HELP WANTED. Enterprising attorneys can score big money and national repute by tackling some very obvious cases that their learned colleagues have apparently overlooked. STILL PLAYING COWBOYS. Nevada’s accidental attorney general and wannabe governor Adam Laxalt refuses to enforce the firearm background check law passed by voters last November. The feds refuse the work, … [Read more...]
In search of César Chávez
He died in 1993 but I’m still following César Chávez’s footprints. Long before he became an international superstar, César Chávez traveled to northern Nevada on worker issues. That’s according to Reno-Sparks NAACP matriarch Dolores Feemster who met with him in the 1960s. I have been unable to find any other record but I won’t stop searching. Reno’s first César Chávez Day … [Read more...]
Not necessarily
Perhaps newspapers are no longer the first draft of history. I was reminded of that fading tradition last week when I picked up a mint condition set of Winston Churchill’s “A History of the English Speaking Peoples” at Grassroots Books. Every time some peacenik advocates diplomacy over combat, the warmongers always shout “appeasement” and trash the memory of Prime … [Read more...]
Death panels, part deux
Ebenezer Scrooge learned the easy way that stinginess kills. Tiny Tim got a reprieve. Not so us. To his credit, Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval went against GOP moonhowlers, expanded Medicaid and insured tens of thousands of lower-income Nevadans under Obamacare. Nonetheless, Nevada as usual sits at the bottom of the barrel in this category, spending less on Medicaid than any … [Read more...]
Positively negative
Coherent individuals should not psychoanalyze a narcissist like President Trump. Sane persons use themselves as frames of reference. Bad idea. There is one bit of mass insanity available to pry into that twisted mind: Positive thinking. Tsar Donaldov Vladimirovitch has stated that one of the formative experiences of his life was a sermon by Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, … [Read more...]
Equal rights betrayal
I witnessed the assassination of equal rights in Nevada. That 1977 night, the legislative hallway was empty, the senate chamber was packed. Only juice lobbyists Jim Joyce and Charlie Bell stood outside, peeking through senate doorway windows, giggling to each other like teenage boys viewing the girl’s locker room. With no one else around, they turned toward me to boastfully … [Read more...]
Reidless and rudderless?
U.S. Sen. Harry Reid left Nevada with a serious case of the blues, both the good kind and the bad. On the plus side, he tromped the Trump trend and went out a winner. He replaced himself with Democrat Catherine Cortez-Masto, returned both legislative chambers to the Donkeykongs and delivered Nevada for Mrs. Clinton. After bucking the 2016 national blue flu epidemic, … [Read more...]
Kate Smith & Lady Gaga
When Lady Gaga opened her Super Bowl halftime extravaganza with Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” I got up to make a sandwich. The New York City Italiana superstar, born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, had no idea of the pain that song evoked in my family. My father arrived at Ellis Island from Italy a few years after Berlin who “was put in a pen with his brother … [Read more...]