It’s summertime and the living should be easy. Vacation season is in full swing and school is out until August.
Editorials
So I was driving down the road the other day and pulled up behind a pest control van at a traffic light. On the back was a bumper sticker that read: “Hire Licensed Contractors | IT’S THE LAW!”
Fifty years ago this month Congress enacted the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Fifty years ago next year, Congress enacted Medicare. Both measures faced furious opposition and even violence over the bitter course of enactment.
If ever there was a person who embodied the “Be Kind, Be Boulder” motto, it could certainly have been Bob Faiss.
As predicted, moderate establishment Republicans won the half dozen high-profile matchups in the 2014 Nevada GOP primary contests. Nevertheless, the big winner June 10 was really Nevada’s growing and maturing conservative movement. Some highlights …
In August 1990, I was covering a court case at the Douglas County Courthouse. Walking past the law library, I noticed the defendant and his lawyer through a glass wall. I swung my camera up and shot some footage of them and then continued on my way.
The number of races in which credible conservative candidates challenged moderate, establishment-backed candidates in Nevada this year was unprecedented. And regardless of whether or not the conservative candidate chalked up more votes at the ballot box, conservatives won. Big time.
The older I get, the quicker time seems to pass.
In 1918, U.S. Rep. Edwin Roberts of Nevada, who was the wartime Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, stayed in D.C. until just before the election. While he was working in the House, back in Nevada his opponents did their best to poison the atmosphere against him, portraying him as a traitor for voting against the declaration of war against Germany and against the draft. By the time Roberts arrived back in Nevada, the political climate was so toxic that in Reno’s Riverside Hotel, someone called him a coward and the result was a fistfight.
Last week in this space, I told a tale of a 2011 measure at the Nevada Legislature that would have switched the state to digital records storage to solve a problem that didn’t exist.
Citizen Outreach has announced the names of its conservative award recipients for 2014. They are:
Memorial Day is just around the corner.
Eleven years ago at the Nevada Legislature, Assemblyman Bob Beers introduced legislation to start converting public records in Nevada to digital formats. His Assembly Bill 260 provided for “a medium for the storage of records electronically that requires a machine to access the information contained within the medium (including) without limitation, magnetic and optical media.” This kind of came out of nowhere.
Sandwiched between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, Americans observe Memorial Day — a day of reflection and gratitude for those who have given their lives defending our freedom. But on this Memorial Day, let’s not only reflect and give thanks to those who have given life, but limb.
Although most of the people attending Friday’s street dance at the Senior Center of Boulder City were old enough to be regular visitors at the downtown facility, they were young in spirit and had an enthusiasm that was fresh and vibrant along with an eagerness to help.