• What’s that pipeline in the living room? Oh, don’t worry there’s nothing to fear. It’s just the lame-duck administration of President George W. Bush laying down thousands of miles of power lines and pipelines across the west to get energy from far-flung places like Montana, Idaho and Wyoming to the Southwest.

Congress, as part of its energy policy plan adopted in 2005, decided that we needed more lines criss-crossing the country, whether that “country” be military bases, national parks and forests, or other federally owned land. Two great things: There will only be one environmental report to cover all the lines (we’re sure that will be comprehensive) and any objections from states and counties are automatically overruled, since this is in the “national interest.”

Of course, environmentalists are joining with their natural allies in the military to object, but we doubt anybody’s listening. The Bush people see what’s coming — a Democratic wave gaining seats in Congress and maybe the White House. They’ve got to give these energy companies a happy ending, and quick!

• Back the badge? House Speaker Dennis Hastert took the bold step of complaining to President Bush about the FBI’s weekend search of the congressional offices of U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-La. (Jefferson is under investigation in connection with a bribery scandal.) Hastert and others believe the raid compromised the separation of powers, as it was one branch of government (the executive) intruding upon the sacred soil of another (the legislative.)

House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, went so far as to call the search an “invasion of the legislative branch.” And since Boehner only likes invasions that he’s given the president unchecked authority to conduct, and then only when they’re based on intelligence he likes, he’s obviously against it.

We say: Relax everybody. The FBI followed procedures, and got a warrant from that other branch of government, the judicial. Under Hastert’s and Boehner’s philosophy, congressmen could take bribes left and right, but as long as they hid the money in their sacrosanct offices, separation of powers would save the miscreants.

That’s not what it’s for. If somebody has broken the law, they need to be held accountable, whether they have an office in Congress, or in the White House. Which leads us to ask: When is the FBI, investigating the violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, going to get a warrant to search the Oval Office? We understand that obeying the supreme law of the land is important to those guys.

• Speed up, you’re going the speed limit! We weren’t surprised by the news in the Review-Journal today that Las Vegas drivers are bad. We’ve witnessed that since moving here in 1993.

But we’ve been doing a little experiment lately, having recently gotten nailed on the way home from California. We’ve been trying to drive the speed limit, or, at most, 5 mph above it. And let us tell you, it’s something.

The hardest part was doing it on Interstate 15 on the the way to and from Mesquite, where we went Saturday to cover the state Republican convention. We got passed constantly, and while we were trying to be good and yield to faster traffic, sometimes it came up on us so quickly, we didn’t even have time to change lanes. We’ve become more familiar with the front grill configurations of a lot of SUVs, which tend to tailgate. And we’ve found the urge to speed almost irresistible. And whether you’re doing the speed limit or not, the favorite move of Vegas drivers seems to be pulling out in front of other drivers regardless of how fast they’re going or how close they are. After all, they’ll stop right?

We still think that going the speed of traffic — whatever that happens to be on the particular road you’re traveling — is the best policy. But we have been driving without the nagging fear we usually have of a police car waiting for us somewhere, radar gun at the ready. Trust us: If you obey the speed laws in Las Vegas, cops will have thousands of other targets to ticket.

We’re planning a California run in sometime next month, which will be the acid test. If we can travel those empty, desolate roads at no more than 75 mph (the speed limit is 70 mph) we’ll know we’ve reformed.

• On the same page. And finally today, our congratulations and thanks to the Greenspun family for its generous donation to the Freedom Forum’s Newseum in Washington, D.C. The family that owns the Las Vegas Sun donated $7 million for a new seven-story, 250,000-square-foot building at Sixth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., dedicated to the role the media plays in a free society. (The Sun carried a story on the donation today. (It was the largest gift after $10 million each from the New York Times Co. and News Corp.)

In an age where journalists are increasingly coming under attack for ferreting out the truth, where the attorney general of the United States threatens to eavesdrop on their calls and put them in jail for doing their jobs, where their readers don’t even understand the importance of what they do and why essential freedoms like free speech and press are so important, we need all the help we can get. And that’s precisely what the Newseum was set up to do.

You can find more information about the more information Newseum here.