• Thanks, Sen. Reid! We wax more eloquent in our column in CityLife this week, but we couldn’t let Monday pass without a nod to Harry Reid’s role in getting Nevada moved up — way up — in choosing a Democratic presidential candidate in 2008. The early party caucus, in January 2008, will give the state an unprecedented voice in national politics, and will no doubt see candidates on the stump in the Silver State as never before.

Reid told us in an interview for last week’s cover story that he brings a lot back to Nevada. We had no idea how much, until news of the state’s coup broke Saturday. State Democrats owe Reid a big thank you for this plum, perhaps one of the most important things he’s brought back to Nevada in his Senate career.

• We said recently that Mayor Oscar Goodman would soon enter his final phase in public office, the feces-throwing phase, but we had no idea it would happen so soon. Goodman’s apparently been going around town proposing the stocks for graffiti artists, according to the Review-Journal. He’s even asked the city attorney’s office to research whether it would be legal, or a violation of the Bill of Rights’ ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

So, let us get this straight: A former criminal defense attorney, ostensibly trained and practicing in the area of constitutional law, doesn’t know whether putting a tagger in the stocks and letting passers-by throw paint in their faces, is unconstitutional or not?

And, in order to find out, he’s asked city lawyers to spend time looking into the matter?

It’s either that, or Goodman’s need to see his name in print and face on TV has overcome what’s left of his gin-addled mind. Either way, it’s not good. Is there any provision in the Municipal Code to remove from office a man who’s apparently gone bat-shit crazy?

• So the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce endorsed U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons because he represents the interests of the business group? That’s what a chamber spokeswoman told the Las Vegas Sun this weekend.

We don’t buy it, however. Consider this: Gibbons has come out in support of an increase in the minimum wage. The chamber opposes it. Gibbons wants collective bargaining, at least for state corrections officers. The chamber has always opposed that. Gibbons has been named “porker of the month” by Citizens Against Government Waste for a particularly egregious bit of pork-barrel spending. The chamber, we presume, is against pork-barrel spending.

So why does Gibbons represent the interests of the chamber’s members again?

The fact is, state Sen. Bob Beers best represents the chamber’s membership, almost perfectly. Not only is Beers a member and a “prospector” for the group (“prospectors” look to recruit new members), he’s in agreement with the chamber on all of its major issues.

But Beers got overlooked and Gibbons got the nod. Why? Because the chamber saw what everyone else thinks they see, the fact that Gibbons has the best chance to win the race. That, and only that, is why the chamber endorsed him.

So why not just say that? Because it sounds cynical and impolitic. And these days, you don’t want that, even if what you’re saying is true. So the chamber had to put out the party line, and hope people bought it. (Fear not, chamber: Most people probably did. Just not anybody who knows anything about politics.)

A final note: The chamber fudging came in a Sun story about Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt not getting the support she thinks she should because she’s a woman. (Hunt is a longtime businesswoman and chamber member who, like Beers, was passed over for the group’s endorsement.) But the decision had nothing whatever to do with gender. Once again, it comes down to viability.

And in that, the chamber, big gambling, developers and everybody else follows a simple rule: Back a winner. It doesn’t matter if that potential winner is a man, a woman, or a cross-dressing hermaphrodite. Everybody wants to back the winner. Keep that in mind the next time somebody tries to tell you it’s all about “principles” or “interests.” Or the next time a cross-dressing hermaphrodite runs.

• Well, at least state Treasurer Brian Krolicki paid for these ads himself.

Krolicki, running for lieutenant governor, has slammed his primary opponent, businesswoman Barbara Lee Woollen for leasing equipment to the makers of “adult films” and “pornography.” (Research by KTNV Channel 13 reveals the movies and TV series in question are rated “R,” and thus by definition not pornography, but that’s not important right now.)

What’s important is that Krolicki and his campaign are obviously starting to worry that Woollen is starting to attract votes with her one-woman crusade against illegal immigration, which Woollen has pledged to fight as lieutenant governor. (If you’re asking yourself what the lieutenant governor of Nevada has to do with illegal immigration, the answer is, not a damn thing.) But Woollen, who says she’ll introduce bills to deny state benefits to illegal immigrants, is trying to latch on to the most white-hot issue of the times, and trying to bring Krolicki in with her.

So, Krolicki finds that Woollen’s movie company, Cinelease, has rented equipment to some racy movies, and he slams her for going against the Republican values she’s touted in her ads. It’s fair game, as Woollen opened the door wide open by claiming to support Republican values. And the Krolicki ad forced her to lamely declare she’d sue, not to mention forcing her to utter mega-lame quotes like this:

“I can unequivocally say Cinelease does not actively, or knowingly, seek out pornographic projects to rent its equipment to. Personally, I’m offended by pornography. I don’t watch pornography. We’re better off without pornography.”

C’mon, Woollen! You claimed to represent traditional Republican values. And making money is the most traditional Republican value of all, isn’t it? Just because what our friend the Las Vegas Gleaner calls “the churchy wing” of the party doesn’t like it shouldn’t mean you can’t profit on soft-core skin, should it? Just so long as the grips are bona fide U.S. citizens, right?

Anyway, this marks a change in the Krolicki ad strategy. Heretofore, he’s mostly used ads paid for by private firms involved with state programs like the prepaid tuition thing to showcase him … you know, doing stuff. This ad, however, was paid for by his campaign. And that’s a good thing.

• More Republican values agenda, folks! Just what we need after our long, dark night of … five plus years of Republican rule? Anyway, our very own fertilized-embryo-loving U.S. Sen. John Ensign is back, with a bill that would make it illegal to transport a minor across state lines for the purposes of obtaining an abortion in order to skirt state-level parental consent laws. In an odd twist for the trial-lawyer-hating Ensign (c’mon, senator, they were once fertilized embryos, too!) the bill would allow parents to sue violators.

Democrats and pro-choice forces have responded that the bill would hurt teens whose pregnancy was the result of incest, and, shockingly, the first draft doesn’t have an exception for that. (Republicans say they’re working on an amendment.) But the real story is twofold, and brought to us by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and our other senator, Harry Reid.

CBO says: The bill won’t cost much to enforce, since the practice of transporting teens across state lines to get abortions is rare. And,

Harry Reid says: “As important as people feel this issue is, how does it compare to what’s going on Iraq? How does it compare to what’s going on in the lives of Americans trying to pay for their gasoline?”

So, Ensign has a bill to ban a crime that hardly ever happens, while he and his caucus ignore bigger issues. In fact, let’s do the lists, shall we?

Republican Priorities (as exemplified in the party’s “values agenda”):

1. Ban flag burning

2. Ban gay marriage

3. Ban federal funding of potentially life-saving research into embryonic stem cells (aside from existing stem cell lines).

4. Protect words “under God” in Pledge of Allegiance by banning court rulings on the topic.

5. Banning rare crime of transporting teens across state lines to get abortion, in order to skirt parental notification laws.

Actual Priorities (as exemplified by a little thing we like to call “reality”):

1. Finding a solution to the crisis in Middle East

2. Finding a way out of the ongoing fiasco that is the Iraq occupation

3. Dealing with the record deficit and record national debt

4. Dealing with the lack of preparation for major storms

5. Dealing with the axis of evil: Iran getting nuclear weapons and North Korea testing their missiles

6. Dealing with global warming/environmental problems

7. Dealing with soaring and sustained high gasoline prices

8. Dealing with the total lack of intelligent, forward-looking energy policy

You know, now that we think about it, the real Republican agenda (you know, the one that rewards rich people and rich corporations at the expense of regular people) has actually caused or made worse many of the items on the reality-agenda list.

We’d call on the GOP to address some of the items on the latter list, but we know how zygote-crazy they get every even-numbered year. Let’s just hope that those being pandered to — they’re called “values voters” — decide they, too, want action on some of the real problems. What will the GOP do then? Oh, how we’d love to find out!