ABSTRACT: We take on Republican activist Tony Dane and his assault on Clark County Manager Tom Reilly, as well as address open government with Bob Beers, bad behavior with Scott Sibley and immigration’s potency as a political issue in Quick Hits.

Professional loser Tony Dane has a new target: Clark County Manager Thom Reilly.

Why? Because Dane — who likes to work for ethically challenged, ineffective, or fringe Republicans like ex-Las Vegas Councilwoman Janet Moncrief and Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, respectively — has a new client: Clark County Recorder Frances Deane.

Deane, as regular readers know, is under investigation by Metro Police for allegedly selling an early look at documents filed with her office to a local businessman, who stood to make a profit from the information. (If you’re getting a sense of deja vu, it’s because Deane was once hauled before the state Ethics Commission, where she paid a $5,000 fine, for trying to set up a private business that would have sold publicly available documents online.)

Reilly says Deane agreed to temporarily step aside from her office while the investigation was pending, but she denies that, and has come to work anyway.

Enter Dane, on behalf of Deane, with that most annoying of political tactics, the automated phone call. We at Various Things & Stuff have obtained a copy of that call, and we’ll take it apart for you here. (Our thoughts are in italics, so as not to be confused with Dane’s rantings.)

• “There is a movement to take away our right to vote. As crazy as that sounds, Clark County Manager Thom Reilly requested from the Legislature last year to make [sic] the county recorder an appointed position.”

You know, that does sound crazy. But once again, as is his wont, Dane is lying. First, there is no movement currently to change the recorder’s status. Second, Reilly didn’t request anything from the Legislature; the Clark County Commission asked for a bill — in 2003, not last year — that would have consolidated the recorder’s office with the county clerk. Third, the county clerk is also an elected position, so voters would still be able to hold an elected official accountable for the work of the recorder’s office. (The bill, Senate Bill 80, was never passed.)

This is not something that could be easily misunderstood, even by someone like Dane, who’s not on good terms with the truth. Reilly made it clear in an op-ed piece in the Las Vegas Sun in 2003 that, if the bill was approved, the elected clerk would take over. And the actual language of SB 80 uses the phrase “elective office,” “elected officer” four times in three pages.

• “His [Reilly] rationale is that the voters are too stupid to select a qualified person for that position. What’s next, judges? Secretary of State? The governor?”

Ah, nothing like calm, rational analysis, is there? First, Reilly has never said anything about the voters being stupid, although he certainly could — their selection of Deane was a FEMA/Michael Brown-style “heck of a job,” if you ask us. Second, there’s a great argument to be made for the appointment of judges, but that’s another blog. Third, the county would be outside it’s authority to request the appointment of … oh, well, you get the idea.

“Thom Reilly has successfully disrupted the county recorder’s office at a time when they [sic] are processing more documents faster and more efficiently than ever before.”

Oh, we see. The elected recorder tries to form a business to sell her office’s documents on the Internet, gets fined, and then allegedly goes ahead and sells them anyway, and winds up as the focus of a criminal investigation, but it’s Reilly who has disrupted the office. It’s takes a practiced mind to come to that contorted a conclusion, folks. And Dane is possessed of just such a mind.

• “But Thom Reilly wants to be the queen bee, buzzing around and stirring up trouble for those he disapproves of. Thom Reilly is not an elected official and has no right to disrupt our elected officials to gain more power for himself. If he doesn’t like the job that is being done, let him run for the office and as voters we’ll select the person we want.”

We were wondering what Dane was up to, and we think he reveals all here. Remember, this is the same Tony Dane who has for years tried unsuccessfully to unseat Assemblyman David Parks. Dane disapproves of Parks because Parks is gay, and so, perhaps coincidentally, is Reilly. Calling Reilly the “queen bee” is just up Dane’s alley: A vile slur from a hate-filled man who just can’t understand why nobody else joins his homophobic crusades.

For the record, we’d vote for Reilly for any elected office, but he’s probably too smart to run for one. If he ever does, the voters would be well-served by his intelligence and experience.

• “Please call the County Commission at 455-3500 and remind them that we don’t have the opportunity to vote for Thom Reilly but we do vote for them. If they don’t remove this power-hungry manager, they will lose our vote. It is time to stop letting these bureaucrats take advantage. We are the voters and we are in control of our vote. If we lose that fundamental right even on something as small as county recorder, what’s next? This message is paid for by Tony Dane, private citizen.”

First, judging by Dane’s past antics, we suspect that he’s been paid by Deane or someone else to put out this call, which the Review-Journal’s Molly Ball reported went to 157,000 homes. Then again, Dane is mean enough, obsessed enough and nuts enough to do it on his own.

The bottom line: Dane is lying, or criminally uninformed about what he’s talking about; Dane has probably been paid by Deane or someone else to defend her sorry behavior; and Dane has the worst of motives. In other words, just another day in the wacky life of Las Vegas politics, where even grifters get a chance at the microphone.

And now, it’s on to Quick Hits!

• We at Various Things and Stuff are breathing a little easier, knowing that the free market is truly responding to our needs. Pass us another Double-Double, baby!

• Thanks to state Sen. Bob Beers, a very attractive man, for his ultimately unsuccessful efforts to keep a hearing on school funding open to the public. A Legislative Counsel Bureau opinion said the hearings aren’t subject to the state’s Open Meeting Law, since they are part of the work of a private contractor conducting a review of schools, but Beers made a motion that they be open anyway. Shame on Assemblywoman Debbie Smith, D-Sparks, for not telling the LCB lawyers where to file their opinion, and telling the contractor and other members of the study panel they’d have to conduct their work in public.

• Can the state Ethics Commission investigate an elected official for conduct that took place before that person was elected? We don’t think so, which is why Assemblyman Scott Sibley, R-Henderson, probably won’t face commissioners on charges he abused his position as a process server to evict a couple from their Lake Las Vegas home. Then again, with a $120,000 civil verdict lodged against him and plenty of negative press as a result, Sibley isn’t exactly getting away with anything.

(Full disclosure: Sibley is publisher of Nevada Legal News, and Various Things & Stuff is owned by the Stephens Media Group, which is known to publish a newspaper or two of its own in the Las Vegas Valley.)

• A battle royale is shaping up between the House and the Senate over immigration reform, which leads us back to a comment we meant to address earlier.

The Las Vegas Sun had a big story on immigration yesterday, in which the political impact of the issue was addressed. Pete Ernaut, a Republican consultant who works for R&R Partners, dismissed the impact of the issue on 2006 races thusly:

“I think the issue of illegal immigration is much like campaign finance reform or identity theft. If you ask someone about it, of course they’ll say they’re concerned. But compared to education, the economy, health care, it’s not even close,” he said.

We’re loath to disagree with the experts, but we think Ernaut’s wrong. True, people don’t care about campaign finance reform very much, and identity theft isn’t a problem unless it happens to you. And true, health care and education are top issues (not to mention traffic, our favorite bitch here in Las Vegas). But we have seen more voter anger, passion and opinion about immigration than on any other issue we’ve seen or covered in the 17 years we’ve been hammering away on keyboards.

For example: One day during our tenure at the Review-Journal we got a call from a retired Air Force officer, who invited us to his home for coffee. We accepted, and after some preliminary chit-chat, he proceeded to outline for us his view that immigration was threatening our country and our state, and that it had to be controlled. He wasn’t a wild-eyed xenophobe, either. He was a reasonable, responsible man.

At a wedding, we got to talking to a Navy man who flew F/A-18 Hornets. He was amazed that he’d been sent to Iraq to patrol a no-fly zone, but the southern border of our country was essentially undefended.

And it’s not just military; people of all walks of life are concerned about the issue. Whether they fear losing jobs, losing American culture or losing a big battle in the war on terror, they are all concerned about immigration. And politicians are skillfully exploiting the issue all across the spectrum. (Anybody heard of Colorado U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo before he started talking immigration?) The issue is so potent, even U.S. Sen. Harry Reid took a day trip to the San Diego border recently to talk about it (and we forgive you, senator, for not dashing across to Tijuana to score us some Cohibas).

We at Various Things & Stuff are sympathetic to the issue, given that our maternal great-grandparents came to America as immigrants. We think anybody should be able to better themselves here. And as long as we ensure security — if novelist Tom Clancy can dream of terrorists coming up through Mexico, so can Osama bin Laden — we should always be the land that accepts huddled masses, yearning to be free.

But we recognize that not everybody shares our view. Whatever the opinion, however, there is more passion on this issue than on a host of others combined. And we should remember that as elections near.