You can learn a lot from debates, candidate forums and the like. Last night, for example, we were overjoyed to learn that U.S. Rep. Jon Porter was alive. See, when he didn’t return phone messages we left with his staff, we feared that he’d perished. But no! He’s alive!

Alas, we didn’t get a chance to talk to Porter since he left the candidate forum, sponsored by Congregation Ner Tamid, immediately after his face off with Democratic challenger Tessa Hafen. But we called his people today, in the hopes of landing him on our TV show, Political Insiders, on KTNV Channel 13. We’ll let you know what happens.

What else did we learn? We’re glad you asked!

• State Sen. Dina Titus sure has a quick wit. “Jim Gibbons wanted to be chairman of the subcommittee on intelligence, which is a little ironic in and of itself,” Titus quipped at one point.

Good one, senator. But forum host Jon Ralston quickly stepped in to correct Titus’ error: Gibbons was passed over for the chairmanship of the House Select Committee on Intelligence.

• Titus also has good ideas. One she proposed was public power, which died in Las Vegas back in 2002.

Although voters approved (by 57 percent) a ballot initiative that urged the Southern Nevada Water Authority to take over at Nevada Power, the plan went nowhere, and the authority eventually dropped it. But Titus said publicly owned power companies could provide energy at up to 20 percent less than a for-profit utility can.

• Hafen is extremely careful in her public speaking, and hardly ever makes a mistake. That’s not a bad thing, unless your audience gets the idea that your answers are rehearsed.

• Porter was at pains to stress that the times are serious, and call for serious leadership. (Don’t worry, congressman, we at Various Things & Stuff are not running for your seat! We’re nowhere near serious enough for that job.)

We face “serious challenges,” Porter said, later allowing that they were “serious, serious challenges.” And then, later: “It’s a serious time. It’s time for serious leadership.”

What are you saying, congressman? That Hafen isn’t serious?

• Porter had a few quotable quotes, that we totally promise we will try not to take out of context.

– “We frisk senior citizens and babies to make sure that they’re safe, as we should.”

Don’t we frisk them to see if they’re toting anything unsafe?

– “Without homeland security, we don’t have a homeland.”

OK.

– Amnesty for illegal immigrants is a “free ride. And I don’t believe in a free ride.”

Yet, he voted for bills that gave huge tax breaks to oil companies, even as they were making world-record profits. Hmmmm….

– “I think [Secretary of Defense] Donald Rumsfeld is doing the best that he can. Certainly there’s things we can do. War is not perfect.”

Indeed, war is not perfect, congressman.

– “Should we cut and run? Absolutely not. Should we bring our sons and daughters home? Absolutely.”

Set aside the false alternatives here: How exactly are we going to not cut and run and bring our sons and daughters home? By making Iraq the 51st state, of course! Once Iraq is admitted to the union, our sons and daughters will be home, and won’t have cut or run! Brilliant, if we do say so ourselves.

– “Absolutely pharmaceutical [companies] should be paying more of their fair share.”

Um, do they know you feel this way, congressman?

– “Right now, Democrats in Congress are trying to take away all the tax breaks we have created.”

You mean the tax breaks that have disproportionately helped the rich while at the same time driving up the deficit and the national debt, saddling our children with the irresponsibility of a Republican Congress seemingly at odds with the Republican value of frugality? Those tax cuts?

• Still, Porter acquitted himself well on some of Hafen’s sharper attacks. On prescription drugs, he pointed out that 300,000 more Nevadans have coverage than otherwise would have. He noted he served a subpoena on the White House in connection with a probe of Yucca Mountain, and voted to override President George W. Bush’s veto of a bill allowing embryonic stem cell research. And he opposed privatizing the North Las Vegas airport, as the government advocated.

He took it on the chin, however, when he embraced the mean-spirited immigration bill that would have made illegal immigrants felons, and when he failed to articulate some kind of exit strategy for Iraq. (Then again, save for the Democrats who want troops out now, nobody has articulated an exit strategy for Iraq.) Hafen also got him when she noted he’d voted to increase student loan rates, a fact Porter didn’t dispute.

• Metro Police Undersheriff Doug Gillespie is a little stiff, and certainly not the campaigner that businessman Jerry Airola is. But he held his own when the candidates for top cop took the stage.

(Nobody asked, but we’d say the best thing Gillespie could do is to stop calling himself a “change agent.” This isn’t chemistry, undersheriff!)

• What’s the real deal? Statistics flew fast and furious as to what the crime rate actually is, making it hard for anybody in the audience to tell. But we’re pretty sure that Airola could not have hired as many cops as Sheriff Bill Young has without raising taxes, as he claimed.

• But we think Airola has some good points, including the fact that Metro didn’t anticipate the growth of Las Vegas, or its popularity as a tourist town, effectively enough. Then again, what government agency did? Only now are we really getting good at peering into the future, and even that prognostication has it faults.

• Airola has some good lines. “I’m sorry, Doug. Your version of what you believe is happening out there and reality are two different things,” he said at one point. And again: “This is the Titanic folks, and we’re on it. I don’t want to be told to rearrange the furniture.”

• But Gillespie has some good replies, too. He said FBI stats show crime is actually down in the last two years. Car theft is not as bad in New York partly because 53 percent of the people there don’t own cars. (And c’mon, where you gonna go in a car in New York? Have you seen that traffic?) And the millions of tourists who pop in for a visit aren’t included in the FBI stats, which make our crime rate look worse.

If you’re like us, a day of sentencing people for crimes against the people makes you hungry. And that’s why we’ve been slaving over a hot stove to bring you some delicious Quick Hits! Here we go:

• Justice is served. It’s fitting that ex-Clark County Commissioner Dario Herrera got four years and two months in federal prison for his conviction in the G-sting case. As U.S. District Court Judge Larry Hicks noted, Herrera lied his ass off on the witness stand during the trial. (We’re paraphrasing, of course.)

“I have never before witnessed a witness spin so carefully the evidence. This jury could see through that with the drop of a hat, but it went on and on and on,” Hicks said, according to the Review-Journal.

But what’s clearly come to an end is Herrera’s notion that his charm and looks can rescue him from any scrape. Oh, and his faith: Herrera converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and supposedly reformed his life, but even that couldn’t keep him from simply admitting his guilt and taking his punishment. Isn’t lying a sin in the Mormon religion?

Herrera now has four years to contemplate that, among other things. His sentence starts Jan. 12. (Fellow defendant Mary Kincaid-Chauncey, who told the truth during the trial, drew a sentence of three years and five months.)

• What the hell? We know the Republican Congress considers multi-billion-dollar oil companies worthy of charity, but a global charity helping out a giant newspaper conglomerate? We were shocked to learn that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had loaned money to the MediaNews Group for its purchase of several San Francisco Bay-area newspapers from McClatchy Co.

(Full disclosure: Our corporate overlords, the Arkansas-based Stephens Media Group, are hooked up with MediaNews and Gannett in something called the California Newspaper Partnership, which owns a lot of papers in the Golden State. This fact is provided as a public service, seeing as how the Stephens-owned Review-Journal somehow neglected to mention it in a Business section wire story on the Gates money today.)

The exact amount of the Gates Foundation money was unknown, but was apparently disclosed in a Securities & Exchange Commission filing by MediaNews. Other investors include GE Capital Corp. and Blue Shield of California.

The MediaNews deal has been controversial, as some have alleged it is an attempt by MediaNews honcho William Dean Singleton to shut out competition in the Bay area, where the only real competition comes from the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle. A developer and advertiser has sued to block the sale, but courts have declined to intervene thus far.

What’s next, Gates Foundation? Investing in computers that only run a certain company’s software in order to corner the market?

Oh, wait… now it all makes sense.

• God have mercy on our souls. Speaking of journalism (one more time, we promise) its ignominious end was featured today, also in the Business section. It seems the Orange County Register has introduced a stripped-down, easy-to-read version of itself, a daily tabloid sized paper called the OC Post. It will sell for 25 cents.

Now, we at Various Things & Stuff grew up in Huntington Beach, Calif., and we’ve seen the Register shrink from its roots as a great paper. It takes about 20 minutes to read now, so who the hell needs a shorter version of that? It would be like writing a summary of Cliff’s Notes.

“The OC Post … is more colorful and has shorter stories than a traditional newspaper. It caters to young, upwardly mobile singles and couples with an above-average income who are too busy to read The Register but want more local content than they can get from television news,” The Associated Press report reads.

Seriously? People who are too busy to read the regular paper? What we want to know is, what the fuck are these people doing that they can’t take 20 minutes and read the goddamn paper? You just know they’re watching American Idol or shows like that. Text messaging each other. Reading People or some other crazy thing like that.

In our world, nobody can’t spare 20 minutes to get informed about a little thing we like to call reality. Creating a picture book newspaper isn’t the answer people! Education is the answer!

Then again, something tells us the good folks at Freedom Communications, which owns the Register and the OC Post are concerned more about the “upwardly mobile” part of their demographic. They’ve got money, and the newspaper folks have ads. It’s a match made in capitalist heaven. (And you won’t believe who God is in capitalist heaven, either.)

There’s another mini-flap in the world of journalism over non-disclosure at the Las Vegas Sun. But this time, instead of being commercial, it’s simply tragic.

It seems that the Greenspun family — owners of the Sun and plenty of other businesses, including developer American Nevada and a partnership with Station Casinos in the Green Valley Ranch — donated $100,000 to a PAC called Nevada Tomorrow.

The PAC, in turn, ponied up a lot of money trying to defeat the Tax and Spending Control initiative, which would limit the growth of the state budget to the combined rate of population and inflation.

And, we should note, the Greenspuns also apparently headquartered the PAC in their offices up on Green Valley Parkway.

So far, there’s no problem. The Greenspuns are citizens, just like anybody else, and they have the right to advocate their point of view. And they are hardly the only donors: The PAC has 28 individual contributors ranging from Harrah’s to university Chancellor Jim Rogers to the Nevada Resort Association, to casino man Phil Maloof to MGM Mirage to uber-lawyer Scott Canepa.

In fact, the Greenspuns’ $100,000 amounts to — remember this number, as it will become important later on —10.58 percent of the $945,000 that Nevada Tomorrow took in.

So what’s the big deal? Well, it appears that Sun Editor Brian Greenspun wrote about TASC without disclosing that he’d contributed money to the efforts to defeat it. And by failing to report his contribution to his readers, he created a conflict of interest for himself as well as every reporter or columnist for the Sun who wrote about TASC, even if they were unaware of the contribution. (And we have no reason to believe anyone besides Greenspun himself was aware of it.)

Oh, and before you ask, the Greenspun contributions were made on April 11 and June 10. And just 15 days later, Greenspun wrote this: “…the effort by TASC folks to tie the hands of legislators and other elected officials when it comes to raising revenues and force any effort to raise taxes beyond a set amount to a vote of the people.

“I’m all for the people voting. But not every time the fastest growing state in the union needs money. That is a sure path backwards for a state that has everything to look forward to as it leads the nation in growth and opportunity.

“But taking TASC to task has to wait for another day.”

Now this is where the tragedy part comes in. Greenspun could easily have avoided the conflict and strengthened his argument, if he’d just appended something like this to those lines: “And I and my family feel so strongly that TASC is going to harm our state that we have donated $100,000 to the anti-TASC campaign. We put our money where our mouths are, because it’s that important. And we urge those with the means to make similar donations.”

Presto! Conflict cured, credibility doubly established, issue over. (By the way, that column is worth a read if you haven’t seen it. Greenspun takes the R-J to task — no pun intended — for bitching about Democrats standing in the way of President George W. Bush’s judicial picks, and then bitching when those conservative judges get on the court and make bad rulings.)

And you know something else that makes this tragic? Greenspun is absolutely right on the issue! TASC is bad for Nevada! TASC will tie the hands of state lawmakers. It will force lawmakers to make cuts in budgets where the state can ill-afford cuts. Despite the conflict, Greenspun’s donation is getting that message out to the people, and it’s a message they desperately need to hear.

Alas, there’s a lot of static on that channel, thanks to the anti-tax Review-Journal learning — and trumpeting — the donation and lack of disclosure. The R-J revealed the donation on Aug. 15, no doubt to the embarrassment of some Sun scribes. And our corporate overlord-in-chief, Sherm Frederick, weighed in on Sunday, slamming Greenspun for the conflict. (In addition, an editorial mentioned the Greenspun/anti-TASC connection, too.)

We won’t shed tears for Greenspun on this; as we’ve said, he should have disclosed. But we will agree with our colleague Jon Ralston, who noted that Frederick’s use of the term “bankrolled” and the editorial’s use of the phrase “a coalition of public employees financed by the owners of the Las Vegas Sun” are both misleading, at best. As we’ve discussed above, the Greenspun contributions are but 10 percent of the anti-TASC PAC’s total haul.

We must part ways with Ralston, however, when he describes the Sun as merely a business in a stable of other businesses owned by the Greenspuns. “We who work for the Great Greenspun Behemoth have accepted that it is more than a media company, that it has development, business and gaming interests that can make reporters and columnists uncomfortable,” Ralston wrote in his e-mail FLASH newsletter Monday.

We think it’s more insidious than that: The Greenspun companies — all of them — seem to exist for a single purpose, which is promoting Las Vegas. What’s good for Las Vegas, in turn, is good for the Greenspun companies, which build places for people to live, to gamble, to book their Las Vegas vacations and to advertise their products and services.

In the case of American Nevada, or Vegas.com, for example, they promote the town well. Green Valley is a wonderful place to live, and Vegas.com is at the forefront of travel sites with innovative ideas like ticket-and-reservation kiosks recently installed in the Burbank, Calif., airport, with more to come.

But when the promote-Vegas zeitgeist comes to the Sun, or other Greenspun publications, trouble begins. Because journalism isn’t supposed to promote; it’s supposed to elucidate truth, and truth doesn’t always make Las Vegas look like a shiny city on a hill. And that does more than just make journalists uncomfortable. In this case, it put them smack in the middle of an awful conflict.

This isn’t to say that Ralston and some other dedicated journalists at the Sun don’t do a good job; they do. In fact, that paper has some damn fine reporters and editors producing some excellent copy. (It also has some writers to whom whoredom comes easily and often, unfortunately.)

But, from this promote-uber alles perspective, it’s not surprising that Greenspun didn’t disclose his donation. We have no doubt that in his mind he was simply acting in what he saw as the best interests of the community. And who could question that? The R-J’s criticisms fall on his deaf ears, since he long ago decided the out-of-state owners of the larger paper don’t give a damn about Las Vegas or Nevada, or anything else but money.

None of that excuses him from his journalistic duty to disclose conflicts, however. In this case, it’s tragic that he didn’t. Because in this case, he’s absolutely right, on the issue and on doing right for Nevada. And a little disclosure could only have made him more right.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: We at Various Things & Stuff worked at the Sun from 1993-1997, and at the R-J from 2000-2005. This blog, as well as the newspaper we now edit, CityLife, are owned by the Arkansas-based Stephens Media Group, which is a partner with the Greenspuns in a joint-operating agreement that sees both newspaper distributed together daily.)