Nolan said it was his third time trying to introduce the neo-fascist red-light cameras, which snap a picture of a driver blowing through the red light and send the registered owner of the car a citation through the mail.

What if you’re not the registered owner? Well, you can send a formal protest with a copy of your drivers license, which officials will compare with the photo taken by the red-light camera to determine your guilt. Yes, seriously.

“Aggressive traffic violators have become such a problem,” Nolan said. And there aren’t enough cops to sit at each problem intersection to hand out tickets in person, he said. (That’s probably good; if you get a ticket from a real, live cop, you pay a hefty fine for a moving violation. If you get a red-light camera ticket, it’s more like a parking ticket fine.)

But Nolan was undone by colleagues like state Sen. Mike Schneider, who recounted a harrowing tale in which his wife rushed him to the hospital to treat an allergic reaction. Although she stopped at each red light, she also ran through them, a lifesaving trip that nonetheless would have earned the Schneider family a handful of tickets.

And state Sen. Barbara Cegavske asked a rhetorical question: Would the cameras be removed once the “pilot program” was concluded? (Answer: No way.) Ironically, Cegavske is the author of a separate bill that aims to ban “video voyeurism.” She was consistent, joining 15 senators to vote down Nolan’s proposal.

He only got support, in fact, from Sens. Bob Coffin, Joe Heck, John Lee, Randolph Townsend and Joyce Woodhouse.

All was not lost in the neo-fascist community, however. Nolan did get support for his bill to make not wearing a seat belt a “primary offense.” Currently, you can be cited for not wearing a seat belt, but only if you were pulled over for something else (like speeding or failing to use a lane-change signal). That bill, which passed the Senate 11-10, and is now headed to the Assembly.

Now, wouldn’t you think that a person who didn’t believe in red-light cameras would similarly not believe in a nanny-state law like wearing your seatbelt? Us, too. We compared the vote to learn that the following senators voted for the seatbelt law, but against the red-light cameras: Sens. Mark Amodei, Warren Hardy, Bill Raggio, Dean Rhoads, Mike Schneider and Maurice Washington. And Coffin voted for the red-light cameras but against seatbelts.

• Dina (Hates) Taxes!

State Sen. Dina Titus voted to kill more taxes Tuesday, joining on the winning side of the 9-12 split to deny Douglas County the right to increase the room tax. Titus joined the majority on Monday in killing a proposal to raise sales taxes in Nye County for more cops. She also voted against a proposal to let Lyon and Douglas counties raise property taxes to build a new juvenile detention center.

And at day’s end, Titus also voted against a bill that would have let voters decide on raising sales and real estate taxes — not to mention imposing impact fees — for schools in Washoe County.

Gov. Jim Gibbons claimed on the campaign trail that Titus would cost money while he’d save it, but it looks like Titus is the one just saying no to taxes.

We’re totally sure its just a coincidence that voters in Lyon, Douglas, Nye and Washoe counties voted with solid majorities for Gibbons.

• The following, totally bizarre, series of events actually happened on the Senate floor on Tuesday:

First, the Senate approved SB 52, a bill that gives student a full ride Millennium Scholarship if they major in special education, math and science. (Currently the scholarship provides most, but not all, the money needed to attend a state university or community college.) The bill also would allow illegal immigrants to get the scholarship, provided they sign an affidavit saying they fully intend to become U.S. citizens. If they don’t, they have to repay the scholarship.

Second, much later in the day, Democrats tried to amend SB 415 — another bill pertaining to the scholarship, but with some different provisions — with the same immigrant-affidavit language. (Although the affidavit provision would become law if SB 52 passed, there would be a conflict if SB 415 also passed without the language.)

But Republicans signaled on Monday they’d object to the amendment, so Titus devised a way to convince her GOP colleagues to come along: She included language that would allow regents to waive the two-year residency requirement to get the Millennium Scholarship for children of military parents, who may be deployed to Nevada for less than the four years kids go to high school.

Alas, the GOP wasn’t falling for that one; SB 415 author Heck introduced an amendment of his own, which kept the military-family language but dropped the immigrant-affidavit language. When the amendments came up, Titus’ was voted down on party lines, while Heck’s was approved unanimously.

Titus immediately rose and moved that, since the language in Heck’s amendment was identical to the Democrats, the names of all Democratic senators should be added as co-sponsors. Raggio shot back that there’s been a lot of “byplay” over the immigration issue in the past two days, and that Titus motion was out of order.

She didn’t back down, however, asking for the record to show that the Democratic senators were denied in their request to have their names on the Heck Amendment, which prompted Raggio to rethink his comments. Saying he had been “hasty” — and encouraging senators to be collegial — he offered to let the Democrats have their names on the amendment. Second later, he was told that only Heck’s name was on the amendment, so he offered the Republicans a chance to get their name on, too. They all agreed.

And everybody was happy. More or less. But now the two bills — SB 52 and SB 415, which was approved 17-4 on a later agenda — go to the Assembly, where the differences must be addressed. Could this debate happen again, in a future conference committee? Probably, since Titus pledged she’s try to amend the bill in the Assembly. We haven’t seen the last of either bill.

• Hardy insists that his bill to recognize a fetus as a person who can become the victim of a crime was not an attempt to erode abortion rights in Nevada. But abortion opponents didn’t quite see it that way, and the bill was widely seen as a ham-handed end run around the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, not to mention voter-ratified Nevada state law legalizing abortion.

The hot potato bill was whispered about for much of the first half of the session, but Titus and others worked on an amendment to fix their problems with the bill. (Hardy says the bill was sparked by a constituent whose pregnant wife was hit by a drunk driver and lost her baby. Under existing law, he could only be charged with battery, according to Amodei.)

Under the revised version of the bill, violent crimes against pregnant women can result in the doubling of the sentence against the perpetrator, and a DUI that results in a pregnant woman losing her baby is a category B felony, punishable by a jail sentence of between two and 20 years.

But there’s no provision for a fetus to be considered a person in the amended version of the law, which maintains the national and state status quo on abortion rights. At the end of the day, Hardy thanked his colleagues “who took me at my word when I said I was not trying to touch on the very sensitive debate over abortion in this country.” 

• You mean 19 senators voted to make English the official language of the state? Oh, yes, it’s that bad. We rant on that in our column in this week’s CityLife. (It will be up on the web Thursday.)

• The Senate is supposed to be the more deliberative body. But that was little comfort to senators as they labored late into the day on Tuesday to meet constitutional deadlines. The Assembly finished its work by midday, and leaders were presumably knee deep in margaritas by 5 p.m., when the Senate was preparing to debate its third agenda of the day.

And speaking of being knee deep in margaritas, that’s all for today, readers!