Former Reno Assemblywoman Sharron Angle announced via the Review-Journal today that she will wage an initiative campaign against Nevada’s teachers, nurses, firefighters and police officers through a campaign designed to enlist property owners in destroying their own quality of life.

"It’s the same thing we’ve always pursued," Angle told the R-J. "We want stable, predictable property taxes. Our measure will look not different than it has before."
Indeed, Angle has waged a crusade against Nevadans of all stripes before. No explanation for her naked, undisguised hatred for her fellow citizens appeared in the story today, so any speculation on our part as to why she wants to destroy institutions like law enforcement, education and health care would simply be guessing. (One idea: Republicans like Angle hate public institutions but tend to love their privatized-but-often-corrupt counterparts run by businesses. Perhaps this is the first step in a campaign to run Nevada as the largest serfdom since feudalism went out of vogue in the Fourteenth Century.)

You know, the more we observe U.S. Sen. John Ensign, the more we have to wonder: Is he destined for something higher in the Republican Party? He’s got all the credentials. He loves golf far more than lawmaking, as his handicap and legislative success record clearly shows. He’s definitely in the Christian wing of the party, and is even a member of Promise Keepers. And he’s proving adept at mouthing Republican talking points.

They say journalism is the first, rough draft of history, so one can’t expect to get the full story from the newspaper every day. But sometimes, reading different papers, different stories and different quotes, a picture emerges that tells you a little bit of what might be going on.

For example, take the Case of Gov. Jim Gibbons and the Yucca Mountain Water.

You all know the story by now: Although Nevada is fighting the federal government tooth and nail to prevent a high-level nuclear waste dump from being constructed at Yucca Mountain, the state engineer — with the full backing of Gibbons — allowed the Department of Energy for a time to use state-controlled water to dig test samples at the mountain. Those samples will be used to justify building the dump at Yucca.

The state’s federal delegation was aghast, and questioned the governor’s wisdom and commitment to fighting the dump. After the Energy Department rejected some conditions the state tried to impose, State Engineer Tracy Taylor reinstated a cease-and-desist order that he’d initially stayed. (According to the Review-Journal, work is nonetheless continuing at the site despite the state’s order.)

On July 18, Gibbons is quoted in the R-J thus: "If the state engineer felt he should legally turn it off today, I would support him 100 percent." Clearly, this suggests that there was some contrary legal thinking that prevented the state engineer, and the governor, from shutting off the water.

And the next day, July 19, the Las Vegas Sun quoted Gibbons’ spokeswoman Melissa Subbotin thus: "The decision to allow the Energy Department to continue using the water, Subbotin said, was a ‘collaborative’ effort made with the help of legal advice." Now this directly asserts that somebody with a law degree opined that the Energy Department should be able to use the water at Yucca Mountain for tests.

But, that very same story also reveals that Gibbons was being advised by Attorney General Catherine Cortez-Masto to shut off the taps at Yucca Mountain. Consider this passage:

Earlier this month in Gibbons’ office, Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto and Bob Loux, the state’s Yucca Mountain watchdog, strongly pushed the governor and his key aides to stop the U.S. Energy Department from using the state’s water for drilling at the high-level nuclear waste project.

The advice to Gibbons was unanimous: It’s time to get tough with the feds. Don’t give the Energy Department any chance to collect new data that could bolster its collapsing case to make Yucca Mountain the nation’s nuclear waste dump.

But Gibbons, reminding those at the meeting that he’s a geologist and a lawyer, rejected the concerns.

 

And on July 26, the R-J also reported that Gibbons was at odds with the state’s top lawyer. 

But all of that to say this: Who in the hell was Gibbons listening to during this debate? Himself? Another lawyer? It couldn’t possibly have been former Gov. Bob List, whose post-Carson City occupation is nuclear waste lobbyist? (List co-chaired Gibbons’ transition team in 2006.)

And, now that we’re asking questions, who advised Taylor that he couldn’t shut off the faucets at Yucca? Doesn’t he consult the attorney general’s office for advice? If the AG herself said no, why would he say yes? Did Gibbons or Taylor hire an outside lawyer? If so, why?

All good questions, no? We posed them via e-mail to Subbotin on Thursday, but we haven’t yet received a reply. Then again, there has been a string of highly important news releases coming from the governor’s office that probably required her attention, everything from Gibbons announcing members of the Tahoe Basin Fire Commission to his summer travel schedule to a big list of appointments to state boards and commissions. (We’ll cross our fingers and hope that, unlike his abortive pro-Yucca appointment to the Nevada Nuclear Projects Commission, Gibbons didn’t, say, appoint Dr. Jack Kevorkian to the Commission on Aging.)

If we hear back from the governor’s office, we’ll let you know via an update.

OK, listen up, people, because we’re only going to say this one more time…

The United States Constitution is the guiding principle of our democracy. Nevada’s constitution is the founding law of this state. They are to be respected, upheld, protected. And people who do violence to them — especially those who’ve sworn to uphold the same — should face consequences.

The issue has arisen again this morning, in the Review-Journal’s story about the coming exodus from the Legislature of those affected by term limits. Many people in Nevada favor term limits, and would be mighty upset should a politician sue to try to get them overturned, says state Sen. Bob Beers.

For the record, we’re against term limits. If voters want to keep electing Beers to office, why shouldn’t they have that right? (And why wouldn’t they? He’s a good-looking guy!) Besides, voters in Nevada have shown they have no problem whatsoever identifying and removing elected officials they think are bad. (You know, people like Erin Kenny, Dario Herrera, Mary Kincaid-Chauncey, Lance Malone, Michael Mack, etc.) And they have no problem keeping elected officials who may have tangled with ethics laws but whose offenses, in the public mind, don’t rise to eviction from office (like Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, who was found to have violated ethics laws but whose finding was later overturned). Goodman remains popular, and, were he not barred by law from a fourth term, we have no doubt he’d win one.

But that’s not really the point. It seems that a very fine legal argument has been found that could potentially invalidate the entire scheme of term limits for state lawmakers. And that’s this: After the term-limits initiative was approved in 1994, the state Supreme Court pulled what we like to call a state Supreme Court Special, and split the question for the constitutionally required second vote in 1996. In that year, voters were presented with two separate term-limit measures, one for lawmakers and another for judges.

Whoops. That could be a problem, especially given the constitutional language in Article 19, Section 2(4), which says that if an amendment to the constitution is approved by voters at one election, "…the secretary of state shall publish and resubmit the question of approval or disapproval to a vote of the voters at the next succeeding general election in the same manner as such question was originally submitted." (emphasis added)

Now, we don’t think you have to be super-smart to see that a single ballot initiative that proposes term limits for lawmakers and judges, and a pair of ballot initiatives that split the two, is not submitting the question to voters "in the same manner as such question was originally submitted." In fact, it’s totally different.

So it can therefore be argued that the results of the 1996 election — in which lawmakers’ term limits were approved but judges were struck down — was itself unconstitutional, and therefore lawmakers’ term limits must be struck down before they start going into effect in 2010.

(A side note: The question of whether the Supreme Court had any legal basis to split the term limits initiative up is a valid one. We are currently trying to get a copy of that ruling, and we’ll update this post with our opinion as to that ruling when we get it.)

But even if the Supreme Court created the mess in the first place by unconstitutionally messing around with a voter initiative, there still exists a very firm legal basis to strike down term limits. That means that Nevadans — if they still wanted to impose term limits — would have to start all over with an initiative, get it approved at two consecutive general elections and only then would the term limit clock start ticking anew. Why, Bill Raggio could conceivably serve another 100 years! (Don’t laugh; he still looks better than us on most days!)

So will it happen? Probably not. And why not? Well, explains University of Nevada Reno political science professor Erik Herzik, judges are afraid of being voted out of office the way former Justice Nancy Becker was after the infamous Guinn v. Legislature ruling.

"When you want to repeal term limits, you are basically saying the public was wrong and legislators know what’s best," Herzik told the R-J.

Ah, but once again, Herzik wrong. And he’s managed to step on one of our pet peeves in the process.

First, if the Supreme Court did overturn term limits on the grounds we’ve outlined above, they would not be saying anything about the public being right or wrong. The court would be saying that justices in the 1990s were wrong for splitting the question, and thus dooming the initiative on constitutional grounds. Such a ruling would not require any analysis whatsoever as to whether term limits are good, bad or indifferent. In fact, a new term limit initiative could easily be filed the next day, and perhaps that one could get to the ballot without court interference. (The molestation of voter-circulated initiative petitions is an ongoing problem with our Supreme Court, and the subject of some of our previous posts.)

Second, a Supreme Court examination of the issue would not involve legislators, save as plaintiff in a challenge brought against the term limits law. Once again, justices would be repudiating their forbears, not the voters.

And now, for our pet peeve: Becker did not lose her seat because she performed an unpopular constitutional analysis and angered voters. She lost her seat precisely because she failed to perform a constitutional analysis, and that angered voters.

We’ve been over it a million times, but here it is in brief: In Guinn v. Legislature, Becker ruled that it was OK for the Legislature to ignore the voter-approved, constitutional amendment that says you have to get a two-thirds vote in both houses of the Legislature to create or raise taxes. She did it because the Legislature was having trouble getting to two-thirds, and there was a real possibility that schools in the state may not be able to open on time absent extraordinary judicial intervention.

Well, she was wrong. Being a justice of the Supreme Court doesn’t mean you get to ignore parts of the constitution you don’t like; it means you have to work to interpret them to find the most reasonable, most practical and most wise solution to the dilemma before you. But under no circumstances should your ruling do violence to the constitution.

(The court, with some different members, later overturned Guinn v. Legislature, in a quiet little passage in an unrelated case, showing not only that justices recognized the ruling was wrong, but also that they’re not above admitting and fixing past mistakes. That may have to happen again should the term limits law be challenged.)

Get it? In Guinn v. Legislature, the court ignored the constitution for political reasons and earned voter ire. In Future Unnamed Lawmaker v. Miller, the court would be interpreting the constitution and, on its face, ruling that term limits were approved in a manner contrary to the constitution, and thus they cannot be imposed. This, too, will earn voter ire, but it will be a defensible, logical and perfectly harmonious decision that holds our state’s founding document harmless. In other words, the two cases are nothing alike, although the results — the will of the voters being repulsed — would be similar.

Let’s see what happens when the inevitable challenge is filed, shall we?

We neglected to comment upon a monorail-related item last week, and that’s this: The Regional Transportation Commission is planning to spend $75 million on special buses that will travel from the monorail’s Sahara station (where the monorail ends) to downtown. The bus line got a boost from U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, who wrangled $25 million for the project.

Here’s our question: Didn’t a regular bus route along this alignment draw so few riders that it was canceled? Oh, that’s right. It did. (We especially like the quote in this story from Ingrid Reisman, who later went to work as the monorail’s spokeswoman: "There are greater needs in this community than that route.")

Apparently not.

Speaking of the monorail, departing Review-Journal "Road Warrior" Omar Sofradzija went back and found one of the monorail’s original critics, who actually apologized for underestimating how badly the monorail would perform.

Wendell Cox, hired by monorail opponents to defeat the rosy and obviously manipulated ridership statistics offered by the likes of monorail founder Bob Broadbent, predicted between 18,500 riders and 26,600 riders per day would use the monorail. It’s actually been an average of 19,000, according to Sofradzija.

And check this quote: "What is going on is something called ’strategic misrepresentation," Cox said."Basically, lying. They wanted to build the project. They believed in the project. That doesn’t make them any less wrong."

Indeed, it makes them liars. And this isn’t the only thing monorail officials have lied about, either. According to CityLife columnist (and longtime KLAS Channel 8 investigative reporter) George Knapp, monorail officials also may have lied about their federal tax status, which they used to leverage state and county tax exemptions. Thanks to those exemptions, the freeloading monorail is able to skip out on paying its taxes.

We also totally love this more modern quote, from the aforementioned Reisman: "Current monorail leadership was not involved in the development of the original projections."

Ah, yes, the distancing from the All-In-The-Family Broadbent-Cam Walker-Jim Gibson-Todd Walker monorail days – begun when the non-profit company that holds all monorail assets "merged" with the for-profit company that was formed to enrich Broadbent, et. al. — is finally complete.

Oh, but wait. There’s more Quick Hits where that came from! Here we go!

» U.S. Sen. Harry Reid delivered some bad news to the fine folks who (occasionally) keep our lights on here at Various Things & Stuff World Headquarters, located in a nondescript building in an industrial area near McCarran International Airport.

Reid said he’d use his considerable powers to prevent Nevada Power — and at least two other companies — from building coal-fired power plants anywhere in the Silver State. "I’m going to do everything I can to stop it," Reid told the Review-Journal.

"All these power moguls want to do is steal our air and water," Reid said. "…but this isn’t good for Nevada. I can’t comprehend how much coal would be used." And again: "I will use every means at my disposal to prevent the construction of new coal-fired power plants in Nevada that do not capture and permanently store greenhouse gas emissions."

Instead, Reid said, power companies should be building renewable plants, like solar, wind and geothermal.

Of course, the power moguls are all upset, saying these are cleaner plants than those built in the past, that these would actually replace dirtier plants and that the key transmission line to be constructed between Ely (where two of the plants are supposed to be built) and Las Vegas would allow all sorts of renewable plants to be built and connect to the power grid. But they’re power moguls; what do you expect them to say?

Anyway, we have two delightfully wicked questions about this:

1.) What if Nevada Power proposed an ultra-clean (at least by comparison) nuclear power plant for Ely instead of a coal-fired plant? Not only would it be cleaner, it would create more jobs. And Reid has always been careful to say he’s not against nuclear power, just dumping nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Try that one out and see what happens, power moguls!

2.) What if the coal-fired plant was going to be located, say, in the southern part of the state? Maybe in Searchlight, Reid’s hometown? Would that have changed things much?

Like we said: Delightfully wicked. But we’re sure glad we’re not Nevada Power today, since Reid has plenty of means at his disposal to hold these projects up for so long, we’ll have invented a reliable method of cold fusion by then and won’t even need coal, except for backyard barbecues.

» Just a couple small tweaks to the 1872 Mining Law would be terrible, says mining lobbyist U.S. Rep. Dean Heller. It would update the law (from an era where picks and shovels and dynamite were the tools of the trade) by adding environmental protections, removing the ridiculous giveaway of public lands to miners and imposing an 8 percent royalty to clean up the half-million abandoned mines around the country.

But according to Heller, it would cost thousands of jobs in Nevada.

This is quite a revelation. Not that the mining industry and its pet lawmakers in Washington, D.C. would object; everybody expects that. No, the revelation is that Dean Heller is actually alive, apparently living and working in Washington. We’d wondered where the hell that guy had gone.

Anyway, the mining reform bill seems like a good idea to us. In fact, updating any regulatory law that was in place around the time the HBO television series Deadwood was set is probably a good idea. But with a powerhouse like Dean Heller on the case, well, who knows?

» It may be time for a good, old-fashioned strike, Culinary says. Power to the people!

» If you have a consumer complaint, if you’ve been ripped off (say, at Dairy Queen), don’t just take it. Fight back! The R-J’s Voice of the Consumer can help!

» Our corporate overlord, Sherm Frederick, on Sunday heartily endorsed the idea of installing traffic cameras on the Las Vegas Beltway.

"In short order, driver habits will change because they know that their every move will be watched," Frederick wrote. "That means drivers driving the speed limit, making safe lane changes, and (can you imagine it?) stopping at red lights. Over the span of only a few years, I believe scores of lives will be saved."

You know, he’s right! Once people know they’re under surveillance (and, presumably, The Man is waiting to exact punishment upon offenders) they’ll totally change their behavior. After all, since they’ve put cameras in banks and 7-Elevens, who ever heard of one of those joints getting robbed? Totally a thing of the past! And forget those ACLU pussies who will complain about Orwellian Big Brother always watching; those guys only care about the Constitution. Lives are at stake!

In fact, we think we should have cameras everywhere! If they’ll get people to behave better on the roads, why not in the workplace? At the gym? (No more ogling the fine babe on the Stairmaster in front of you!) In fact, if we had cameras in people’s homes, we could virtually wipe out child abuse, drug use, fornication and the appalling failure to recycle that we face in our community!

When do we get started?

» And finally today, it turns out that yet another Republican hypocrite has been unearthed. (Yes, we know the Internet is getting mighty full of these revelations, but bear with us.) U.S. Rep. John Campbell was mighty peeved at our own U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley for earmarking $200,000 for the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy recently. He bitched up a storm about it, saying Agassi (who has donated millions to the school) could afford another couple grand.

Well, big surprise, but Campbell himself had an earmark, in a water bill, for $14.3 million. (Why, yes, Berkley’s earmark is just 1.39 percent of what Campbell was trying to wrangle, thanks for asking!)

But our point is not to slam Campbell for trying to get the money in the first place. See, he was asking for the cash (he ended up getting $1 million) to restore estuaries along the Newport Bay in beautiful Orange County, Calif. That’s a worthy cause, if we do say so ourselves, and we do, since we grew up just up the road from Newport Beach.

So, did Campbell learn from his arrogance and hypocrisy, and vow that — from now on — he’s going to examine earmarks on a case-by-case basis, looking for value in each one and speaking out only against those that truly don’t serve the public good?

Nope. He just said he wouldn’t ask for any more earmarks, supposedly so he can remain philosophically pure when criticizing everybody else’s earmarks. Sort of the cut-off-the-estuary-to-spite-the-bay approach.

What a complete dick. Maybe voters in beautiful seaside Newport should toss Campbell out on his earmark?

It’s the oldest technique in the political book, and somebody must have found former Gov. Kenny Guinn’s old copy lying around the governor’s mansion, because current Gov. Jim Gibbons is sure trying to lead the opposition.

Sorry for the lack of posts, readers. We returned Monday from a weekend in beautiful San Diego, and there was a lot to do. But just because we weren’t here doesn’t mean things weren’t going on! Let’s take a quick (hits) look back:

» We can’t believe it, but we actually agree with a Review-Journal editorial. Our first thought when we read that Mayor Oscar Goodman was discussing an idea to issue permits to those who hire day laborers gathered outside nurseries and home improvement stores was the same as our former colleagues over at the R-J’s editorial page. And that’s this: If those day laborers are illegal immigrants, then isn’t hiring them a crime? And how can the city issue a permit to people to commit a crime?

(We love, by the way, the analogy to the city issuing a permit to possess marijuana. You know that actually happened in Oakland, and the federal government arrested a man who was legally permitted to grow the plant for sick people under a city program. The federal judge refused to let the jury hear his defense — he had a permit — and he was convicted! True story.)

Now, we are advocates of immigration reform, because we think there’s nothing wrong with people coming here from other countries who are willing to work and make a better life for themselves in America. And the guys who gather outside home improvement stores are definitely willing to work. So why shouldn’t private people be able to engage in private contracts with willing workers, sans city permit? At least that’s our view.

We understand the city’s view, too: Since many of the workers are illegal, job protections (like safety, minimum wage, benefits, etc.) are nonexistent. If the workers were legal, those rules would have to be followed.

But a permit? For an illegal act? That is, shall we say, a unique solution.

» We believe that it was us who said that, whole Gov. Jim Gibbons may have gotten a post-Legislature boost in the polls, he "…hasn’t gotten smarter and hasn’t suddenly decided to amend his ways."

How right we were! Last week, Gibbons showed the state that he’s still got the ability to screw up in a major way. First, he appointed a pro-Yucca Mountain representative to the Nuclear Projects Commission, Nye County Commissioner Joni Eastly.

"This position on the Nuclear Projects Commission requires a representative who shares the primary sentiment of Nevada residents and my administration’s views on the Yucca Mountain Project," Gibbons said in a statement accepting Eastly’s "resignation" from the commission.

Really? Well, then, why the hell did you appoint somebody who didn’t share the primary sentiment of Nevada’s residents and your administration in the first place, governor? Who the hell do you have handling appointments, Screwup O’Dumbshit? It’s not like this was some hidden thing.

Second, at the same time this is going on, Gibbons was allowing the state engineer to allow the federal government to continue to use state water to drill holes at Yucca Mountain in the hopes of proving it’s suitable to store nuclear waste. This shocked pretty much everybody, including Republican members of the state’s congressional delegation. (And they’ve been victims of Republican mendacity for years, so shocking them isn’t that easy.) The latest is that the feds refused to accept the state’s conditions on using the water, so the engineer turned off the faucet, and now everybody’s headed to court.

Third, and blissfully unrelated to Yucca Mountain, Gibbons apparently kicked Rosemary Vassiliadis off the state’s Homeland Security Commission. Vassiliadis, wife of R&R Partners adman Billy Vassiliadis, was the only representative of McCarran International Airport on the commission.

That would be, McCarran, as in the state’s largest airport, the sixth busiest airport in the country and the conduit for millions of Las Vegas visitors every year.

For a governor with a security fetish, it seems an odd thing to do. After all, this is the guy who wants his very own Jack Bauer Secret Undisclosed Location Command Headquarters up in Carson City so he can play commander-in-chief on weekends. Why eliminate input from an airport that anybody can see should be included in the state’s security planning?

Some have suggested it’s politics, since Billy Vassiliadis is a Democrat who fought against Gibbons in the recent Legislature when the governor tried to steal money from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to pay for his woefully inadequate road-building plan.

But if that’s true, then we’d have to conclude that Gibbons has no problem putting politics ahead of homeland security, public safety and even common sense. And if that’s true, it would mean that Gibbons is a clear and present danger to the security of the state of Nevada.  Why, it’s almost like he’s only concerned with the image of homeland security, not actual homeland security.

Oh, by the way, Gibbons had a junior aide to his chief of staff, Mike Dayton, make the call to inform Vassiliadis she was out. That means in addition to all of the above, he’s also churlish. (Hey, do you suppose that aide was the aforementioned O’Dumbshit?)

» We really love the lead on this story from the Review-Journal’s front-page Saturday: "A gambling problem rocked the NBA on Friday, and while such a scandalous scenario has long been one of league commissioner David Stern’s biggest fears, it seems clear the case has no link to Las Vegas."

Translated: Don’t blame Sin City, for which we are now serving as community booster, for this problem! It was somebody else that did it, and our fine legal gambling establishments are still wonderful places to spend your money. See ads to follow for details.

» U.S. Sen. Harry Reid said President George W. Bush will be remembered as the worst president in United States history, but couldn’t find his voice to endorse a measly censure plan advocated by fellow Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold. (It’s odd, too, because that’s just the kind of action Reid is known to favor when it comes to the war in Iraq: Ineffectual, meaningless and totally symbolic.)

We happen to agree with Reid, however: Bush will be remembered as the worst president the country has seen. But we would remind Reid that, at the very least, Bush will be remembered.

» On the other hand, U.S. Rep. John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who heads the House Judiciary Committee, is moving forward to hold former White House aides in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to testify about the firings of nine U.S. attorneys. (The aides refused to testify after President Bush invoked executive privilege.)

This may be a fruitless exercise, but it may also be aimed at a civil lawsuit that might force the president to disclose whether his administration selected U.S. attorneys for termination who wouldn’t play along politically. The truth about that is important to the American people, and thus Conyers is doing his constituents, and the country, a service.

Somebody tell Reid.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and this photo of disgraced former Clark County Commissioner Erin Kenny sure screams volumes. They could do a decade’s worth of DARE program classes, a month of Sunday school sermons and a year’s worth of scared straight videos and they’d still not be able to compete with the simple message that this picture sends: Doing evil makes you look really old.

Then again, this photo of Kenny also has a message: Sometimes, people do things that make them look really stupid. The Review-Journal has carted it out from time to time, and it always makes us chuckle. 

"I’m not here today to make any excuses because there are none," Kenny told U.S. District Court Judge Kent Dawson, according to the R-J’s story. "I’m here to see this through."

But, in that story and an excellent sidebar that summarized Kenny’s career, the R-J coverage made one thing patently clear: Kenny has never apologized to the constituents she betrayed with her bribe-taking, loyalty selling, and ambition that supplanted the public’s interest with her own interest. (Ironically, Kenny once testified that she immediately apologized to the FBI for her bad acts when agents confronted her.)

She may be going to jail, but wethinks she’s not at all sorry for what she’s done. And that’s got to account for some of the hatred that her name invokes around here.

Kenny’s excellent lawyer, Frank Cremen, argued that Kenny should get less than the 2-1/2 years that Dawson handed out on Wednesday. After Kenny was confronted by the FBI, she immediately confessed to her crimes and struck a plea agreement to testify against other corrupt officials and businessmen. That’s got to earn her something, he argued.

Sorry, counselor. She confessed only after she was caught. Had the FBI remained in the dark about her schemes, they could still be going on, only this time, from the rarefied air of the lieutenant governor’s office in Carson City, or beyond. (Hey, wait, isn’t the lieutenant governor under investigation right now anyway? Oh, the more things change…)

In the end, we think one R-J headline got it right: "Spirited Kenny offered promise/Colleagues say they thought she stood for something." Well, it turns out that’s true. Her energy, innate intelligence and incredible drive could have amounted to something. The only problem was, the only thing she really stood for was herself. And that combination, we Las Vegans have now learned so well, is deadly.

» The Review-Journal has pretty much owned the Kenny-in-court story in the news department, but the Las Vegas Sun had a couple good things to say as well, including an editorial lauding the verdict.

My colleague Jon Ralston put things in perspective on Sunday with a column looking back at Kenny’s career and lamenting her wasted potential. And another colleague, Jeff Simpson, issues a charge for businesses to avoid doing business with Kenny-tainted figures, like developer Jim Rhodes. (We’d agree with that, and even expand the list to include Triple 5 Nevada Development Corp., which Kenny claimed paid her for a vote on an abortive casino in Spring Valley. Where are those indictments, federal grand jury?)

» On the other hand, R-J columnist Jane Ann Morrison today wrote that she would have given Kenny less than the 2-1/2 years she received after pleading guilty to corruption charges. Why? Let’s let my former colleague explain:

"Personally, I’d have given Kenny a six-month break for confessing and not lying on the stand as [former Clark County Commissioners Mary] Kincaid Chauncey and [Dario] Herrera did. But I loathe liars," her column reads.

What? Kenny didn’t lie on the stand? You mean to say that she really does have memory loss as a result of vertigo, a diagnosis unsupported by medical science? She really can recall some details with amazing clarity, but not others? It wasn’t just defense lawyers like Dominic Gentile who disbelieved Kenny (he called her, appropriately, a "trollop" when it comes to credibility). The judge and the jurors thought she was full of it, too!

Maybe it all depends on what the definition of "lie" is?

By now you’ve no doubt heard the news: Former Clark County Commissioner Erin Kenny is headed to the slammer for 2-1/2 years. She was eligible for more, and she certainly deserved more, but we figured she’d do two or less so the U.S. attorney could still induce people to take deals when the FBI knocks on their door.

Props, by the way, to George "The Knappster" Knapp, who called the sentence during an appearance on Nevada Week in Review. Don’t ever bet against that guy: He knows everything.

You know, as glad as we are that Kenny is going away for awhile, the thing that pleases us most about her plea bargain and jail sentence is the felony conviction. You see, as a felon, Kenny cannot hold any office of trust or profit under the United States, or under the state of Nevada. And it would be just like Kenny to emerge from jail and want to run for office again.

Hell, she probably thinks she did the public a service by ratting out her co-conspirators (after she’d been caught, of course). The fact that jurors in the trial of real estate developer Don Davidson didn’t believe her even when she was confessing to crimes would deter most normal people from even showing their faces in public. Kenny? Well, she’s definitely not normal.

Besides, felonies can be erased, and voting rights restored. Anybody want to bet that Kenny will put her Boyd Law School education to work while she’s behind bars plotting a comeback?

No, like Godzilla and polo shirts with upturned collars, we hope we’ve seen the last of Kenny. But something tells us, she may be back yet.

» You know what we don’t like about the Review-Journal? For one, the paper doesn’t like to admit its mistakes, and many times, it will simply move on and forget about errors rather than promptly correcting them.

Take political reporter Molly Ball’s story on the non-existent scandal involving state Sen. Bob Beers and political consultant Robert Uithoven. Ball penned a story on Friday in which she pretty much suggested that Uithoven had broken a state law while rounding up sponsors for a Beers fundraiser. Consider the closing paragraphs of that piece:

Normally, readers, we don’t delve too deeply into political fundraising stories. For one, they’re pretty dry. For another, we know that likability is the No. 1 factor in determining who gets elected, not money. And for a third, we find that they are generally only interesting to political insiders, campaign operatives and elected officials, and we are in none of these groups.

But we’re glad we slogged through the Review-Journal’s fundraising piece today, or we would have missed this line: "The biggest surge in fundraising in the second quarter belonged to Democrat [U.S. Sen.] Joe Biden. The Delaware senator’s campaign is considered a long shot, but he raised nearly $70,000 in Nevada, more than [U.S. Sen.] Barack Obama or fellow Democrat [former U.S. Sen.] John Edwards."

(Point of clarification: Although the oddly awkward phrasing above might suggest that Obama is not a Democrat like Biden and Edwards, the Illinois senator is, in fact, a Democrat.)

A long shot? Who says? Biden is a very experienced, very intelligent candidate, who has extensive experience in foreign policy, which is just what our country needs right now. Unlike certain so-called front-runners, he’s authentic and unafraid to make verbal gaffes. (Let’s see somebody say that about U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton!) He may not be pretty (like Edwards) or flashy (like Obama) or blessed with executive experience (like New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson) but he’s got the chops to do the job.

Now, we admit that Biden isn’t doing too well in the polls. But we’ve interviewed the guy twice, and we can tell you, he’s presidential material. So don’t let media bias convince you that he’s done. Biden still has a shot! So keep that money coming, and, if you’re an elected official who hasn’t already signed on to Clinton’s campaign (or Obama’s, or Richardson’s) why not given Biden a try?

» You’re all familiar with U.S. Sen. David Vitter, aren’t you? He’s the Republican hypocrite who talked all moral about teens saving sex for marriage and then staying faithful, and protecting the institution of traditional marriage, while at the same time being the biggest whoremonger around!

Anyway, he emerged from seclusion with his wife to say, once more, that he’s sorry and that he’s going back to work in Washington, D.C. "I want to again offer my deep, sincere apologies to all those who I have let down and disappointed with actions from my past," he said. "I am completely responsible and I am so very, very sorry."

Oh, David, you big freak! Just relax! We don’t think any less of you for consorting with whores, but then, we’re pretty liberal that way. But now that we’re on the subject, there is something you can do as part of your penance. And that’s this: Instead of being such a moralistic, tight-assed, judgmental asshole, why not lighten up? Realize that people are people, we all have our own issues, and our charge as human beings should be learning to live together in as much harmony as we can muster. You can use your personal story to encourage people to be nice to one another, not judge each other and forgive each other. How about it, David?

» So Clark County wants a bigger share of the room tax money generated around here. Yeah, it’s probably because it has to pay lobbyists on all sides of critical issues. And speaking of stories broken by the Las Vegas Sun, can you believe the College of Southern Nevada official who’s under investigation by the state for allegedly having college contractors help build his home is getting a raise? In the immortal words of … well, us … "what the fuck?"

Now if only those newshounds would publish our July 3 letter to the editor that we wrote to correct a glaring omission in a news story about syndicated columnist Gustavo Arellano, whose work appears in CityLife (although you wouldn’t know it from reading the Sun). It’s Day 13, and still no joy! We’re beginning to lose hope. This can’t be a personal thing, can it?

You know why we love the Sunday Review-Journal? (Of course for the celebrity trivia in Parade magazine, but besides that!) It’s for the inspirational stories, of course! And this Sunday was surely no exception.

The paper did a friendly profile of the Slankers, just two crazy kids, following their dreams (and an estimated $21,367 monthly salary, plus consulting fees) to Washington D.C. so they could make a gosh-darn difference! Why, seeing them in that photo, smiling, gazing at the camera, was almost enough to make cynics like us believe in miracles once more!

Sure, the odds are against them. It’s a great big, bad world out there, by golly, full of doubters and skeptics, like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for example. Why, he says that there’s no chance that the Slankers will be able to get the Senate "in play" this cycle! He’s sure a negative Nelly if you ask us!

But the political power couple plucked from right here in Sin City by John Ensign — another dreamer who hopes someday he, too, can get a 2 handicap — to run the National Republican Senatorial Committee are full of hope! Mike Slanker promises that U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu isn’t going to get re-elected, no sir! And that mean old Hillary Clinton? Well, she’s in trouble, too!

"The prospect of President Clinton — Hillary — is a huge, huge motivator of our base. I can’t accentuate it enough," Mike Slanker says. Oh, but you know he’ll sure try!

And Lindsey Slanker? Well, she’s brimming with positive thoughts, too! "We still raised more than $7 million with [President George W. Bush] last month at a dinner with the congressional committee," she says. "Our base, our faithful contributors, still look at him as president of the United States and have a great deal of respect for him."

Right on, sister! Although we have to point out that even us left-wingers see Bush "as the president of the United States." Yessir, right up until noon on Jan. 20, 2009, is what the Constitution says.

Anyway, don’t let those damn Democrats get you guys down! Sure, they claim you haven’t recruited a single candidate for next year’s races. Sure, they’ve outraised you two-to-one in terms of fundraising. Sure, you’ve got to defend outrageous, sometimes laughably illogical policies in the face of reason. Oh, but don’t fret! And don’t ever forget the power of a dream!

And, in 2008, when the dust clears and you wake up from the post-election booze-and-Tylenol PM bender, just remember, you’ll always have a home here in Las Vegas, where dreams (and all that cash you’re socking away) are all you need to be a winner!

» So some of the city of Las Vegas’ new historical markers downtown are, in fact, total bullshit.

And, it turns out, Mayor Oscar Goodman, City Manager Doug Selby and Business Development chief Scott Adams just don’t care.

You’re waiting for … surprise? Please! This is the city that celebrated a "centennial" six years before it was incorporated, and simply altered its website to fit the "new" timeline! They’re going to care about accuracy on historical markers?

Still, we have to side with people like Bob Stoldal, the TV newsman who’s probably forgotten more about Las Vegas history than most will ever know. He says if you’re going to spend $3,600 on brass markers, well, what the hell? You might as well make sure it’s not stuff that city staffers just made up.

"Is it necessary to debunk a legend and the mystique that continues to draw 40 million people annually to this part of the desert?" countered Adams.

And while that’s a completely stupid point, it did make us think of a good one: Since very, very few of those 40 million people ever set foot downtown, the harm is really minimized. So, let’s just chalk this one up to another misuse of Las Vegas tax dollars, and move on, shall we?

» As we informed you before, or as you might have read in the Review-Journal, a federal court judge ruled that a law that bans ads for brothels in counties where prostitution is illegal has been struck down. We at CityLife expect to carry ads for a Nye County brothel soon in the paper.

And that just doesn’t sit right with Janine Hansen, head of something called the "Eagle Forum." We’re pretty sure that has nothing to do with helping eagles in Nevada.

"A community has the right to protect its citizens and its families from indecent materials like pornography and the advertising of prostitution," Hansen said in the Reno Gazette Journal.

"The people of a community, the elected officials, should determine what the people in that county want. And here we have the courts overturning a sensible restriction," she added. "So what it does is undermines and destroys the rights of local government."

Oh, where to begin?

First, the law in question was a state law, which means that lawmakers in faraway Carson City were dictating their preferences to local governments. Clark County could no more have legalized brothel ads than it could legalize marijuana within its borders.

And second, since Hansen is such a big fan of local control, clearly she’d have no problem if Clark County decided to legalize brothels and marijuana, right? So long as its not the courts or a distant legislature making the call, it’s OK, right Ms. Hansen?

C’mon! We’re surprised at Hansen, who is also a member of the Independent American Party. People don’t need to be "protected" from truthful information by their government! Shouldn’t the IAP be arguing people need to be protected from their government’s intrusion into constitutional freedoms?

Hmmmm?

Apparently, there’s a leaker among the lobbyists! And that leaker showed the Review-Journal’s Molly Ball an e-mail, sent by political consultant Robert Uithoven, that solicits hosts for a fundraiser this month for state Sen. Bob Beers. But get this: The e-mail was purportedly sent before the legal prohibition on post-legislature fundraising had expired!

Beers, for his part, claims no knowledge of Uithoven’s actions, save to admit that he did have the former campaign manager for Gov. Jim Gibbons-turned-political consultant save the date, and instructed him to send invitations only after the so-called "blackout period," which stipulates that no state lawmaker may solicit or receive funds 30 days before, during or 30 days after a legislative session. Uithoven’s e-mail, according to the R-J, was sent June 25, and the Legislature had only adjourned June 5. (While the regular session ended on June 4, a one-day special session was called for June 5 to wrap up unfinished business.)

"My only involvement was to save the date of July 19," according to a Beers statement quoted in the R-J on Saturday. "I also asked that if invitations were to be sent out, it would not be until after July 6." Now, this may very well be true, and if it is, Beers did precisely what he’s supposed to do under the relevant statute.

But in Friday’s R-J piece, Ball says that Uithoven may have violated a companion statute. "However, another statute, [NRS]294A.310, prohibits solicitations on behalf of candidates and applies also to those making such solicitations or those making or committing to make banned contributions."

Actually, it doesn’t. At least, not in this case.

NRS294A.310 does prohibit fundraising on behalf of a candidate, but only if you’re working for a political party caucus. If you’re, say, a freelance political consultant acting without the direction of a lawmaker, well, the statute simply doesn’t apply. How do we know? Well, we can read. But we also double-checked with a man who knows.

"This does not apply to private citizens. And that’s what’s happening here," says Lorne Malkiewich, director of the Legislative Counsel Bureau. Another measure elsewhere in state law bans lobbyists from soliciting or contributing money to a lawmaker within the prohibited periods, but under the current law, political parties, private citizens and political consultants acting independently are not covered.

Which brings us back to what Beers said: He asked that no solicitations be made until after July 6. And unless evidence can be found that Uithoven was acting at Beers express direction in asking for underwriters for the July 19 event, then neither Beers nor Uithoven broke any laws whatsoever. (Any of you lobbyists got any more incriminating e-mails you want to leak?)

Damn. We were so looking forward to a late-summer scandal!

» Perhaps there’s still hope!

Gov. Jim Gibbons has opened up yet another legal defense fund. Only this time, it’s actually, you know, legal.

Regular readers will remember the last legal defense fund, which Gibbons created in secret, took money in secret and spent money in secret, until a nosy Fourth Estater came calling and the governor was forced to spill the beans. Since there was no provision in the law for legal defense funds in those days, Gibbons called the donations "gifts," and filed an amended report.

The problem? Some of those "gifts" exceeded the limit on political contributions. The solution? Gibbons simply kept calling them "gifts," and Secretary of State Ross Miller bought it, saying that since there wasn’t a law banning legal defense funds (um, we mean, "gift-giving"), it must be OK. (There’s also no law banning those now-dreary Corey Levitan features in the R-J’s Living section, but nobody is still arguing that those are OK. Still, this week’s wig was a step up from the usual haircut!)

Lawmakers this year wrote a statute covering legal defense funds, which Gibbons took advantage of as soon as time permitted. Now, given that he hurriedly closed his old legal defense fund — despite the fact that it had been blessed by the secretary of state — and then opened a new one to cover essentially the same legal problems, we’re hard pressed to wonder why that isn’t a tacit admission that the old one was bogus? Otherwise, why not just leave that one open, instead of closing it down and taking a second mortgage on the governor’s Reno house to pay attorneys?

Just asking.

» Our corporate overlord, Sherm Frederick, came under fire from Las Vegas Sun Editor Brian Greenspun on Sunday, apparently because Frederick attacked the Sun’s favorite politician, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid.

"The good news is that now that the Las Vegas Sun is delivered to the same people as the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the readers have the benefit of two separate newspapers and at least two points of view. Sherm’s and mine," Greenspun wrote.

Um, why yes … that is good news.

But it was Frederick’s column that really got us angry this weekend. He dismissed lefties (like us) who are outraged by President George W. Bush’s decision to commute I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby’s jail sentence in the Valerie Plame-CIA leak case as merciless.

Yes, we remember all that right-wing "mercy" that flowed like a river when former President Bill Clinton was caught in a lie under oath, and one that had nothing whatever to do with outing a CIA spy and exposing other intelligence agents to danger. Oh, yes, despite Frederick’s claim that Libby shouldn’t be punished for "…a crime that wasn’t a crime," what he did was very serious.

Lest you think it was no big deal, remember that the CIA did a damage assessment after Plame’s true occupation was revealed. The people who outed her — we know that State Department No. 2 man Richard Armitage and Bush political guru Karl Rove discussed Plame’s identity with reporters as well as Libby — didn’t just identify her as a spy. They identified all of her associates, recruits and fake job fronts as CIA-connected. The domino effect was very serious indeed, which is why there are laws against outing spies.

But apparently it wasn’t that serious to Frederick, who quotes former New York Mayor Ed Koch at length thusly: "So why am I taking this step, which is sure to be criticized by many of my friends and supporters? It is because I believe in fairness. To remain silent because speaking out would not be popular is to invite punishment in the world to come."

Yes, well, how about remaining silent because speaking out would make you look like an idiot in this world? We don’t know what awaits us in the world to come, but we do suspect that people will very likely not be judged worse because they failed to serve up talking points for Bill O’Reilly and Chris Matthews. But who knows? Perhaps Koch follows a more rigorous theology.

So what does Koch actually think is behind the "mob rage" at the Libby ruling? Let’s let him tell you:

"That mob hate of Bush and [Vice President Dick] Cheney for a host of reasons — the Iraq war, the two elections that elected and re-elected them, their tax policies, their attitudes and policies directed at Islamic terrorism and a dozen other issues. They know they can’t directly strike at Bush and Cheney, whose terms of office dwindle with each passing day. They are striking at Libby as their surrogate. If they could in their lust for blood and vengeance, they would perform an auto de fe and burn Libby at the stake."

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is a bit more robust today, following U.S. District Court Judge James Mahan’s ruling for summary judgment on behalf of the plaintiffs in Coyote Publishing et. al. v. Heller.

For those who don’t know, this litigation — filed by Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada — was a lawsuit on behalf of several newspapers, seeking to void two state statues statutes that prohibited brothel advertising in counties where prostitution is illegal. And we’re proud to say that CityLife is one of those publications.

Until today’s ruling, NRS 201.430 said that it is unlawful to advertise brothels in any county, city or town where prostitution is prohibited, and NRS 201.440 provided for a six-month jail sentence and/or a $1,000 fine for a first offense, all the way up to a three-year jail term and up to a $1,000 fine for a third offense.

This presented quite a problem for the Shady Lady brothel in Nye County, which wanted to advertise in CityLife and other publications. Hence, the lawsuit.

And today, bowing to the superior arguments in Lichtenstein’s motion for summary judgment, Mahan agreed. Lichtenstein will draft the order invalidating the laws, which should go to the judge for his signature in about a week. Thereafter — notwithstanding any stays — brothels will be able to advertise in places like Clark and Washoe counties.

We’ve always thought those state laws were unconstitutional, but we’re glad to see that a federal judge agrees. We sincerely hope that the state or Clark County (both of whom are defendants in the case) agree as well, and don’t pursue an ultimately fruitless appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It would be a waste of time and taxpayer money.

Speaking of money, some will argue that the corporate masters of CityLife pursued this litigation only to make money from brothel ads. Personally, we don’t think there’s a gold mine there, but certainly, making money is what corporations do. (After all, we don’t accuse car dealers of advertising "simply because they want to sell cars," do we? Of course they want to sell cars. That’s what car dealers do!)

But for our part, the motive wasn’t financial. (We’re not going to get a rise raise, or avoid a cut in pay, because of this lawsuit.) The motive was philosophical: We honestly believe that telling a newspaper it cannot accept truthful advertising from a legal, licensed business is wrong. It’s prior restraint, and it does violence to the First Amendment’s guarantees.

Our hearty thanks to Lichtenstein and the ACLU of Nevada for their efforts in court. The First Amendment is stronger today because of them.

According to the Review-Journal’s Omar Sofradzija, who keeps track of these things, the Las Vegas Monorail is in financial dire straits. (Congratulations, by the way, to Sofradzija, who is leaving the R-J soon to become the editorial adviser for The State News at Michigan State University.)

It seems that poor income figures have caused Fitch Ratings to downgrade the monorail’s stock even further into "junk" status, and to predict that default on the $650 million in tax-exempt bonds that built the train "appears probable." Cash reserves, Fitch predicts, will only last until 2010.

Of course, those naysayers at Fitch forget that the monorail did make a lot of money for founders Cam Walker and the late Bob Broadbent, and their families. And it did provide a booming job program for them and fellow members of their church, including former monorail president (and Henderson Mayor) Jim Gibson. So it wasn’t a total failure.

Anyway, the monorail has been plagued with problems from the start, including design flaws that kept the train hobbled for months. It’s never, ever even approached the ridership figure of 50,000 average riders per day that Broadbent promised, and it’s never come close to making enough money to break even. In fact, even the monorail’s critics were too optimistic about ridership numbers.

Despite constant, repeated promises of success that was just around the corner with new "marketing" plans, the monorail has seen only a slight uptick in riders in recent months. (The train now only reports its ridership quarterly, no doubt to avoid embarrassing headlines around the first of each month.)

So what happens now? The monorail has plans (blessed by the Clark County Commission, which was led in the action by Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, a friend and fellow church member of Broadbent’s) to expand to McCarran International Airport. But with bonds that are worthless, new debt will be terribly expensive. What’s going to happen?

We believe we have seen the future, in the form of a recently-documented change in monorail policy. You see, while the monorail said it would not again resort to using state-sponsored, tax-exempt bonds, it appears officials are backing off that stance.

Our prediction: The monorail will once again ask the state to bail it out of a bind, and hand over tax-exempt bonds. And the state will probably say yes.

This is, of course, a mistake. The monorail isn’t going to help in any significant way in getting people around, even if it is extended to McCarran. First, how will it get luggage to and fro? Second, since it only goes to one side of the Strip, it’s virtually useless to people staying at Mandalay Bay, Bellagio, Caesars Palace, The Mirage, Treasure Island, or even Donald Trump’s new joint.

Plus, even if you are staying at a monorail-serviced hotel, check-in is pretty far from the monorail station, as the Las Vegas Sun once demonstrated.

Third, since Las Vegas already has transportation to and from the airport (locally, they’re called "taxis," "buses," "limos," "hotel shuttles," "rental cars" or "my friend who lives in Vegas will pick us up!") do we really need the monorail?

No, for this train to be totally useful, it would have to make a circuit all around the Strip (both sides), stop at almost every single hotel, run to the airport, and have larger cars (to accommodate luggage) or a concierge system that would route luggage directly to hotels. To all hotels.

Of course, serving as a mass transit system was never what the monorail was really designed to do. It was designed to move passengers among a small number of hotels, some a considerable distance from the well-traveled Strip, and to make its officers wealthy men. It’s accomplished only half of that mission, thanks in part to the contractors that those wealthy men selected to do the job, who initially failed.

The monorail has survived thus far on juice. It was juice that got the idea going in the first place. It was juice that got the state to agree to issue tax-free bonds, without which the monorail could never have been built. It was juice that got the state and the county to exempt the monorail from taxes (it’s considered a "charity" for doing mass transit work that the government should be doing; alas, the government is doing that work, which is what helps keep monorail ridership low). It was juice that beat back questions about revoking the monorail’s tax-exempt status. It was juice that got pro-monorail people installed in key government transportation jobs at just the right times to help the train. And it will be juice that the train tries to use to expand.

We shouldn’t let it. If the monorail — which calls itself a "privately financed" line — wants to expand, it shoul