How do highly trained U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents search for illegal immigrants at McCarran International Airport? Here’s Lloyd Easterling, supervsiory agent in charge of the Yuma Sector, which includes Las Vegas, in the Review-Journal:

"Agents look for people whose manner is nervous or confused. Clothing and hygiene will also spark curiosity," he said.

Oh, come on, Supervisory Special Agent Easterling! This is McCarran International Airport we’re talking about here! It’s confusing from the time you try to get to the parking lot (watch the colored triangles merge!) to when you come home and try to figure out which merry-go-round has your bag (they change it even after they give you the first assignment, so watch out!).

Got anything else for us?

"For example, if clothes are dirty, like they haven’t been changed for days, or they have cactus needles sticking out," Easterling added.

Cactus needles? Seriously? Are we looking for illegal immigrants or Speedy Gonzales? Hey, you know what else is a dead giveaway? Sombreros and pinatas! Or at least cowboy hats and cervesas!

Boy, we sure feel safe.

» It looks like the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education is prepared to change the name of the Community College of Southern Nevada (and the Western Nevada Community College) by dropping the word "community."

"We just want to be proud of our school," says student body President Presley Conkle. (Conkle has written pieces for CityLife, by the way, although not on this topic.)

Really? Well, if the awful stigma of the word "community" robs you of pride, when, we wonder, why did you enroll there in the first place? And if the academic program is solid — which it must be, since students have plenty of time to petition to change the school’s name — then why does in matter at all?

These questions weren’t really asked by the regents, who ought to go in for a name change of their own (we’re accepting suggestions! Send them to SSebelius@lvcitylife.com and we’ll publish the best ones in an upcoming blog. Remember, the meaner the better!). Instead, regents worried about whether or not "the mission" of the community college would be compromised…

…and then they promptly went ahead and OK’d a plan for the community college to partner with three schools in China in order to supply Las Vegas-based casino companies with gambling industry workers.

Oh, the hell with it. If the "Community" College of Southern Nevada has gone global, we may as well scotch the word "community."

» Quotable: "In meeting with patients at the clinic Friday, Gov. Gibbons said he learned that most of the addicts took drugs ‘not to get high, but to keep themselves from feeling bad.’" — from a Review-Journal story about Gibbons touring a drug treatment clinic founded by Miriam Adelson, wife of Venetian owner Sheldon Adelson.

We just don’t know sometimes…

» According to Las Vegas Sun columnist John Katsilometes, the mistress of ceremonies at Gibbons’ inaugural ball, Lia Roberts, blanked on the name of Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki when introducing officials on Friday. We think she was fumbling for "nevăstuică," which she’d more easily recognize in her native Romanian as "weasel."

» And finally today, the big news of the day is that Gibbons bypassed Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas, in favor of Las Vegas Councilman Lawrence Weekly to replace Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates.

Weekly’s a good choice, although not as good as our pick, former state Sen. Joe Neal. (C’mon, Neal was a pioneer back in the day, and he’s principled as hell.) But Weekly’s done a good job representing his ward on the City Council, emerging from the shadow of a political battle that pitted Mayor Oscar Goodman against then-Councilman Michael McDonald. (McDonald favored Weekly and Orlando Sanchez, now the city’s director of neighborhood services, for two brand-new council seats; Goodman went along with Weekly but thwarted McDonald’s perceived grab for power by introducing Las Vegas to the open ethical sore that was ex-Councilman Michael Mack. Thanks, again, Mayor!)

So, congrats to Weekly, who’s leaving at the perfect time: Filing opened Jan. 23 for his Ward 5 seat, which means that, if the council picks somebody to fill Weekly’s shoes for the period between now at the municipal elections (primary day is April 3, with the runoff June 5) that person won’t really have the advantage of incumbency. Filing closes Friday, so anybody who wants to be a councilman and lives in Ward 5, now’s your chance!

CORRECTION: Our mistake: While Orlando Sanchez was the city’s director of neighborhood services for a time, he was promoted last year to the rank of deputy city manager. We regret the error.

Now, everybody knows we at Various Things & Stuff are members of the Socialist World Workers Party (we only re-registered Democrat so we could vote in the 2006 gubernatorial primary). So, it may be only natural for us to find things that we don’t necessarily like in the administration of Gov. Jim Gibbons.

But we never thought we’d find this many things. Hell, we didn’t know there were this many things.

The latest: Gibbons’ office dutifully announces the appointment of Hatice Gecol as director of the Nevada state Energy Office, and as the energy/science adviser to the governor. (Gecol is a professor of chemical and metallurgical engineering at UNR, but still, she’ll have to stay on her toes, because as everybody knows, Gibbons is also a scientist. He has a degree in geology!)

Here’s part of what the Wednesday news release said:

"’Alternative energy development and energy independence has [sic] been a priority of mine since entering public service and I intend to continue fostering pro-growth policies as governor,’ said Governor Gibbons. ‘I am confident that Hatice Gecol’s extensive experience will provide an invaluable resource to our state’s ongoing efforts to increase our alternative energy capabilities."

 

But after Gibbons met with the Review-Journal’s editorial board, Friday all of his goodwill and confidence were forgotten. Here’s a small portion of that story:

"Gibbons boasted of having ‘hired a very bright lady on energy.’

 

"Asked her name, he said that he couldn’t pronounce it and that she was ‘Indian.’

"Gibbons’ energy adviser, appointed Wednesday, is Hatice Gecol, who is Turkish."

Oh, snap! Not only could the governor not remember a five-letter name, he got the nationality wrong! Thank God he didn’t say she was "Pakistani." Them’s fighting words, to the Indian people, at least.

But let’s just say that somebody in Gibbons’ press shop totally made up that quote and put it in Gibbons’ mouth, thus allowing the governor to avoid having to, you know, actually say the name himself. And let’s say that he forgot, albeit just two days later, who he’d appointed to the job. (He remembered she was a "bright lady," right? That’s something.)

There’s still no excuse for Gibbons to have said what he said earlier in his sit-down with the R-J, which was that the blue ribbon panel on state roads failed to say how to pay for $3.8 billion in backlogged projects. "They never told us how to fund it. All the blue-ribbon commission told us was we need a number of dollars…. It didn’t do what I think it should have done, which is be all-inclusive of all the creative ways to fund it," Gibbons said.

In fact, as everyone who reads the paper knows, the blue ribbon panel had a whole friggin’ list of ways to make up the $3.8 billion shortfall. Panelists didn’t endorse any specific recommendation, but they sure had some.

Don’t believe us? Well, according to the R-J, funding options include: a slight increase in the payroll tax; an increase in the state government service tax, paid via car-registration fees; reducing the depreciation allowance on automobiles for purposes of the personal property tax; indexing the gas tax; doubling the cost of a driver’s license from $20 to $40; increasing the state sales tax by one-eighth of 1 percent; using some of the state’s surplus for highway construction (which Gibbons did in "his" budget, inherited from ex-Gov. Kenny Guinn); increasing the car rental tax by 1 percent; a 3-cent increase in the diesel fuel tax; a 1 percent increase in the gambling tax; using sales tax proceeds from cars for building roads, instead of putting that money in the general fund.

And, just in case the governor doesn’t read the R-J, the recommendations were also included in an editorial in the Las Vegas Sun.

Now, we’re not saying that Gibbons would agree with any of these recommendations, most of which call for an increase in taxes, to which he says he’s opposed. And surely, they’re not as sensible as, saying, selling water rights under state highways to raise money for roads, a plan Gibbons has advocated that would fall far short of fixing the $3.8 billion hole. But you cannot say that the blue ribbon commission didn’t at least identify ways the shortfall could be fixed.

How did we know? By reading the paper. And if we can figure that out, so should Gibbons, or at least somebody on his staff. Don’t you think?

And let’s not even get started on trying to figure out what in the hell he meant when he said this, "If they can get the support in the Legislature to pass a tax, and it will pass my veto, I will pass it."

Oh, if we could only nap until 2010…