We’re not saying that UNR political scientist Erik Herzik is ass-over-tenured-teakettle in love with Gov. Jim Gibbons. We’re just saying it’s odd that whenever we see them together, they’re making out on Lovers Lane in a steamed-up car, and the only thing you can see for sure is Herzik’s bicep tattoo of a heart with Gibbons’ name inscribed therein. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

How else to describe these loving quotes, contained in a Washington Post survey of the many scandals of Gibbons?

"If I want to be completely naive, I’d say Jim Gibbons is in the wrong place at the wrong time, again and again and again. At the same time, many of these blunders get made into these fantastic stories," Herzik told the paper.

Oh, he wants to be completely naive, all right! You’d be hard-pressed to find a Herzik quote that comes close to reality, which is to say, one that characterizes the Gibbons scandals as a series of events brought abougt by Gibbons’ own actions. Here, for example, Herzik seems to imply that poor Gibbons just wanders into trouble and the media take it from there. Like the Mr. Magoo of governors.

"To me, the impact is, it’s distracting from his ability to govern," Herzik added to the Post. While that would probably be a good thing, Gibbons and all his people say the governor is focused like a laser beam on his agenda. Whatever that is.

Let’s do one more, shall we? "Democrats risk a backlash from conservatives if they push too hard, Herzik said. Gibbons’ ‘poll numbers are incredibly low. But will that be enough to get him recalled? Not unless one of these charges sticks.’"

Now that’s the party of optimism for you. Thinking only one of the charges is going to stick, instead of say, most of them. But when you work your way up to be not only a professor of political science, but the chairman of the entire department, you’re entitled to your hope. And your yucky political crushes.

» Oh, sure. Secretary of State Ross Miller will totally investigate a lame group sending political hit pieces in races nobody cares about. But let the governor create a secret, potentially illegal slush fund, and he’s all, "oh, I can’t find a law that says what he did is illegal!" Nevada, man. Whatever.

» My colleague Erin Neff penned one of her best columns ever on Sunday, an intriguing, behind the scenes look at why the Justice Department under the administration of President George W. Bush might not have wanted U.S. attorney Daniel Bogden around anymore. Here’s a hint: It was for performance-related reasons. Bogden was performing all too well in his job!

Of course, U.S. Sen. John Ensign — who was personally lied to by at least one Justice Department official about the reasons for Bogden’s dismissal — is still giving the administration the benefit of the doubt. Ensign says he really does believe the line that Bogden’s failure to prosecute a porn-on-the-Internet case was the reason for his downfall. Even in this administration, devoted as it is to restoring the pure kingdom of God on Earth, that explanation is something only … well, Ensign could believe.

As for us, well, we think Neff is on to something. And not just because Ensign dismissed it as "a conspiracy" and "a fantasy," although that didn’t hurt her theory in our mind.

» We’ll just bet that some people who live in the inner-city have some choice language for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, after he told a swooning National Federation of Republican Women that students should be immersed in English to "…learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto."

Oh, yeah, we can hear those ghetto shout-outs to Gingrich now…

» So, it turns out that it’s not just first lady Dawn Gibbons who forms a consulting company that is subsequently hired by her husband’s campaign, thus funneling campaign money right back into the family accounts. It seems that kind of thing goes on at the Clark County Commission level, too.

» The Las Vegas Sun’s headline over a piece about Assembly Judiciary Committee Chairman Bernie Anderson refusing to allow witnesses to speak the word "Wynn" — despite a policy that steals tips from dealers at the Wynn Las Vegas — reads thus: "Civics lesson: Don’t mess with the chairman."

We suppose, "Tool uses specious reasoning to cover up for casino mogul ripping off his employees" was too long?

» Thompson is in! No, not longtime character actor Fred Dalton Thompson, for whom the guys at Slate have produced a great ad. The former governor of Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson. Or something.

» Speaking of would-be presidential candidates, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama says if President Bush vetoes Iraq spending bills that contain deadlines for getting troops out of Iraq, the Senate will quickly pass measures to fund the war without such burdensome deadlines.

Pay attention Republicans: That’s how you hand your opponents a strategy for defeat!

» And finally today, can somebody tell Gov. Gibbons that an honest-to-goodness, Nevada scientist has found yet more evidence of global warming, this caused by deforestation and dust coming off the South American continent? And the best part is, he literally found the proof the way Gibbons knows water: From the ground up!

If you’re a journalist, working for Brian Greenspun must be hell.

For the second time in recent memory, Greenspun undercut one of his own staffers publicly, using his Sunday column as a shiv.

This time, it was my colleague Jon Ralston who got the knife, as Greenspun lamented the fact that Ralston — we swear this is true — interviewed candidates for the Las Vegas City Council and asked them tough questions too close to Election Day.

A fine journalistic tradition would have been to ask them those questions a few weeks ago, so weak-minded voters could somehow figure out the truth in time to cast their votes properly.

So, the editor of the Las Vegas Sun thinks that if you can’t get the story in time, you shouldn’t do it at all, unless there’s exigent circumstances, of course. (Might one of those circumstances be the time that Greenspun personally interviewed former President Bill Clinton, who told him that, unless Harry Reid was re-elected to the United States Senate, we’d get Yucca Mountain shoved up our asses because John Ensign just couldn’t be trusted with the responsibility? Didn’t that story run on the Friday before the Tuesday election? And in that case, Greenspun didn’t even bother to interview Ensign or his people to get a response! And didn’t Greenspun in 2006 defend that column? Why yes, he did!)

(Side note: Clinton was right. Ensign has proven himself to be a total lightweight, whereas Reid has managed to keep Yucca Mountain at bay.)

But let Ralston do a little pre-election digging on TV, and there’s hell to pay. A couple excerpts for those not brave enough to click on the link:

"And, most importantly, Hank [Greenspun, Brian Greenspun’s father and founder of the Las Vegas Sun] had a simple rule about elections. Unless there was egregious conduct that needed to be reported during the last few days of an election, it was unfair to allow his newspaper to be used to spread rumors, innuendo and half-truths so close to an election because the other side had little or no time to respond.

"That is a tradition that I have always believed to be essential to good journalism.

"I thought of what I learned and why I learned that lesson from my father as I listened, as I often do, to Face to Face With Jon Ralston last Thursday. That would be the Thursday just five days before the upcoming election in the city of Las Vegas. I also saw a report of that Face to Face show the following morning in the Las Vegas Sun. And what I thought was, "What happened to that concept of basic fairness?"

…

"And one of those has to do with last-minute news reports — or, at least, what passes itself off as news — and how we go about sharing that information with the public. It is still about fairness and it is still about an election process that the numbers in this election alone have proved is being ignored by far too many voters.

"Had the Face to Face program been aired three weeks earlier, I would not be questioning the timing because the response would have been in the public realm sufficiently to convince most people that there was no story there at all.

…

"We used to call the last-minute smear tactics, well, last-minute smear tactics. They rear their ugly heads in the waning days of a campaign and are given credence by people like Jon and other media outlets who pick up on them and attempt to make news out of them. Even though Jon would say that he gave everyone an opportunity to respond, it is the airing of the charges - most of them baseless or easily answered - that remains unfair.

…

"I am not blaming Ralston or any of the others who think it appropriate to raise issues at the eleventh hour before an election. There are times when information is so compelling that it must be brought to the public’s attention regardless of the timing. But I am questioning why an age-old tradition of editing - that’s deciding what is important, what is credible and what is necessary to inform the electorate - is so easily cast aside."

There you have it, readers. Brian Greenspun, who appeals to journalistic tradition and practice, does not believe it’s appropriate for a journalist like Jon Ralston to question candidates for a public office about their qualifications or charges that may have been raised against them when it’s too close to Election Day.

Forget that most voters don’t start paying attention to races (especially off-year, local races) until about 20 minutes before Election Day. What if the Sun learned that a candidate had done something unethical, but only two days before voters go to the polls? Whoops. That’s off limits. And if the guy gets elected anyway and does unethical things while in office? Well, it wouldn’t be fair to raise those issues. And if you do, you may get publicly stabbed in the back by your own boss.

And this isn’t the first time that’s happened, either. When poor Sun reporter Sam Skolnick Skolnik noted that state Supreme Court Justice candidate Mike Cherry had amassed a small fortune, despite not having an opponent in his race, Greenspun blasted that story in his column, too, although it had been published in September, well inside the Greenspun-approved Newsworthiness Zone. (We choked on that one, too.)

Now, Ralston is an adult and can easily handle whatever Greenspun tosses his way. Skolnick Skolnik is still employed at the paper, too. But we can’t help but wonder about the effect these public ratfuckings have on morale at the Sun, and on the desire to dig into subjects that might catch the boss’ eye.

The saddest thing? The Sun has been getting better in recent days by leaps and bounds. Aside from doing the most unethical thing a Nevada newspaper has ever done in 2006, the quality of the writing, reporting and analysis of the Sun has been excellent. And since the Review-Journal often seems to be stuck in a more or less permanent state of mediocrity, the days are multiplying when the Sun has better coverage than its bigger rival.

But something like this tarnishes that quality work, and serves as a reminder that the Sun will probably always be held back by the heavy hand of its editor, wielding that much-bloodied shiv.