The three-decade legal wrangle over whether Clark County will ever be allowed to tap groundwater from White Pine, Lincoln and Nye counties has reached another milestone, but may be far from over. Jason King, state engineer for the Nevada Division of Water Resources (NDWR), issued a 111-page ruling denying the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) request for water … [Read more...]
Too Many Willing to Forgo First Amendment Rights
Here is proof positive that ignorance is hazardous to freedom. The Freedom Forum’s 2018 First Amendment survey, conducted in May and June, asked 1,009 Americans to name the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. Only one person could name all five. One out of more than 1,000. But perhaps the most telling aspect of the survey was when knowledge of the First … [Read more...]
Take a Pass on Petition to Eliminate Primaries
With all the polarizing political rhetoric and bombast of this election year it is sorely tempting to grab onto any idea to lessen the load. A petition called the Greater Choice-Greater Voice Statutory Initiative is currently being circulated. It proposes to eliminate the major political party primaries in Nevada. Instead, there would be only a General Election in November … [Read more...]
Could Nevada Benefit from Plans for Hoover Dam Electricity?
What’s in it for us? A recent New York Times story outlines a proposal by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to use Hoover Dam and Colorado River water to smooth out its flow of electricity. The utility has so much intermittent solar and wind power that sometimes it must pay others to take it off its hands lest it overload the grid and result in blackouts. The … [Read more...]
Modifications to Endangered Species Act Overdue
It is about time. A few weeks ago the Interior Department announced proposals to modify the way it enforces the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to make the law a bit less onerous for private businesses and land owners. The agency is currently accepting comments on its proposals. One of the proposals is to remove the phrase “without reference to possible economic or other … [Read more...]
Can Nevada Lawmakers Correctly Introduce Energy Choice?
Let’s get one thing straight, the Energy Choice Initiative — Question 3 — on the November ballot is not deregulation of the electricity market. It would replace Nevada’s regulated energy monopoly with a regulated competitive energy market. It would amend the Constitution to require lawmakers by July 1, 2023, to “establish an open, competitive retail electric market, to … [Read more...]
Courts Are Solidifying Gun Rights
The courts in recent years have been nailing down ever more solidly the right to keep and bear arms. In the District of Columbia the U.S. Supreme Court struck down restrictive ordinances that required that guns be kept at home disassembled or nonfunctional with a trigger lock mechanism, saying this violated the Second Amendment. Justice Antonin Scalia opined that the … [Read more...]
BLM Rule Change Doesn’t Signal Wild Horse Slaughter
Wild horse advocates are apoplectic over a change in rules for selling off wild horses recently announced by the Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management, saying it could lead to the animals being sold for slaughter. In 2013, after learning that Colorado rancher Tom Davis, a friend and neighbor of then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, had over a three-year period sold … [Read more...]