Recent Stories (view all stories)

A debate to remember (and forget)

Two takes on the first mano a mano between McCain and Obama

Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008

n hit the jackpot. Minutes into Friday evening’s presidential debate-viewing party at Sierra Gold at Jones and the I-215, someone won $20. Two center-bar televisions cut away from Barack Obama’s meandering economic prescription for the recession, and up popped glowing graphics and the word jackpot in red uppercase letter

Muslims speak out

Local leaders want it known that ignorance is the greatest danger voters face

Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008

For nearly 20 months, U.S. Muslims have watched Barack Obama fumble as he tries to debunk rumors that he’s a closet Muslim.

Hey, everyone, important community issues being discussed here!

Um, everyone ... anyone ... ?

Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008

School over, dozens of students filed past the solitary sign-holder pointing visitors to the Greenspun Junior High auditorium for the first of several community forums on education sponsored by state Senate Democrats.

Electile dysfunction

Clark County may have new voting machines, but it faces more scrutiny from poll-watchers than ever

Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008

Florida in 2000 gave us hanging chads and butterfly ballots. Ohio in 2004 set precedents for voter intimidation and massive disenfranchisement (350,000 missing or purged names).

Worldwide local tour

Undeterred by casino freeze-out, rapper creates traveling hip-hop showcase

Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008

Juiced by receptive crowds at First Friday performances in February, the West Las Vegas rapper set his sights on large bars and casino showrooms. Most venues declined before even hearing his pitch.

Touring the educational corridor

Charter schools and alternative approaches attempt to redefine education in West Las Vegas

Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008

New York-based Edison Schools, the nation’s largest and most controversial for-profit school-management company, roared into town in 2000, winning the right to manage seven campuses, including one of the state’s most troubled—West Middle School. Burrow into a surly patch of the city, off of Lake Mead just west of Martin Luther King, and there is West. North of the school is Buena Vista, a shuttered apartment complex politely described as a mini-Beirut; to the east, the FBI’s gleaming new headquarters occupies a patch of desert that was once a popular disposing ground for used condoms and spent shell casings.

No flip-flops

And other things I learned tagging along with vote canvassers

Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2008

Sunday morning and the sun is on low boil. An inordinate number of flies annoyingly hover near the entrance of the Sunrise Library. Outside, a few Barack Obama supporters prepare clipboards and paperwork for the day’s mission: persuading people to support their man.

The best bet

McCain or Obama—who's better for our state's biggest industry?

Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008

By now you’ve probably heard so much about how John McCain and Barack Obama will restore our faith in government and have seen enough hit pieces calling bullshit on the other guy’s promises that it’s hard to tell fact from spin.

Lowden Clear

The state GOP chair is confident Republicans will beat the odds and prevail in November

Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008

Come November 4, we’ll know whether Nevada Republican Party chair Sue Lowden is Nero, sitting idly by as the empire burns, or the political version of Joe Namath.

What's the use?

With the city’s old courthouse building in mothballs for several years now, many mull its future role

Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008

Real-estate agent Jack LeVine describes the shuttered Clark County Courthouse on Third Street as a “classic icon of mid-century modernism.” You may be thinking: This place, modernist? Even before it closed in 2004—its court functions moving to the stately, 17-story Regional Justice Center a few blocks away—probably few thought that this place, with its boxy shape and the aqua-colored siding on its towering column, was much to look at.