Congress has discovered the night sky and, through a show of characteristic silliness, has proposed to celebrate it with legislation. Nevada’s senators, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, joined by a couple of colleagues from neighboring states, have introduced a measure to create a National Dark Sky Week, an official span of days in which…

In Nevada, it is customary to begin close to home, and Reno has kindly obliged by proving the oldest rule in the state: the house does not merely win, it prospers. Reno reported $62 million in gaming win for March, up 7.5% from last year, which is a polite way of saying the visitors arrived…

Justice, when it finally arrives, tends to travel slowly and speak plainly. On April 29, in Washoe County, it spoke in numbers a man can’t outtalk: 141 years to life. Robert Vasquez received his conviction in January on seven counts, three for sexual assault of a child under 14, two for lewdness, and two attempts…

In Pahrump, where the curriculum still lists reading, writing, and arithmetic, two enterprising brothers attempted to introduce a fourth subject: retail narcotics. Deputies with the Nye County Sheriff’s Office arrived at Pahrump Valley High School after a student was found semi-conscious, an outcome rarely associated with academic excellence. The boy went to a hospital, and…

In Fernley, where the schools prefer arithmetic to wrestling, a substitute teacher delivered a demonstration no curriculum had the nerve to print. On April 20, according to the Lyon County School District, the gentleman supplemented his lesson with “inappropriate comments” and a practical exercise involving two students’ necks, complete with a shaking, choking motion, as…

The federal government has formed a new posse and pointed it west, which is how you know the problem has grown large enough to require both acronyms and airfare. The Department of Justice announced a “West Coast Health Care Fraud Strike Force,” uniting prosecutors from Nevada, Arizona, and Northern California with the usual alphabet of…

Buddy and I take a walk most mornings. Buddy does the walking, and I do the thinking, which is a fair division of labor since he has four legs and I have doubts. Our route progresses by a house where a man sits in the mouth of his garage. He is a quiet fellow. When…

In North Las Vegas, where education is a noble pursuit and parking lots are apparently graduate courses in poor judgment, Canyon Springs High found itself hosting a lesson no one had scheduled. It began, as many modern complications do, with “several people who were not students” loitering where students should loiter properly. School staff, who…

There are few things in this world more convincing than a man determined to be stupid, and fewer still more persuasive than a pistol that looks real at three o’clock in the morning. On April 25, in that cheerful hour when only bakers, burglars, and poor decision-makers are awake, a gentleman named Mitchell Nettles took…

Nevada’s latest audit of children’s facilities reads like a manual on how not to run one. Across 25 inspected sites, nine delivered conditions that would make a halfway house blush and a parent reach for a lawyer. At one foster home, inspectors found a loaded firearm resting in an unlocked bedroom, accessible to children and…