Dennis Myers, Commentary

A few weeks ago I sat in a restaurant with U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei to get his thinking on a number of current issues facing Congress. One of the questions I asked dealt with the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA).

Before its approval by Congress, there were several months of citizen activism that targeted the anti-terrorism section of NDAA, which many people read as applying to U.S. citizens and other legal residents of the United States. They were specifically concerned with the indefinite detention provisions of the measure.

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Dennis Myers, Commentary

Facebook, which seems to be following Google’s example in squandering corporate good will, has laid trademark claim to the word “book.”

The rule appears in its user agreement: “You will not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Book and Wall …), or any confusingly similar marks.”

When I sent some friends a link to Dictionary.com‘s commentary, a journalism professor replied, “I can’t see how you can copyright a word that has been in dictionaries for centuries.”

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Dennis Myers, Commentary

The dispute over whether the U.S. health care program should require all employers to provide birth control coverage for their workers provided an excellent opportunity for the kind of educational process our political system used to offer.

But this time it was treated as just another dispute between Republicans and Democrats, with points given for political ground yardage gained or lost by either side.

The fact that Republicans are rehabilitating President Barack Obama’s poll numbers by putting him on the popular side of innumerable issues has its interest, of course. But there is more at stake in these disputes, and journalism has a responsibility to get deeper than the question of who’s winning in setting government policy.

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Dennis Myers, Commentary

Of all the messages to the Nevada Legislature delivered by governors that I have heard, one is the most memorable. It was 1983. The state was coming out of a crippling recession that had been made worse by Gov. Robert List’s “tax shift” that changed state government’s reliance from property to sales taxes, making the tax structure less stable and more unpredictable.

As a result, the state had difficulty meeting its obligations to the public at exactly the time when the public depends on government most. To put it another way, people who paid for government services in good times found them difficult to obtain in bad times.

List, whose rationale for this mess was “When businesses must tighten their belts, government should do the same,” was defeated for reelection by Richard Bryan in large part because of the fiscal fiasco.

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This year’s Nevada Legislature ended at its 120-day constitutional limit without an important piece of business being finished.

The new districts for Nevada’s legislative and U.S. House districts were not drawn by the lawmakers, not because they didn’t do the work but because Gov. Brian Sandoval didn’t like the work they did. He vetoed the districting plans drawn up by the legislators.

Dennis Myers, Commentary

Then after the legislative session ended, instead of calling them back into special session to finish the job, the governor turned to the courts.

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Many years ago I used to read magazines that came to my father in the mail, specialized publications like the Elks Club and Veterans of Foreign Wars magazines.

Dennis Myers/ Commentary

There was frequently an ad for cigars that bore this headline: “YOU DON’T NEED CASTRO’S PERMISSION TO ENJOY THE UNIQUE HAVANA FLAVOR.”

This was an ad I never saw in mainstream magazines. Clearly, these cigar makers were looking for a certain demographic. (In researching this column I found it still appears occasionally in publications like the “Gator CAPers,” the newsletter of the Florida Civil Air Patrol.)

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By Dennis Myers, Commentary

Answer this: Is the Catholicism of U.S. House Speaker John Boehner an issue in politics?

Almost anyone outside of politics would say no. To most folks who grew up in the United States, took a civics class, understand the Constitution, there is something unpleasant about the notion.

So it may be disturbing to many to know that last month 70-plus Catholic leaders sent a letter to Boehner telling him that his party’s position on Medicare and Medicaid is “anti-life.”

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By Dennis Myers, Commentary

In 2003, Nevada Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins introduced Assembly Bill 344. The Nevada Legislature meets only ever other year, and this was the first time it had met since September 11, 2001.

Perkins’ bill was intended (according to its summary) to provide for a “special election to fill vacancy in office of Representative in Congress in event of catastrophe.”

When there is a vacancy in a U.S. Senate seat, the governor appoints a replacement. When there is a vacancy in the U.S. House, a special election is required by the U.S. Constitution. (Last week the Reno Gazette-Journal proposed in an editorial that Nevada provide for the governor to appoint House members, too, and was hit by messages from schoolchildren telling the newspaper’s staffers that what they proposed was illegal. The newspaper then ran a second editorial that deftly backed away from the idea without ever admitting error.)

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By Dennis Myers, Commentary

I wonder if Oprah Winfrey feels like a fool.

In 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger was running for governor in the California recall election.

Rumors about his treatment of women came to critical mass after six women told the Los Angeles Times that Schwarzenegger had grabbed their breasts or made other lewd advances to them. One woman said he tried to strip her clothes off. “Did he rape me? No,” one woman said. “Did he humiliate me? You bet he did.”

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By Dennis Myers, Commentary

A couple of weeks ago, President Obama visited Reno. On the morning he was to arrive, Reno’s daily newspaper carried this front page headline: “Political spotlight focuses on Reno.”

The spotlight, of course, was on the president of the United States, not Reno. The town just caught some of the reflection. This is the most parochial kind of journalism – local boosterism. I wondered if any of the national reporters picked up a copy of the paper.

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