» We don’t know how we could have forgotten, but we did. There was big news today, people! Our very own U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley was named to the House Ways & Means Committee. That’s a job long sought by every member of Nevada’s House delegation since John Ensign left in 1998 to unsuccessfully challenge U.S. Sen. Harry Reid.

The appointment is especially welcome because Berkley hasn’t always had the best relationship with Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Berkley backed pal Steny Hoyer for majority leader over Pelosi in 2001, and she defied Pelosi again in supporter Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, for majority leader over the Pelosi-endorsed John Murtha this year.

But all is forgotten, or at least temporarily set aside.

According to our research staff, Berkley is the first woman from Nevada to serve on the Ways & Means Committee, which handles trade and tariffs, health care, Social Security and a host of laws that affect industries like gambling and mining. (Federal gambling tax? Yeah, we don’t see that happening.)

So, congratulations to Berkley.

» And while we’re blogging, we can’t help but notice another couple transition teams from Gov.-elect Jim Gibbons, who himself never managed to snag a seat on Ways & Means. Or Appropriations. Or the chairmanship of Intelligence.

But whatever, people! He’s moved on. And so will we. To the business & industry and tourism and gaming transition teams!

We’ll bet you can guess the chair of the business group. Why, yes, it is Kara Kelley, president of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, which endorsed Gibbons for governor. The chamber is also simpatico with Gibbons’ anti-tax stances (and, we’re compelled to add, has as many good ideas for how to pay for vital services without taxes, which is to say, none). Also from the virulently anti-tax crowd: Mary Lau, president and CEO of the Retail Association of Nevada.

On the group are Republican Assemblyman Chad Christensen, whose creative approach to campaign finance accounting is literally record-breaking, and Lt. Gov.-elect Brian Krolicki, who has time on his hands now that he’s worked out the biggest dilemma he will face in his term in that office: where his actual office will be located. Also, Brady Industries CEO Bill Brady, who dropped out of a race for state senate under very mysterious circumstances, is emerging from the shadows to take part in this team.

Other high-profile business types involved include Jones Vargas President (and GOP national committeeman) Joe Brown, Rogich Communications Vice President Chris Cole, state Sen. Warren Hardy, ex-state Sen. Mark James, now CEO of the Frias Holding Co. and Tom Warden, vice president of communications and government relations at the Howard Hughes Co.

When it comes to tourism, Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman Bill Weidner will be heading things up, serving alongside longtime Venetian spokesman Andy Abboud. Wait, what’s this? Breaking with tradition, a true union representative on a Gibbons transition team? Why, it’s none other than D. Taylor, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Union Local 226, which picketed the Venetian before it was even open and fought a public-sidewalks lawsuit all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and won! We’ll just bet that Taylor and the Culinary are still dreaming of organizing workers at The Venetian.

Awkward!

Also on the tourism team are Lewis & Roca lobbyist Alfredo Alonso, Democratic ex-Mayor Jan Jones (say it isn’t so, Jan!), MGM Mirage vice president for corporate diversity and community relations Punam Mathur, Station Casinos chief lawyer Scott Neilson, as well as Station Vice President of corporate and government relations Lesley Pittman, ex-Attorney General candidate Scott Scherer and Luis Valera, director of public affairs for the Nevada Resort Association.

Well, that’s it folks. We think the Gibbons people are done transition teaming, since there’s only like 15 Nevadans left who aren’t on one of the many teams. We can’t wait to see what the come up with!

» So Gov. Kenny Guinn met with Gov.-elect Jim Gibbons, and spokesman for both men tried to convince the public that they don’t hate each other. No, it’s a simple matter of political differences!

Guinn and Gibbons "may have had some political differences, but never have had any personal problems with each other and have been working together on the transition," says Brent Boynton, Gibbons’ spokesman.

We know Boynton hasn’t been around the campaign for very long, so he may not know about the fact that, say, Guinn ran Republicans for Miller when Democratic ex-Gov. Bob Miller was seeking the governorship back in 1994. Who was the Republican candidate in that race? Oh, that’s right! Gibbons.

But surely Boynton knows that Guinn has been "working" on the transition in the sense that "working" means "screwing his successor as hard and as often as possible." That’s why Gibbons says he’ll put just "small fingerprints" on Guinn’s proposed budget. (As in "small fingerprints on the knife I use to carve out a whole lot of Guinn’s ideas.")

"There may have been disagreements on some policies, but that happens in politics. You’re not always going to agree," says Guinn spokesman Steve George. Yes, just a little disagreement in which Gibbons totally screwed Guinn by criticizing his tax plan in front of the entire Legislature, emboldening Assembly Republicans to hold up his plan. (The Legislature ultimately adopted a lamer plan.) We’re sure Guinn has forgotten about that by now.

Anyway, a picture is worth a thousand words, so take a look at this shot of Guinn and Gibbons. Do they look like old friends to you?

» Oh, thank God! The crisis has been averted! And Weasel-in-Chief Brian Krolicki gets to stay on the ground floor of the Capitol, instead of having to walk up all those stairs to obscurity on the second floor of the building.

It all started when Krolicki (aka "the whiner") didn’t want to give his first-floor office to Kate Marshall, which was odd, since Marshall was elected to the job that Krolicki now holds, state treasurer. After contemplating and wussing out of more important races, Krolicki had opted for the relatively obscure post of lieutenant governor. The problem? The lieutenant governor has an office on the second floor!

Commence whining, excuse-making, rationalizing, etc. from Krolicki about how he should get to keep his own office. It was embarrassing, kindergarten-like behavior that didn’t end even when he was publicly mocked for it! You’ve got to give it up for the Man Who Never Knew Shame!

But thanks to some accommodating governor’s office employees, Krolicki will get to move his desk to an annex on the east side of the Capitol building, just 30 steps from his old office, says the Review-Journal. Some of Gibbons’ new employees will take over the lieutenant governor’s office upstairs.

Now there’s a crisis averted, and in a symbolic way, too. Out in Washington, the West Wing of the White House is where the president works. The East Wing (kind of where Krolicki will be working come January) is reserved for the First Lady. No offense to ladies, of course.

» Reid’s free! The Senate Ethics Committee found there was "not substantial, credible evidence" that U.S. Sen. Harry Reid broke ethics laws when he accepted boxing credentials worth hundreds of dollars for free. Ethics gadfly Robert Rose had asked the committee to look into Reid’s acceptance of the tickets, which he promised never to do again after the matter was reported publicly.

We’re not sure we totally agree with the committee’s reasoning, given that the credentials could not help but be seen as a gift, albeit one from the Nevada Boxing Commission and not a private company or person seeking to influence the senator. But they are the final word, and we are not. We do, however, agree 100 percent with Reid, who said after the flap that he ought to have known the difference between something legal and ethical, and something that just doesn’t look right.

Amen, senator. And that’s not a bad lesson to carry into your new job as Senate majority leader.

» You know, we can honestly say that we’ve never really wanted to go to a North Las Vegas State of the City speech before. It’s not that we don’t think Mayor Mike Montandon wouldn’t give a good speech. (He could talk about, say, political money laundering.) It’s just that, well, we don’t really care about what happens in North Las Vegas.

Well, this year, things are different. We received in the mail the snazziest invite to a state of the anything speech we’ve ever gotten. It was an actual 3-D picture, with the city of North Las Vegas logo hovering over a pretty blue sky, with clouds. The North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce logo was there, too, since that group sponsors the event.

We’ll tell you, we are even now scrambling to clear our calendar for Jan. 11, which is when the speech takes place at the Texas Station hotel-casino. (It’s emceed by our friend Mitch Fox, and North Las Vegas Chamber President Bob Hart is going to give a business update.) Man, if this speech is anything like this invitation (which is to say, if the speech is also three-dimensional) it’s going to totally rock!

In the meantime, we’ll just pin this invite up to our bulletin board and admire it.

If you didn’t already know, you should now. We all should. Hatred inevitably leads to fascism, and fascism to unspeakable horror. That’s why we have to confront hatred wherever we find it, with the only thing that has ever worked: education. We do this so that we don’t have to confront fascism later on with rifles and bullets.

We’re not alarmists. We don’t think Pahrump is going to start building concentration camps or give rise to a xenophobic dictator who will exploit the fears of Americans in order to rise to power and institute a bloody rein reign of terror that would plunge the world into war.

But could that eventually happen? Perhaps. Which is why we have to speak out when it comes to the little things, like forcing illegal immigrants to register with the town. That’s the latest brainchild from Pahrump Town Board member Michael Miraglia, who brought you English only and the ordinance that says you can’t fly a foreign flag, which he only recently has learned is unconstitutional.

"The purpose is to create and incite racial tension. The perception is they hate us. It’s a racial thing. And the perception in this case is almost 100 percent real," says Fernando Romero, of Hispanics in Politics.

Romero’s right: This is born of hatred, and hatred must be opposed, by all people of good will, as soon as it rears its ugly head.

And while we’re on the subject, let’s address newly minted Assemblyman Ty Cobb’s bill draft to deny state benefits (except for emergency medical care and K-12 education) to illegal immigrants or their children. (He says it’s costing Nevada millions, but there is no proof to back that up.)

While Cobb’s proposal doesn’t evidence the alarming fascist tendency that Miraglia’s does, make no mistake: They have something in common. What kind of a person would stand at the schoolhouse door and tell a child who learned English (a notoriously difficult tongue to master, by the way), studied hard, got good grades and earned a Millennium Scholarship that he or she can’t have one, because they or their parents are not from here? A mean-spirited person, at best. A hater, at worst.

People like Miraglia exploit fear and ignorance, in a misguided bid to defend the United States. In the process, they demean it, and its millions of good people. If we all stood up to people like him, and if we told people like Cobb what he’s doing is wrong as well, we’d be better off for it.

Because no matter how benign it begins, hatred always grows into fascism eventually. And we all know where that leads. Or we should.