John L. Smith, Nevada Smith

I thought I’d written the final installment of the Immigration Chronicles in the U.S. Senate race before the November election, but I guess I should have known better.

Alas, this is a never-ending story. Neither Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid nor Republican challenger Sharron Angle can resist politicizing it.

Whatever his true feelings about the complex issue may be, during the campaign Reid has chosen to soft-sell immigration reform.

He’s relying on a heavy turnout of Hispanic voters to carry him across the finish line on Election Day.

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By John L. Smith, columnist

For months Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Sharron Angle has been knocked for her firebrand rhetoric on subjects ranging from Social Security to health care reform.

Her strong conservative stands have thrilled her followers, but have been used by the campaign team of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to portray her as an uncaring extremist.

Now Angle faces what would appear to be an even more difficult task: dealing with the politically toxic comments of her longtime pastor, John Reed of Sonrise Church of Reno.

In a lengthy, thoughtful article in the Reno News & Review by veteran Nevada journalist Dennis Myers, Reed called Reid’s Mormon faith “a cult. The Christian community, all the Christians, theologians and scholars, all recognize that, that Mormonism is a cult. I have books in my library on cults, and it lists Mormonism right there with all these bizarre cults.”

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By Arnold M. Knightly, Boulder City Review

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will dedicate the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge on Thursday, Oct. 14 at 10 a.m., the U.S. Department of Transportation announced this morning.

Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer are scheduled to attend, as well as Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Dina Titus.

Family members of the O’Callaghan and Tillman family will also attend the event.

Nevada Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki will attend on behalf of Gov. Jim Gibbons, who was injured last month in a horse-riding accident.

The $250 million bypass bridge could open as soon as the week of Oct. 18, according to Boulder City officials.

By John L. Smith, Nevada Smith

The Immigration Chronicles continue today with more sparring from representatives of U.S. Senate candidates Sharron Angle and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Reid recently took the calculated risk of raising the issue of immigration reform, at least as it pertained to the DREAM Act, with just weeks to go to Election Day.

The DREAM Act, however, was sidelined last week after Republicans blocked it following Reid’s insertion of it into a defense spending bill.

Reid’s challenge is to focus on reform while courting Hispanic votes. Angle’s challenge is to illustrate her hard-line stance on illegal immigration without further feeding her opponents attempts to portray her as “extreme” and out of touch with the mainstream on the issue.

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By John L. Smith, Nevada Smith

A riverboat gambler must be hidden somewhere in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s family tree.

That would help explain his recent decision to risk so much by embracing controversial immigration reform while facing the tightest re-election fight of his life.

Like many other areas and issues in Nevada’s U.S. Senate campaign, immigration is a subject where Reid and Republican challenger Sharron Angle stand in direct opposition. While a few of their words sound the same — both are for reform, you know — they couldn’t be more different in their approach to the complex subject of what to do with millions of America’s illegal immigrants.

Reid represents a Democratic Party that has gone to great lengths to court Latino voters and needed them to gain a majority in both houses and win the White House, but then put contentious immigration reform on the back burner behind health care and the economic crisis. By resurrecting it now, Reid could be viewed as a simple man who is just trying to fulfill a campaign promise.

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Are you scared yet, Nevada? Do you tremble every time a commercial comes on the air?

Do you dread that knock at the door?

Does the thought of looking in your mailbox fill you with trepidation?

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By Dennis Myers

It’s been a year since the tea party movement developed and it’s still not easy to get a handle on it.

From the start, tea party leaders resisted getting too organized or centralized and they were especially insistent that no one was a spokesperson for the movement.

They failed to anticipate that this left a vacuum that others would be all too happy to fill.

Groups and leaders surfaced saying, “We are the tea party,” and there was no one to say to them nay.

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