• 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.