Three-hour waits outside McCarran International Airport? And they’re handing out garbage bags to shield people from the rain, because the lines were so long, they had to wait outside? Did nobody at Southwest Airlines (where the lines were the longest) get the memo that there was a few special events in town this weekend? Like the NBA All-Star Game, the MAGIC Convention and (our favorite) Chinese New Year, ushering in the Year of the Pig? What’s up, Southwest?

Combine that with the indecipherable signage at the airport, and you’ve got problems. (We visited last week, and instead of short-term parking found ourselves driving amidst the shuttle buses and limos! All because we were just one lane off! And when we swung around for another try, we nearly hit a horribly confused old man in a Cadillac who had come to a full stop trying to figure out where the hell he should go!)

But we have a good friend who works at the airport (who must remain nameless for security reasons) who tells us regularly that we’re full of it, and points to the fact that McCarran received the J.D. Power & Associates award for overall airport satisfaction, ranking No. 1 in the nation. She tells us that most of McCarran’s operations were as smooth as a Michael Jordan dunk on Monday. And with that, we’ve made our first, and only, NBA-related simile for this blog.

On with today’s mega-helping of Quick Hits!

» Mayor Oscar Goodman is hitting the right notes as he prepares a presentation for the NBA, to be heard in April in New York, for Las Vegas to be the permanent home for a team. The NBA has a problem with betting on pro basketball, which according to our colleague Erin Neff, brings in about $320 million per year.

"They’re [casinos] the economic engine of this valley. I will not go around them," Goodman told the Review-Journal last week. "That would be like cutting off my nose to spite my face. In order for the arena, the whole concept of a franchise in Las Vegas to be successful, it has to be a partnership with the whole community. There can’t be division."

We’ll definitely do our part, mayor, by attending games and eating and drinking our weight in beer and hot dogs!

But we think the mayor’s on to something, since a gambling industry insider hinted to us Friday that the industry might accept taking only the Las Vegas team off the betting boards, provided that taxpayers don’t have to put up any money for the arena in which the new team would play. Given that Goodman has said he’s got a way to build an arena without taxpayer dollars, it seems to us that things might be coming together!

P.S. Don’t cut off your nose, mayor! That would just look weird.

» Gov. Jim Gibbons is busy denying that he ever did anything wrong when it comes to his good friend, Warren Trepp. But we already know that Gibbons took an unreported private jet flight and Caribbean cruise from Trepp, after he’d helped Trepp’s company get lucrative, black-budget contracts. The e-mails (previously reported by the Wall Street Journal) only make things look worse.

But it wouldn’t be a Gibbons-style scandal without a Gibbons-style screwup in making the Gibbons-style defense. In the Las Vegas Sun Friday, it was this: After telling a Reno TV station that he "had nothing to do with any contract," the Sun revealed that Gibbons put out a news release in June 2004 saying he’d requested and obtained $3 million in federal money for eTreppid, Trepp’s company. Whoops. If only he knew spin like he knows water, from the ground up.

» Quotable: "Gibbons is trying and I think will be a good governor. We need to move on." — Dr. Garn Mabey, Assembly minority leader. Um, actually doc, this scandal just got revved up. You see, at this stage, you’re supposed to say "he’s innocent until proven guilty, and he should get his day in court." Then, you switch over to "these are partisan charges designed to undercut his effectiveness in office." (You know, more than Gibbons himself undercuts his effectiveness in office.) Only then do you move on to "it’s old news, and its time to move on." Nobody busts out "move on" on the second day of a scandal! It’s just not done. Didn’t you get the Karl Rove handbook when you took office? Check around your desk.

» Oh, so apparently, black lawmakers in Carson City are frequently mistaken for each other. The Las Vegas Sun’s Patrick Coolican won’t say who, but apparently even veteran lobbyists can’t tell the difference between people like Assemblyman William Horne and state Senator Maurice Washington. (That’s easy! Horne is the one who doesn’t engage in fraud against the state!)

Anyway, we say to the brothers in Carson: Cry us a river! Trying Try looking like us at Various Things & Stuff and getting mistaken for state Sen. Bob Beers! You think that’s a picnic? Oh, and it happens all the freakin’ time, too! We have to explain how we’re not that guy, how we do support higher salaries for teachers and how we don’t want congressional reject Sharron Angle’s rejected bills put into law. It’s exhausting! And just when we’re done with that, somebody takes us for former Assemblyman (and current lobbyist) Josh Griffin! (OK, to be fair, the person who did that is slightly insane, but still, it happened.)

Here’s a handy guide on telling us pleasantly plump, bald, white folks apart: Griffin dresses better than the rest of us, and could eat both Beers and us under the table, combined. Beers is the one who has fun with numbers, and is constantly scheming to cut your taxes. (He’s also been known to ride around in an RV.) We’re the one who’s always scribbling something down in a notebook, saying bad words and usually have a cocktail or a cigar in hand (or both). Got it?

Of course, it goes without saying that there are always plenty of lovely ladies around us, Beers and Griffin. What can we say? Ladies love the plump! Alas, ladies, all three of us are taken.

» Speaking of mistaken identity, a Reno TV reporter once mistook us for Beers at the impeachment trial of the late Kathy Augustine. Until this Las Vegas Sun story, we thought he was the dumbest person in Nevada media.

» We’ve already entered Assemblywoman Peggy Pierce into our Quotage Hall of Fame 2007, but make room for Assemblywoman Bonnie Parnell, D-Carson City. After some activists objected to spending more money on education, Parnell noted thus: "We’re still talking about a cost per student that’s about 25 percent of the cost per inmate in this state. When we talk about paying more [for prisons] nobody blinks."

Amen, sister! We’re always amazed that Republicans — allegedly the fiscal conservatives — can’t figure out that education costs less in the long run than incarceration, by a considerable factor. Thanks to Parnell for pointing that out.

» Let’s get this straight: U.S. Sen. Harry Reid doesn’t regret his vote against the war, but has become a critic of it. And he thinks its the worst foreign policy mistake ever made in U.S. history, but all he’s doing to correct it is pass a non-binding resolution disagreeing with the president?

What doesn’t make sense about this? Oh, that’s right: Everything.

"The evidence at the time was persuasive, especially if you go back and look and see what Secretary of State Colin Powell did at the United Nations. We’ve learned since then that the evidence was manipulated. So the answer is no, I’m not going to apologize," Reid said, explaining his pro-war vote. (Actually, Reid would have had to go forward if he wanted to base his vote on Powell’s shameful performance at the U.N., since the vote was in October 2002 and Powell didn’t head to New York until February 2003.)

Yet, there were many of us who thought the war was wrong at the time and doubted the Bush administration’s since-disproved case for war. Among that group were 21 of Reid’s fellow senators, including Barbara Boxer, Robert Byrd, Richard Durbin, Russ Feingold, Edward Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, Ron Wyden and the late Paul Wellstone. They certainly suspected Bush was wrong, so Reid could have as well.

If Reid really does believe that Iraq is America’s worst mistake, why doesn’t he try to fix it, by trying for a new resolution that forces Bush to initiate an orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq? That’s especially true since Reid voted for the Iraq war — he’s got a moral obligation to fix his mistake.

"I’m sure [Reid's] not complaining that we haven’t been attacked again since 9/11 at home," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, after being asked about Reid’s remarks. Now, with a lightweight intellectual opposition like that, fixing the Iraq mess shouldn’t be too hard. All it takes is some courage to endure Republican lies. But remember this, senator: If they’ll lie about Iraq, they’ll lie about anything, and they’re going to lie about you anyway. So you may as well do the right thing.

» Tom Mitchell, editor of the R-J, had a good column on Sunday, following the newspaper’s series of reports (written by my friend and colleague Frank Geary) about judges sealing court cases on scant authority. The courts are supposed to be open, and that shouldn’t change just because a wealthy defendants wants it to be so.

» And finally today, it seems that R-J columnist Jane Ann Morrison got dinged for $50 for having a suitcase that was overweight on a recent trip to Washington, D.C. She argues the overweight-bag policy discriminates against women, but we disagree: It discriminates against overpackers!

But we’ve got the solution, both for Morrison and for anybody who does any travel, whether for business or leisure. It’s located at www.onebag.com, a website that helps you to pack even for long trips using only a carry-on suitcase! The author, Doug Dyment, not only shows you what to bring, what kind of a suitcase to buy but also how to pack your stuff to minimize wrinkling. It’s a revolutionary site, and it’s helped us make many trips burdened only by a single carryon bag. And we’ve never been hit with overweight fees. Check it out.