• Republican state party Chairman Paul Adams is doing the right thing, pushing for a bylaws change that would allow the party to essentially ignore any elected official who’s been impeached.

You’d think something like that wouldn’t be necessary, since the shame of an impeachment would keep anybody with a conscience from running ever again. But if you think that, you’ve never met state Controller Kathy Augustine, the Woman That Shame Forgot. Despite admitting three ethical violations, being impeached, convicted and censured, Augustine is running for state treasurer anyway, saying her name recognition is high.

Adams has handled the situation properly from the start. First, he wrote Augustine a personal (and confidential) letter, urging her not to run. Augustine turned around and made Adams’ letter public, but he stood by his words. She decided to run anyway, which prompted him to suggest disowning her by having the party recognize only untainted candidates.

“We have to say ‘This is someone who, because of what they’ve done, should not be running as a Republican.’ This is someone who should not taint our ticket,” says Adams, who has made a hobby out of bashing U.S. Sen. Harry Reid on ethics and partisanship. How can the Republicans be taken seriously on ethics if they don’t police their own? It’s that kind of principle-over-personality that is all too rare in politics these days.

Augustine, of course, refuses to get it: “This is a free country and everyone’s entitled to run for whatever they want to whenever they want to,” she said. (That’s hardly the point, and she’s not automatically entitled to hold the Republican Party hostage to her mad lust for higher office.) Augustine further complains that Adams has a personal grudge against her, which is partly true: She did get impeached, and Adams does want to deny a party platform to the impeached, which is a very small demographic.

Keep up the good work, Mr. Adams. We may not agree on any other issues, but we agree on this: Ours is a system of laws, and not men, or in this case, women. And in a time when principle is usually a punchline, Adams is showing Republicans still have a reason to be proud of their party.

Now if only they could do something about President George W. Bush, who should be impeached for crimes against the Constitution. Alas, that’s for another day.

• Let’s get this right: Soldiers are shopping for their own body armor and scouring dumps to find metal to use as improvised armor on their trucks. (Thanks, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld!) But the United States Congress decided to spend almost seven times the money it devoted to buying body armor to pork, like fish hatcheries, getting rid of tree snakes in Guam, sprucing up a mothballed battleship and killing weeds?

That’s right: A Defense Department spending bill contains 2,966 special earmarks, for a grand total of $11.1 billion, according to a story in today’s Review-Journal.

We’re not sure if that meets the technical definition of “treason,” but we’re totally sure that meets the technical definition of “assholes.”

• Speaking of the R-J, the newspaper finally responded to that ridiculous Las Vegas Sun report that suggested golf course developer Bill Walters is getting a raw deal and taxpayers are getting a good deal out at Royal Links. (The opposite, of course, is true.)

Editor Tom Mitchell spins a little tale mocking the study and all who believe it (hello, Sun Editor Brian Greenspun).

City Hall reporter David McGrath Schwartz, who has owned the Walters-Royal Links story from the beginning, also penned a piece, noting some of the problems with the study and giving both Greenspun and the deal’s critics a chance to comment, the way the Sun never did on Feb. 19, the day the newspaper abandoned all pretenses of being, you know, a newspaper.

One interesting (and irresistible) note: Mayor Oscar Goodman is trying to have it both ways, once again. Back when the Sun first published its piece, Goodman jumped at the chance to say he was right all along: “We knew we were doing the right thing for the taxpayers, so it’s good that an independent study has confirmed that fact,” Goodman crowed. “I hope this will serve to promote the people’s trust in the City Council and the belief that we continue to act in their best interests.”

But in McGrath’s piece just one week later, Goodman was much more subdued about the study, saying it won’t come into play until the Royal Links deal is back before the City Council. “Until then, it’s fairly irrelevant. I’ll give it future consideration, and maybe I’ll look at it differently.”

There you go, folks: From “I told you so” to “it’s irrelevant” in just seven days.

• Speaking of mayors, it seems London Mayor Ken “Red Ken” Livingstone has been suspended from office for a month by something called the Adjudication Panel of England, for conduct unacceptable and damaging to the reputation of his office. Red Ken’s crime? He compared a Jewish reporter for a right-wing newspaper to a Nazi prison camp guard.

We were as surprised as you are: Right-wing newspapers employ Jewish reporters? Who would have thought?!

But one thing about this story is clear: The heads of the Adjudication Panel of England would surely explode if they had to police the conduct of Goodman, whose gin-promoting, Playmate-photographing, son-helping, corporate-coddling, homeless-hating, thumb-cutting, showgirl-escorted tenure is forcing the encyclopedia writers to re-draft the entry under “damaging the reputation of office.”

• No, that wasn’t us at Various Things & Stuff in a Carson City courtroom on Friday, listening to a District Court judge throw out the 200-word description of the Tax and Spending Control initiative! That was state Sen. Bob Beers, who is nonetheless a very good-looking man.

It seems the description of the complicated initiative — which would limit state spending to the combined amount of population growth and inflation — was misleading, or so Judge Bill Maddox said. Re-written versions will be submitted to hizzoner next week for review.

“All we want is for this thing be truthful,” said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Danny Thompson, in the Review-Journal. “It is not truthful now. It is deceptive. It is designed to destroy governments.”

Fun fact: Even if Beers included “it is designed to destroy governments” in the initiative’s 200-word description, he’d still probably be able to collect the 83,000-plus valid signatures he needs to qualify the damn thing for the ballot.

• You’ve got to hand it to those nuclear power people: They’ve got big cajones. (Undoubtedly they’ve mutated from radiation exposure.) Not only is the nuclear power industry still pushing for Yucca Mountain, despite the fact that there’s no way to guarantee the dump will be safe for even a fraction of the time the nuclear garbage will be radioactive, now they want to expand the dump!

The law designating the 77,000-ton capacity of Yucca “eventually is going to stand in the way” of the growth of nuclear power, says Steve Kraft, of the industry lobbying group Nuclear Energy Institute. He added that moving waste off the property of nuclear power plants (presumably, so the plants can generate even more waste) is “our No. 1 goal, our No. 1 issue.”

Oh, and while we’re at it, why not freeze the rates that nuclear utilities pay into the fund that may eventually build Yucca?

Gee, Steve, is there anything else the government (read — taxpayers) can do for you? Perhaps a nice glass of port and a fine cigar? Silk robe? Foot rub?

The only really interesting thing about the Yucca debate (aside from the occasional protest arrests of fictional president Martin Sheen) is the fact that the lack of a dump has played a part in hampering the growth of nuclear power plants in America. And that’s a good thing, in that it gives us all the moment of pause we need to ask if we really want these plants around at all.

Make no mistake, America: There would be no nuclear power without the government. State-funded research paved the way for nuclear power, legislation is the only way the damn things can get insurance and Yucca Mountain is one giant bit of corporate welfare: Uncle Sam taking out the trash for Big Energy.

So let these plants choke on their waste, while politicians finally wake up to the need to find alternative sources of energy that don’t produce toxic byproducts. Maybe if the need becomes dire enough, we’ll put some real energy behind it. Pun intended.

In the meantime, Kraft needs to wake up to a reality: No matter how big he wants Yucca Mountain to be, the real question these days is whether it will happen at all.

• None dare call it conspiracy? No sooner does Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith write about a Magellan Research poll in “a Southern Nevada Assembly district” about the free-ticket political scandal than a hit-piece appears in mailboxes of Assemblywoman Francis Allen’s constituents, slamming her for taking free tickets to the Rolling Stones. Anybody want to guess what district Magellan’s clients may have been polling?

The flier, which can be found on the blog of my friend and colleague Jon Ralston, recounts Allen’s lame response to the scandal when it broke and her further acceptance of NASCAR race tickets at the Las Vegas Speedway. And guess who’s quoted slamming Allen? That’s right: Smith.

Let’s get something straight, however: Whether or not there was any connection whatsoever between the poll, the leaking of the poll to Smith or the flier, there’s no denying Allen was wrong to take those free tickets and fail to report them on her next financial disclosure form, and Smith was justified in his column slamming her.

But the flier’s final line, “At 27 years old, it seems Miss Allen doesn’t have the maturity to represent Assembly District 4,” misses the point entirely. People much older than Allen also took tickets and also failed to report taking them; are they not “mature” enough to represent their districts? Regardless of age, what Allen and the other lawmakers who took the tickets and didn’t report them did was unethical. And that’s why she shouldn’t be representing Assembly District 4.

Oh, and Smith couldn’t resist blowing a kiss to his very favorite mayor (and authorized biography subject) at the end of his column: Goodman still popular, poll says. Alert the media.

Beyond the whorishness of the Las Vegas Sun, there’s plenty of other news out there. And we bake it up into a delicious meal of Quick Hits. Bon appetit!

• Regent (and Metro Police captain) Starvos Anthony’s quest to ban rap music he considers an incitement to felonious conduct is itself felonious conduct, against the First Amendment. But, more than that, it is further proof that the framers of the state’s constitution got it right when they installed the much-ignored separation of powers clause, which bans people who work in the executive branch from also serving in the legislative.

Specifically, it’s not a good idea for the people who enforce the laws to be the same people writing the laws. Such is the classic definition of a police state, in which a committee including university police officers gets to decide which acts get booked at the Thomas & Mack Center. (That’s an actual Anthony proposal.)

Hey, how about that all-cop band Pigs in a Blanket? We hear they’re pretty good, and only a fool would try to deal drugs or commit other illegal acts with those bad boys on stage! Freebird, dudes, Freebird!

• Does university system Chancellor Jim Rogers have too much power? Personally, we don’t think so: The chancellor should have the power to hire and fire presidents, and to otherwise manage the day-to-day affairs of the system. Regents should concentrate on setting big-picture policy.

We’ll pause to let the laughter die down.

But seriously, folks, all across the valley, city and county managers have hiring and firing authority over department heads, and things seem to work just fine. And since there’s an appeals process whereby an aggrieved president can appeal a firing to the Board of Regents, the system has checks and balances.

The problem, by the way, isn’t the system; it’s the people in the system. Rogers is strong-willed, hard-charging and, sometimes, dead wrong. Many regents are weak-willed, and some are dangerously stupid. As long as you have that combination, you’re going to have problems.

• We just loved the Review-Journal headline in Wednesday’s newspaper, over the story of the shooting and SWAT standoff at Harrah’s: “Slaying, standoff disrupt the Strip.”

Yeah, shootings tend to do that. But it’s kind of funny to think of Metro Police officers politely asking Harrah’s guests to step outside for just a moment, pretty please, while we deal with the guy throwing shots all over the place. Terribly sorry, folks, we’ll have you back at the slots in a jiffy!

Who writes this stuff?

• We’re not going to delve too deeply into the controversy about the takeover of six key American ports by a company based in the United Arab Emirates, save to ask this: President George W. Bush is threatening to veto any bill that seeks to block the deal, which he didn’t even know about until after lower-level functionaries in his administration had already ratified it?

Who writes this stuff?

• To squelch any rumors, Chancellor Jim Rogers had nothing whatever to do with forcing out Harvard President Lawrence Summers. But we’re sure that Rogers will want to give Harvard his two cents about who the next president should be, given Rogers’ oft-repeated desire to control All Education Wherever It May Be Found. Somebody get the Citizens for a Better Massachusetts on the phone…

• Say what you will about Colorado Spring, Colo. (home of Focus on the Family and the nation’s largest Christian school, the U.S. Air Force Academy!) it’s South Dakota where America’s fundamentalist theocrats have the most influence.

The state legislature is revising a bill that would ban all abortions, save those needed to preserve the life of the mother. (Wow — that’s even more conservative than Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson’s stance on the issue!) The goal is apparently to get a hearing before the All New Bush Appointed U.S. Supreme Court in the eventual hopes of overturning 1972’s Roe v. Wade ruling.

If the high court bites (and after that Kelo v. New London thing, we think everybody can agree the high court bites) abortion would be a decision made on the state level. Which means South Dakota would be free to ban abortion to its hearts content. And Texas. And Mississippi. And Arkansas. And Georgia. And the Carolinas. And Virginia. And…

• Despite promises made to Utah U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett back in 2002, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a formal license to an above-ground nuclear waste dump in Utah, not far from Salt Lake City and a U.S. Air Force base.

Private Fuel Storage now has official permission to store up to 44,000 tons of waste in casks on big concrete slabs built on land owned by the Goshute Indian tribe’s Skull Valley reservation.

Back in the day, the White House allegedly secured Hatch’s and Bennett’s vote for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain dump by promising that Skull Valley wouldn’t be needed if Yucca were open. Unfortunately, Nevada has fared far better in its legal battles than the White House had hoped.

It would be easy to gloat and make fun of Hatch and Bennett for their deal with the devil, but we still think nuclear waste being shipped on roads and rails across the country isn’t such a good idea, even if it’s not headed here. So while we hope Hatch and Bennett have learned their lesson, the American public is still in jeopardy.

And here’s a news flash: The sooner we stop generating new nuclear waste, the sooner we can get a handle on the waste we already have. And that means ending our addition to nuclear power.

• And finally today, gratuitous self-promotion in the Las Vegas Sun isn’t limited to front-page defenses of business partner Bill Walters’ dealings with the city. It can happen in entertainment columns, too!

What else could have possessed columnist John Katsilometes to attend, cover and gush extensively over the re-launch of glossy casino promotional Las Vegas Magazine, formerly known as Showbiz? (The only difference between Las Vegas Magazine and the Sun seems to be that the Sun promotes off-Strip acts, while the magazine sticks to hawking acts on Las Vegas Boulevard.)

But Katsilometes’ column begs the larger question: Are all Sun writers now required to turn tricks for the Greenspun Empire?

When Las Vegas Sun Editor and President Brian Greenspun announced the amendment to the joint-operating agreement with the Review-Journal to his staff last year, he said something very telling. He told assembled staffers — all of whom were fretting about whether they’d have jobs — that the deal to insert the Sun into the daily R-J would allow the Greenspun family’s voice to live on, and reach an even greater audience.

Now we know what he wanted to use that voice for: Promoting the interests of his business partner.

As if the Sun’s Sunday package of stories and commentary on golf course developer Bill Walters’ proposed deal with the city of Las Vegas wasn’t bad enough, the Sun today published a front-page editorial, once more touting the study and its questionable conclusion: That lifting a deed restriction on the Walters-owned Royal Links golf course — an act that makes the property worth between $35.6 million and $55.7 million — in exchange for a paltry $7.2 million from Walters, is a good thing for taxpayers. (Walters wants to build homes on the property, some of which would be built as close as 20 feet from the property line of the city’s sewage treatment plant.)

In typical Sun fashion, the editorial didn’t address any of the criticisms we’ve mounted against the deal here on the blog, or in print since the matter came to light last year. It simply repeated the conclusions of the highly questionable study, commissioned by the Sun and, we’re told, delivered to the mayor and members of the Las Vegas City Council today.

So now the Sun is doing research to support Walters, who by the way is a business partner of the Sun-owning Greenspun family in a Henderson land deal that’s also come under scrutiny from critics? It should surprise us, but as we wrote in an e-mail to a colleague this morning, “The Sun, with this crusade, has left the realm of journalism behind forever.”

In the spirit of debate, however, let us address a few points from today’s editorial.

• “What has happened is that critics of Walters, both inside and outside of government, have tried to muddy the waters involved in what, at times, has seemed to be a complicated issue to the public,” the Sun writes. “Many of the critics have made it personal — and their rhetoric in opposing the deal has bordered on hysteria — when it never had to be.”

We’ll cop to being a critic — but of the deal not of Walters. As we said in our previous post, we’ve actually defended Walters in the past, when we thought he was being strong-armed by law enforcement.

As for muddying the waters, we’d suggest that the Sun’s study, which even the newspaper admits doesn’t address all the issues surrounding the Walters deal, was disingenuous at best, and outright misleading at worst. Given that information that refutes the Sun-sponsored report’s conclusions is readily available, we can only conclude that the newspaper’s attempt to cast the deal in the most positive light possible was entirely intentional.

Making it personal? We don’t think so. We have no interest in the Walters matter save for the interests of the taxpayers of the city, who stand to lose millions if the deal is allowed to go through. If we seem hysterical, it’s only because we’re amazed that only Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian seems to have those taxpayers’ interests at heart.

• “But what some critics of this deal seem to forget is that this land is owned by Walters, not the city, and the upside belongs to him as a landowner,” the Sun continues.

What the Sun knows full well, however, is that Walters owns a 160-acre piece of land with a deed restriction that limits its use to a golf course. He knew about that restriction when he bought the property, he agreed to it, and he’s lived under it for six years. Now, Walters wants an entirely new deal, one that would grossly increase the value of his property. The thing is, he’s not willing to compensate taxpayers for that increase in value, or the additional costs that will be incurred by building homes just 20 feet from a sewage treatment plant’s property line.

• “Walters could decide the city is asking too much and just keep running the golf course, which [the study’s author] estimates is making $2.5 million a year. Of course, by continuing to run the golf course, Walters will continue to use 904,000 gallons of water each and every day.”

What the Sun neglects, of course, is this: Walters was supposed to keeping running a golf course in the first place! The city always intended the land to serve as a buffer between existing homes and the sewage treatment plant, a good public policy that Walters now wants to erase in the name of making money. The very fact that the city may have to spend up to an estimated $28 million — and perhaps more — to expand and upgrade the sewage treatment plant to deal with homes just a stone’s throw away is reason enough for the City Council to reject the deal out of hand. That council members have embraced it instead is more than curious.

(Speaking of curious, the Sun’s concern about water use is admirable, and new. The Greenspun family — through its development company, American Nevada, has developed hundreds of square miles of homes, not to mention golf courses, in Green Valley, and is on the cusp of doing so in North Las Vegas, too. If they really wanted to save all that water, wouldn’t they be building drought-friendly parkland instead? Just asking.)

• “The study that the Sun commissioned is the kind of report that either the City Council or Walters should have undertaken themselves a long time ago,” the editorial concludes. “If they had done so, and done a much better job of explaining what the deal would mean for taxpayers, it would have rendered moot all the needless squabbling that we have instead been subjected to for so many months now.”

Why should Walters commission a study, when his good friends at the Sun are there to do it for him? Even if he had, the results would have been questioned as self-serving. And that’s precisely how we should view the Sun’s survey: The self-serving, assumption-laden, conclusion-driven advocacy piece that it is.

It’s not that the city or Walters has done a bad job of explaining the deal to taxpayers, it’s that the facts simply are not on their side. The deal is manifestly bad for taxpayers, and as a result, leaps of logic and contortions of fact are necessary to make it look good. That’s precisely what the Sun has done. What they call “needless squabbling” is what the rest of us call “investigative reporting,” the kind of work done by the R-J’s David McGrath Schwartz in exposing the deal, for example.

We suppose we should be surprised that the Sun can’t tell the difference. But we’re not.

All eyes on Sunday were transfixed by the Las Vegas Sun insert in the Review-Journal, and the rather lengthy attention given to golf course mogul Bill Walters’ dealings out at the Royal Links golf course.

Where to begin?

With the good news, of course! The Sun made full disclosure: Investigative reporter Steve Kanigher’s story contains a line revealing that the Greenspun family, owners of the Sun, are business partners with Walters in a Henderson real-estate deal. Sun Editor Brian Greenspun’s adjacent column has a similar admission. (By the way, Sun, that’s Greenspun, as in Hank, not Greenspan, as in Alan.)

But, we’re sad to say, the good news stops there as the Sun launches into a defense of the Walters deal with the city of Las Vegas that makes wild assumptions, relies on carefully constructed straw men and comes to wildly unbelievable conclusions.

First, let’s give you a few foundational facts:

• Foundational Fact No. 1: Bill Walters purchased the 160-acre Royal Links site in 1999 for the low, low price of $894,000, with the proviso that it be used only as a golf course. Why? The city’s sewer treatment plant isn’t far away, and the land was meant to separate homes from the plant. The city, by the way, had paid $5.6 million to assemble the land, so taxpayers took a net loss on the sale.)

• Foundational Fact No. 2: Last year, Walters approached the city and asked for the City Council to remove the deed restriction on the property, because he wanted to build homes there. He offered $7.2 million for the transaction, what he claimed was the value of the land without the deed restriction back in 1999, plus 6 percent interest per year.

• Foundational Fact No. 3: City-sought estimates have put the value of the land without the deed restriction at between $35.6 million and $55.7 million.

• Foundational Fact No. 4: Although Walters owns the land, he cannot develop a single home there without city permission. And the city is in a position of strength, to demand that Walters pay the going rate for the unencumbered land today, which is far in excess of $7.2 million. And that’s if they even want to allow Walters to build homes, which some city officials have suggested could result in increased costs of up to $70 million at the sewage treatment plant, for odor control. (It should be noted that Clark County has approved homes as close as 150 feet from the plant; Walters subdivision would come within 20 feet of the plant’s property line.)

• Snarky Conclusion No. 1: So, faced with a situation where the right thing seems to be to deny Walters request and keep the land as a buffer, or to at the very least ask Walters to pay what the unencumbered land is worth today … the council immediately tried to jam through Walters’ suggestion, until things were stopped cold by an attorney general’s investigation.

So, with that brief background, what did the Sun say? The newspaper commissioned a firm to study the deal, and concluded that (no shit) it would benefit taxpayers! (We have not read the study; we’re just privy to what was printed in the paper.)

So what were the firm’s, and the Sun’s, conclusions?

• By eliminating Walters favorable deal, wherein he can buy treated wastewater for just 26 cents per 1,000 gallons, while it’s going for almost $2 per 1,000 gallons at other golf courses. (Yes, that was actually printed — eliminate the downside of one sweetheart deal with an even bigger one.)

• By getting so-called “return flow credits” for recycling water that used to be used to irrigate the course. (Of course, those credits would not inure to the sole benefit of Las Vegas taxpayers, who will be losing out on this deal — see below.)

• By the $7.2 million that Walters is offering to lift the deed restriction. (A pretty good price, as we try to demonstrate below.)

And, wouldn’t you know it, the firm hired by the Sun estimates that, without a deed restriction, the land is worth $43 million. Without it, the land is worth $23.6 million as a golf course. The difference between those two numbers is $19.4 million. And since Walters is going to pay $7.2 million, he only stands to make a profit of $12.2 million.

We’ll give you a minute to get the Kleenex to wipe away the tears for poor Walters, making a mere $12.2 million on the deal. And we’ll give you another minute to figure out the big flaw with the math above.

Ready? OK, here we go.

Even the Sun’s experts admit the land is worth $49 million without that nasty deed restriction. So, starting at $49 million, let’s subtract Walters payments and see what we’ve got:

$49 million — Sun estimate of land value.

(MINUS) $7.2 million — Walters proposed payment to eliminate the deed restriction, thus resulting in land worth $49 million.

$41.8 million — remainder

(MINUS) $894,000 — Walters original 1999 purchase price.

$40.9 million — remainder, which should be read as Walters’ instant profit!

And, if we add back in the $5.6 million that taxpayers had to spend on the land in the first place, we’re back up to $46.5 million, which is what taxpayers would lose if this deal goes through. (And that’s assuming the Sun’s analysis is correct, and that the high appraisal of $55.7 million is wrong.)

Of course, there are other factors, but one of them should not be the improvements that Walters made to the Royal Links course. He and the city struck a deal in 1999, and both parties lived up to their sides of that deal. Now, Walters wants an entirely new deal, and that means that what’s happened in the past is history.

Of course, we could be wrong. Walters told the Sun that “You have people in the media who have been writing about this who frankly don’t know what they’re writing about.” It could be we’re missing something, or more correctly, not buying into a key Walters/Sun assumption about the deal.

“When you have people with personal agendas writing about things who don’t have the background to know what they’re talking about, i don’t know how you combat that. But I think this study is very refreshing,” Walters said. (Well of course he does; it’s the only analysis besides his own that suggests this is anything but a sweetheart deal.)

Ouch, baby. Comments like that might suggest that we at Various Things & Stuff have some kind of personal agenda with respect to Walters. We don’t. In fact, we’ve written good things about him (defending him when Metro Police seized more than $2 million from his sports betting operation, and failed to return the money even after cases against Walters collapsed). And we’ve written bad things (like critiquing this Royal Links deal).

For his part, Greenspun touts the study in his front-page column, slamming in the process the Review-Journal, which has had reporter David McGrath Schwartz digging up details on the case for months. “Contrary to the opinion of the Review-Journal, its minions and a few assorted complainers in this town, my friend Bill Walters is not getting a sweetheart deal from the city of Las Vegas. In fact — perhaps for the first time in his life — he is getting by far the worst deal in his desire to develop Royal Links Golf Course into homes.”

Really, Brian? The worst deal? By far? Your friend Bill Walters is about to spend a grand total of $8,094,000 for unencumbered use of land that your own newspaper says is worth $49,000,000, and that’s a bad deal? We’d hate to see Walters on a good day, at least if taxpayers are involved.

Then again, we’re just assorted complainers. (We assume we’re not “minions” of the R-J, since we regularly criticize that newspaper, too.)

The Sun’s independent study is, at best, seriously flawed. (For example, it didn’t take into account the potential costs of upgrading the sewer treatment plant. There may be more; we wrote Sun Managing Editor Mike Kelley a nice letter today, requesting a copy. We’ll let you know if he says yes.) At worst, however, the study — from what we read of it in the Sun, at least — is a conscious misleading of the newspaper’s readers to a preordained conclusion favored by the newspaper’s owners, self-admitted business partners with Walters. And that’s a huge conflict of interest, whether disclosed or not.

But it’s also more than that: It’s an abandonment of the newspaper’s role — and obligation — to tell the truth. This is not a simple Sun promotion of a Greenspun family business partner (say, Station Casinos). It’s propaganda, pure and simple. And Sunday marked one of the darkest days in the history of a once-proud newspaper.

Full disclosure: We at Various Things & Stuff worked at theLas Vegas Sun from 1993-1997. This blog, CityLife and us are all owned by the Stephens Media Group, owners of the Review-Journal, the Sun’s main competitor and partner in the joint-operating agreement that sees both newspapers delivered together.)

UDPATE: Our mistake — the Sun actually said the Royal Links property is valued at $43 million without the deed restriction, not $49 million. As is, the Sun says, the land is worth $23.6 million. The difference is $19.4, which leaves Walters (after his $7.2 million payment to lift the deed restriction) with a profit of just $12.2 million. Good thing these numbers are total crap, huh! By the Sun’s own calculations, then, Walters should be able to get a $43 million piece of property for just $7.2 million, a savings of $35.8 million.

Some of you may doubt the power we wield here at Various Things & Stuff. Well, doubt no more. Just one day after we called in our column in CityLife for U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons to declare his stance on the Tax and Spending Control initiative, Gibbons broke months of silence and came out in opposition.

Oh, yes, we are fantastically powerful.

In fact, according to a FLASH dispatch from our friend and colleague Jon Ralston, Gibbons actually made the decision on Thursday night. That can mean only one thing: Gibbons read CityLife, felt the sting of our well-aimed words, and immediately blurted out his stance.

He’d stuck to silence for a long time. After all, there’s not a whole lot of upside. The TASC initiative is circulated by state Sen. Bob Beers, who, like Gibbons, is running for governor. Beers may be more of a fiscal conservative than Gibbons, which is not something you want to highlight on the campaign trail.

But, after our column, Gibbons could remain silent no longer. That’s right, readers: Bow to the mighty power of CityLife, together with the ancillary power of this blog. All hail us.

What’s that? What were Gibbons’ reasons for opposing TASC? Well, we suppose that’s part of the story. Gibbons pledged he’d need no TASC when he was governor, because he’d veto any bloated budget. He will look out for taxpayers, a one-man TASC, ready to rebate surplus tax money at a moment’s notice.

Hmm, nice argument. But what about the Gibbons Tax Restraint Initiative, the constitutional amendment that doesn’t let you raise taxes without a two-thirds supermajority vote in the Legislature? Why was that constitutional amendment a good thing, while TASC is bad? (That’s a rhetorical question, folks: We at Various Things & Stuff don’t like either idea.)

We’re sure those questions, and others, will be posed to Gibbons in the days ahead, most probably by Beers. (With Gibbons opposed, he and O’Connell are the only two Nevadans left in favor.) But one thing is sure: Gibbons finally staked out his position. And we’re totally taking credit for getting the guy to do it, too. (And we didn’t even have to use any Gitmo-style interrogation techniques, either.)

That’s the main course. How about some quick hits for dessert?

• After a criminal investigation that began a whopping 14.5 hours after Vice President Dick Cheney shot 78-year-old Austin attorney Harry Whittington, and wrapped up five days later, the sheriff’s department for the Texas county where the incident happened has closed its probe. No criminal charges will be filed against Cheney.

And that’s probably the right conclusion: All witnesses, including Whittington, have characterized the incident as an accident. (We’d characterize it as a negligent discharge of a firearm, but we’re picky.)

Now if we could only get some law-enforcement agency to start looking into the manipulation of prewar intelligence…

• Thursday was not a good day for the Constitution. Not only did the Senate vote down Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold’s attempt to delay renewal of the USA Patriot Act, but the White House seems to have successfully derailed an investigation into warrantless National Security Agency wiretapping.

The White House sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, saying it would not allow former Attorney General John Ashcroft to testify about the origins of the plan. (Ashcroft, regular readers may recall, backed up his deputy who had serious legal problems with the program. As a result, the Bush administration ignored them and did it anyway.)

The committee adjourned before a motion to investigate the NSA wiretapping could be heard. Republicans cited a statement by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, saying the administration was “open to legislation” on the program. (Can you see that protest sign? “Legislate, don’t investigate!”) Ohio Republican Sen. Mike DeWine has a bill that would exempt the NSA program from the requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

But that raises an interesting question: If legislation is needed to exempt the NSA program from FISA, isn’t that an admission that the program presently is illegal? (The White House says it’s legal, but if that’s true, why would they be “open to legislation” legalizing it? Wouldn’t that be like legalizing driving at the speed limit?)

And that raises yet another interesting question: If it is illegal, haven’t President George W. Bush and his administration broken the law? And, having done so willingly and knowingly (SEE, Ashcroft, above) are they not eligible for impeachment/indictment?

We’re just asking. Unfortunately, nobody in Congress is.

• It seems the Las Vegas City Council will have to vote in early March on whether to waive an attorney-client privilege that City Manager Doug Selby claims applies to certain documents in the Bill Walters/Royal Links scandal.

That’s interesting, because generally we don’t believe attorney-client privilege applies in cases like this. The city attorney’s client is the people of the city of Las Vegas, not the city manager, the City Council or city staff.

In fact, we’d argue that when Chief Deputy City Attorney John Redlein discovered in the late 1990s that former Public Works Director Richard Goecke had allegedly committed what Metro Police called illegal acts to help Walters, his response should have been to call Metro and have Goecke arrested immediately.

Why? Because Goecke is not the city attorney’s client. The people, who are the city attorney’s clients, had been harmed, and when a lawyer’s client has been harmed, he’s got an obligation to do what’s in that client’s best interest.

In any case, Mayor Oscar Goodman says the city has nothing to hide, so he’s advocating disclosure. And since Selby is generally invertebrate when Goodman tells him to do something, we’re guessing this won’t be an issue going forward.

Says the private law firm investigating the city of Las Vegas’ sweetheart deal with golf course developer Bill Walters: You’re dragging your feet in getting us documents!

Says the city, in reply: Are not! Why we just handed you more than 18,000 pages of documents on … um, Monday. Yeah, it was Monday, because on Wednesday, we demanded you show up and tell us what you’ve been doing for the last three months, since you were assigned the case.

What, two days isn’t enough time to read 18,000 pages? It’s called Evelyn Wood, baby!

Yes, we made that dialogue up, but only to spare you gentle readers from having to slog through the stupid real-life remarks made by some members of the City Council on Wednesday, when, to nobody’s surprise, members of the law firm investigating the council didn’t show up to tell the subjects of their investigation how the investigation was going.

(Can you picture it? O.J. shows up at Marcia Clark’s office in downtown L.A., storms in on a meeting with her and Mark Fuhrman and demands to know if they found that bloody glove he’s been missing? Yeah, that happens.)

Too harsh? Well, OK, the only thing the City Council’s been accused of killing is the public trust, but still.

Don’t believe us? Check out this gem, from City Councilman Larry Brown: “I do know this firm has been borderline abusive as far as a lack of respect for the official communications process.”

Oh, sorry, we should translate, since Brown rarely speaks in English words and phrases. What he’s saying his — prepare to be shocked — investigators are showing up to interview people without telling them or City Manager Doug Selby beforehand!. We told you it was shocking.

Why, it sounds like those lawyers are actually using commonly accepted investigative techniques as they pursue this investigation of the Walters deal. Damn, what’s next? Subpoenas? Comparison of one witness’ testimony to another’s? When will these people stop?!

What, we wonder, would be the time interval between Selby getting a call about lawyers wanting to sit down with City Employee A and him calling his dark master, Mayor Oscar Goodman? Could that be measured without using the U.S. Navy’s atomic clock, we wonder? And what are the odds that nobody who was interviewed would be gently talked to by the city, either before or after the investigative interview, so officials could find out what investigators were curious about?

Hmmm.

Anyway, even though the city says it won’t release letters from the law firm investigating the Walters mess, my friend and colleague Jon Ralston has acquired them, and posted them on his blog for your reading pleasure. Seriously, Ralston’s blog is like the Christian Science Reading Room for All Material They Don’t Want You To See.

Oh, and this just in! The R-J’s new e-mail newsletter, dubbed eR-J, has flashed word that investigators have discovered the city spent even more money than previously disclosed to benefit Walters. That could be key to the investigation, since Metro Police and District Attorney David Roger have concluded that any crimes that may have been committed are too old to prosecute.

But, if new information has been unearthed, the situation could change. According to the eR-J flash, which you can sign up for if you’re an R-J subscriber, the previous investigation was “very limited” and that investigators have found some transactions that police investigators didn’t examine. (The letter apparently goes out of its way not to criticize the Metro investigation, however.)

UPDATE: The city of Las Vegas didn’t say it wouldn’t release the letters between it and the law firm investigating the Walters deal; in fact, the city did release those letters, today, in response to media requests made Wednesday. It’s also releasing the 18,000 pages of documents sought by the firm, for the low, low price of $25 ($5 per CD for the whole five CD set).

Oh, sure, we could do another round on Vice President Dick Cheney’s negligent shooting of a friend while hunting quail, but why? It’s like shooting fish in … um, it’s like hitting the side of a barn … no, that’s not right … it’s like … oh, hell it’s too easy, OK? Plus, Cheney said it was one of the worst days of his life (to say nothing of it being one of the worst days of his victims’ life!) and we just don’t want to add to their misery.

Instead, let’s go to the kitchen of sarcasm for a plate full of quick hits. Ranch dressing, anyone?

• There’s apparently a bunch more photos showing U.S. soldiers abusing prisoners at Iraq’s notorious (then and now) Abu Ghraib prison. And the Pentagon apparently thinks it’s terrible … that the photos were published on Australian television.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told Knight Ridder Newspapers that the photos “could only further inflame and possibly incite unnecessary violence in the world.” As opposed to necessary violence, Bryan? Are we invading another country today?

State Department attorney John Bellinger III agreed: “It is unfortunate … that the photographs are continuing to come out because I think it simply fans the flames at a time that sentiments on these issues are raw around the world. But the photographs show conduct that’s absolutely disgusting.”

Let’s get something straight here, gentlemen. What’s really unfortunate is that prisoners in military custody were abused at all. It was either an utter failure of training (bad) or an organized campaign of abuse designed to get cooperation (worse).

And here’s some shocking news: The inflammation, violence, and flame-fanning is as a result of the abuse, not a result of the proof of the abuse. If our troops hadn’t misbehaved, there would be no scandal, no pictures and no need to deplore the free flow of information.

One more bit of shocking news: The residents of the Muslim world have every right to be shocked, appalled and outraged by the conduct of soldiers at Abu Ghraib, especially when the United States claimed it came to Iraq to stop just such acts.

• Clark County Sheriff Bill Young apparently had a little chat with President George W. Bush in Washington recently, according to the Review-Journal.

Young asked Bush why Las Vegas had been stricken from the list of cities that are potential terrorist targets, a designation that brings lots of terror-fighting money. And … well, let’s just quote directly from the story for this next part:

“Young said he was surprised that Bush didn’t know Las Vegas was among the cities considered by the Homeland Security Department as a high-risk target for a terrorist attack,” the story says.

Shocking! Outrageous! Hella-Lame! Not the fact that Bush didn’t know Las Vegas had been taken off the list; they probably don’t tell the guy that much these days. No, we’re talking about Young being surprised that Bush didn’t know. C’mon, sheriff! Get with the program!

Anyway, Bush promised to take the matter up with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, just as soon as Chertoff’s ass recovers from the reaming he received because of his hands-off (way, way off) response to Hurricane Katrina. (And those were just the Republicans doing the reaming. Imagine if the Democrats had joined in. Well, it probably wouldn’t have been much worse, we suppose.)

“I hope the president gets back to us with some logical explanation” for why Las Vegas is off the list, Young told the R-J. Yeah, we wouldn’t be waiting by the phone on that one.

• American Gaming Association President Frank Fahrenkopf apparently makes a lot of money, according to documents unearthed by the R-J’s Tony Batt. And Fahrenkopf apparently doesn’t like talking about it.

After Batt asked Fahrenkopf about his more than $1 million annual base salary (16th highest of all the lobbying corps!) and his $1.25 million total compensation package (23rd highest!) Fahrenkopf got a little testy: How much does your publisher (Sherm Frederick, who is also our corporate overlord-in-chief) make? How about your editor (Tom Mitchell, our former overlord)? How about Batt himself?

Hey, we at Various Things & Stuff have been with the Stephens Media Group for a long time now, and we’re betting that all three of those salaries don’t add up to $1.25 million.

Then again, neither Frederick, nor Mitchell, nor Batt, nor us at Various Things & Stuff have Fahrenkopf’s responsibilities. We don’t have to sell an often-unpopular product — gambling — on Capitol Hill. We don’t have to be friends with total a-holes, like former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. We don’t have to ensure that casinos devastated by hurricanes are eligible for the same tax breaks as other businesses.

Oh, wait. They didn’t get those tax breaks, did they? Well, anyway, we don’t have to be friends with Tom DeLay at least.

Fahrenkopf, a former Republican Party bigwig, also told Batt he wished the media would stop focusing on disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who by total coincidence is also a Republican. “Someone in the media should focus on the 99.9 percent of lobbyists who follow the law, are very hardworking and educate legislators on the Hill,” Fahrenkopf suggested.

Hey, the guy does media consulting, too. All for the same $1.25 million the American Gaming Association pays him. Why, it’s totally worth the 17.4 percent of total AGA revenues ($7.2 million) he pulls down! Back off, media! Go check if the vice president has shot anybody else, why don’t you?

Whoops! We said we we’re going to do that. Our bad!

Told you so.

On Tuesday, we at Various Things & Stuff predicted that a local government and the American Civil Liberties Union would end up in court over some ordinance that does violence to the First Amendment.

Little did we know how right we were. The ACLU filed a lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of two street preachers who were arrested for violating a rule that says protest signs must be no larger than the width of the human body.

(In our case, we could pretty much get away with a Mobile Billboard-sized sign, but that’s not important right now.)

The preachers, who condemn sin and pornography, had signs that were larger than the allowable dimensions. And even though the charges were dropped against them, the ACLU is moving forward to have the ordinance declared unconstitutional.

And it will be. Oh, it will be.

Clark County has a history of passing rules that they know — or have reason to know — are unconstitutional. But commissioners simply don’t care; they want to erase any sign of dissent, incongruity or unpleasantness from the face of Las Vegas (or at least the Strip and the area around the convention center). Anti-handbilling rules have been struck down in the past, as well as claims that the hotels “own” the sidewalks in front of their properties. (We’re still waiting for some poor sap arrested for watching an illegal street race to challenge the law that makes that a crime.)

In any case, we hope this case is resolved soon, and we hope Clark County has to pay the ACLU’s fees, much like the Fremont Street Experience had to pay $86,000 in fees to the ACLU on another First Amendment case downtown. (Then again, commissioners don’t care about the expense, since they’re taxpayer dollars; maybe if they were held personally liable, things would be different.)

Our fellow blogger Len Butcher takes issue with the media focusing on the story of Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shooting a fellow hunter Saturday. Why was the media so upset that they weren’t told until the owner of the ranch decided, a day later, to let the local paper know, Butcher wonders?

Yeah. We never thought we’d ever have to write this next line, but here goes: The vice president of the United States shooting somebody, accidentally or not, is what we call a news story.

Of course, the first priority when something like this happens is tending to the guy who Cheney shot, Austin lawyer Harry Whittington. He was assisted by Cheney’s medical team, and ferried to a nearby hospital by Cheney’s ambulance. (Cheney himself didn’t go; instead, he had dinner, but was, one dining companion said, “very worried.”)

But once that situation is under control, like it or not, the accident has to be reported, to the local sheriff’s department, and to the media. Deliberately not telling anyone for a day looks to us in the media like a cover-up. And there’s a subtext of secrecy — created by Cheney — that undergirds this incident.

Don’t forget, this is the vice president who may or may not have told his chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, to leak the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame. This is the vice president who had meetings with energy industry leaders to produce a task force report that the entire nation will have to live under, but refuses to say who helped him formulate the recommendations. This is the same vice president who insists that the U.S. Naval Observatory, where the vice president lives, be obscured in Google Earth photos, when even the White House itself is shown. This is the vice president who played a key role in taking us to war in Iraq based on what one author calls “cherry picked” intelligence — and Cheney made multiple visits to Langley to do the picking. The guy has a history of being dangerous, not just with 28-gauge hunting shotguns, but with secrets.

Butcher also wonders when the media is going to give up on the “old cry” that the people have a right to know. Gee, until Hurricane Katrina hit, we thought the media had given up on the people’s right to know, as President Bush and his administration tamed them with the rubric of Sept. 11, 2001. But lately, with the hurricane fallout, the NSA spying scandal, and other stories, the media seem to have gotten at least a little of their passion back. We cheer that development: No legitimate government should be afraid of scrutiny. And when a government is afraid of scrutiny, it generally means its doing something very wrong. Nixon, anyone?

To sum, we’re glad the media got aggressive with White House press secretary Scott McClellan, whose dissembling from the press room podium brings shame upon the entire White House. Instead of backing off, as Butcher seems to wish they would, the press corps should get even more aggressive.

Oh, and Cheney should take a hunting safety refresher course.

UPDATE: Vice President Dick Cheney did visit Whittington in the hospital the day following the shooting, according to Time magazine.

UPDATE: The Associated Press is now reporting that Harry Whittington, the 78-year-old lawyer accidentially shot by Vice President Dick Cheney has some birdshot lodged in his heart, and had “a minor heart attack.” His injuries, we are assuming, are perhaps more serious than was first reported, which explains his initial treatment in a Corpus Christi hospital’s intensive care unit.

Those deadbeats over at the Fremont Street Experience are finally paying their debts to the American Civil Liberties Union, after losing a lawsuit that should never have been necessary in the first place. The ACLU was forced to use a legal maneuver meant to garnish the wages of deadbeat dads before the collection of downtown casino owners that make up the Experience finally paid off the $86,360.55 in legal fees awarded to the ACLU in October.

The whole thing could have been avoided had the city and the Fremont Street Experience not conspired in 1997 to try to suspend the First Amendment on the pedestrian mall. Instead, lawyers said leafleting, soliciting and proselytizing on the street wasn’t permitted, because it was private. (This despite the fact that ex-Mayor Jan Jones once labeled Fremont Street a “public park” in order to justify giving room tax money to the venture.

Of course, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, since they, unlike lawyers for the city or Fremont Street, have apparently read the First Amendment a time or two since graduating from law school. The case was sent back to Nevada’s federal courts, and the Fremont Street Experience and the city were told to pay the ACLU’s attorney fees. Rightly so. We’d suggest substantial penalties or even jail time for those engaged in a conspiracy to deprive citizens of their constitutional rights, but we’re radical that way.

Of course, the Fremont Street Experience dragged its feet, forcing the ACLU’s hand. On Tuesday, the Review-Journal reported that the Experience, and not city taxpayers, would bear the cost.

We’d hope that this would be a lesson to all attorneys, public and private, who would seek to turn any public forum (including the sidewalks in front of casinos) into the private enclave of monied gambling interests. But $86,000 isn’t really a large enough sum to send a message. So, we expect to see this kind of battle rage yet again, somewhere, and probably soon.

Good thing the ACLU bills out fairly cheap.

Pity poor state Sen. Bob Beers. The poor guy defends the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, and even “prospects” for new members for the business group. And how is he repaid? With a big slap in the face, as the chamber today came out against his Tax and Spending Control initiative. Talk about your lack of gratitude.

Now, don’t get us wrong. The chamber is right to oppose TASC, which would put handcuffs on state lawmakers and result, as the chamber says, in unintended consequences. But it’s still a blow to Beers, given that he and the chamber are usually natural allies.

Here’s the text of the chamber’s release:

LV Chamber Announces Opposition to TASC

Proposed Amendment Ignores Long-Term Liability of Public Employee Retirement Benefits

Las Vegas – Today, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce’s Government Affairs Committee announced its opposition to the Tax And Spending Control (TASC) constitutional initiative petition. The Committee found that the TASC proposal does not address the largest long-term financial liabilities of the State and that the proposed amendment to the State Constitution is most likely to result in unintended consequences that would be difficult to remedy.

“We believe that two of the largest long-term financial liabilities for Nevada taxpayers at the state and local levels are funding the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) and the Public Employees Benefits Program (PEBP) for retirees,” said Kara J. Kelley, president & CEO of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. “TASC does not address these two key issues and more specifically exempts PERS from the constraints of TASC. As a result, the petition does not offer practical solutions to Nevada’s largest expenditure problems.”

The Chamber supports responsible spending for state and local governments, and believes that all government spending should have a measurable and accountable return on investment for the taxpayers.

“By supporting a taxpayer return on investment through efficient government spending, the Chamber ensures businesses grow our local economy, improve our quality of life and create jobs in Nevada,” stated Kelley.

The Chamber is also concerned that future tax decisions will be made exclusively at the ballot box.

“The public has a right and an obligation to be involved in government spending,” said Government Affairs Chairman Steve Hill. “But ballot initiatives are certainly contested between - and often won by - highly- funded special interest groups. These sound bite battles have the potential to lead to poor long-term tax policy.”

The Chamber supports a broad-based, transparent, consistent and stable tax base. As a result of provisions in the initiative, TASC would drive Nevada to create a more narrow tax base and hidden taxes that would undermine the equability of the tax system.

“Provisions of TASC are likely to lead to exactly the opposite kind of tax structure, where only narrow taxes applied to politically vulnerable taxpayers will be approved,” explained Kelley.

Finally, TASC is a constitutional initiative petition that would amend the Nevada Constitution. The Chamber maintains that the Constitution should contain the guiding principles of government, not the details of legislating. TASC will place complicated mechanical procedures into the Constitution, which may result in future unforeseen problems that would be difficult to remedy.

“For the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce to support any constitutional changes, we need to have the highest confidence that not only the policy, but also the implementation of that policy is without question,” commented Hill.

###

• Flagging support for the warrantless spying on American citizens? Then why not cite a thwarted terrorist plot to boost support for illegal spying? That’s what President George W. Bush did Friday, telling America about a plot to destroy the “Liberty Tower” in Los Angeles. (It was actually called the “Library Tower” before being re-named the U.S. Bank Tower; it’s the tall circular building in downtown Los Angeles.)

Couple things. No. 1, authorities don’t even know if the plot was serious. No. 2, perpetrators were arrested in Asia before they could carry it out. No. 3, and most important, there was no connection with the NSA spying program whatever. So how can this incident even be mentioned in the same sentence as the NSA program? Good question, but not one the president is likely to answer any time soon.

• We already knew it, but now there’s confirmation. A former CIA official in charge of the Middle East says Bush and his aides “cherry picked” intelligence to bolster what analysts came to believe was a predetermined case for going to war. Analysis showed that post-war Iraq would not be a fertile ground for democracy, but would be a fertile ground for guerrilla warfare. Hmmm, seems like the CIA was right after all.

• The monorail had its worst-ever month in January, carrying just 18,187 average riders per day, while seeing its bonds drop to “BB” status, a further descent into “junk” territory.

This further puts in jeopardy the monorail’s plan to expand to the airport or the west side of the Strip. With a bond rating in junk status, borrowing is nearly impossible, and certainly very costly. Private investment isn’t going to bridge the gap. That leaves public financing, and the monorail should in no way, shape or form be allowed anywhere near the public treasury.

Why? Well, let’s just say it’s in retaliation for the lies of monorail founder Bob Broadbent and his consultants, who promised 50,000 average riders per day. Credible opposing experts said average ridership would be half what Broadbent predicted. They were right, he was wrong, but he still managed to convince the state not to tax the monorail because it’s a “charity.” The public has done enough for this white elephant; now it needs to sink or swim on its own.

• We’re not quite sure what Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce President Kara Kelley was talking about in the Review-Journal Sunday. Kelley, who sits on the board of the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority, said the Las Vegas Convention Center — up for a $737 million expansion — shouldn’t use tax dollars to compete with private convention centers, like the ones at the Venetian or Mandalay Bay. According to her review, the expansion doesn’t do that.

Oh, yes it does. And once the expansion is finished, it will compete even more. That’s just a fact.

The only way to eliminate that competition, in fact, would be to sell the convention center to a private exhibitor. And since the expansion is funded by room taxes, any private owner would have to pay for expansion privately, as the Venetian and Mandalay Bay have done.

So why is nobody, save perhaps for Venetian owner Sheldon Adelson angry about this? Because most Strip hotel owners know the Las Vegas Convention Center brings tons of people to town, and fills their hotel rooms. And once the expansion is finished, those numbers will only go up. (The expansion, while expensive, looks extremely cool, by the way.)

A communally held asset funded by taxes that benefits everybody? Say it isn’t so.

• Quotable: “I have never been so mad in my life, and as God as my witness, I am not going to take it anymore. I am sick and tired of having to be part of a delegation that includes [U.S. Rep.] Jim Gibbons and [U.S. Rep.] Jon Porter, and I want them both gone.” — U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, on her fellow members of Congress. (Quoted in the R-J.)

And people say we’re scorched earth.

• And finally today, Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a fellow hunter on a south Texas ranch while stalking quail Saturday. The shooting wasn’t confirmed by Cheney’s office until news of the incident was broken by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. The newspaper has posted an update on its website, revealing that the local sheriff’s department didn’t begin investigating until a day after the incident.

Well, that makes it official: Now the vice president now has more actual combat experience than the president.

But seriously, folks, the Texas lawyer Cheney shot in the face, neck and chest, Harry Whittington, was to be moved out of intensive care soon. For his part, the vice president flew back to Washington. Whittington apparently didn’t announce his presence after he wandered into Cheney’s line of fire, nor could he detect the black aura of evil that surrounds the vice president. (Well, Whittington is a rich lawyer. Their senses are sometimes dulled.)

We at Various Things & Stuff don’t mind criticism. We dish it out by the metric ton, and so not being able to take it would be the height of hypocrisy.

But we do like to respond to criticism, even if it comes from a less-than-legitimate outlet, like the e-mails of one George Harris, aka Liberty Watch.

We knew right away that today’s missive — directed at CityLife’s Jan. 9 cover story, “16 ways to make Las Vegas a better place” — wasn’t written by Harris himself. Why? It was literate. That could only mean one thing: Harris’ doppelganger, banker Doug French.

French handles most of the e-mailing duties, giving Harris more time to come up with political schemes and strategies that are destined to fail miserably. French is, on rare occasions, an entertaining read, even if we disagree with him.

In today’s e-mail missive, French takes CityLife to task for some of the ideas found in this week’s cover story, but not before accusing us of satirizing Liberty Watch: The Magazine. We admit we have used satire, but only to lambaste the very serious problem that is Liberty Watch: The Magazine columnist Ken Ward, and his racist rants.

After coming out against diversity and neighborliness (”Most people can’t stand each other. I respect their judgment,” French quotes another columnist as saying) and voting (”Abstaining from voting is, in effect, making a personal sacrifice [however academic] in service of upholding an important moral principle,” he quotes again) French finally gets to the point. He thinks our advocacy of the gross receipts tax is wrong.

The GRT hurts small business, which in turn hurts job creation and innovation, French says. And that’s a fair and legitimate point. It’s also probably why the GRT, as advocated during the 2003 Legislature, contained a healthy exemption specifically to protect small businesses. Curiously, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, which boasts that 85 percent of its members are small businesses, opposed the tax. Why? The big members, which pay big dues, told the chamber to.

Alas, French goes beyond his expertise when he typed his next line, which went from legitimate criticism to assigning motives. “By promoting the GRT, Sebelius is only carrying the water for his friends who occupy the executive wings on the Strip.”

First, we at Various Things & Stuff have no friends in executive wings on the Strip. It probably has something to do with our longtime advocacy of raising the top tier of the gross gambling tax, or perhaps railing against the inordinate influence that casinos have over state politics. Perhaps its our pillorying of the concept of “private” sidewalks outside Strip resorts, our support of organized labor, or the questions we raised about Strip water features when water czars were telling the rest of us we couldn’t wash our cars. Perhaps our repeated examination of the industry’s hypocritical approach to Indian gambling played a role, too.

In short, we don’t have any friends on the Strip. Which is too bad, since we think many of those folks are nice, smart and interesting people.

No, we advocated for the GRT for a reason that might shock French: Principle. We simply think it’s the right thing to do, for all the reasons we gave, and more. So, Mr. French, don’t go guessing about our motives, and we promise not to impugn yours. (How hard would it be to say, “Doug French, a banker, only defends small business so banks can continue to profit by dealing with small business”? Not hard. But we assume, perhaps wrongly, that French’s opposition to the GRT is as principled as our support of it.)

French closes by saying at least CityLife didn’t advocate paying cops or teachers more. We actually do advocate that; we just didn’t get around to putting it on our list.

Now that we’re done talking Second Amendment with Goldy and Stan, who’s up for a late-night serving of quick hits (wonderfully aged to perfection)?

• Who couldn’t have guessed the news that Miss Nevada, Crystal Wosik, is allegedly being threatened in the wake of her pro-Yucca remarks would prompt an environmentalist-bashing editorial in the Review-Journal?

Hey, everybody, she’s a beauty queen, not a nuclear scientist or a politician. With all due respect to Sherm Frederick, our corporate master-in-chief, who has praised Wosik’s courage, let’s keep things in perspective. And that perspective is this: Why should anybody — the public, the media, environmentalist thugs — care what she has to say about anything? It’s not like she’s an actress or anything…

• The pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, Fred Phelps, of “God hates fags” fame, is now picketing the funerals of U.S. service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He claims their deaths are God’s judgment upon America for tolerating gays and adulterers.

We can only hope there’s a really big surprise waiting for Pastor Phelps in the afterlife. (And we’re pretty sure there’s going to be…)

In the meantime, could somebody remind that idiot that the deaths of U.S. service members in Iraq and Afghanistan are actually caused by, in order of proximate cause, fundamentalist Islamic insurgents, a completely wrong decision to go to war and inadequate planning and equipping?

• Our very own Mayor Oscar Goodman is asking representatives of the attorney general’s office, and the special counsel investigating the city’s sweetheart land deal with golf course mogul Bill Walters to come give the council an update on the investigation next week. “I want it resolved. I want to find out what’s happening,” Goodman said in the R-J.

Leave aside for a moment the very good point made by my friend and colleague Jon Ralston — this is a request from the suspects in an investigation for information from the law enforcers probing their behavior. Instead, consider this: Why does Goodman want the investigation resolved so quickly? Answer: Because he wants to consummate the bad-for-taxpayers deal with Walters at the Royal Links golf course, which Walters wants to turn into homes. And why does he want to consummate the bad-for-taxpayers deal with Walters so badly?

That, dear readers, is a very excellent question, if we do say so ourselves.

UPDATE: An alert reader identified an incomplete sentence in this post. We’ve added material to fix the problem, and that material [appears in italics inside brackets below]. And while we’re on the subject, we correct mistakes in the blog by crossing out incorrect material and inserting new material thereafter. Why? Because we make mistakes like anyone else, and we think its proper to correct, not hide, those errors.

A couple of our regular correspondents, Goldy and Stan, have brought up the issue of assault rifles in the wake of the death of Metro Police Sgt. Henry Prendes. (Sgt. Prendes’ funeral was Tuesday at Henderson’s Central Christian Church. He was gunned down with a variant of the AK-47 7.62mm assault rifle wielded by a man who fired more than 60 rounds 40 rounds before being killed by police. Sgt. Prendes leaves a wife and two daughters.)

Goldy wonders whether his neighbors in residential areas should be allowed to have assault rifles. Stan made some kind of a joke (at least we think it was a joke) about the AK-47 being a hunting rifle. Which is true, if you’re hunting people, which is precisely what that weapon is designed to do.

We at Various Things & Stuff part company with most our liberal friends when it comes to gun control, mostly because we believe in the Second Amendment as strongly as we do the First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth, which get a lot more attention and discussion on the blog. And for that reason, our view is this:

People in the United States are guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms (defined by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling as “weapons of military usefulness”) because a well-regulated militia (defined as the population of able-bodied citizens capable of rising to the defense of the nation, irrespective of their membership in the National Guard or active-duty armed forces) [is necessary to the security of a free state]. No law, no regulation and no policy of the government should be allowed to abridge that right.

Therefore, Goldy’s neighbors should be allowed to own AK-47s, regardless of where they live. People should be able to use them for hunting, or collecting, or target shooting, or whatever other legal purpose they wish.

That idea is distasteful to a lot of people, who choose to indulge in the fantasy that prohibiting guns by law makes people safer. It doesn’t, for reasons so manifest that we’ve no need to go into them here.

We at Various Things & Stuff have owned weapons for years: Handguns and a rifle variant of the AK-47 (ours is not fully automatic, as fully automatic weapons are available only to specially licensed citizens, which we think is wrong). We have never committed a crime with those weapons, and they are properly registered with Metro according to the law. (We also think registration is wrong, but that’s another discussion.) Should we have our weapons taken away because other people using those same pistols or rifles have committed crimes? Should any of our other civil liberties be suspended, because they’ve been abused elsewhere? Of course not.

Metro Police Sheriff Bill Young says that his officers need access to better, more powerful weapons. (The department issues the AR-15, the civilian variant of the military’s 5.56mm M-16A1, to some officers in special units.) He’s right; no cop should be outgunned on the streets. And let’s not forget how the man who shot Sgt. Prendes was killed: By a gang unit officer armed with an assault weapon.

If assault weapons were forbidden to citizens, would Sgt. Prendes have died? We’ll never know, and it’s useless to speculate. He could have been shot just as easily with a handgun, or attacked with a knife, or run over with a car. Or, just as possibly, he could have survived a gunshot wound with a pistol and returned to duty and to life with his family. We cannot say for certain, and the senselessness of the death of a fine and dedicated cop isn’t made any easier by the questions.

But the fact is, we not only shouldn’t ban assault weapons, we simply cannot, not if the Bill of Rights still has any meaning to us. This results in tragic situations: A person’s character is smeared by someone acting under the First Amendment; a criminal goes free because police didn’t follow the Fourth Amendment; and a brave cop dies protecting the rest of us, because a man owns a rifle protected under the Second Amendment. We wish such things were not so. Yet we should also pause to consider what our society would be like if there were no Bill of Rights.

And, most important of all today, we should keep the family of Sgt. Henry Prendes in our thoughts and prayers, knowing that however he died, he died a hero, and we are all in his debt.