OK, who didn’t see this one coming? U.S. District Court Judge Robert Jones has ruled that the city of Las Vegas’ ordinance that bans feeding homeless people in city parks is unconstitutional, as well as totally stupid. (Actually, we made up that last part, but we’re sure the judge could find a case or two that supports our conclusion.)

The judge found a couple other portions of the ordinance — a ban on gatherings of more than 25 people, the ability of the city to ban certain people from city parks and the ability to designate a park for children only — are OK, but the American Civil Liberties Union has vowed to appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

OK, for all the money: What do you think the 9th Circuit is going to say about all of this? Anybody? If you guessed "kill those laws like Michael Vick kills puppies," you’re on the right track. You’re also incredibly insensitive to animals.

» Whatever you do, never, ever buy a used car from Scott Adams. No, not the Scott Adams who created the Dilbert cartoons. He’s cool, and plus, his used cars are probably Jaguars or Bentleys. No, we’re talking about the Scott Adams who is director of the city’s Office of Business Development.

Remember when we told you that the city had installed a series of $3,600 historical marker plaques in downtown sidewalks, some of which contained lies? It seems city staffers did a little Internet research to jazz things up, but in the process introduced inaccuracies.

Well, Adams’ solution is to install yet more plaques, identifying the information on the original plaques as "fun facts." You know, like this: "Hey, these plaques in the sidewalk? They’re full of shit. Isn’t that fun? It’s like we took the truth, and then changed it to make it not true. Woo-hoo! This sure is fun, huh?"

Anyway, members of the Historic Preservation Commission — being grown-ups and all — don’t really see things the way Adams does. "That’s not a disclaimer; that’s an endorsement," said member Bob Stoldal, the commission’s chairman, of Adams’ "solution."

Hell, if Adams sold you a car, it would probably have a sticker inside the trunk that said "This is really just a ‘fun car.’ Otherwise, it would actually have an engine in it! Ha!"

» Man, Gov. Jim Gibbons just can’t seem to get his campaign finances straight. He’s been fined $2,000 by the Federal Elections Commission, which overlooked other counts that could have resulted in an ever larger fine.

In fact, Gibbons’ violations go all the way back to 1994, when he had to return $120,000 that exceeded campaign finance limits, a penalty he suffered again last year, when he had to give back $11,000.

Oh, that’s the problem: Gibbons said back in 1994 he thought the state law was different than the federal law, and since he obeys neither, he accidentally took too much. Ooopsie!

UPDATE: Sorry, readers. It turns out that we were wrong when we reported that Gibbons was fined $2,000 by the Federal Election Commission for an illegal PAC donation to his Silver State Leadership Fund. In fact, he was required to return the illegal donation to its source.

» Heh, heh: We just noticed that, in the Review-Journal, the story right next to the Gibbons campaign finance story is about a woman being pulled from a burning car in a garage. We could totally make a joke right now about Gibbons, women, garages and burning passions, but we won’t. That would just be uncool. But totally funny.

» C’mon, people! Stop bothering poor Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney about the ancient history of his peculiar Mormon faith. Who cares about faked archeology, "plural marriage," or that 1857 incident in which some Mormons killed a bunch of Arkansas pioneers in Utah? Water under the made-up bridge, baby!

Instead, let’s focus on the fact that the church officially discriminated against black people right up until 1976, which was during Romney’s lifetime. How the hell does he justify that? (Don’t forget, Romney isn’t just a parishioner; he was a church leader, too.)

» Yeah, baby. Very yeah: Our colleague Erin Neff calls out Republic Services for trying to pull a fast one. We especially like the part where Neff notes that Republic promised twice weekly trash pickups in order to juice in its long franchise agreement, and now that it has the trash contract for a few more decades, it wants to change things in order to raise profits.

County, it’s time to make them put up or go out to bid for another RFP! Who’s with us?

» Great. A state-owned holding company for the Arab government of Dubai — Dubai World — buys a minority stake in MGM Mirage. Can nobody see this is a huge security risk? Do we really want those people to obtain our sophisticated slot-player club technology? Next thing you know, they’ll want to run the ports or something….

» Hey, you know that battle the Las Vegas Sun was having with the university system, which was illegally holding back conflict-of-interest forms that are supposed to be filed by professors who do outside work? Yeah, funny thing: The university’s ignoring of the Open Records Law doesn’t really matter, since nobody was filing the (required) forms anyway.

» So, let’s see if we can get this straight: University Chancellor Jim Rogers decided to withdraw a pledge of $3 million for a science and math building at the University of Nevada Reno after Regent Ron Knecht questioned his integrity during a recent employee review process?

See, this is the problem when the boss (ostensibly the regents) tries to manage the employee (Rogers) who is also filthy rich and a huge donor. And its not the first time it’s happened, either, although Rogers later reversed himself and restored a $25 million donation he’d pulled from UNLV.

But this conflict was easily foreseeable, before and after Rogers volunteered/barnstormed his way into the job in 2004. And when asked about the potential for conflicts between his university job and his philanthropy, then private-citizen Rogers said simply: "I would never stop giving. You can’t do that."

Oh, apparently you can.

Can we have a private word here, Mr. Chancellor? Just between us? It seems that taking back money from UNR is a little harsh, even if Knecht did question your integrity. But just because Knecht is a total dick doesn’t mean the science and math students at UNR should suffer, does it? They didn’t elect him to be a regent, did they? And seriously, nobody pays any attention to Knecht anyway, unless it’s to rank him as the worst lawmaker in the state, bar none. And you’re right, he’s probably just sore that you gave $20,000 to his opponent in the last election.

But this sets a bad example, no? Taking ones’ ball and going home? Doesn’t that in a way prove at least one of Knecht’s criticisms? We know you’re better than that! Give the money back to UNR, and do what the rest of us do: Ignore Knecht!

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid has been on a jihad of late against new coal-fired power plants being built in Nevada. Instead, the Senate majority leader says, we should be focusing on alternative sources of energy, like wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and the like.

It’s not that we support coal-fired power plants. We’d love it if the entire world ran on solar power and cold fusion reactors, frankly. But Reid has failed utterly to explain how Nevada Power or anybody else can generate the necessary amount of electricity using renewables, without driving costs through the roof. Until he does — and until he explains why he’s willing to give mining a pass on its green responsibilities while holding the power company to a different standard — wethinks he’s got a credibility gap.