So, our good friend Chuck Muth is upset at U.S. Sen. Harry Reid. In fact, in a blog posted today, he even compares Reid to a mobster!

Which is odd, since the source material Muth cites only shows Reid to be a hardball politician, and we know from reading Chuck for many years that he loves hardball politics, and even plays them himself from time to time.

Let’s quote the offending passage, from a Review-Journal story in today’s paper by political writer Molly Ball, about why Reid decided to campaign against soon-to-be-ex U.S. Rep. Jon Porter:

Asked about Porter, Reid made no bones about having sought to get rid of him based on a personal grudge. The story he recounted amply illustrated how Reid comes by his reputation for ruthlessness.

Once, Porter and Reid were friends. In the 1980s, when Porter was mayor of Boulder City, he even hosted a fundraiser for Reid. In Reid’s telling, the two men had the same sort of agreement Reid now has with Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., wherein the two do not criticize each other.

According to Reid, that all changed one day in 2006.

“I always thought Jon Porter was my friend and would never do anything to campaign against me,” Reid said. “But I woke up one morning and read in the newspaper that wasn’t the case. He issued this scathing release, during the Tom DeLay time — he never told me this, but I’m confident Tom DeLay must have put him up to it. Well, that hurt our relationship.”

The Jan. 6, 2006, news release came at a time when Democrats including Reid were pointing to scandals surrounding DeLay, the indicted former House majority leader, and convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff to decry a Republican “culture of corruption.”

Porter called such criticisms a “study in hypocrisy,” adding, “Many of these Democrats, including the very vocal Senate minority leader, have filled their campaign coffers with contributions from Abramoff and his clients.”

From that point on, Reid no longer considered Porter a friend. Within days, Reid approached his press secretary at the time, Tessa Hafen, and asked her to run against Porter. Hafen lost a hard-fought campaign by a slim margin.

“I can truthfully say I would never have campaigned against him had he not turned on me,” Reid said of Porter. “I frankly talked to Tessa Hafen because I felt wronged. Within a couple of days of that release, I talked to Tessa and asked her if she’d be willing to run, and she said yes — well, she said she’d think about it. I was surprised it was that easy.

“I don’t take credit for his (Porter’s) ouster,” Reid said. “The only thing I take credit for is that I stayed out of his races totally until he decided he didn’t want to be my friend. Friends don’t do things like that.”

Wait, so this makes Reid somehow bad? A guy trash talks him and Reid decides to get even by making the guy sweat on the campaign trail? Welcome to politics, baby. And here’s another tip: Reid even telling this story is politics, too, inasmuch as he’s sending a simple message: Do not fuck with me if you want a political future. Careers, and legends, are made by stories like this.

If Reid was really a Mafia don, Porter would be buried in a hole somewhere in the Nevada desert, not coming home to contemplate an (admittedly weakened) challenge against the senator in 2010.

We’ve differed with Reid more than once, and frankly, the good senator probably doesn’t carry us on his “friend” list, if he ever did. But the fact is, Reid was playing the kind of hardball politics that Muth constantly encourages his docile Republican friends to play. So how is it wrong if the other side does it?

From where we sit, Reid’s legend is doing just fine. Maybe they’ll even make a movie trilogy about him.

Yes, we know there’s a terrible economic crisis looming. Yes, we know terrorists staged attacks in Mumbai over Thanksgiving weekend, the heartless murdering bastards. Yes, we know Americans have just been through what seemed the longest campaign in history, including the 100 Years War.

But we fear something’s getting lost: Justice for the crimes committed under the George W. Bush administration.

We say “crimes” not in an abstract moral sense, as in, “It’s a crime to wear white after Labor Day.” No, we say “crimes” in its true criminal sense, as in “People who violate the law should go to jail.” And we’re not in any way being humorous here.

There’s been debate on the cable TV news machine about whether or not Bush will issue pardons to key members of his administration who introduced politics into the hiring practices of the U.S. Department of Justice, a violation of U.S. law, and fired U.S. attorneys for political reasons. Or perhaps those who participated in the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Or perhaps to those who signed off on the torture of prisoners at the American gulag at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a violation of U.S. law and the Geneva Convention, to which the U.S. is a signatory and which the president is constitutionally obligated to follow. Or even the Iraq War itself, which was begun on a series of intentional lies designed to persuade the American public, Congress and the world to allow an attack and invasion of a sovereign nation without cause.

The fact that there is even discussions about pardons is telling. If pardons were actually to issue, it would be clear that somebody, somewhere, feels a case could be made against administration officials, or even the president himself.

Yes, there are still people out there who believe that Bush was simply misled, or misinformed, about the reasons for invading Iraq. The only excuse for a statement like that is willful, intentional ignorance, or an inability to understand the evidence. As we have pointed out repeatedly — including an article this year in the pages of CityLife — Bush and members of his administration knew the reasons they gave for invading Iraq were false. And Vincent Bugliosi’s excellent book alone shows how those statements and actions constitute the basis for a charge of murder against the president.

Many Americans will want to move on, or call people like us at Various Things & Stuff “Bush haters” for calling for investigations and prosecutions of crimes that occured under this administration. It’s in the past, they’ll say. Why must liberals be so vindictive, or criminalize politics? The public could never stand the image of a former president in the dock on murder charges! Be realistic!

But we can’t move on. And it would be a grave mistake to do so. If we allow Bush and his administration to get away with even half the things they’ve done, the criminal things they’ve done, it would be a sign of moral acquience to a great evil. Neither ignorance nor American exceptionalism should cover over the multitude of sins this administration has committed.

We surely hope that, in the midst of all the pressing global and domestic issues that will wind up on the Resolute desk in the White House before President Barack Obama, justice still has a place. The new president wants to bring the country together. We think he’s capable of doing it. But he shouldn’t be afraid, in the name of unity, from holding those who held the highest offices in the land accountable.

Not for their politics, or their policies, or their personalities. For their crimes.

Here are a couple of photos (click for larger versions) from last night’s apocalyptic-looking fog that rolled into parts of the suburban west side, particularly Desert Breeze Park, which totally made areas of Vegas look like something out of that really terrible post-apocalyptic Thomas Jane movie that came out last year.

If you really think about it though, is there really any difference between zombies and the hordes of Black Friday “bargain” shoppers waiting in front of retail stores at 5 a.m. anyway?

Buried in the R-J business section beneath piles of Thanksgiving meat and psychically toxic family awkwardness was this little disappointer of a story. Nevada’s Desert National Wildlife Refuge, 1.5 million acres of juicy naturalness and the largest wildlife refuge in the lower 48, is gonna get a big hug from the energy industry.

A host of federal agencies recently OK’d the placement of a grossly intrusive energy corridor along the refuge’s south and eastern edges. Snip:

John Hiatt, conservation chair for the Red Rock Audubon Society, said the energy corridor that runs through Clark County follows a tortuous path around the Sheep Mountains and then north and west of the Spring Mountains.

Hiatt said the route pleased nobody, including the federal officials who detoured it “150 extra miles” around the metropolitan area. In the process, they did not bypass the Desert National Wildlife Refuge.

“It is not like it is going to destroy the refuge, but it is a death by a thousand cuts and this is the first big cut,” Hiatt said. “It definitely has a big impact. Essentially it removes all sense of naturalness from a fairly wide corridor which will be disturbed numerous times for fuel lines, gas lines, whatever they want to do. It is a bad situation with no simple answer how to solve the problem.”

Who’s gonna use this corridor — which can eat up a swath as wide as two-thirds of a mile? Why, those ever-dependable, dirty-energy cronies of the Bush administration, of course. Chalk this up to yet another kick in the nuts as part of Bush’s cynical Big Jerkface Industry Giveaway Farewell Butthole Tour 2008.

At least the refuge is already used to having obnoxious neighbors, what with the Nevada Test Site and Nellis bombing range just up the block.

Only catch: Wilderness can’t just rent a U-Haul and bail when the neighborhood starts going to shit.

With the official grand opening of Steve Wynn’s hyper-opulent Encore Las Vegas coming up in mid-January, there’s a separate sub-bass-and-strobes buzz in the air about XS, the aptly named ultra-super-mega club that’ll grace that property to the tune of 40,000 square feet (including the pool) and more millions of dollars than, perhaps, has ever been spent before on one nightspot in the history of the known universe.

In keeping with his love for the big surprise, Wynn is insisting everyone involved with the creation of XS keep quiet, at least before the media is allowed in on Dec. 27. That’s not leaving a lot of time for promoters to do their thing before Vegas’ club-crucial New Years holiday, but no one seems worried — least of all, Vegas big gun Victor Drai, co-creator and co-owner of sultry, elegant Drai’s (inside, um, Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall) and Tryst, his current flagship lounge at Wynn proper.

Drai isn’t going into much detail about XS, other than to say he’s not worried about the economy (”I’m amazed we’re not feeling it [at Tryst],” he tells CityLife. “… but I’m at the most beautiful hotel in Vegas and at the most beautiful club … as long as you’re on top, you don’t have to worry too much,” and that XS, for all its excess, won’t feature those trademark trappings of rich crimson that saturate Drai’s and Tryst.

“There are no reds whatsoever,” he says. “But this will be a beautiful place with a beautiful … atmosphere.”

Word on the street says to expect more in the way of golds and browns inside the behemoth venue. Whatever it looks like inside, though, Drai says we’ll find the same things absent at XS that we’ve already grown accustomed to not seeing at Tryst: the paid celebrity hosts and celebrity DJs competing clubs think they need to draw business.

“I believe more in the environment, you know … where you are,” he says. “I’m not big on the big names and all that … it’s not necessary for us.”

Read much more on XS as it monstrously develops in CityLife’s Fear and Lounging section next month.

So last night I went down to the Clark County Library for a free screening of A History of Violence. I’ve been wanting to see the film for a while, but that wasn’t the main reason for attending. I went for the novelty of a public library hosting an R-rated, ultra violent David Cronenberg flick. You see, in Greensboro, the public libraries probably set a PG-ratings cap on all films sanctioned with screenings.

But here, the library seems to make an active effort, at least some of the time, to cater to adults. Which is nice.

If the screening had taken place in Austin – my other point of reference – the auditorium would have brimmed with film nerds. There were a couple in the hall last night, but homeless folks seeking a couple of hours of shelter and distraction dominated the audience. In acknowledgment of their presence, the people running the film series warned audience members that they risked ejection if they fell asleep.

Anyway, it was a good movie and a good audience that got a little animated at the climax, when Viggo Mortensen gets all reluctantly bad-assy on some villains.

There will be more opportunities to see disturbing films – for free – in the company of Las Vegas’s lumpenproletariat. Next up, Trona, about an underwear-clad man stranded in an abandoned Mojave Desert town.

Kids in the Hall's Bruce McCullough as "Gavin"

The fourth annual Las Vegas Comedy Festival happened last weekend, and did pretty much what it was supposed to do: generate laughs and cash with a 20-plus comedian docket including big names like Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneres and Dane “My Comic Potential Is Crushed by Numbing Aggro Insecurity That Fortunately Resonates With Confused Millions” Cook.

I, along with many other lucky media invitees, found the fest a feast for the comic senses — a chance to bask in the real, non-digital presence of some solid talent in an arrangement only compromised a little by tourists in the seats behind us who actually blurted, with regularity, things like, “It’s true,” “She’s right,” and “Oh my God that’s so hysterical!” In other words, the same people Mussolini would have found most receptive during long sessions of harranguing from the balcony.

Highlights:

It was nice to see Ellen opening the festival Thursday evening at Caesars’ Colosseum, even if it wasn’t stand-up — or even comedy, really — she was doling out for the most part. This was a TV taping of Ellen’s Even Bigger Really Big Show, a variety hour special to be aired Nov. 29 on Turner Broadcasting System, who sponsored this year’s festival. After gritting our teeth through a pre-show emcee’s TV soundcheck (”Scream! Scream like Ellen’s just arrived!”), Degeneres did finally emerge to deliver a shot of dry-witted charm before relinquishing the spotlight to a series of high-caliber Gong Show-type acts. A guy rolling around in a giant hoop. A brother-sister acrobatics routine. Another guy in the costume of two conjoined ballroom dancers whose movements pleased and confounded us before it became apparent that he was on all fours, using his arms as the woman’s legs. No, not enough Ellen, but still miles better than seeing the activist anti-heroine in only two dimensions or glimpsing her at an airport. (more…)

I’m fully convinced the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s pipeline project is staffed by warlocks and sorceresses. Remember two years ago, how the authority managed to cast a powerful spell on a host of federal agencies — the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Indian Affairs — agencies that are supposed to regulate stuff like ecosystem-rocking pipeline plans?

Instead of actually doing their job, though — you know, watchdogging our public land — the feds instead got all blank-faced and swirly-eyed like they were at an especially good hypnosis comedy show, and abruptly dropped their protests to a huge portion of the pipeline project.

Right before a major hearing, no less. Them there are some fucked-up kung fu magicks, indeed.

Or, as one conservationist put it in a recent statement:

“Federal agencies put politics before science when they abandoned their protests and signed the agreements,” said Rob Mrowka, Nevada conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity. “They abrogated their rights and responsibilities under federal laws to protect both the environmental values within their jurisdictions and the interests of the affected tribes.”

So, enviros got totally burned on that one. But as a new slate of pipeline hearings approach — these concern the authority’s designs on groundwater in Snake Valley — pipeline foes are urging the feds to do their job this time.

In a letter sent Monday to the Department of the Interior, 19 environmental groups urged the Interior Department to not douche out (”abrogation of responsibility” is the enviros’ term for it) and make sure their agencies actually show up during the October 2009 hearings.

It’ll be interesting to see whether our new, hopey-changey administration will have trickled down that far by then. Or whether the Department of Interior will instead remain a little Bushie hamlet of total choadwank do-nothingism. (”Withdrawing protests due to political pressure” is the enviros’ term for it.)

Just in time to fill your gullets with just about every kind of meat and food on earth, apparently there has been a resurgence of interest by the media in analyzing and looking at Norwegian black metal and all of its sword-wielding, spike-wearing, church-burning, occult and occasionally murderous ways.

First, Huston cultural photographer Peter Beste’s semi-recently released book True Norwegian Black Metal (Vice Books) shows an unflinching, untabloid account of one of the world’s most secretive and extreme musical cultures known to man. According to Beste, he spent seven years shooting the scene, which took him to Norway 12 times and eventually led to him meeting the infamous and reclusive Gogoroth lead singer Gaahl, who spent nine months in prison for beating a man and allegedly forcing him to drink his own blood in 2002. Beste’s trip to visit Gaahl became part of an excellent 2007 documentary you can find here, and the entire story of Beste’s book can be found in this week’s excellent cover feature about Beste done by L.A. Weekly’s Siran Babayan here.

Second, and on a sillier note, the guys at Big Brother Magazine (the same people who, for better or worse, brought us Jackass) show the world their yearly “Black Metal Thanksgiving” party here.

If these two stories about one of the most underground and crazy musical cultures ever don’t make you forget about all the inane arguments, family awkwardness and instead inspire you to rip out the giblets of your turkey and feast on them in front of a horrified Aunt Gertrude or Grandpa Phil tomorrow, then clearly whatever opiate you’re going to be on tomorrow is something that I totally want some of.

Well, at least we didn’t say the slow death of local music venues couldn’t get any worse. As of Sunday, Puff Lounge, (1020 E. Flamingo Road) a hookah lounge and club — situated where the old Boston Bar and Grill once stood — is now closed.

Puff, more or less a newcomer in the Vegas music scene, had become well-known for its wild weekend parties, but the University-area club ultimately became well known for its appeal to local and national rock acts when it teamed up with local monthly rock rag, Vegas Rocks Magazine earlier in the year to present “Rock and Roll Wednesdays” at the club. Vegas Rocks publisher and editor Sally Steele was not available to comment on the future of “Rock and Roll Wednesdays” which is sponsored by her mag, but when she does, it will more than likely end up here.

Also on the closure front, after six years, one of Las Vegas’ final havens for hardcore is now gone. The Hammer House, an underground, all-ages local hardcore haven called it quits Nov. 22 after a final show with L.A. hardcore group Terror along with locals Misericordiam, Lose None, Suffer the Loss, all topped off by venue operators Folsom. The house — which was nothing more than a stage stuck in the middle of a family-owned junkyard next to the Florence McClure Women’s Correctional Center in North Las Vegas — has in its six years of operation hosted countless local and national acts, including Champion, Death Threat, Terror and more.

The Hammer House was one of Las Vegas’ longest-lasting underground venues, comparable only to the likes of the Cement Factory (a desert location for punk rock shows that ran from the 1980s up until 2000) and The Caves, a cave-based guerrilla show location situated west of the Las Vegas Valley that still hosts occasional gigs to this day.

There’s a little rule in law: If you have the facts on your side, pound on the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound on the law. If you’ve got neither, pound on the table. And that’s what soon-to-be-indicted Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki is doing, both personally and through his lawyer, after telling the world Monday that he’s about to be indicted.

If you read Krolicki’s statement defending himself and his attorney’s letter to Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, you’ll start to see a pattern emerging: Krolicki and his lawyers are saying the entire thing is partisan, since he’s a Republican and Cortez Masto is a Democrat. Of course, that ignores the fact that a good case has already been made by legislative auditors that Krolicki violated the law. Facts, Mr. Lt. Governor, are not partisans, but in this case, the facts hate you as much as the Democrats.

So, what does he say? Well, according to Krolicki, he’s being targeted “by mean-spirited individuals” and “enduring a political witch hunt” because of a “so-called investigation” that resulted from an “aggressive and reckless posture” by the AG, resulting from a “deeply flawed and tragically and deliberately incomplete investigation” or “a process that is born of partisan malice and a desire to personally and professionally harm [him] irreparably.” And while he thinks the whole thing is “shameful” and the AG is “thoroughly conflicted” in the matter, the “punitive campaign” is “but a partisan persecution” and he’ll be found innocent in the end.

Whew. That’s a lot of table-pounding.

Meanwhile, Krolicki’s attorneys are denouncing Cortez Masto for using a grand jury to get Krolicki into a courtroom rather than a preliminary hearing. (Quick refresher on basic criminal procedure: A person may be bound over for trial in a superior court in two ways. The first, a preliminary hearing before a justice of the peace or municipal court judge, in which a mini-trial open to the public takes place, complete with evidence, witnesses, testimony, and cross-examination. The second is a grand jury, where members hear evidence in secret, deliberate behind closed doors and then decide whether to hand up a true bill of indictment or not.)

Attorney Kent Robison, too, denounced the fact that Masto is apparently seeking “partisan political gain,” using a “desultory process” and finally accusing her of “plac[ing] partisan politics above fairness and justice.” He complains that an investigative report compiled by the Nevada Division of Investigations has not been shared with him, and then concludes: “It is clear your office is afraid to bring these politically motivated charges by way of criminal complaint.”

Oh, that’s right. Robison is using the “you’re chicken” offense. Too bad Cortez Masto isn’t Marty McFly. That totally could have worked!

So after calling Cortez Masto names, Robison demands she use the preliminary hearing to get the matter into court, and not the grand jury. And that, in itself, is a little outrageous, too: It would be like O.J. Simpson demanding the Los Angeles Police Department keep him in the loop about the murder investigation until things went to trial. You know, because they should.

A couple things here: First, the prosecution will, in time, be obligated to turn over every piece of evidence, every report, every witness statement, etc. to the defense. Second, Krolicki may get indicted, but that’s far from a conviction. The AG will still need to persuade a jury that he’s guilty before that happens. But something tells us that the uber-cautious Cortez Masto wouldn’t have moved at all if she didn’t think she had the goods. After all, the biggest complaint about her tenure is not that she’s aggressive and partisan as Krolicki and his lawyers maintain, but that she’s too cautious and careful.

And third, while an indictment will certainly hurt Krolicki politically — as Robison contends in his letter — a preliminary hearing in which all the evidence was aired would undoubtedly hurt him even more. He and his lawyers are rolling the dice on an awfully big gamble.

Sadly, for them, Cortez Masto is not likely to be moved. Expect the grand jury’s true bill, soon, Mr. Lt. Governor. We say that not out of partisanship, but because we know — as we suspect the bloviating Krolicki does — that there’s plenty of evidence to sustain a conviction.

As usual, the R-J’s Republican-friendly political scribe Molly Ball doesn’t tell you the whole story in her piece today about the impending demise of Freedom’s Watch, the right-wing attack factory founded by former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and funded in large part by Las Vegas Sands chief Sheldon Adelson.

Allowing the right-wing nutjobs one last free spin, Ball quotes the group’s spokesman Ed Patru, who insists the focus (read: mission) of Freedom’s Watch was only “to impact the debate.”

No, the mission of Freedom’s Watch was to lie and to twist the truth in a shameless partisan attempt to fool working-class voters into voting for a Republican Party who left their interests by the roadside decades ago. Kind of like their final, parting lie: a new campaign ad targeting Georgia Democrat Jim Martin as being soft on crime. Funny, but neither Ball, Patru  nor the new Freedom’s Watch ad mentions that Martin’s daughter was kidnapped when she was 8 years old. Classy, no?

One thing is certain, however. With the impending demise of Freedom’s Watch, at least one more sociopath will be out of a job.

If lawmakers (correctly) insist on retooling and eco-conscious commitments from Detroit before an auto bailout, shouldn’t the robber barons at Citigroup be subject to sane preconditions, as well?

Here’s a good start: Citi should drop its $400 million sponsorship of a new Mets stadium, don’cha think? Slate’s Daniel Gross agrees. The last bank bailout had no such strings; look where that’s put us all.

Debates on whether to bail out Detroit aside, it’s important to remember how the Big Three got here. And how their greed, and the greed of lawmakers who coddled them for decades, has further imperiled our economy.

Yale Environment 360 has an eye-opening recap. If Who Killed the Electric Car? upset you, check this out.