Author: Tom Darby

The sun hung low over the Wyoming plains, painting the sagebrush gold and casting long shadows from the Tetons. Jake Callahan rode easy in the saddle–weathered Stetson tipped back, Marine discipline in the set of his shoulders.

He’d left the Corps after Korea, trading snow and mud and M1 Garand for open range and a roan gelding named Smoky. The cowboy life suited him—quiet, honest, and hard work.

But the world was ever-changing, and Jake, like the wind, never stayed put long.

He’d been punching cattle for the Lazy J outfit when the foreman, a grizzled cuss named Rawlins, took him aside one evening. “Jake, you got a voice like a campfire storyteller. Ever thought of radio?”

Jake laughed it off, but Rawlins wasn’t joking. The local station, K-Bar, needed a disc jockey to spin country records and talk up the weather, so curious, he figured he’d give it a whirl.

The first time he sat at the mic, a hulking Marine-turned-cowboy in a booth smelling of stale coffee and cigarette smoke, he froze. The red “ON AIR” light glared like an enemy sniper.

Then he thought of the boys in Korea, how he’d kept their spirits up with stories around the fire. He leaned in, voice low and steady, “This is Jake Callahan, your saddle tramp with the tunes. Let’s ride through the night with some Hank Williams.”

The words flowed, smooth as a mountain stream.

K-Bar’s listeners took to him like calves to milk. Ranchers tuning in from their pickups, lonely widows in clapboard houses, even truckers hauling freight through the pass—they all found something in Jake’s voice. He played Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, and the occasional yodeler, but what hooked’em was his storytelling.

Between tracks, he’d weave tales of trail drives, barroom brawls, or the time he outran a blizzard with nothing but a slicker and grit. Half were true, half were dreams, but they all felt real.

Trouble, though, always sniffed out a man like Jake. It came in the form of Cal Dempsey, a big-shot rancher who owned half the county and wanted K-Bar to push his political cronies.

Jake wasn’t one for games, and when Dempsey leaned on the station manager to fire him, Jake got wind of it and aired a story about a “certain greedy coyote” trying to fence off free range. The town buzzed, and Dempsey’s face turned redder than a branding iron.

One night, as Jake locked up the station, two of Dempsey’s hired toughs waited in the alley. They figured a beating would shut him up.

But Jake hadn’t forgotten Parris Island or the Chosin Reservoir. The first swing missed; Jake’s didn’t.

He laid one man out with a right cross and sent the other running with a boot to the backside. The next evening, he was back on air, voice steady as ever, spinning Merle Haggard and saying nothing about the scuffle.

The town knew, though. Word spreads fast in open country.

Dempsey backed off, but Jake felt the itch to move on. The mic was a tether, and he was a man born to drift.

One frosty dawn, he saddled Smoky, left a note for the station manager, and rode west. K-Bar hired a new voice, but it wasn’t the same. Folks still talked about the Marine-turned-cowboy who’d spun records and stood tall.

Years later, a trucker passing through Nevada swore he heard Jake’s voice on a late-night station, telling a story about a drifter who outsmarted a storm. No one could prove it was him.

Jake Callahan was like the wind—gone before you could pin him down, leaving only echoes in the air.

Should you pass a newsstand this past week or chanced upon some solemn-faced anchor with a quiver in their voice, you’d have thought we were shipping students off in cattle cars and replacing them with scarecrows. Such was the hue and cry over the revoked student visas at UNLV, where seven poor souls—no more, no less—found themselves caught in the gears of government bureaucracy.

Then late Monday afternoon, in a move as quiet as a mouse tiptoeing past a sleeping cat, the federal record keepers flipped the switch back to “active.” One might expect a cheer, but the University complains it learned about the good news–not from Homeland Security but “as part of its regular monitoring of the federal SEVIS database.”

That’s a way of saying, “We did our jobs.”

No official word, mind you, from the Department of Homeland Security, whose silence on the matter would shame a tombstone. While their records got resurrected like Lazarus should their visas remain revoked, they’re still out of luck for reentry. Like a man who finds his keys after the house has burned, some might not find it all that comforting.

The students—seven at UNLV, part of a much-touted thousand–got swept up in a visa revocation spree. And with its usual thunder and lightning, the media turned the matter into a four-alarm fire while the rest of us wondered what exactly had burned. Many of these “national security threats,” had little more than a parking ticket’s worth of infractions.

Now, don’t mistake me–I hold no grudge against fair warning, but a feller can only hear “The sky is falling!” so many times before he starts bringing an umbrella to bed.

The press should remember the old fable about the boy and the wolf. Because when there’s real danger—and surely there will be—it’d be nice if folks hadn’t already tuned out.

So here we are–the records are fixed, crisis cooled, and the wolf, as usual, was more shadow than substance. But don’t worry–someone in the newsroom is already warming up for the next cry.

Heaven help us when there’s a real wolf at the door.

Now, gather ‘round friends, and allow me to tell you of a curious show held recently in that fine circus tent of solemnity known as the Nevada State Legislature. The Secretary of State, a sprightly fellow named Cisco Aguilar, hosted what he calls Election Demonstration Day—a harmless soundin’ name–though it’s always wise to be suspicious when politicians start “demonstratin’” things.

It’s usually when the real trickery begins.

Lawmakers and various specimens of the elected sort got invited to ogle at blinking lights, humming gadgets and technical gobbledygook stretched across two floors of the building as if they were children in a candy store—only these candies cost millions and come wrapped in legalese. On the first floor were poll pads, sleek devices that look like they might check your vitals but are used to check voters in. On the second floor was what one might call the “Wizard’s Den,” a technicolor dream of election machinery and vendors laid out like a mechanical buffet.

There, legislators got the rare treat of pretending to be just folks, asking questions like, “How does this thing work?” and being answered with a precision that only exists when no votes are at stake.

“This is about education,” Aguilar chirped, “because once the actual election comes, things get chaotic.”

It’s reckoned he’s not wrong. Elections get chaotic, and chaos, as any old gambler knows, is the best time to palm a card or slip a ballot.

Aguilar’s idea, you see, is that transparency breeds trust—which is mighty fine in theory until you realize you’re gettin’ shown only what they want you to see. It’s like a magician doing card tricks with transparent sleeves and hoping you’ll forget to ask what’s up his other hand.

Two election-related bills—Assembly Bill 306 and Senate Bill 102—were getting their second round of gussying up in committee during all this “transparency.” It’s convenient timing, and nothing in politics ever happens by accident.

As the Secretary claimed, “This is an opportunity for legislators and state leaders to understand the systems we are using.”

Indeed. That’s how one learns which parts to break, which gears to grease, and which levers to pull come next November.

He even brought in vendors—the folks who build the machines—to let legislators talk to them directly–no filters, no meddling. Now I ask you– when was the last time you got to sit down with the fellow who made your toaster and ask him how it might one day burn your house down? But in this circus, the clowns sit at the judge’s bench, and vendors perform like trained seals, promising faster counting, better processing, and more “capacity,” all noble goals if you assume nobility is still in fashion.

Aguilar promises improvements are coming, especially for rural and tribal communities, though I reckon they’ll see about as much real benefit as a cat sees from a bath. But no matter—it’s the gesture that counts, and gestures are what politicians do best.

So take heed, dear reader. When the state puts on a show in the name of clarity, it’s often to distract from the sleight of hand. And when lawmakers “learn the system,” they’re learnin’ how it works—and how to work it.

After all, democracy may be the will of the people–but elections–that’s show business.

The Nevada Senate, with all the pomp and certainty of a person selling snake oil, unveiled Senate Bill 460, dressed up in the high-sounding title of the “Education through Accountability, Transparency and Efficiency Act”—or, more quaintly, the “EDUCATE Act.”

Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, who believes herself to be the Moses of modern schooling, led the charge. She declared the bill a remedy brewed over a year’s worth of chin-wagging with experts and advocates—though one suspects more talking than listening took place.

Now, the EDUCATE Act is said to be “divided” into five great categories, each as vague and thunderous as a politician’s promise. There’s talk of staffing every classroom with “qualified” teachers and filling every school like a Christmas stocking.

There’s a noble push to improve student outcomes–as if that weren’t the stated goal of every flailing reform from here to Kalamazoo. A Pre-K expansion makes an appearance, too—because nothing says progress like enrolling toddlers into the machinery earlier.

Then comes the bit about “accountability,” which in the language of bureaucrats means more spreadsheets, more meetings, and not one whit more learning. Lastly, the bill ponders the “future of public education,” though if its present state is any clue, the future looks about as bright as a blown-out lantern.

Strangely—one might say tellingly—not once in all this mighty stack of words does the bill see fit to mention the act of teaching. Not the teacher’s burden, not the classroom’s labor, not the miracle that happens when one soul tries to enlighten another. Nope, the bill, like a raft with no oars, floats entirely on governance, staffing, and statistical mumbo-jumbo.

In short, the EDUCATE Act appears to be a legislative stew boiled down from buzzwords, stirred with intention, and served with the promise of everything—except education.

It seems the folks in Congress have finally taken a break from hollerin’ at one another and passed a bill that even a Missouri mule might call sensible. Senator Jacky Rosen hitched her name to a fresh piece of law aimed at the worst kind of mischief the modern world’s cooked up–false and lewd images conjured by clever mechanical brains they call “AI.”

The new law, stamped with the name “TAKE IT DOWN Act”—as direct as a barkeep’s warning—declares it a criminal offense to go spreading around intimate images, especially those cooked up without consent by some oily digital sorcery. It includes the kind where the subject’s never even posed, but the picture makes a lie look like the gospel.

Don’t think it’s just another law to get filed away like an old hat. This one’s got teeth. Social media outfits—the same that let your aunt post twelve blurry photos of her meatloaf—are now bound by law to remove such offending material within 48 hours of being told by the poor soul whose likeness got robbed.

Senator Rosen put it plain, “The lack of protections for victims of online abuse has put far too many people at risk, and it’s past time we took action to stop bad actors, protect victims, and hold social media sites accountable.”

Now, I reckon most decent folk would agree—when a person’s image can be stolen, twisted, and passed around faster than a bottle at a campfire, it’s high time the law caught up. And for once, it seems it has.

Now, what to do with a bad politician?

Now, I don’t pretend to be a lawyer, a sheriff, or a Texas man with an unspellable first name, but I do know the smell of cow pies when the wind shifts–and friends, something peculiar’s driftin’ over from Storey County. They’d rather eat their badges than speak plainly when the subject’s has a darker shade than a sand-blasted sagebrush.

One Shyncere Jefferson, all of eighteen years and hailing from the land of brisket and big hats–Abilene, Texas–got sentenced to fifteen years in a federal pokey for producing child pornography. A grim and vile business, no doubt, and justice, at least on that score, had its boots laced up tight.

But what catches the ear isn’t just the crime–it’s the molasses-slow and mutter-mouthed way the Storey County Sheriff’s Office–which has all the transparency of a coffin lid–chose to say so. You’d think a case involving two underage local girls and a man from out of state would provoke a mighty bellow of righteous fury.

Instead, the SCSO stayed so tight-lipped it made a bullfrog look chatty. Why, you ask?

It’s no secret that Storey County’s got a bad hand at the poker table from social media that makes a cursed prospector look charmed. A past fracas that involved race left the office tiptoeing like a chicken on a hot skillet, and the sheriff and his deputies fearin’ their legal shadows like superstitious gamblers in a haunted saloon.

It all began on August 26, 2024, when the Sheriff’s Office cracked open an investigation into a man sending nasty messages to two girls–just 12 and 13. The girls’ phones got a forensic download–a term that here means “we poked around until we turned pale,” and what they found would make a grizzly lose its appetite–filthy texts, videos, and photos, all tied back to young Mr. Jefferson.

Now, here’s where the SCSO pulled one of its favorite moves–passing the ball. They joined with the FBI faster than you can say “not it,” and let the feds do the heavy lifting. By October 28, the FBI in Abilene slapped the cuffs on Jefferson and hauled him off like yesterday’s trash.

But Storey County, ever the shy debutante at the truth-telling cotillion, waited till the whole matter got tied up in a neat federal bow before mumbling the outcome. One can almost imagine the press release being scribbled with one hand while the other clutched a rosary, praying nobody noticed the suspect was Black.

Look–justice ain’t about hiding behind hedges when the going gets racial. It’s about stepping into the sunlight, telling folks what happened, and trusting that truth, however rough around the edges, will stand on its own two boots. But that sort of plain talk seems to spook the SCSO worse than a ghost in a courthouse.

Maybe, one day, they’ll speak up before the FBI sends the wedding invitations, or maybe not. After all, in Storey County, silence is golden–and sometimes, cowardly.

Well now, gather ‘round and let me spin you a yarn that smells more of brimstone than frankincense—a cautionary tale from the great American desert where salvation was for sale, and the Devil took debit.

It appears one Pastor Regina Brice, a woman of the cloth—or at least a woman frequently seen near cloth—was sentenced not to prison but to probation for her role in a healthcare fraud scheme that would make even the slickest riverboat gambler tip his hat. Her transgression? Pilferin’ over a million dollars meant for the impoverished through Nevada Medicaid. For her efforts, she got four years of supervised liberty and a bill for $1.1 million in restitution—a debt, I daresay, she’ll be paying until the Rapture or the next federal shutdown, whichever comes first.

You may think defrauding the sick and impoverished would guarantee a stay in the Graybar Hotel, but nope. You see, Ms. Brice’s attorney, a fella named Gary Reeves, painted her not as a criminal mastermind but a minor accomplice, groomed like a show pony and trotted out by the real schemers.

Mr. Reeves spun a tale thick with remorse, religious fervor, and bodily ailments—reminding Judge Boulware that Ms. Brice was very spiritual and suffered from some accident-related ailments to boot. The good judge obliged, and she walked without a shackle or scolding.

Her husband, Joe Brice, was not so fortunate. For his participation in this gospel-tinged grift, he got ten months in prison and a tidy restitution of $392,000. He also pleaded guilty to moving money of dubious origin and, much like his wife, had conveniently forgotten to mention his rather storied criminal past when applying to be a Medicaid provider.

His resume omitted burglary, drug charges, and a concealed weapon offense—minor hiccups, no doubt, on the road to sainthood. As the layers of the holy onion got peeled back, more names appeared—Gregory and Carol Kirby, once united in wedlock, now bound only by mutual misdeeds.

Gregory, who now fancies himself “Apostle Kirby,” a title easier to earn than a bus pass–confessed to raking in fraudulently claimed Medicaid funds and converting them into real estate from Decatur to Laughlin. He and Carol walked free from prison but got ordered to cough up nearly $373,000 in restitution.

But wait, there’s more!

For Carol Kirby, one scheme wasn’t enough. Arizona’s got her in their sights too, charging her with 20 felonies for bilking another health care program in a new enterprise—”A Better You Wellness Center,” which, based on the indictment, made its patients poorer and the operators richer.

The cast of this ministerial melodrama includes at least 15 players, some of them still unidentified, and a total estimated fraud of $30 million. That’s thirty million taxpayer dollars for Nevada’s needy, rerouted into trucks, properties, and sanctimonious sermons.

Now, you may ask, where’s the moral in this mess? Well, friend, it’s buried under the parking lot of a church with no congregation and six LLCs.

Being no stranger to human folly, having seen men trade gold for gravel and trust a painted sign more than their mother—but even I must tip my hat to the gall of one Miss Barbara Trickle, aged eighty, of Las Vegas. The venerable fraudstress, who should’ve been enjoying her dotage sipping tea and scolding squirrels, spent her golden years fleecing the gullible with more letters than a lovesick poet.

According to the ever-serious Department of Justice, Miss Trickle led a merry little band from 2012 to 2018, peddling fraudulent prize notices to the masses. These weren’t just a few postcards promising riches if you kissed a frog—they mailed out millions of these things, each promising the moon and charging a tidy fee of twenty to fifty dollars to get it.

Folks thought they’d won a cash prize–but got a paper report on sweepstakes or a bauble barely worth the stamp that carried it.

Miss Trickle, it seems, was no idle hand in this racket. She ran the operation soup to nuts—lasering, printing, licking envelopes, and counting the loot while her victims, many of them elderly, dreamed of riches that never arrived. After the first hook, she and her co-conspirators would send more bait, like a fisherman who knows the trout’s already hungry.

Once the law caught wind of the con and the Postal Inspection Service kicked in some doors, the tally stood at over $15 million siphoned from the hopeful and the lonely. That’s quite a sum for a business that traded in fairy dust and fine print.

Said Inspector Eric Shen, “The defendant and her co-conspirators used the promise of sweepstakes winnings to defraud the most vulnerable members in our communities.”

That’s a polite way of saying they sold snake oil to Grandma and told her it was champagne.

So now, having pled guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, Miss Trickle must face the music—whether that’s a prison tune or a quiet retirement with a dented reputation and a confiscated printing press, only time will tell.

So, if someone tells you you’ve won a fortune and all you’ve got to do is send ‘em twenty bucks—keep your twenty, friend. You’ve already lost the prize.

Here’s an example of two bureaucracies shaking hands across a barbed wire fence as Governor Joe Lombardo and the Bureau of Land Management work like two old mules who finally agreed on what direction to plow.

It appears the Governor, a gentleman with a keen eye on Nevada’s dusty horizon, has gone and inked what the city folks call a “Data Sharing Agreement” with the BLM—a long-winded term meanin’ they’re fixin’ to swap notes on what bits of God’s forsaken scrubland might one-day suburbs, strip malls, or parking lots. It’s the sort of arrangement that gets men in suits mighty excited–but for the average sagebrush philosopher, it just sounds like the government talkin’ to itself a little louder than usual.

“I’m pleased to announce the State’s joint agreement,” quoth the Governor, with a straight face and manicured nails.

He claims this paper pact will “improve our ability to share critical data,” which is politician-speak for passin’ maps and numbers back and forth while trying not to trip over each other’s ambitions. The man’s heart seems in the right place, though, bless it.

Over yonder, BLM Nevada’s acting chief, Kim Prill, chimed in like a Sunday school teacher with a fresh lesson plan. She says they’re eager to pass along data “as efficiently as possible,” which is quite the hopeful statement from an outfit known for takin’ three weeks to answer a telegraph.

The agreement itself, drafted in the language of fine print and finer intentions, outlines four noble goals–first, to figure out which parcels of windblown wasteland might be up for grabs–the second, to save a penny or two in the process–thirdly, to keep from doubling up on the same map twice–and fourth, to ensure that whatever information does get passed around is more accurate than a prospector’s guess.

It’s like a dance between the State and the Feds, each hoping not to step on the other’s toes while they waltz across Nevada’s sun-baked terrain. One can only hope the information flows faster than the Humboldt River in August and that the whole endeavor results in more homes, fewer headaches, and enough red tape to keep the bureaucrats happy without binding the rest of us in knots.

There’s always one in every class—the fella who fusses when the teacher tries to bring a little order to the room. In this case, the class clown is none other than Nevada’s Attorney General Aaron Ford, who, instead of thanking the Trump administration for finally putting reins on runaway ideological programs in our schools, decided to holler, stomp, and run off to court–again.

The Department of Education had the gall to say that if state and local agencies wanted federal dollars, they had to follow the law. Specifically, they had to drop so-called DEI programs that divide children by race and teach folks to see each other through the warped lens of grievance politics. The administration made it clear–either uphold the Civil Rights Act–equal treatment for all–or find another sugar daddy.

But Ford, bless his bureaucratic-dogmatic soul, wasn’t about to miss a chance to posture. He and 19 other like-minded attorneys general filed suit, bellyaching about “vague interpretations” and “legal incoherence,” as if asking states not to use public funds to peddle discrimination disguised as inclusion was a cryptic puzzle.

And, of course, Ford played the victim card like it was the last ace in the deck, claiming Nevada would be “forced” into lawsuits or have to abandon programs designed to “protect children.” Funny—many Nevadans voted precisely to end those programs, believing their children should learn reading and arithmetic, not grievance and groupthink.

Despite the left’s political concerns, the Trump administration is fulfilling its promises—restoring common sense to government, defending civil rights, and ensuring taxpayer money isn’t going to ideologues.

As for Ford, maybe someone needs to tie his hands with more red tape of his own making—just enough to keep him from signing any more lawsuits written in political theater and wrapped in moral panic. Because in the end, this ain’t about civil rights, but about whether the federal government gets to say, “If we’re footing the bill, we expect the rules to be followed.”

And that, as any farmer, blacksmith, or barber will tell you, is just plain fair.