Well, screw you, Brian Greenspun!

That’s what we at Various Things & Stuff were tempted to say after a friend e-mailed us to report that Las Vegas Sun Editor Brian Greenspun had called us out by name in his Sunday column in the “Sunsert” section of the Review-Journal.

Once again, Greenspun has taken to the keyboard to defend his friend and business partner, golf course mogul Bill Walters. Once again, he’s done it without disclosing that he and Walters are business partners in a Henderson land deal. And once again, he’s got his facts mixed up.

No wonder even Greenspun’s wife seems to see he’s making an ass out of himself in print. Alas, we’re always blind to our own faults.

Greenspun slams us for a Media Watch item in CityLife ["Bad! That's a bad Smith!" March 9] in which we (once again) attack a Feb. 19 story in the Sun about an “independent study” commissioned by the newspaper that purports to say Walters’ Royal Links deal with the city of Las Vegas is good for taxpayers.

We’ve long ago debunked that line. Twice, in fact. Click on the links if you’re interested.

Greenspun implies that we’re covering for the R-J, a regular target of our criticisms, out of ignorance that the newspaper is sitting on exculpatory evidence that proves the independent study is valid. He also says we were assigned the task by our corporate masters downtown.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Corporate overlords Sherm Frederick and Tom Mitchell didn’t even tell us what to do in the days when we toiled as a columnist for the R-J, much less now in our role as editor of CityLife.

Whatever research the R-J has compiled is that newspaper’s business — they don’t really share a lot of that with us, despite our common corporate parent. But the questions we raised on Feb. 20 (repeated here and there on the blog and in CityLife on Feb. 23) have yet to be answered.

Here’s are just a few, in case Greenspun cares to answer them:

– Why did the independent study start by assuming Walters was entitled to the full value of the Royal Links golf course without a deed restriction that prohibits homebuilding? Why not proceed from the present value of the course, with the deed restriction, since that’s what Walters owns?

– Why did the study assume it was perfectly “good for taxpayers” to allow Walters to essentially pay 1999 prices for unrestricted title to land that’s become immensely more valuable in the meantime?

– Why did the independent study ascribe “benefits” of saving water to the city of Las Vegas’ taxpayers, when said “benefits,” if they exist at all, would accrue to the entire Las Vegas Valley as a whole?

– Why did the independent study not examine the costs involved with expanding and upgrading the sewage treatment plant which would likely be necessary if Walters is allowed to lift the deed restriction and build homes just 20 feet from the plant’s property line?

– Why, if the Sun’s study is accurate, has it come to conclusions totally incongruent with the analysis of city lawyers who have studied the Royal Links matter in the past?

And, while we’re at it, why not toss in a couple more questions?

– What were the parameters of the study, and who set them?

– Why deliver copies of the study to members of the City Council, unless you were intending to influence the outcome of an official action? If that was the intent, is that ethical?

If Greenspun wants to answer those questions, he can e-mail us at SSebelius@lvcitylife.com. We’d love to hear from him.

Our favorite part of Greenspun’s column was the part where he said the R-J was opposed to the Walters deal “…because they have a vested interest in discrediting any finding that may run counter to their narrow view of the world.”

Yet Greenspun has (on just one occasion) admitted that he’s a business partner and friend of Walters.

So, the R-J’s intangible desire to run the world is a bad thing, but Greenspun’s actual financial and personal conflict is an acceptable thing? It’s the kind of conclusion only a practiced mind could reach.

Anyway, we’re under no illusions that Greenspun reads us here on Various Things & Stuff. In fact, we’re quite flattered to learn he reads CityLife. Thanks for the support, Mr. Greenspun!

• On the very day that a coroner’s inquest jury found that police were justified in killing rapper Amir Crump, 21, in the Feb. 1 shootout that cost a Las Vegas police sergeant his life, the Board of Regents made the rare wise decision to reject member Stavros Anthony’s bid to ban gangster rap from university campuses.

A couple things:

– First, Anthony, who works during the day as a Metro Police captain, said it was the killing of Sgt. Henry Prendes that motivated him to float the gangster rap ban, which could have seen a panel including university police deciding which concerts were acceptable and which were not.

This is further proof that those who enforce the laws should never be the same people as the ones who write the laws. As a government employee, it seems clear to us that Anthony is automatically ineligible for service on the board of regents under the state constitution’s separation-of-powers doctrine.

The death of Sgt. Prendes was a tragedy that needs to be answered with communitywide condemnation of attitudes that justify violence against women and the police, not with assaults on the Constitution that all police officers are sworn to uphold. Metro Police officers acting professionally at all times and making progressive efforts to reach out to minority communities will do more to reduce violence in the community than banning a particular form of music.

– Second, this was an obvious, slam-dunk bad idea from the moment it was hatched. As Chancellor Jim Rogers observed, it constitutes prior restraint, even if the speech that’s being restrained is obnoxious and evil. At the end of the day, Anthony seemed to get a better understanding of that, even if he was still pushing for some kind of policy hinging on the “incitement to violence” exception to free-speech rules.

And that illustrates the difference between someone truly preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution and someone cleverly conspiring to confound it: The constitutionalist embraces the document and its principles, even if some perceived wrongs cannot be addressed; the craven conspirator constantly looks for ways to get around the document and its principles. With the latter in office from Washington D.C. to our own Board of Regents, we need the former more than ever.

• Oh, and speaking of that coroner’s inquest, you’ve simply got to read our friend and colleague Vin Suprynowitz’s column on his experience trying to attend the proceeding.

Vin discovered what many who have gone to the old Clark County Courthouse (and now, it seems, the new Regional Justice Center) have known for a long time: The bailiffs, with some rare exceptions, are total pricks. Not only that, but they also have their metal detectors turned up so high, they can detect the iron naturally occurring in human blood.

All kidding aside, to bar the public from court proceedings is a very serious violation the rights of the public and the press to access trials of public importance. And an “overflow” room that doesn’t have full audio and video presentations of the inquest from start to finish is hardly a suitable alternative.

• Attorney and Las Vegas Councilman Steve Wolfson says his client, Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Joshua Corcran was doing his job when he smashed into a Cadillac on Interstate 15, killing four. But according to the Review-Journal:

– Neither Corcran’s lights nor his siren were on.

– There’s no record he was rolling to a so-called “hot job” at the time of the accident.

– He told a supervisor he was going home for dinner.

“He’s [Corcran] looking forward to the day when all this information and all of the facts come out in a court of law,” Wolfson says. Apparently, the trooper doesn’t really have a burning desire to get all the facts out; on Wolfson’s advice, he declined to meet with officers investigating the case. Police have asked that Corcran be charged with felony reckless driving.

• If you haven’t already read it, you’ve got to check out Geoff Schumacher’s Sunday column on the 75th anniversary of the legalization of gambling in Nevada.

Although Schumacher makes the common error of thinking that Las Vegas was “founded” in 1905, the year of the auction of downtown land, the rest of the column has some great historical perspective. And we especially loved the part wherein he reports the then-president of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, S.R. Whitehead, questioned whether advertising gambling was such a good idea.

The Chamber: Wrong on the issues for more than 75 years.

• And finally today, as if there weren’t enough gifts from the Gods of News, we learned from the Review-Journal that ex-Las Vegas Councilwoman Janet Moncrief is going to run for lieutenant governor.

Gods of News, you are too good to us.

Of course, Moncrief demonstrated since her 2005 recall from office that she hasn’t grown any more savvy: She held a news conference on Sunday, which put her announcement deep inside the Monday paper. (Had she done her no-questions-please schtick on Saturday, she would have gotten into the better-read Sunday paper.)

But she was still her old self: No concrete proposals, but plenty of defensive lashing-out at her opponents, including the attorney general’s office, which settled a campaign finance case against her after she admitted wrongdoing and paid a civil fine of $5,000. Before that, she’d been indicted and subjected to a criminal prosecution for her offenses.

The deal made “it perfectly clear to many of my supporters that the only incentive for the indictment was to spearhead a movement to get me out of office,” she said. “Now that the issue of campaign finance is over, now that the five felony counts went up like a puff of smoke, I am no longer bound by silence and can keep my promise to all our citizens.”

To which we say, “oh, shut up, Janet.”

The fact is, Moncrief admitted breaking campaign finance laws, and paid a hefty fine as a result. She may have said at the time she wasn’t guilty, and offered that she only agreed to the civil deal because she couldn’t afford a lawyer, but that’s so much bullshit. (Remember, folks, in a criminal trial where the defendant cannot afford an attorney, an attorney will be provided at no cost to the defendant.)

Moncrief broke the law. She admitted breaking the law. A truly innocent person would not have admitted the same, especially if he or she hoped for a political future. The fact was, the attorney general had enough for an indictment, and had the matter gone to trial, probably would have had enough to convict. Therefore, Moncrief decided to avoid the whole mess with her admission and fine.

So deal with it, already.

And while we’re on the subject, we’d like to tell disgraced Controller Kathy Augustine to shut up, too. Like Moncrief, Augustine admitted her wrongdoing before the state Ethics Commission and paid a fine. She was later impeached and convicted (on one of three counts) before the state Senate. Yet today, she runs around saying she did nothing wrong, and there are mysterious “facts” out there somewhere that may change things.

Shut up, Kathy: You broke the law, you admitted to breaking the law, and you were even impeached and convicted of breaking the law. Deal with it.

So far, the only other person in the Republican primary for lieutenant governor is Treasurer Brian Krolicki, whose unfortunate compulsion to feature himself in TV ads and brochures for prepaid college tuition and the Millennium Scholarship are totally unnecessary: He’ll have no problem winning this primary.

And when the voters finally speak, we hope (with great longing) that Moncrief is listening to the message they first sent during the recall of 2005: Go away.