So, state Sen. Mark Amodei, the Republican who represents Carson City, has a new job: Starting Oct. 1, he’ll be president of the Nevada Mining Association. That’s the lobbying group for mining companies that are doing business in Nevada.

So Amodei will be a senator and a lobbyist. A senobbyist. A lobbator.

We know what you’re thinking: Can he do that?

That’s really two questions: Can he do that legally? And should he do that, morally?

We think the answer to both is: "Hell no!" And we’ve laid out our detailed reasoning in a previous post, In Re: Las Vegas Councilman Steve Ross. The analysis is precisely the same, the facts are frighteningly similar, and the conclusions cannot be different: Amodei needs to either resign as a senator — immediately — or quit his new (and no doubt lucrative) mining job.

There’s no middle ground or gray area here. 

» Mayor Oscar Goodman will not be the man to challenge Nevada’s potentially flawed term-limits law, hizzoner said at his regular news conference today. Goodman is now in this third term, and is barred by law from seeking a fourth.

Still, Goodman said he’d be interested in the results of a lawsuit, and would like to serve beyond the three, four-year terms allowed thereunder. But he made it clear he wouldn’t be the one who sued to overturn it.

"The voters have spoken," he said. (Voters approved term limits overwhelmingly in 1994 and 1996, three years before Goodman was elected mayor.)

"Unlike a lot of elected officials, I don’t need to be mayor," Goodman said. "I had a life [before politics]. I will have a life [afterwards]."

But if the law were overturned, as some say it should be, given that the version of the measure that passed in 1994 was different from the version that passed in 1996? Goodman said he’d look at the result and might decide another term as "happiest mayor in the universe" is for him.

In other Goodman news, the mayor was outraged to discover that Esquire magazine had apparently passed him over when compiling a collection of photos of the best-dressed mayors in America for the magazine’s August issue. We have to say that Goodman is always well-dressed, and to pass him over is crazy, especially when you consider they put Daniel C. Snarr of Murray, Utah (scroll down) on the list. Snarr is attired in a Hawaiian shirt of the Tommy Bahama variety, which we support, but c’mon. Goodman always sports double-breasted suits and nice ties. How could he lose to Snarr, who thinks we’d all be better off if we "lived Christ-like ideals."

What would Jesus wear? Tommy-B, apparently.

» Woo-hoo! The inevitable Biden March continues! Our man for president, longtime Delaware U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, has doubled his showing in the Silver State in the course of just six months! Woo-hoo! He’s unstoppable!

According to figures obtained by giant media conglomerate Gannett, and reported by our friend Hugh Jackson over on the Las Vegas Gleaner, Biden has fully 2 percent of voters in his corner. But back in March, he had just 1 percent. That’s a 100 percent gain in just six months! Now multiply that over time, and in just … let’s see … 25 years, he’ll have 50 percent! That’s a winner, baby!

Of course, we don’t have 25 years to play around with here, not considering the juggernaughts that are the campaigns of U.S. Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. (That handsome John Edwards has apparently dropped out of the race in Nevada, which is good news for Biden! There’s a place for you in Bidenville, Edwards voters!)

So while Clinton and Obama debate whether to take nuking the hell out of Iran off the table, our man Biden has a chance to slide up and wow them with this incredible foreign policy experience, domestic knowledge and superior debate skills. We’re pulling for you, Joe! Go Biden!

» That’s odd. Of all the reasons that Review-Journal business reporter Jennifer Robison gave for the lack of new businesses moving to Nevada in the last fiscal year, the state’s oppressive pro-tax climate was not among them. Hmmmmm. Could she finally be ready to admit her long-ago story about how taxes would keep businesses from moving to Nevada was … what’s the word? … total bullshit?

Give her credit at least for doing the story, and getting Nevada Development Authority officials to take the rap. Then again, since they take credit for any business anywhere that’s ever even thought about moving to Nevada, they may as well take the blame when things don’t go their way.

» Let’s see if we can understand this: U.S. Sen. John Ensign, a potential candidate for vice president of these United States, does want smart students from India to stay in this country once they get their degrees. But Ensign doesn’t want Mexican immigrants who come to America to be able to stay in this country, with special emphasis on denying them Social Security benefits, even if they’ve worked for them.

Both groups work hard. Both pay taxes. Both came to America to get something they couldn’t get at home.

So what gives? Why does Ensign like Indians but dislike Mexicans?

» U.S. Sen. Harry Reid says he’s got plans to derail those coal-fired power plants in Ely and Mesquite, which should come as bad news to Sierra Pacific Corp., the parent company of Nevada Power. Reid would never have so publicly committed to the fight if he didn’t have the means to back it up.

"Nevada Power, instead of sitting around whining about this, should develop some alternative energy," Reid said.

Now, we at Various Things & Stuff are totally for alternative energy. This fossil fuel thing was fun while it lasted, but we’re running out, and some pretty creepy things are happening to the climate that are connected with our use of those fuels. So, it is time to come up with something new. But to do that, we’re going to need real leadership, say, a United States senator saying that the government is going to take every dime of corporate welfare headed for big oil companies, nuclear energy companies and the like, and spend it on ways to make alternative energy viable. Once that technology is developed, the taxpayer-financed research should be given away to jump start the clean energy era. Because we’re just not there yet.

Which is why we think it would be hilarious if Nevada Power’s representatives sat down with Reid and said this: "Senator, we agree with you. We want to do alternative, clean energy. We’re committed to it. So if you can show us a way to spend the $3.8 billion we were going to spend on the Ely Energy Center and spending it on clean energy instead and get exactly the same — or greater — energy output, we’ll hold a news conference later today with you at our side announcing that we’re doing it.

"But, senator, if you can’t show us how to do that, well, then, we’re going to need you to go back to D.C. and get some research done, because you’re asking the impossible right now."

Now that would be a conversation we’d like to hear.

You know, as supporters of big government, we sometimes have to acknowledge that this bureaucrat or that one went a little too far in exercising the righteous power of the state. Sometimes, we admit, big government can be turned to evil ends. Such is the case with the ridiculous developments in the Anti-Smoking Crusader Battalions.