You know what’s tasty? A burrito stuffed with rice, black beans, sour cream, salsa and big chunks of Quick Hits! We’ll take ours ranchero style!

• Attorney General George Chanos read the law about re-importing Canadian prescription drugs so narrowly, he ruled the program illegal in a decision that was immediately and vigorously ignored by pretty much everybody. But now, Chanos is back, with a much more liberal and expansive reading of the law: Despite the fact that there are more than one version of the Tax and Spending Control (TASC) petition out there, it can still go on the ballot. No worries, mate.

Don’t you just hate flip-floppers?

Chanos admitted that the TASC folks had submitted three different versions of the petition to the secretary of state, one of which was circulated to voters. (The law says there should only be one version, so as not to hoodwink voters.)

To be honest, there were more versions of TASC than conspiracy theories about the John F. Kennedy assassination, as backers tried their best to limit government spending to the rate of inflation plus population growth. And some of it had to be re-written, thanks to a lawsuit from opponents.

But seriously, one version will reportedly allow the government to spend $1.3 billion more than the others. That’s a fairly large mistake thanks to a “typo.” (And trust us; we make typos all the time!)

But, Chanos reasoned, voters who signed all wanted essentially the same thing, i.e. limited government, and great weight should be given to the will of the voters. So go ahead and put that bad boy on the ballot.

Not so fast: This initiative has to go to the state Supreme Court first in an inevitable lawsuit. And we’re sure the high court’s justices will give the Chanos opinion the due consideration and weight that it deserves.

• Cox Communications is not a charity. We know, because we pay them for their fine services at our spacious Henderson flat: Digital cable TV, digital video recording, and high-speed Internet access. (Love the Movies on Demand, guys! Keep it up!)

But Cox is set to receive a giant gift from the city of Las Vegas, which is all about welfare so long as the recipient is a huge business that doesn’t actually need it. (SEE, downtown redevelopment and WALTERS, Bill.) According to the Review-Journal’s City Hall reporter David McGrath Schwartz, the city wants to give Cox a seven-acre parcel for just $1.

Oh, there are all the usual excuses. The company is moving into West Las Vegas, and bringing 900 jobs to the area. Economic development. They’re taking over an empty building. Yada, yada, yada. It’s still a parcel of land the city is giving away, one that could have been sold, if not for top dollar, at least for more than $1.

We’ve said it before: The right-wingers have a point when they talk about government officials being too free to spend the public’s cash because it’s not their money. The city has raised to an art form the should-be-illegal practice of making a gift of public funds. It should stop. If the city has run out of legitimate uses of that money (funding police, firefighters, road building and repair, social services, business licensing, building and maintaining parks, and the like) it should start issuing refunds, or seek a decrease in property taxes. Yeah, we won’t hold our breath.

• Speaking of the city, did Mayor Oscar Goodman really tell ex-Councilman Steve Miller to “suck my big toe”? At a news conference?

We’re telling you, folks: The feces-hurling phase is just weeks away. Keep those cameras rolling!

• We see that Review-Journal business reporter Jennifer Robison documented the 61 new businesses that the Nevada Development Authority claims it brought to town during the last fiscal year. Seems Southern Nevada added 1,961 new jobs, with a five-year economic impact of $2 billion. (And those same businesses will pay $79 million to local governments in taxes during that period, and an additional $24 million to the state.)

All of which reminded us of Robison’s 2005 story and sidebar that alleged Nevada’s onerous new taxes — passed by the 2003 Legislature — were simply killing Nevada’s business climate.

Which leads us to wonder: How could this be? The only possibilities are:

a.) The NDA’s dazzling recruitment talent has overcome the state’s oppressive tax burden

b.) The massive reduction in the payroll tax (from 0.65 percent to 0.63 percent) enacted in 2005 has solved everything

c.) The fact that Nevada has no business income tax like surrounding states do, and, even had one been enacted in 2003, it would still have been lower than California’s

d.) Robison’s original story was bullshit

We’re going with “D,” but only because Robison herself has written stories directly contradicting her 2005 piece. Oddly, no correction or admission of error has even been published in the R-J. Yeah, we’re not holding our breath.

• Why does the Review-Journal hate the young people? And why does it hate journalists, as evidenced by this Ann Coulter op-ed column that ran in its pages?

• Did U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons really admit to “extortion” in recent profile in the R-J, as his gubernatorial primary opponent, state Sen. Bob Beers alleges?

To help you decide for yourself, we reprint the relevant passage herein:

“Gibbons tells a curious story about his first term in the Assembly. Perhaps intended to illustrate his ability to stand his ground, it also reads as a tale of political payback.

“The newly elected legislator told Delta, his employer, that he would need a six-month unpaid leave to serve in the Assembly. But unlike his previous airline, Delta didn’t have a public-service leave policy, and Gibbons was told he would have to choose between his job as a pilot and serving in the Legislature.

“Sure enough, when Gibbons went to Carson City he was fired for failing to show up to work. But he soon had a chance to get back at the airline.

“‘The Legislature was increasing the tax on jet fuel, and they put me in charge of the bill,’ Gibbons said. ‘Delta sent a representative to lobby, and guess who they had to come talk to? Me.’

“Because of the way the airline had treated Gibbons, its lobbyist got nowhere with him. Within days, Gibbons got a call from Delta saying he’d been rehired. When he returned to work after the legislative session, the airline had a public-service leave policy.

“‘I couldn’t believe Delta would be so stubborn when it’s so important to have a good relationship with the government,’ Gibbons said. ‘I think it was that lobbyist who went back and said, “This (leave policy) is silly, it could jeopardize our ability to survive.”‘”

We’re not lawyers or anything, but, to us, that that doesn’t just sound like a tale of political payback. It sounds like a public officer using his position in government to grant an unwarranted privilege, preference or advantage for himself.

Not only that, but it also kind of sounds like Delta gave, offered and promised, directly or indirectly, compensation, gratuity or reward to Gibbons with the intent to influence him with respect to an act, decision or vote. At the very least, you have to admit it seems like Gibbons may have implicitly asked for and received compensation, gratuity or reward upon an agreement or understanding that his vote, opinion or action upon a matter then pending would be influenced thereby. Don’t you think?

• And finally today, yes, that was us at Various Things & Stuff on the TV at 11:30 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday. It’s a new weekly political talk show on KTNV Channel 13 that we’re co-hosting with Heidi Harris, of famed KXNT-AM 840 talk-radio duo Alan Stock and Heidi Harris.

It’s a brand-new venture, and we’ve not done too much TV before, save for our appearances on Nevada Week in Review with Mitch Fox. So, don’t be too harsh in your judgments while we get the program off the ground. We’ve already gotten tons of unsolicited advice, some good, some bad, much of which we plan to use. But the whole concept of doing a show with a paper bag on our head, well, we just can’t go there. So, be forwarned: If you tunes in, you takes your chances. Don’t eat for at least a half-hour beforehand.

You know how in James Bond movies, there’s an evil villain trying to take over the world? And how in 1999’s Tomorrow Never Dies the villain was media mogul Elliot Carver, (Jonathan Price)?

Readers, meet the real-life Elliot Carver, MediaNews CEO William Dean Singleton. Like his cinematic counterpart, Singleton has bought up a lot of media, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area. Thanks to the recent sale of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain to the McClatchy chain, Singleton was able to pick up a few more papers, including the venerable San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times and the Monterey Press-Herald. All told, MediaNews owns 17 papers in and around San Francisco, including the San Francisco Chronicle Oakland Tribune. (UPDATE: The San Francisco Chronicle is owned by Hearst Corp.)

And that’s just not right, according to one advertiser, developer Clinton Reilly, who filed an anti-trust lawsuit at the tail end of last week.

Why do we in Las Vegas care about this? Good question, readers. It’s not just our obsession with all things California. It’s because our very own corporate overlords, the Stephens Media Group, are partners with a 26 percent interest in most of MediaNews’ California holdings, thanks to something called the California Newspaper Partnership. And that means Stephens, which owns CityLife and this blog, is a co-defendant with Singleton in the lawsuit.

And it’s a doozy. Consider these quotes, featured in the Las Vegas Sun on Saturday (the Stephens-owned Review-Journal somehow only found room for a brief):