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?