Regular readers know that we like to make fun of stupid things people say and do in our own words. But sometimes, mockery requires a quote. So how about a collection of recent doozies, with some of our own flavor tossed in? (We culled these quotes from the pages of the Review-Journal and Sun.) Here we go!

• "I’m probably one of the four or five best-known Americans in the world." — former New York Mayor (and presidential candidate) Rudy Giuliani. Now we know why everybody hates Americans.
• "There’s a letter from my therapist saying there’s absolutely zero wrong with me, other than what’s happening, the stress I’m under from what’s happening, that I have no paranoia." — Suspended District Court Judge Elizabeth Halverson. It’s bad enough when you have to defend yourself by quoting your therapist, but even a fake therapist could not have concluded there’s "absolutely zero" wrong with Halverson. We’re guessing her "note" is scrawled in crayon on a napkin from Baskin-Robbins, and signed "Dr. Rocky Road."
  
• "I can drive you out there and find a family that’s giving me the finger and saying four-letter words, living with three other families, because we failed in our background checks." — North Las Vegas Mayor Mike Montandon, on families living in low-income housing. Now, can we be totally sure they’re giving Montandon the finger and using four-letter words because the background checks failed? Could they be giving him the finger because he’s kind of a dick? We’re just saying.
  
• "Force this developer to think long term. Challenge them to take this 50 acres and develop something else. Casinos have huge social costs." — Activist Lisa Mayo DeRiso, on Focus Property Group’s plan to build a casino at Kyle Canyon Road and U.S. 95. Instead, the council forced the developer to accept pretty much everything the developer demanded from the city. Here come the slots!
  
• "Our basic rights come from God, not government." — actor and former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, who’s now running for president. Yes, we remember well that passage from the Sermon on the Mount: "Verily, I say unto thee, thou shalt keep and bear thine arms, and weapons of military usefulness, since thou art part of a well-regulated militia." Ass.
  
• "I’m not serving in the U.S. Congress for show." — U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, on symbolic votes against the war versus real progress. Now, who could she be implying IS serving in the Congress for show? Hmmmmm….

For the first and last time ever, Review-Journal Road Warrior Omar Sofradzija’s Sunday column carried a dateline: East Lansing, Mich. It was Sofradzija’s swan song, now that he’s left to take a job as editorial adviser to The State News.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: Various Things & Stuff, ValleyBlogs.com, and Las Vegas CityLife, the newspaper we edit when we’re not blogging, are all owned by Stephens Media LLC, the company that also owns the R-J. We at Various Things & Stuff worked at the R-J as the newspaper’s political columnist for five years.)

As you readers know, we’ve got mixed feelings about the Review-Journal’s Corey Levitan, author of the weekly "Fear and Loafing" column in which he — over and over and over again — writes the same story about doing various jobs, usually badly. (He’s even got a website dedicated to it.)

On the one hand, we’ve said it’s more interesting than the usual stuff that runs in the R-J’s sorry Living section. (Damning with faint praise to be sure, because that bar is so low it’s actually subterranean.)

But on the other hand, we’ve also said it’s become tiresome, repetitive and too much a vehicle for Levitan’s obviously outsize ego. (Then again, it’s not like he’s the only one.) But he is the only one we know of who compares himself to Hunter S. Thompson or George Costanza in that self-deprecating way that all true egoists employ to mask their rampaging self-love.

Now, it’s not like Levitan came up with the idea, although he’s been doing even before he arrived at the R-J in 2005. Other journalists have broken this well-trod ground long before Levitan started hamming it up.

But to hear Levitan tell it, he was the original person to steal the idea and those bastards at the Los Angeles Times are stealing his theft of the idea.

And check out the Times reporter’s reply on L.A. Observed, a blog about media in the city of angels.

We’re really not sure where to go with this one. It appears that Levitan is right: He was doing this long before the Times did it. Congratulations. You’re the man. But, why would a person want credit so badly he’d go on an e-mailing rampage, when the thing he wants credit for isn’t exactly fresh? It’s like demanding that people recognize you were the one who created the macarena. Sure, you were the first. But the macarena was lame even when it was in vogue.

Anyway, we have good reason to believe that Levitan is most happy when people are typing his name, regardless of what adjectives they type in front of it. So we’ll stop now, and let Levitan get back to the ultimate post-ironic "Fear and Loafing" column: His daily journalism gig at the R-J.

Say what you will about our fair city, there’s never a shortage of things to do. For example, the Culinary Union Local 226 is going to hold a celebration at 6 p.m. Friday at the Culinary Training Academy (710 W. Lake Mead Blvd., in North Las Vegas) commemorating the successful six-year strike against the Frontier hotel-casino.

So the group Judicial Watch is suing the Bureau of Land Management, seeking letters or other documents from U.S. Sen. Harry Reid and others regarding lawyer/lobbyist Harvey Whittemore’s Coyote Springs project.

The group’s complaint says that the BLM hasn’t provided "contacts or communications" from Reid, U.S. Sen. John Ensign and then-U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons sought under the Freedom of Information Act. 

Somehow, Judicial Watch must have gotten the impression that Reid and his fellows in Congress used their special powers to help Whittemore build Coyote Springs, which is a huge community in the middle of freaking nowhere. (Consider it "leapfrog development" if the frog in question was bionic and had super powers as the result of being exposed to radiation.)

How could they have gotten that idea? Oh, probably from the Los Angeles Times, which reported in 2006 that Reid helped Whittemore pave the way for his project, thanks to an "especially close" relationship. The story also detailed Ensign’s role in helping Whittemore on the project.

Then again, maybe Judicial Watch just read the Review-Journal, in which Reid literally described the cooperation between lawmakers, environmental groups and government as "a lovefest" in a July 2006 story.

Naturally, Judicial Watch wants to know precisely what was said to whom, by whom, when and what impact it might have had on the government’s role in the "lovefest." And now that they mention it, we’re kind of curious about that ourselves.

Reid could, of course, release all letters, report all contacts and make staffers available for interviews as to what they did with respect to Coyote Springs. After all, if nothing untoward happened, what’s the harm?

But we’re guessing Reid’s going to fight this one. His spokesman, Jon Summers, called the lawsuit "a politically motivated move by a right wing group attempting to get headlines using Sen. Reid." Well, if that’s the goal, mission accomplished! But we’re thinking Judicial Watch is after something a little more than a headline.

Besides, who cares if it is politically motivated or if Judicial Watch is a right-wing group? (Lawyers from Judicial Watch did sue Vice President Dick Cheney over records from his secret energy task force, a lawsuit that was unsuccessful when the U.S. Supreme Court unconscionably sided with Cheney.)

But politicians and spinmeisters often complain about the motives of their attackers, when what’s really at issue is underlying conduct. And even a person’s most dedicated enemy can find a legitimate scandal, no? In fact, it’s usually the enemies who are the only ones who care enough to look.

Too bad for Reid that courts don’t care about motive; instead, they apply the law. And based on our knowledge of the Freedom of Information Act, we think Judicial Watch is going to get the documents they’re after.

All the more reason for Reid, Ensign and Gibbons to release what they have now. Let’s have a look at just how much love they put into the fest.

On Monday, we told you about some top honors earned by the law firm of Kummer, Kaempfer, Bonner, Renshaw & Ferrario in the publication The Best Lawyers in America (2008 ed.). Little did we know that another firm in town had garnered a few honors of its own.

And while we’re at it, maybe it’s time to revise the way we choose judges in the first place. That will be the subject of a University Forum lecture slated for 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the Barrick Museum Auditorium on the UNLV campus. Professor Tuan Samahon of the William S. Boyd School of Law will deliver the lecture, titled What’s Wrong with the Way Nevada Selects Its Judges? A Legal and Policy Analysis. It’s open to the public.

Apparently, every journalist in the English-speaking world has descended on Las Vegas to report on the O.J. Simpson/armed robbery/sports memorabilia story. Not us. We couldn’t possibly care less. If he did it, we hope he gets convicted. If not, well, whatever. To us, it’s simply another crime story in a city where plenty of crime stories — many much more serious and life-altering than this one — happen every day.

So, we’ll leave the O.J. to the rest of the entire media world. As for us, well, it’s time for some blogging!

» Everybody loves a train! Except, perhaps, for U.S. Sen. John Ensign. According to a story in The Hill newspaper today, Ensign is expressing some skepticism about using federal funds to build a magnetic levitation train that may eventually run from Las Vegas to Anaheim, Calif.

"The privately financed is in general the way to go," Ensign told the Washington, D.C., newspaper. "There just isn’t enough money to do all the rail projects that we want to do around the country."

Yes, that’s true. That’s probably why projects go to states with the most aggressive representatives, who fight to bring those dollars home to their constituents instead of playing golf all the time while other lawmakers gather up the inevitable pork. We admit its not an attractive feature of the federal system, and that it does not encourage frugality with taxpayer dollars, but we also admit being part of the reality-based community.

The story was occasioned, as it happens, by the dedication of $45 million to do an environmental impact study for the maglev train, which will be financed at least in part by private dollars. (It’s supposed to whisk travelers along at high speeds while avoiding those nasty, miles-long traffic jams that tend to make a trip to Las Vegas akin to a visit to the proctologist with the world’s biggest hands.)

But lo! There is another privately financed option! It’s called Desert Xpress, and it aims to run a high-speed regular rail train between Las Vegas and Victorville, Calif. You may recall this as a totally private venture that, while not stretching all the way to Los Angeles, would still eliminate a good deal of the traffic in getting there.

The Desert Xpress people are natural competitors with the maglev people. Although the maglev would move much faster, it is also more expensive. And who knows which one — or either — will ever be built. (Propriety compels us to note that Bombardier Inc., the same people that brought you the problem-plagued Las Vegas Monorail, are big backers of the Desert Xpress train, according to The Hill.)

Anyway, most of Nevada’s delegation (the article also names U.S. Sen. Harry Reid and U.S. Reps. Shelley Berkley and Jon Porter, although we’re almost sure somebody else from our state is in Congress) is trying to stay neutral. But not Ensign. For him, philosophy trumps everything. And it’s good to stick to your principles, unless one of those principles is, apparently, "be as big of a dick as you possibly can."

» Speaking of sticking to your principles, we see that the American Civil Liberties Union is coming to the defense of alleged gay-sex seeker U.S. Sen. Larry Craig. While Craig has denied he was seeking sex in a Minneapolis airport men’s room, the ACLU is arguing that, even if he did, soliciting sex in public is perfectly OK, provided the sex itself doesn’t occur in public. That’s covered by a little thing called free speech.

OK, we see the point. But where does the ACLU think Craig was going to go after he’d (allegedly) solicited relations with a man who turned out to be an undercover police sergeant? The Hilton? Craig himself said he was waiting to catch a flight, so it’s not like there was a lot of time to go to a private place to have sex. To us, it seems clear that Craig intended to have some kind of freaky sex right there in the men’s room.

Still, props to the ACLU for coming to the aid of a guy who so rarely himself came to the aid of civil liberties. That shows the group really does have no client but the Bill of Rights.

» So, Vice President Dick Cheney doesn’t believe in mocking members of the military who’ve honorably served their country, eh? That’s what he said at a Republican fundraiser, reacting to an ad by the group MoveOn.org that cast the last name of Iraq war Gen. David Petraeus as "Gen. Betray Us?"

"It’s bad enough when politicians turn their backs on a war they voted for and supported when it was popular," Cheney said. "But no one in politics, regardless of party, should hesitate to object when an American solider at war is mocked and insulted."

(You know what’s coming right? Tell us you know. OK, here we go.)

In fact, Cheney didn’t object at all when U.S. Sen. John Kerry was "mocked and insulted" with Band-Aids emblazoned with images of the Purple Heart medal were handed out at the Republican National Convention in 2004. (Kerry received three Purple Hearts in Vietnam for combat wounds. Cheney received none, probably because he never went to Vietnam, citing "other priorities" for his multiple deferments from service.)

Cheney never said anything when former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole (a wounded-in-action World War II veteran) questioned whether Kerry really deserved the medals. (Dole later apologized for his remarks.) Nor did he speak up when former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said, "I think it’s funny." In fact, the only Republican seemingly on record against the Band-Aids was Vietnam veteran (and former POW) U.S. Sen. John McCain.

And let’s not forget the even worse outrage of Republican criticism of former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, a disabled Vietnam vet who was pictured in an ad with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in 2002. Cheney didn’t have much to say about that, did he?

So once again, we see Republicans saying one thing, but doing another. It’s getting to the point where it’s not even fun pointing out their myriad hypocrisies anymore.

(Thanks to an alert reader for some of the links, and the idea, for this one.)

» The shooting, possibly of innocent bystanders, by private security contractors working for a company called Blackwater U.S.A. has pointed up something we’d first read about long ago: A law imposed early on by the Coalition Provisional Authority that exempted all private military contractors from Iraqi law.

This never-repealed 2004 law, in the view of some, was essentially a license to kill for military contractors, who have assumed plenty of duties that used to be performed by soldiers. Among the most dangerous: Protecting top American officials in Iraq.

The paper of record has more on Blackwater, but for an in-depth look at the company, check out Jeremy Scahill’s comprehensive book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

» And finally today, those dedicated activists over at Planned Parenthood are throwing a gala luncheon to benefit the Planned Parenthood of Southern Nevada chapter. The lunch will run from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday at the ghostbar at The Palms hotel-casino. Guest speakers will be Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and actress Wendie Malick of Just Shoot Me fame.

It’s $60 for an individual ticket, and $100 for a patron ticket, and you can RSVP to 878-3622.

He was for it before he was against it. That’s what it appears U.S. Sen. John Ensign was doing on the $104.6 billion transportation bill that passed the Senate approved 88-7, with Ensign voting no. President George W. Bush has threatened to veto the legislation, saying it’s too expensive. And Ensign apparently agrees.

Or at least he does now. He may not have agreed before, when he was ladeling some pork of his own into the bill, including $3 million to widen Blue Diamond Highway, the site of many traffic deaths. Ensign was right to seek those funds, since there are quite literally lives at stake. By ultimately voting against the bill, Ensign has set himself up to be accused of total callousness towards the red asphalt.

But it’s his own fault. It seems Ensign (and Bush) didn’t like the $3.1 billion for housing that was included in the bill that exceeded Bush’s recommendations, not to mention $600 million for Amtrack, $765 million for airport grants, and $631 million for highway programs.

Grand total of that "objectionable" spending: $5.096 billion. In other words, 4.8 percent of the total spending.

For 4.8 percent, Ensign votes against things that he himself put into the bill, including $3.8 million for Interstate 15 interchanges with the Las Vegas Beltway, and the Blue Diamond Highway widening. For 4.8 percent, Ensign sided with a tiny minority of Republicans, against a bill he’d previously supported.

It would be one thing if Ensign opposed all pork projects, and voted against the bill out of principle. And it would be another thing if Ensign supported the bill — even with the extra spending — by saying the funds for Nevada were too important to vote against the entire measure.

But no. Instead, Ensign puts his own pork in, but then decides to vote against it, because he just can’t abide an extra 4.8 percent.

Wait, you say! Perhaps Ensign was being smart, since he knew his earmarks would pass anyway, even without his vote. He may be trying to have his cake and eat it, too, but at the end of the day, he’s covered his ass and at the same time got Nevada the funds it deserved for much-needed projects.

That is a viable argument, but not for Ensign’s political smarts. It’s an argument for Ensign being, once more, totally full of shit.

If only there were someone, someone who was also elected to represent Nevada, available to call Ensign out on his tricks. Someone familiar with Senate procedures, someone who also knew full-well the needs that Nevada has, and had the state’s best interests at heart.

Yeah, it’s really too bad there’s nobody out there like that.

What’s that? You want a few more Quick Hits? Well, OK, if you insist…

» Oh, man. This doesn’t look good. Just as the Nevada Resort Association is trying to convince everybody that the gambling industry already pays its fair share of taxes, along comes word that the industry won a record $1.146 billion from gamblers in the month of July. Hell, it was so good, even downtown casinos saw an increase in win! That public education campaign is getting harder and harder all the time.

» Welcome to Nevada politics, Mr. Andrew Martin. Although the Nevada Democratic Party isn’t supposed to get involved in primaries, it usually does, getting behind the person perceived to have the best chance to win in lots of subtle ways. And that means Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Robert Daskas is getting the nod in the 3rd Congressional District race against Republican U.S. Rep. Jon Porter, not you.

However, Daskas has said publicly that he’s not going to answer questions or talk about issues until he’s finished prosecuting the most recent member of the Mack disorganized crime family to work his evil on our poor state, accused murderer and attempted murderer Darren Mack. Therefore, we feel it’s only right for us at Various Things & Stuff to abstain from writing about Daskas until such time that the candidate, you know, wants to be a candidate for purposes other than that of raising money.

As for Martin, it might help if he had somebody other than Joe Bifano running his campaign. The last time we heard from Bifano, he was idiotically suggesting the Regional Transportation Commission avoid buying a French-made bus because the French refused to go along with George W. Bush’s misbegotten war.

That is the same guy, right?

» Congratulations are due to the law firm of Kummer, Kaempfer, Bonner, Renshaw & Ferrario, on being named Nevada’s top law firm for land use and zoning law in The Best Lawyers in America, (2008 ed.) Four of the firm’s lawyers were named individually for their practice in zoning and land use — Chris Kaempfer, Mark Fiorentino, Robert Gronauer and Thomas Amick. (We at Various Things & Stuff have personally seen Kaempfer and Fiorentino perform more than once back when we were earning an honest living in the field of journalism, and we can say they definitely deserve the accolades.)

In addition, Managing Partner Michael Bonner was recognized as a leading lawyer in corporate as well as mergers and acquisitions law; partner Thomas Kummer was named a top lawyer in commercial litigation; Robert Crowell, Kathleen Drakulich and Steven Tackes were recognized for their practice of energy law; and John Brewer was named one of the leading lawyers in corporate law.

» And finally today, in news not so good for the legal profession, the State Bar of Nevada is notifying its members that $300,000 in missing, perhaps the subject of an embezzlement by an investment agent working for the bar.

"The Bar has been informed that an agent retained to invest the Bar’s savings is unable to locate three $100,000 certificates of deposit for which the Bar had advanced funds to purchase. The Bar filed suit against the agent, and obtained a restraining order to protect other certificates of deposit which were purchased with Bar funds," the attorney’s group said in a news release.

"The State Bar of Nevada has also notified the district attorney, the Nevada attorney general, the U.S. attorney and the Nevada Supreme Court of the potential embezzlement," the release concludes.

Man, if there’s anybody you don’t want to steal from, it’s the mob. But after the mob, it’s lawyers. After all, the mob will only kill you. Lawyers? You don’t even want to think about it. You’d be better off skin diving among great white sharks in a wetsuit made of recently harvested seal meat and scented with shark pheromones than stealing from lawyers.

Information about the guy dumb enough to allegedly steal from the State Bar wasn’t in the release, and a call to the group’s deputy counsel wasn’t immediately returned, but we’ll update you when we find out.

Hey, kids! Did you know it’s Constitution Day? That’s right: It’s the one day we set aside to celebrate the adoption of the Constitution of the United States as the governing document for the 13 formerly disparate colonies that eventually became the good, old U.S.A.

From what we hear, constitutional literacy is on the decline, and not just among people we elected to office. (Actual law adopted in violation of the Constitution: It is illegal in Clark County to stand and watch an illegal street race. True story!)

So we encourage all of our readers to visit the Constitution Center’s website (linked above) and find out more about the amazing document (and its amendments) that has created one of the greatest, most free societies on Earth. One good result of this might be the possibility that citizens can stand up when scoundrels, demagogues and charlatans tell us that we have to give up some of our freedoms for liberty, or simply ignore the principles that must guide this nation when they get a little inconvenient.

Just in the last few years, consider the assaults on the Constitution: The Bush administration has been spying on Americans’ overseas phone calls and e-mails, without warrants, provided they think you’re talking to a terrorist. The Patriot Act has allowed FBI agents to illegally enter your house, search your stuff and even put a monitoring device on your computer, again without warrants. (Significant abuses, to no one’s surprise, have been discovered, with related National Security Letters, which allow the FBI to seize personal records without a warrant.) At least one election — in 2000 — was decided by extra-constitutional means. Treaties signed and executed in accordance with the Constitution have been ignored and violated. Private property has been seized and handed over to developers. A high school kid pulling a stupid prank has had his rights to free speech curtailed.

Here in Las Vegas, courts have allowed casinos to ridiculously claim they can control the public-forum sidewalks in front of their properties. Street preachers, handbillers, petition circulators and protesters have been deprived of their rights to free speech, under laws passed by local governments. And the separation-of-powers concept enshrined in the state and U.S. Constitution has been flaunted.

Worst of all, most of these abuses have been perpetrated by those who have sworn an oath to "preserve, protect and defend" the Constitution. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

So check out the Constitution Center, and give the old girl a good read. It takes the animation of the citizens to breathe life into our founding document. Otherwise, it’s just a piece of extraordinarily well-cared-for paper in the National Archives building.

» Speaking of the Constitution, a sure-to-be-interesting lecture is planned for 7:30 p.m. tonight at the Barrick Museum Auditorium on the UNLV campus. University of Texas Professor Sanford Levinson will lecture on the topic of whether the Constitution adopted 220 years ago is still fit to govern a country that’s moved into the Information Age. Should we convene a new constitutional convention? The lecture is co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the William S. Boyd School of Law and the College of Liberal Arts. Don’t miss it.

» Still speaking of the Constitution, the Las Vegas Sun published a story wondering about the chances of impeaching President George W. Bush. It’s not likely to happen, especially with the opposition of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. (Ironically, if Bush were impeached along with Vice President Dick Cheney, Pelosi would become the 44th president of the United States!) But just because the Democrats don’t think they have the votes to do it — and are worried about being punished at the polls if they did do it — doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. In fact, it doesn’t even mean Reid and Pelosi think it’s a bad idea! You can never really tell what those people are thinking.

The Sun went a little further in its coverage, too, asking a constitutional lawyer to actually draft the articles of impeachment. Hell, all somebody in Congress has to do now is cut and paste! Any takers?

» Still speaking of the Constitution, somebody who was mostly illiterate in what it says left high office Friday. Although he served as a judge and as the highest law-enforcement officer in the land, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales once said torture is OK under U.S. law and treaties (it isn’t) and that habeus corpus isn’t an individual right (it is).

But we’re finally safe, since he quit on Friday after he got caught fibbing to Congress in various pieces of testimony about various unsavory things he’d done while in office.

"Over the past 2-1/2 years, I have seen tyranny, dishonesty, corruption, and depravity of types I never thought possible. I’ve seen things I didn’t know man was capable of," he said in his farewell speech.

And that was just in the administration! Bam!

» And still speaking of the Constitution, one of the things the document requires the Senate to do is give advice and consent to the president on nominations to certain federal offices. And we think the Senate is going to have a somewhat harder time doing that for one Henrietta Holsman Fore, a former Las Vegas businesswoman who rose to head the U.S. Mint and become undersecretary of management at the U.S. State Department.

Fore has been nominated to become director of foreign assistance at State, but the nomination has been delayed because she had a role in the huge backlog of passports created when the U.S. government began requiring them for travel to Mexico, the Caribbean and other destinations.

But that’s nothing compared to this paragraph from an October Vanity Fair story about Bush’s bunker-like mentality (and actual bunker): "Or Henrietta Holsman Fore, nominated by Bush to replace Randall Tobias, deputy secretary of state for foreign assistance, after Tobias was forced to resign in an escort scandal? It turned out that Fore once told a college audience that she tried to retain black employees when she was president of a small wire-products company near Los Angeles, but that they preferred selling drugs; that Hispanics were lazy; and that Asians, while productive, favored professional or management jobs. (Her nomination is pending in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.)"

Ouch, baby. Very ouch.