Even if Liberty Watch: The Magazine put out an April Fool’s Day issue, it would be impossible to tell, since almost every issue of the rag is a joke. From avowed racist Ken Ward to the obviously cleaned-up prose of semi-literate Publisher George Harris, Liberty Watch is just a couple steps above a comic book on its best day.

But with the June issue, Liberty Watch has departed even the outer fringes of journalism, and arrived squarely in territory reserved for the most clumsy and obvious propaganda sheets.

In a cover story written by Liberty Watch Editor Mike Zigler, state Sen. Maurice Washington is lionized as the “gold standard,” whose “service and style has become a model for Republicans to follow.” (FULL DISCLOSURE: Zigler is a former employee of CityLife, whose tenure includes this unfortunate hagiographic profile of Harris.)

But if you think Zigler went light on Harris, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The Washington piece contains not a single negative word about the senator, whose troubles are legion, and well-publicized. In fact, we at Various Things & Stuff were able to discover a number of things that should be included in any Washington profile with a few simple searches and $9.95 to purchase some old back articles from the Reno Gazette-Journal. (Or, should we say, “should be included in any honest Washington profile.”)

It’s enough to make us wonder if perhaps the staff or owners at Liberty Watch are being paid to put out soft-focus features on friends, and vicious attacks on enemies. (To be sure, in the March issue of Liberty Watch, Zigler penned an article that slammed Harris critic Jon Ralston. In just three months, his bulldog instincts have apparently atrophied.)

Consider:

“In a Legislature full of wannabes and misguided hopefuls, state Sen. Maurice Washington’s ideas and voice are breaths of fresh air,” the piece begins.

“A humble man, Washington sometimes thinks about the day when he doesn’t return to Carson City. He is content with life’s offerings, knowing he has been successful in many areas,” the piece says near the end.

In the middle, it’s a rose-colored-glasses view of Washington’s legislative efforts, including a “major bill” Washington helped pass concerning charter schools. Tellingly, Zigler doesn’t see fit to mention the Nevada Leadership Academy, a charter school run out of the church Washington founded, the Center of Hope Christian Fellowship. Look into the matter more deeply, and you’ll probably find out why:

• Washington served briefly on the Nevada Leadership Academy board, which school officials in Washoe County cited as a conflict, since the school paid the church lease money.

• Washington was also accused of misuing public funds, when he withdrew $150,000 from school accounts and wrote a cashier’s check to his church, using that to convince Wells Fargo Bank officials that the church had enough money to buy the land on which it sits. The money was returned after a week, according to the Gazette-Journal’s story about a state audit into the matter.

“Because of necessity, the school came forward to help. The school provided a short-term loan,” Washington said in the Aug. 20, 2002 story. But the following month, in a Sept. 16, 2002 story by another reporter, Washington had a different view: “The school didn’t loan money to the church. As far as I know, it was a legitimate business transaction to secure facilities for the church.”

Wells Fargo declined to press fraud charges, and the matter was dropped.

• Washington is perhaps most famous for trying to collect workman’s compensation for a ruptured Achilles tendon suffered while playing in a Republicans-vs-Democrats charity basketball game in 2001. He claimed he was acting in his capacity as a state senator, and thus was entitled to state coverage. (Washington’s own insurance policy was for catastrophic coverage only.)

He was denied coverage, appealed, and was again rebuffed, after a hearing officer found he participated in the game voluntarily.

• Ironically, around the same time, Washington was facing state charges for failing to provide worker’s compensation insurance at both his church and the charter school. In fact, an affidavit contained in court papers alleges Washington personally ordered school officials not to pay for the coverage.

(A woman who worked at a day care center operated by the church was injured, and incurred $11,246 in expenses. The fees were initially paid from the state Uninsured Employers Claim Account, but the state later sued for reimbursement. It was the third worker’s comp case filed against Washington, his church or the school in an eight-week period in 2002, according to the Gazette-Journal.)

• In November 2002, after winning a third term in the state Senate, Washington pled no-contest to a charge of failing to maintain worker’s compensation insurance for employees at the school. (The charge of personally ordering the suspension of payments was dismissed.)

• In a wide-ranging Ethics Commission complaint filed against him in 2002, just before the November election, it was revealed that Washington used official state Senate letterhead to solicit campaign contributions from business leaders. (The commission ruled in 2001 that the use of such stationery for fund-raising was improper.)

He told the Gazette-Journal that he wouldn’t do it again.

“I was trying to inform the business community it was going to be a tough campaign. With the revenue shortfall issue, experienced leadership was going to be vital in the next session so I asked for their support. I wouldn’t want to create the controversy or stigma of impropriety.”

The complaint — including the letterhead issue — was dismissed by a two-member panel of the commission and did not go to a full hearing.

• Although Liberty Watch may think of Washington as “the gold standard,” legislative colleagues, lobbyists and the press disagree. In polls of those people conducted by the Review-Journal in 2001 and 2003, Washington was ranked as the worst senator in the state. In 2005, he fell to third, behind Sens. Sandra Tiffany and Barbara Cegavske.

• Even on a matter that could evoke sympathy, Liberty Watch was demure: The magazine alludes briefly to Washington’s “health troubles.” In fact, Washington was rushed for emergency surgery following the December 2004 impeachment hearings for state Controller Kathy Augustine, diagnosed with colon cancer. He endured chemotherapy during the 2005 Legislature, in addition to serving as chairman of the Human Services and Education Committee.

• And there’s always the political record. Washington has cast votes against banning the death penalty for juveniles in Nevada, despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the practice constituted cruel and unusual punishment. He voted not to require health insurance companies to cover contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy. He once declared on the Senate floor that “the only color that matters is the color green.” And he attributed his 2002 victory, in a quote that appeared in the Gazette-Journal, to “a lot of prayer, the good Lord on our side and a lot of good people, especially Sen. [and state Senate Majority Leader Bill] Raggio.” Well, at least he put God before Raggio.

• Speaking of Raggio, Washington says the senator, along with state Sen. Randolph Townsend, talked him into running for office in the first place. So who are the only two colleagues interviewed in Zigler’s piece? You got it: Raggio and Townsend.

All of the things we’ve dug up here were known, or could easily have become known, to Zigler and Liberty Watch, had they bothered to look. They didn’t. Why they didn’t remains an interesting question. The fact that this piece is downright dishonest, however, is not in question at all.