Readers, we’re sad to say it, but we must finally acknowledge that Gov. Jim Gibbons is not going to heed our call for him to resign. Who knows? His press secretary and then-chief of staff refused to even tell the governor we were writing that piece, so perhaps he doesn’t know it was published.

In any case, since that piece was published in April, things have become worse, not better. We’ve learned that the governor used a state-issued cell phone to text-message his “friend” more than 800 times when he was supposed to be working during the 2007 Legislature. We’ve learned that the governor received — apparently without justification — a tax assessment that saved him thousands on some ranch property he purchased in Elko County. We’ve witnessed the governor preside over a special session of the Legislature in which feckless lawmakers answered his call for budget cuts. And we’ve witnessed him pledge to do more cutting in the months and years to come, even as the state suffers greatly to his apparent non-concern.

Indeed, the governor seems to have that rare combination of stubbornness and stupidity that in good times is merely annoying, but in bad can be downright dangerous for a state in a crisis like the one facing Nevada.

The state Constitution doesn’t set forth the grounds for recalling a public officer, although it does require that the reasons therefor appear in the recall petition. Surely, in Gibbons’s case, the trick wouldn’t be citing the reasons but limiting the list to the constitutionally prescribed 200 words. We can start with lying to the public, his very first offense, and end with bringing discredit upon himself and his office, his least offense.

And, if properly funded, such a recall could succeed. A recent poll in the Reno Gazette-Journal found 61 percent of people disapproved of the way Gibbons was handling the job as governor, and a Review-Journal poll published today found 46 percent rating Gibbons’s job performance “poor,” the lowest of any governor in six states that were surveyed. (Just 23 percent rated him “excellent” or “good.”)

So where could this proper funding come from? My colleague Jon Ralston penned an excellent column in today’s Las Vegas Sun suggesting university Chancellor Jim Rogers. Rogers has spent the last year making a very public case for how Gibbons’s cuts will destroy public education. Most recently, Rogers has flatly said Gibbons is using the budget crisis to purposefully dismantle state government in keeping with his own ideology, and Gibbons has replied in a fashion that indicates he simply does not care, and will not change.

(In fact, it looks as if things are getting worse. Responding to the low poll numbers in the R-J, Gibbons’s spokesman Ben Kieckhefer said this: “Budget cuts are never popular, but you know what, neither are tax increases. Gov. Gibbons has kept his promise to the people of Nevada that he would hold the line on taxes; and when the economy turns around, which it will, the state of Nevada will be the better place for it.” There are two possibilities here: One, he’s spinning, which is his job, or two, he really believes it, which is worse. But we think it’s the latter, given that Gibbons himself, in a typically cliche-laden speech to the Nevada League of Cities, recently predicted that “We are going to become the shining city on a hill.” Precisely how?)

Moreover, even as Republicans talk plainly among themselves about possible replacements for Gibbons in the 2010 primary, Gibbons has declared he not only intends to finish his current term, but to seek a new one. Only Democrats, hoping for an electoral advantage, want Gibbons on the ticket in two years.

But we can’t afford two years. We can’t afford two more weeks. And we are at a crossroads: Reason has failed. Persuasion has failed. Diplomacy has failed. The only recourse is force, the force of a recall.

Ralston is correct: Rogers, who has the money and contacts with Nevadans who feel the same way as he does, should immediately start organizing a recall of Gibbons. It requires signatures in an amount equal to 25 percent of the voters who cast votes in the last general election (about 146,569 valid signatures, by our count). But they can be gathered anywhere in Nevada, and with between 46 percent and 61 percent disapproving of Gibbons, it’s certainly within reach.

Ralston’s final line is worth repeating: “Jim Rogers and others ave the time and the money to alter the course of the states future. The only question is whether they have the will.”

UPDATE: Conservative activist and blogger and TV pundit Chuck Muth was on this bandwagon by the time we climbed aboard this afternoon. (He doesn’t necessarily support the recall of a governor who he’s criticized plenty in the past; he just thinks the time for talking is over and the time for doing is now.) Well, that makes it unanimous!