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 John L. Smith, Nevada Smith

If I didn’t know better, I’d think there was something in the water.

HORSE LAUGH: The smartest move at the state Legislature – and how many times do I use “smartest” and “Legislature” in the same sentence during the year – is to shelve AB 329, which redefines “wild life” in Nevada to exclude wild horses and burros.

Horse lovers have loudly argued that the proposed law would have the force of enabling ranchers to block wild mustangs and burros from water holes. Advocates for ranchers, and by that I mean rural legislators, counter that the legislation would clarify the proper role of the Bureau of Land Management to provide for the federally protected species.

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By Chuck Muth, Muth’s Truths

Sen. John Ensign finally did the right thing, apparently one step ahead of the law, but it was too little, too late. If he’d quit from Day One, Rep. Dean Heller might already be a U.S. senator and Harry Reid might not be in office.

But that’s all water over the bridge and under the dam now.

Odds are it won’t take long for Gov. Brian Sandoval to announce that Rep. Heller is his pick to fill the Ensign vacancy (heck, it could be done by the time this gets published).

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By Arnold M. Knightly, Boulder City Review

Defeated U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle may want to look into buying a house in Boulder City where she would, apparently, be among friends.

Angle and many Republicans did at least 10 percentage points better in Boulder City during the Nov. 2 election than in the rest of Clark County and the state, complete election results released last week show.

Boulder City residents cast their ballots on Nov. 2 at the city's recreation center. Nearly 75.6 percent of the city's 9,559 registered voters participated in the midterm elections. City residents heavily backed Republican candidates including defeated U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle, who received 55.8 percent of the local vote. Photo by Steve Andrascik

Angle captured 55.8 percent of the vote in Boulder City, 14.5 points better than she did in Clark County and 11.2 points higher than the statewide total.

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By Dennis Myers, Commentary

Recently I heard a Harry Reid radio spot that attacked Sharron Angle for wanting to “privatize” the Veterans Administration. It’s actually called the Department of Veterans Affairs now, but that’s the least of the issues here.

That criticism of Angle was legitimate, but then the spot argued that Reid “cared” about veterans and Angle does not.

While I was looking for the transcript of this spot on Reid’s campaign website, I couldn’t find it, I did find this: “When asked point blank asked if things like prescription drugs and doctor’s visits should be covered by the VA, Angle callously answered: ‘No, not if you’re moving towards a privatized system’.”

Uncaring and callous? Just for opposing a change in how veterans’ affairs are handled? She wasn’t proposing that veterans be sent to internment camps.

She was just proposing a different way of handling the matter.

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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 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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