And we really thought those candidates liked us for us, you know? Turns out it was just our early momentum and our delegates. We feel so used.

» There’s a pretty glaring omission from this biography of former Clark County Commissioner Lynette Boggs, who is slated to be a speaker at the Women of the Word conference in Las Vegas Sept. 20-22 at the Tuscany hotel-casino. You know, just little things, like the fact that she’s been indicted on several felony counts related to documents she swore were true but turned out to be false.

There’s no indication that Boggs has been taken off the schedule of speakers for the conference, the theme of which is "relationships." And why should she, really? After all, she’s innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, and even then all her sins will be forgiven if only she believes and repents. Besides, she needs the cash to hire a lawyer, now that a hearing master has denied her request to be represented by a public defender.

» Remember this story about the Summerlin resident whose personalized license plate — XSTACY — was recalled by the DMV because some jerk complained that it was a reference to drugs? (Impossible since Stacy Moore got the plate in 1988, long before the club drug Ecstasy was popular.)

Well, she’s decided to appeal the DMV’s demand that she surrender her plates in court, and is recounting the tale of her experience on her website.

And we say, good for her. The fact is, her license plate is a simple play on her first name, not a drug reference. But even if it was a drug reference, so what? Are we so simple-minded in Nevada that merely looking at a license plate that might refer to drugs will make us actually do drugs? Heck, we saw an In-N-Out Burger bumper sticker the other day, and we didn’t immediately hit the drive-through. And if we can resist that kind of pressure, even the most hopelessly addicted druggie could see a plate that says LUVCOKE with no ill effects. (By the way, that’s a reference to Coca-Cola. What did you think we were talking about?)

But yet, one single, solitary moron figured it was a drug reference and was so offended, he or she called it in to the DMV. To that person, and to the agency, we say, get a life. And to Moore we say, good luck.

» Regular readers know we love the Review-Journal’s correction box more than almost anything else in the paper. Man, those guys hate to admit mistakes!

You may remember the recent mystery surrounding a correction, regarding a company called Meridias Capital. While a correction was published in the R-J on Aug. 31, the story containing the original error could not be found anywhere in the R-J archives. Had it been removed from the web, we wondered? Surely not, since that would be unethical and the R-J would never, ever do anything unethical.

Well, the mystery deepens. Business writer Hubble Smith penned a story Sept. 2 that referred to Meridias Capital. But astonishingly, the original story still does not appear in the R-J’s archives.

Where did it go? If the name had been misspelled in the correction, why is there a second reference to the company with the same spelling now in the archives? Are there some shenanigans going on down on Bonanza Road?

We’ve always been a little skeptical of calling Sept. 11 "Patriot Day." After all, it marks the day America was attacked by Islamic fascists in the grip of a vile delusion. It reminds us of the former Navy SEAL who wrote disparagingly of the Purple Heart medal, handed to those who are wounded in combat against an opposing armed force. It’s an enemy marksmanship medal, Cmdr. Richard Marcinko, USN (Ret.) wrote, and he was glad to have never won one.

But the anniversary does give us an opportunity to look back on the last six years, and assess what we’ve done to prevent another attack from occurring. Alas, the picture isn’t good. Our port security is still flawed. Our borders are still porous enough to allow suitcase nuke-carrying terrorists to simply walk into the country. Our war in Iraq, in addition to taking the lives of more than 3,000 brave service members and thousands of Iraqi civilians, has increased global tensions and allowed our enemies to depict us as crusading invaders. We’ve outsourced many formerly military tasks to contractors, creating a new industry in war profiteering. Oh, and the man who masterminded Sept. 11 — Osama bin Laden — is still alive and making videos urging us all to convert to his "religion of peace," at peril of the sword.

Here at home, the alleged "patriots" of the Bush administration have shredded in the Constitution in favor of creating a system of warantless wiretapping that, in the beginning, was unsupervised by any court. A compliant, bipartisan, feckless Congress has passed the USA Patriot Act, which has been abused by the government to obtain records they otherwise would not have been able to obtain. (Portions were recently declared unconstitutional by a federal judge.) Our leaders have abandoned the American way and centuries of tradition (to say nothing of treaties to which the United States is a signatory) by condoning torture, secret prisons, and even denying that habeus corpus is a personal right.

At every turn, where politics should have yielded to true security for the nation, where party should have been trumped by true patriotism, President George W. Bush and his administration have failed. They’ve lied to us about connections between Iraq and Sept. 11 to justify war. They’ve lied to us about the reasons for war. And now they’re lying to us about how long the war will last. And in the meantime, real threats go unaddressed.

Bush and his ilk came to Washington promising to provide grown-up leadership after what they derided as the frivolity of the Clinton administration, the prosperity and peace of which we now long to have back. But they proved over the last six years that they’re all public relations, no substance.

It was an inexplicably horrific day in 2001. And it’s remained a tragic day every year since, as much because of our leaders as our enemies.

So thanks to the actual patriots, here, in Iraq, and around the world, who get up every day working with their very lives to keep America safe. Let the rest of us do our part in the coming election to provide leadership worthy of those heroes, and their sacrifice.

So we’re inclined to give the press people in Gov. Jim Gibbons‘ office a break after they put out a statement this morning commemorating the sixth anniversary of the attack of Islamic fascists upon the United States. Everybody knows it’s the "World Trade Center" and not the "World Trace Center." No big deal, and the governor’s staff quickly sent out a revised version.

No problem. It’s all good.

But then we re-read the news release — both in its original and corrected versions — and noticed this line appeared in each: "Six years ago, people around the world witnessed the most catastrophic attack on American soil since the invasion of Pearl Harbor. Those horrific and historic images remain with us, uniting us as a state and as a nation."

Excuse us? The invasion of Pearl Harbor? Pearl Harbor wasn’t invaded, governor, it was attacked via aerial bombardment by Japanese aircraft surging from carriers 275 miles north of Hawaii. In order to have an invasion, you need ground forces land and occupy territory. The Japanese didn’t do that. Their aim may ultimately have been to invade and occupy Hawaii, but on 7 December 1941, the goal was to cripple America’s Pacific Fleet.

Got it? Let’s review:

Invasion: Take Iraq for an example: Our ground forces landed, entered Iraqi territory, set up bases and are currently present in that country. That’s an invasion, followed by an occupation. Ditto for World War II (in which North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France, Holland, and, ultimately, Germany were invaded), Korea (in which North Korea invaded South Korea, prompting a United Nations military response) and Vietnam (in which the governor served as an F-4 Phantom pilot).

Not an invasion: Take Libya for example: On 15 April 1986, in Operation EL DORADO CANYON, 18 F-111 fighter/bombers from the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing — assisted by A-6, A-7 and F/A-18 Hornets from a trio of American aircraft carriers — attacked military targets in Libya. No ground forces were involved, and thus no invasion took place.