The day begins with a somber reminder of the sacrifice of military families. The day ends 16 hours later with a reminder of how many of us use the freedom those military families secure: We execute our God-given right to be fat, drunk and stupid.
I realize you hate politics, and you have every right to. The inscrutable gibberish, the meaningless bickering. The jargon, the gridlock. The bad comb-overs. You hate it because it was stated with utmost seriousness that global warming legislation died last year because it snowed in Washington.
We have long suspected that Metro Police officers shoot their guns more often than police in other cities, and that our process for investigating those shootings is faulty.
Let me paint a scenario: Let’s say an employee of your company is accused of embezzling company money. Would it be appropriate for a member of the board of directors to work on behalf of the employee’s defense team?
What if I told you I could offer you a two-bedroom, two-bath condo in Summerlin — well, basically Summerlin — for the price of an Acura MDX: Is that something that would interest you? It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. We’ve heard this before from the real estate pitchmen.
Like God before it, the novel is dead, or so we are told. “The book can’t compete with the screen,” Philip Roth, the old master, has said. The hegemony of digital media is now assured — our culture given over to what the novelist Jonathan Franzen once called “attractively priced electronic panderings.”
There were as many police officers as protesters when I left a recent demonstration at NV Energy. But if people in Southern Nevada knew more about the electric utility rate hike, I think there would have been thousands there.
Lawsuit accuses school president of trying to sweep theft under the rug
Friday, Nov. 18, 2011
An explosive lawsuit filed in District Court this week alleges that College of Southern Nevada President Michael Richards retaliated against employees who cooperated in the attorney general’s investigation of Bob Gilbert, the former construction chief and associate vice president convicted of theft of CSN materials.
Build a medical school. There’s a lot to chew on in a 178-page report presented to the Economic Development Board on Monday, but that one stood out to me for its short- and long-term benefits.
They don’t make it easy for those of us who believe in vigorous government. By “they” I mean our public employees, who sometimes leave us shaking our heads.
As I steer my Lamborghini Gallardo LP 560-4 Spyder through downtown Henderson, I pass JobConnect, our state’s unsubtle euphemism for the unemployment office. As I pass by, I yell, “Losers!”
We do not notice them, but we should. Pedestrians are our city’s second-class citizens, as has become all too clear with the recent spate of deadly incidents. And while rage at the drivers may make us feel better, we should also have a feeling of collective guilt.
Las Vegas has never been much for introspection. We were like the guy at the party with the high-grade Bolivian marching powder, our own bottle of fine single malt Scotch and a bevy of women leaning in to hear our witticisms.
Not everyone was surprised by the indictment Thursday of Dr. Sebastian M. Paulin Jr. for selling prescription drugs to people who don’t need them. That’s because among painkiller addicts and recovering addicts in the Las Vegas Valley, Paulin was well known as an easy source of drugs.
College isn’t worth it. That was the message from a Pew Research Center study this year that reported 57 percent of Americans think the higher education system doesn’t give students a good value for the thousands of dollars in tuition and expenses they spend. Seventy-five percent said college is too expensive, and two-thirds of respondents who didn’t continue their education beyond high school cited financial reasons for leaving the classroom.
Saturday night, talking to Jesus. Or at least a guy who looks like Jesus as traditionally depicted: robe, beard, hair, sandals. It's Halloween season and we're at the Cosmopolitan, at the edge of the Chandelier Bar. But who knows, maybe he's chosen this moment and this place to make his return.
Who needs caffeine when you’ve got today’s topic: homeowners associations! Yes, your blood pressure is spiking at the sight of the dreaded acronym, HOA.
The early evening crowd at the Fremont Street Experience is typical — jiggly, a little buzzed, wearing the tribal gear of Oregon Ducks and Green Bay Packers — except this night is different.
Early this week, Mitt Romney, in town for the Republican presidential debate, had this to say to Las Vegas residents who have thrown their money into the black hole of the real estate market: Tough luck.
A message to the assembled national press corps here for the Republican debate: Welcome to Las Vegas. If at all possible, avoid the following clichés in your debate stories: Sin City, “What happens in Vegas” and any and all poker and gambling references.
Nevada Women’s Philanthropy has a creative way of doling out the significant money it raises every year: It holds a competition, with dozens of the valley’s best nonprofits making proposals.
I received an important news release Wednesday: “BERKLEY RECOGNIZES 100th ANNIVERSARY OF LAS VEGAS CHAMBER OF COMMERCE IN HOUSE FLOOR REMARKS.” Later, another important item arrived from the ether: Video of Rep. Shelley Berkley’s floor remarks had suddenly become available and ready for broadcast.
Gaetano Palmeri has an imposing mustache, a crisp striped shirt, double-breasted jacket and a lilting Sicilian accent. The food and service at his Henderson restaurant, Gaetano’s Ristorante, are known for their delectable simplicity and elegance. Gaetano likes to drop by the table and offer choice fillets of wisdom, gratis.
If there’s a single property in the Las Vegas Valley that typifies the extremes of the housing boom and bust, it may be this little house for sale on Walcott Drive.
For two years I’ve been wondering where they are — the long-term unemployed, the people who have lost their homes to foreclosure, the still-employed who have lost all their savings. Why aren’t they marching on Washington, demanding an end to three decades of right-wing economic policies that delivered incredible riches to a tiny minority of Americans while everyone else struggled to get by?
I’m touring yard sales, and I’m searching for the saddest item I can find. Of course there’s a certain sadness to all yard sale items — they’ve been rejected, ostracized, their value just a fraction of what they were when new.
At the National Center for Responsible Gaming Conference on Sunday, I got bored and my mind began to wander. That in turn caused me to think about some recent journalism I’d been reading about willpower. Fitting.
The spread of sports betting kiosks at bars certainly seems like a great innovation: Your beer, your sweat-inducing chicken wings and your action on your team. And all without the annoyance of being in a casino.
State Sen. Michael Roberson is a rising star in the Republican Party. He caught the attention of conservatives during his first legislative session this year with tough rhetoric attacking teachers unions.
I went to see Ruben Kihuen kick off his congressional campaign Tuesday at Rancho High School with low expectations. And he failed to meet them. Kihuen, 31, has an inspiring personal history.
Nevada’s medical marijuana statute is a cruel farce, like a dark Kafka story for those in need of weed. Shocking: The Legislature largely ignored a mandate and told patients to fend for themselves.
Culinary Union Local 226 set up a website recently at unfitforchildren.org that details the foul-mouthed tirades of Dana White, president of Ultimate Fighting Championship.
MTV: Please just get it over with already and do a season of “Jersey Shore” here in Vegas. Why anyone would want to go to a club because there are some cut-rate, 99-Cent-Store celebrities pumping their fists in a VIP section is beyond me, but regardless, it’s happening.
Listening to Mitt Romney detail his economic plan in North Las Vegas on Tuesday, I was reminded of the Talking Heads lyric “same as it ever was” from the song “Once in a Lifetime,” released in 1980.
I try to be civil with this column: I don’t use the words “stupid” or “dumb” or “idiot.” I don’t tell people to “shut up.” I try to assume good faith motivations. And so it seems as if God has sent Kate Marshall to test me.
Even as I write this, the TV in our newsroom is tuned to ESPN a half-hour before our boys from UNLV get ready to take on the 11th-ranked University of Wisconsin Badgers.
Steven Chu is energy secretary, but maybe he should be crafting the message for Democrats instead. Chu is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, but at the National Clean Energy Summit at Aria on Tuesday, Chu played historian, and it was a refreshing message.
When it comes to the emerging clean energy revolution, Nevadans should fear that once again we’ll play the role of the developing country, plundered for our natural resources without much benefit to ourselves.
The American Sociological Association held its annual convention at Caesars Palace this month, and their reaction to Las Vegas has been like a parody of academic pomposity.
I was really hoping Sen. Harry Reid would get in one of the electric cars on display and drive around today at Aria, which is hosting the fourth National Clean Energy Summit that gets under way Tuesday.
I drive at only-in-Nevada high rates of speed on U.S. 93 so we can make a midafternoon appointment, and I’m thinking about the road, a central metaphor of all American storytelling.
We drive on U.S. Highway 50 toward Lake Tahoe, its surface shimmering with sunlight, the hillsides dense with trees. I’m a little confused by all the hippies roaming about, until I realize that the jam band Phish is playing an amphitheater right on the lake.
When we began our journey across America’s loneliest road in Baker, on the Utah border, we encountered two woman cyclists who looked exhausted. We called them the joyless, sullen cyclists. On our 62-mile drive to Ely the next day, we saw a hitchhiker going in the other direction, and turned around in an attempt to talk to him: What could be more lonely than hitchhiking the loneliest road?
As far away as anyplace you can possibly be and still be in the United States, but it’s right in the middle of everywhere. That was the saying of a late friend of Ed Spear, executive director of the White Pine County Tourism & Recreation Board.
BAKER — At T&D’s restaurant in this hamlet near the Utah border, the talk turns to water almost immediately. “What about our water problems — Las Vegas trying to steal our water,” says Rouena Leonard, a semi-retired British-born waitress.
Throw this into the ever-growing pile of the baffling: Why is there no discussion about blight on the Strip? Why is there no sense of concern about the long stretches of our most important economic and cultural asset that are pocked with half-finished projects or just empty land?