, seeking a law that would have allowed warrantless phone taps. Hmmm, interesting. If we were lawyers, we would at this point say:

• The fact that the administration went to Congress seeking a change in the law suggests that they knew, or suspected, that warrantless wiretaps were illegal. (Otherwise, why would you need to change existing law?) And remember, Bush and other top officials would later argue that they had the authority to do warantlesss taps all along. If they really believed that, they would have had no need to amend the law. Right?

• Plus, they did it anyway! Even while knowing (or at least suspecting) they lacked the legal authority for warrantless wiretapping, the Bush administration simply went ahead with the program. That means they were seeking legal authority to justify something that was already under way, under the well-known legal doctrine of “it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.” But this makes Bush’s abdication of the Fourth Amendment even worse, given that it’s a knowing and willful violation.

By the way, the administration was rebuffed by senior members of Congress, who said they couldn’t get a bill passed that would allow warantless eavesdropping without compromising the effectiveness of the program. (That is no doubt due to the pesky Fourth Amendment, which clearly and unambiguously bans the Bush spy program.)

But notice what those members of Congress didn’t say. They didn’t say “What? Why, we already gave you that authority with our Sept. 11 resolution!” And that puts the lie to the another administration contention, that Congress intended to allow warantless wiretaps in its use-of-force resolution passed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. If Congress had intended that, there would have been no reason for the administration to seek permission to justify the program, and, even if officials had sought such permission, if Congress had actually intended to give it, senior congressmen would have said so at the time.

Hey, we’re pretty good at this lawyer thing. Let’s try another.

Gonzales says that, although the administration uses a different standard to justify its wiretaps (they insist they have a “reasonable basis” to believe a person is connected with al Qaida, and thus is eligible for phone tapping) it’s pretty much the same thing as the Fourth Amendment’s “probable cause” standard.

Too easy, baby. If that’s true, then why not simply get the required warrants under the “probable cause” standard, thus avoiding doing violence to the Constitution? After all, the secret intelligence court almost never denies the government when it comes looking for a secret warrant. (We hear they’re thinking of putting in a drive-through window at the court where NSA, CIA and even FBI agents can get warrants, fries and a shake, all in under 60 seconds!)

What’s the real difference between Gonzales “reasonable basis” standard and the Constitution’s “probable cause” standard? Legally speaking, probable cause must be sworn to in front of a judge, while Gonzales’ version is never overseen by anyone but the spooks at Fort Meade (where the NSA is based). It lacks … oh, what’s the word? … checks and balances. Yeah, that’s it.

Anyway, we’ve had fun playing lawyer. Say, does anybody know how much tuition is at Boyd Law School? We hear they do a pretty good job over there, and working at a top firm in town is bound to pay more than what we get over here. Custom home, Porsche 911, private jet and Fiji vacations, here we come, baby!

A rolling stone, they say, gathers no moss. And with that, we’ve used the sole remaining rolling stone-related reference in the media firestorm that has resulted from ex-Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa handing out tickets to a Rolling Stones concert — paid for by her client, mortgage company Ameriquest — to a handful of state lawmakers in November. (Ameriquest subsequently settled a predatory lending lawsuit out of court.)

We are pretty much the last people to weigh in on this bad boy (our friend and colleague Jon Ralston wrote about it today, our other friend (we’ve only two) Erin Neff wrote about it on Tuesday and Review-Journal scribe John L. Smith tackled it today. All had good things to say, and we especially agree with Smith, who said that anyone who failed to report the tickets should be bounced by voters.

Having said that, a few remarks:

• Ethics guru Craig Walton called it right in today’s Review-Journal: “Why do they [lawmakers] have to be told it’s wrong? Their duty is to the people who put them in office. Every candidate or incumbent should make a statement that our relationship with lobbyists will be at arm’s length. This practice of accepting gifts has to stop.”

As always, Walton hits the nail on the head. Accepting gifts is perfectly legal; lawmakers who accepted the tickets and declared them as gifts did NOT break any law. But it’s still a horribly unseemly practice. In politics, there is no such thing as a gift that does not come with strings attached.

But it’s not just politics. The R-J also carried a story today in which a group of doctors, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association argues that doctors’ acceptance of gifts ranging from pens to expensive European vacations is compromising medical care, since physicians tend to use the generally more expensive drugs and equipment proffered by pharmaceutical and medical-equipment gift-givers.

Whenever a potential to compromise a core interest — the general public’s, or a medical patient’s — could be compromised, gifts should be routinely refused. Walton, as well as the concerned doctors, recommend a total ban, which is not an egregious standard. (We journalists are not allowed to accept gifts from news sources, either, lest it keep us from writing fairly about gift-givers.)

But Walton also highlights the other part of the problem, the sometimes corrosive effect certain relationships have on the system. All politics is about relationships, after all, especially here in Nevada. Gifts are merely a symptom of a larger problem, which is a system that can be gamed by a lobbyist who conjures campaign donations but later turns up to represent those donors, who, it turns out, are clients with needs. That’s why the politicians who can tell even their friends in the lobbyist corps “no” are rare people, much to be treasured.

• Perception, as always, is reality in politics. If the general public perceives their interests can never be heard above the din of concert tickets, fancy dinners, fine cigars, rounds of golf, private jet rides, and the host of other special favors lobbyists convey on behalf of their clients, they will never participate in the system. Why should they? Nobody earning $40,000 per year could ever compete with a huge corporation that can lavish $1 million on a lawmaker with a single fund-raiser.

But, as Ralston cogently noted, here’s the rub: You cannot lay the blame at the feet of lobbyists. They are hired to represent a narrow interest, and when they buy dinner, pay greens fees or help a lawmaker get elected, they are doing their job. Lawmakers are the ones who are supposed to put the public’s interest first, even if it runs counter to the interests of the very people who get them elected. (More than one political career has ended, however, because of a person voting his conscience.)

• The responses to the scandal have ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime. Assemblywoman Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, the future speaker, actually reimbursed Ameriquest before the matter came to light, consistent with her personal policy of not accepting gifts. (That’s a stance that could benefit all lawmakers.) Assemblywoman Francis Allen, R-Las Vegas, is donating the cost of the tickets to Centennial High School, but only after the scandal came to light. And state Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas, says that because Ameriquest had no business before the Legislature in 2005, and may not in 2007, he’s not going to return anything.

And that’s fine; Coffin took the tickets and reported them, and it’s perfectly legal. But the standard he’s seemingly created — no gifts from people who do have business before the Legislature — reinforces the point that there’s no such thing as a real “gift” between special interests and politicians. Like the godfather, the day may come when the special interest will need the politician to do him a service.

Finally, we simply cannot withhold comment on the silliest response we’ve seen so far. Assemblyman Mo Denis, D-Las Vegas, took tickets not to the Stones, but to Luis Miguel at the Mandalay Bay.

“I didn’t know much about Luis Miguel. I had committed to Frankie Sue thinking they [the tickets] cost $20 to $30. As the only true Hispanic in the Legislature, I felt I had to attend a Hispanic concert,” he (really) told the R-J.

Where to begin? First, what difference does it make if he knew the artist or not? Would he take a gift from an unknown artist but reject one from a superstar? Second, what does it matter what the tickets cost, unless gifts really are given to buy favor. (For $20, you might get a nod in the hallway; $50 buys an e-mail, $1,000 is a phone call and, if you max out for $10,000, you can take me to dinner?)

As for that last line, we’ve got to believe the usually level-headed Denis was having a bad day. He’s the only true Hispanic? (Coffin, who claims Hispanic heritage, is certainly going to be miffed to hear that.) And that obligates him to attend? By that logic, we at Various Things & Stuff (who are part Italian, part German and part Irish) feel an ethnic compulsion to have lobbyists buy us beer at the Hofbrauhaus, dinner at Piero’s and after-dinner drinks up at J.C. Wooloughan’s at the JW Marriott. Puh-lease.