Apparently, there’s a leaker among the lobbyists! And that leaker showed the Review-Journal’s Molly Ball an e-mail, sent by political consultant Robert Uithoven, that solicits hosts for a fundraiser this month for state Sen. Bob Beers. But get this: The e-mail was purportedly sent before the legal prohibition on post-legislature fundraising had expired!

Beers, for his part, claims no knowledge of Uithoven’s actions, save to admit that he did have the former campaign manager for Gov. Jim Gibbons-turned-political consultant save the date, and instructed him to send invitations only after the so-called "blackout period," which stipulates that no state lawmaker may solicit or receive funds 30 days before, during or 30 days after a legislative session. Uithoven’s e-mail, according to the R-J, was sent June 25, and the Legislature had only adjourned June 5. (While the regular session ended on June 4, a one-day special session was called for June 5 to wrap up unfinished business.)

"My only involvement was to save the date of July 19," according to a Beers statement quoted in the R-J on Saturday. "I also asked that if invitations were to be sent out, it would not be until after July 6." Now, this may very well be true, and if it is, Beers did precisely what he’s supposed to do under the relevant statute.

But in Friday’s R-J piece, Ball says that Uithoven may have violated a companion statute. "However, another statute, [NRS]294A.310, prohibits solicitations on behalf of candidates and applies also to those making such solicitations or those making or committing to make banned contributions."

Actually, it doesn’t. At least, not in this case.

NRS294A.310 does prohibit fundraising on behalf of a candidate, but only if you’re working for a political party caucus. If you’re, say, a freelance political consultant acting without the direction of a lawmaker, well, the statute simply doesn’t apply. How do we know? Well, we can read. But we also double-checked with a man who knows.

"This does not apply to private citizens. And that’s what’s happening here," says Lorne Malkiewich, director of the Legislative Counsel Bureau. Another measure elsewhere in state law bans lobbyists from soliciting or contributing money to a lawmaker within the prohibited periods, but under the current law, political parties, private citizens and political consultants acting independently are not covered.

Which brings us back to what Beers said: He asked that no solicitations be made until after July 6. And unless evidence can be found that Uithoven was acting at Beers express direction in asking for underwriters for the July 19 event, then neither Beers nor Uithoven broke any laws whatsoever. (Any of you lobbyists got any more incriminating e-mails you want to leak?)

Damn. We were so looking forward to a late-summer scandal!

» Perhaps there’s still hope!

Gov. Jim Gibbons has opened up yet another legal defense fund. Only this time, it’s actually, you know, legal.

Regular readers will remember the last legal defense fund, which Gibbons created in secret, took money in secret and spent money in secret, until a nosy Fourth Estater came calling and the governor was forced to spill the beans. Since there was no provision in the law for legal defense funds in those days, Gibbons called the donations "gifts," and filed an amended report.

The problem? Some of those "gifts" exceeded the limit on political contributions. The solution? Gibbons simply kept calling them "gifts," and Secretary of State Ross Miller bought it, saying that since there wasn’t a law banning legal defense funds (um, we mean, "gift-giving"), it must be OK. (There’s also no law banning those now-dreary Corey Levitan features in the R-J’s Living section, but nobody is still arguing that those are OK. Still, this week’s wig was a step up from the usual haircut!)

Lawmakers this year wrote a statute covering legal defense funds, which Gibbons took advantage of as soon as time permitted. Now, given that he hurriedly closed his old legal defense fund — despite the fact that it had been blessed by the secretary of state — and then opened a new one to cover essentially the same legal problems, we’re hard pressed to wonder why that isn’t a tacit admission that the old one was bogus? Otherwise, why not just leave that one open, instead of closing it down and taking a second mortgage on the governor’s Reno house to pay attorneys?

Just asking.

» Our corporate overlord, Sherm Frederick, came under fire from Las Vegas Sun Editor Brian Greenspun on Sunday, apparently because Frederick attacked the Sun’s favorite politician, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid.

"The good news is that now that the Las Vegas Sun is delivered to the same people as the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the readers have the benefit of two separate newspapers and at least two points of view. Sherm’s and mine," Greenspun wrote.

Um, why yes … that is good news.

But it was Frederick’s column that really got us angry this weekend. He dismissed lefties (like us) who are outraged by President George W. Bush’s decision to commute I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby’s jail sentence in the Valerie Plame-CIA leak case as merciless.

Yes, we remember all that right-wing "mercy" that flowed like a river when former President Bill Clinton was caught in a lie under oath, and one that had nothing whatever to do with outing a CIA spy and exposing other intelligence agents to danger. Oh, yes, despite Frederick’s claim that Libby shouldn’t be punished for "…a crime that wasn’t a crime," what he did was very serious.

Lest you think it was no big deal, remember that the CIA did a damage assessment after Plame’s true occupation was revealed. The people who outed her — we know that State Department No. 2 man Richard Armitage and Bush political guru Karl Rove discussed Plame’s identity with reporters as well as Libby — didn’t just identify her as a spy. They identified all of her associates, recruits and fake job fronts as CIA-connected. The domino effect was very serious indeed, which is why there are laws against outing spies.

But apparently it wasn’t that serious to Frederick, who quotes former New York Mayor Ed Koch at length thusly: "So why am I taking this step, which is sure to be criticized by many of my friends and supporters? It is because I believe in fairness. To remain silent because speaking out would not be popular is to invite punishment in the world to come."

Yes, well, how about remaining silent because speaking out would make you look like an idiot in this world? We don’t know what awaits us in the world to come, but we do suspect that people will very likely not be judged worse because they failed to serve up talking points for Bill O’Reilly and Chris Matthews. But who knows? Perhaps Koch follows a more rigorous theology.

So what does Koch actually think is behind the "mob rage" at the Libby ruling? Let’s let him tell you:

"That mob hate of Bush and [Vice President Dick] Cheney for a host of reasons — the Iraq war, the two elections that elected and re-elected them, their tax policies, their attitudes and policies directed at Islamic terrorism and a dozen other issues. They know they can’t directly strike at Bush and Cheney, whose terms of office dwindle with each passing day. They are striking at Libby as their surrogate. If they could in their lust for blood and vengeance, they would perform an auto de fe and burn Libby at the stake."