• Conversation in a Proper Saloon

    It was one of those short, pointed conversations you can only have in a saloon in Virginia City—where the whiskey is old, the walls are older, and the stories older still. I had just settled into a deep and meaningful relationship with my Old Fashioned when she strolled in like she owned the place and…

  • Churchill County Authorities Seeks Help Locating Missing Woman

    The Churchill County Sheriff’s Office is seeking the public’s help to find Nancy Griffiths. Her family reported her missing on January 10. Investigators believe she may be in the Reno/Sparks area and possibly in the company of an unidentified male. Her vehicle, a gray 2016 Toyota Corolla with Nevada license plate 042H66, was discovered in…

  • A Strange Notion of Privacy

    When Criminals Get a Cloak of Invisibility In Nevada, if a man commits a crime and happens to be in the country illegally, the authorities believe his identity needs guarding with the same zeal as a treasure map. The Nevada Department of Corrections and the Metropolitan Police Department are blacking out names like a gambler…

  • Battle of the Never-Empty Courtroom

    If lawsuits got outlawed tomorrow, the legal profession would go the way of the dodo, and the news industry would have to do honest work. Alas, that day has not yet arrived, so the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found itself knee-deep in a dispute over Nevada’s latest election law—a law meant to keep election…

  • A Fine Fiddle with Opioid Funds

    Nevada’s Latest Budgetary Jamboree Nevada, ever a pioneer in getting the short end of the stick, has found itself awash in a mighty heap of cash—some $870 million, to be precise—courtesy of the opioid reckoning. The windfall–wrung from the trembling hands of big drug companies after their enthusiastic peddling of despair, was meant to mend…

  • A Foolproof Plan to Lose a Wife—Legally!

    It has long been the custom of the civilized, when faced with a difficulty, to find a way to make it someone else’s problem. That is how Nevada made a name for itself in the divorce trades. Now, in a stroke of pure legislative genius, the esteemed members of Congress have devised a method by…

  • A Rare and Wondrous Sight

    Nevada Politicians Agree on Something It is a well-established fact, known to all students of the human species– that expecting legislators to agree on anything is much like expecting a cat to take to water–or a lawyer to refuse a fee—contrary to nature itself. And yet, in the grand and baffling spectacle–the Nevada Legislature, a…

  • Magic of Sudden Pain

    It was one of those tranquil evenings where a man can sit in his favorite chair, digesting his supper in peace, when suddenly, from down the hall, came the voice of my beloved wife—shrill as a tea kettle and twice as alarming. “Do you ever get a sharp pain that shoots across your body, like…

  • Nevada's Busybody Legislature Rides Again

    Nevada’s esteemed legislators have once again saddled up their noble steeds, donned their finest spurs, and galloped headlong into the grand enterprise of making more laws to fix laws that aren’t fixing anything. Two new bills, SB304 and SB309, have been introduced with much fanfare, promising to cure the scourge of drunken and drugged driving…

  • The Nevada Double-Backflip

    Making Two Wrongs into a Right The Nevada Legislature, in its infinite wisdom, has taken up the noble task of turning the aged adage “two wrongs don’t make a right” and turning it inside out and backward. Assembly Bill 209, now before the Committee on Judiciary, proposes to extend a legal olive branch—nay, a full-blown…