The following is a list of former state Senator Bob Beer’s thoughts on some public figures, both local and otherwise. Beers’ opinions are in quotes. (You can read the first part of my interview with the former state senator here.)

1) Sen. Steven Horsford: “Replaced Chris Guinchigliani as my most capable long-term political debate opponent last year.”

2) Bill Raggio: “He’s in the wrong party.”

3) Barbara Buckley: “Iron fist. No one can see your bruises if they’re above your hairline.”

4) Jim Gibbons: “Not done surprising Nevada.”

5) Sig Rogich: “Glad we’re on the same team.”

6) President Obama: “Wish he only had a talk show.”

7) Rush Limbaugh: “Wish he were President.” (more…)

1. A man who looked a lot like NASCAR driver Tony Stewart holding a sign depicting Obama’s head on Tupac Shakur’s body, with the words “Thug Life” in an ye-olde-time font.

2. A man dressed as Benjamin Franklin approaching a group of young kids playing on the park’s jungle gym, only to say to the kids in an epic baritone: “Children, please, no sword-fighting with the American flag.”

3. An elderly man dressed up like a Union soldier on a faux patrol holding a sign that said, “Invade the South For Food.”

4. Three people wearing red T-shirts that depicted Obama in various states of friendly affection, including kissing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

5. A man holding a sign that said, “We came unarmed, this time.”

6. Confusing protest sign: “Google Imperialism, Legalize Hemp.”

7. Confusing protest sign No. 2: “You get pork, we want bacon.”

8. “If we were serious about cracking down on prostitution, we should crack down on Nancy Pelosi and her house of whores.” — 2008 Libertarian Party vice-presidential nominee Wayne Allyn Root.

9. Large slices of pizza being handed out to protesters by employees of Giovanni’s Pizzeria.

10. A time rift of irony ripping the space/time continuum in half and consuming a man whole after he said to a reporter: “It’s time for some change we can believe in.”

11. Conservative blogger Chuck Muth speaking to a crowd, and people actually taking him seriously.

Assemblyman Ruben Kihuen’s bill outlawing the theft of more than 10 copies of a free publication passed the full Assembly yesterday. The vote was unanimous. Now, the legislation moves to the Senate for a committee hearing, and then, hopefully, a vote.

People steal free newspapers for two main reasons: To censor the information inside, which is what happened to UNLV’s Rebel Yell a couple years ago, or to recycle them for money. Although the former gets more ink, the latter is the more pervasive problem, especially for Nevada’s Hispanic media.

Kihuen’s bill makes free publication theft a misdemeanor punishable by a $250 fine. That, along with recycling rates that have fallen to a half cent per pound, provides a substantial financial disincentive to anyone considering swiping papers. In previous cases, police have declined to investigate allegations of free newspaper theft because there is no law against it.

Yesterday, a blogger became the acting head of OSHA. The U.S. Department of Labor announced on April 8 the appointment of Jordan Barab as deputy assistant secretary of OSHA. That’s second in command. He’ll lead the agency until the Obama administration chooses a department head.

Barab is a verifiable workplace safety wonk with two decades of advocacy under his belt. Labor leaders are over the moon about his appointment. Business lobbyists, not so much.

Edwin Foulke, a corporate attorney who advised the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, resigned from his post as the head of OSHA in November. He’d served since April 2006. Under the Bush administration, OSHA curtailed regulation and enforcement in favor of business-friendly voluntary programs that encouraged compliance with the law. If you want to see how well that worked, read the Charlotte Observer’s series on poultry processors. Or the Sun’s articles on construction deaths.

Barab’s appointment suggests the current administration is serious about worker safety. Or it’s a concession to organized labor. We won’t really know until President Obama announces his pick for assistant secretary, because that’ll be the person who leads the charge.

A Harvard economics professor takes a wonky shot at deconstructing the nation’s unemployment numbers according to race and level of education, the results of which are less than surprising.

The takeaway? The better educated are still doing better than those of us who played grab-ass in school.

Oh, and it’s so much better if you can manage to be born all lily-white: Blacks endure 13.5 percent unemployment, although whites must still face an 8.5 percent rate.

Think again if you believe Obama’s election magically washed away centuries of economic exploitation. Just try to sell that bullshit on the historic Westside, or up in North Las Vegas.

Lending a smidgen more credence to my theory that anyone vocally against civil rights for gays is probably closeted himself is this fortuitous headline/secondary story combo from today’s Sun website:

It’s not shocking that the six major corporations who run most of the broadcast news in the country, along with the small fraternity of companies who control most of our 1,500 daily newspapers, prefer to paint the Somali pirates as little more than seafaring brigands.

The narrative is good for ratings, and doubly good at suppressing the truth of how the West has screwed the East Africans for decades. (Yes, Virginia, there is an “establishment media,” and no, they don’t have your interests at heart.)

The truth, as it always is, is more complicated. Yes, many of these pirates are thieves. That’s what you can expect after a coastal nation’s government collapses (1991, in Somalia’s case).

But a few intrepid reporters are finding that some pirate attacks on Western vessels could be sparked by anger over the West’s dumping of nuclear waste off Somalia’s shore for years.

That’s right. After the Somali government collapsed in 1991, European ships started turning up in their waters, dumping barrels of something or other overboard. After years of wondering at the high levels of sickness among their shoreline populations, Somalis found many of the barrels that washed ashore after a tsunami held a possible explanation. The barrels that hadn’t rusted out under the sea were still packed with nuclear waste.

If China, say, dumped nuclear waster in the waters near California or Alabama, how many of us would hop in every available tugboat, jet ski, john boat and schooner just to mete out a little justice, American style?

The Voice of America touched on this story back in 2005; The Independent has a more recent, and relevant, wrap.

Little more than a week after CityBlog reported on Spain’s probe of UNLV law professor and former Bush administration torture judge Jay Bybee, The Daily Beast reports today that he, along with former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and several other Bush lawyers, will likely face charges in that country for their role in elevating torture to the level of American foreign policy.

Considering who runs President Barack Obama’s agenda, it’s not surprising our 44th president would sit this one out, although we have to chuckle that it turns out those supposedly effete Europeans are the ones with the balls big enough to prosecute American torturers.

The batshit-crazy theocrats still frothing over President Barack Obama’s recent assertion that the United States is not a Christian nation might want to shelve their fairy tale codex and crack a history book.

Presidents, and the public record, have had a lot to say on the subject, our 1797 Treaty of Tripoli notwithstanding (Article 11 has always been a personal favorite).

Salon has a decent micro-compendium (they even mention the 1797 treaty) of why the Religious Right is, again, full of shit.

Statistical wunderkind Nate Silver, the brainiac who called the 2008 presidential election by, who knows, peering into an ancient orb of wizardly power, recently projected some dates when states would vote against a gay marriage ban.

See his full post here. But take a quick look below and marvel at when he sees Nevada voting down a gay marriage ban: Like, NOW.

2009 (now)
Vermont
New Hampshire
Massachusetts
Maine
Rhode Island
Connecticut
Nevada*
Washington
Alaska*
New York
Oregon*

[snip]

The model predicts that by 2012, almost half of the 50 states would vote against a marriage ban, including several states that had previously voted to ban it. In fact, voters in Oregon, Nevada and Alaska (which Sarah Palin aside, is far more libertarian than culturally conservative) might already have second thoughts about the marriage bans that they’d previously passed.

Our wedding industry could certainly use an infusion of pink dollars, too.

Text messaging and driving are two things that usually don’t mix. But thanks to a month-old initiative by the Regional Transportation Commission, cell phones are playing a role in easing traffic congestion — a perennial problem here in the valley.

Go here to sign up for text alerts from the commission. Traffic accidents, road closures and bottlenecks will show up on your phone before you get into your car, saving you valuable time and frustration.

Useful, right? Also fun to make mental pictures of this new division, which I envision as a room full of teenagers with spangled phones and massive thumbs.

Well, it looks like Assembly Bill 184, which would prohibit job discrimination against the transgendered — you know, giving them a civil right everyone else enjoys — doesn’t have a very promising future. According to informed sources, it likely won’t make it out of the Assembly Committee on Commerce and Labor by tomorrow’s deadline, effectively killing it.

Local trans community members are staging a silent protest tomorrow at the Grant Sawyer building downtown in order to urge Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley to allow a vote on the bill.

From a dispatch from counselor and activist Jane Heenan:

I’d like to invite anyone whose work schedule permits to join the supporters of AB 184 for an unprecedented “sign-in” protest this Friday afternoon, April 10, 2009, at approx. 1:00 p.m. on the 4th Floor of the Grant Sawyer State Building, 555 E. Washington Avenue, just east of the corner of Washington and Las Vegas Boulevard. The meeting of the Assembly Commerce and Labor Committee will be videoconferenced in one of the Legislative Counsel Bureau’s meeting rooms, and the public is welcome. AB 184 is not expected to be on the agenda, but there is nothing to stop as many people who are able from signing in to express their support. You won’t be required to speak, just to write your name and the bill number and to check the box for support. These sign in sheets are part of the official record, and they will be seen by the Chair of the Committee at the beginning of the meeting. Additional sign-in sheets will also be faxed to the Chair throughout the meeting as new folks sign in, so you can still participate even if you can’t be there from the beginning.

We believe this “silent” but vitally important protest is necessary to show the Assembly Leadership that we know exactly who is responsible for disrespecting the LGBT community by refusing to allow a vote on AB 184, and they are going to have to look us in the eye to do it. We hope you will join us this Friday!

Jay Bybee, the federal judge and UNLV law professor who signed off on a series of Bush administration torture memos in 2002, could find himself in deep legal shit by year’s end.

Two days after CityLife asked how Bybee, the respected jurist who headed up the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2001 to 2003, could have approved America’s torture of suspected terrorists, the same Spanish judge who went after former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet opened a probe of the conduct of Bybee and other Bush administration lawyers.

Today, Cal Law reports Bybee has hired Maureen Mahoney of global heavyweight law firm Latham & Watkins to help him defend against the Spanish probe and, presumably, against any future charges he might face as a result of forthcoming internal Justice Department probe.

(Note: Cal Law requires you to register to view the article, but registration is free)

A 2007 report from the Red Cross, now published by The New York Review of Books, details how Americans tortured the prisoners we held in our global network of once-secret prisons.

Waterboarding, beatings, prolonged standing in stress positions and solitary confinement: Suspected terrorists endured this and much more at American hands, thanks to the legal advice of now-federal judge and UNLV law professor Jay Bybee.

CityLife readers know Bybee well. He was also the Bush administration lawyer whose scholarship helped turn torture into American foreign policy.

As head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2001 to 2003, Bybee signed a handful of once-secret memos (one of which can be seen here) that gave legal backing to our abuse of human beings for no other reason than because we could.

Despite warnings on torture, including from American World War II troops who insist it doesn’t work, we marched on, and instead became Rome.

According to our own government officials quoted in The Washington Post, this torture foiled no terrorist plots. Military experts overseas say it’s bad enough torture stains America’s image; it’s worse that it endangers American lives.

Here’s a cardinal rule of community organizing: Do not schedule important meetings during major sporting events. Last night’s F Street meeting, the last before a planned protest march on the Strip, had the smallest turnout of any since the gatherings began.

The meeting still drew about 50 people with no interest in — or money on — the basketball championship. Metro sent two representatives, a deputy chief and a lieutenant, to brief the crowd on what they can expect on Saturday, April 18, when the protesters march from Flamingo Road to Convention Center Drive.

The ambulatory portion of the protest starts at 10:30 a.m. and lasts until 12:30 p.m. Then the three groups will rally at the Convention Center for another hour. Because the coalition was unable to obtain insurance, the county did not grant them a protest permit. So they’re going to have to confine themselves to the sidewalks.

If you’re interested in participating, plan to attend a rehearsal — for chants and stuff — on Friday, April 17 at 6 p.m. at Second Baptist Church. On the day of the protest, participants will gather at the church at 8 a.m.

In the meantime, the participants may want to follow this link to an article and video in the Times of London about what kind of protests actually work.