For 30 years I had the honor of serving this state, working for the finest service agency I have ever known, the Nevada Legislative Counsel Bureau (known throughout the state simply as the “LCB”).

This past holiday season (and repeatedly throughout the year) we are reminded - with public service announcements, distracting billboards along the freeway, stern lectures and emotional denouncements - about the horrors of driving under the influence from the police, the district attorney and other politicians.

As I prepare to teach today the first class of my Ethics Course at UNLV Boyd Law School for the spring semester, I am struck by a number of ironies. That day, 1/21/2020, will mark a milestone of 50 years as a lawyer after being admitted to practice in California in January 1970.

Gov. John Vellardita has a plan. He wants to scoop up $1.4 billion for education by raising the sales tax and the gaming tax to about 10 percent each. Those are increases of nearly 60 percent and 50 percent, respectively, over the current rates.

Las Vegas resident Israel Tellez-Nava is no kingpin. He says he normally works as a landscaper.

Some of the most important legal cases protecting your rights – from free speech protections to the limitation on abusive police practices – come from rather unsavory litigants. Think of Larry Flynt and the Illinois Nazis, who along with the ACLU (back when they were a legitimate civil liberties organization instead of just another partisan political advocacy group) ensured that everyone’s First Amendment rights were honored.

It was a good run while it lasted. I lived nearly four decades without the internet breaking my brain.

The Crescent Dunes solar plant, the bright curiosity that gazed upon every passing motorist driving north of Tonopah, has become Nevada’s latest taxpayer-subsidized monument to failure.

I hate to admit it. I hope I don’t get put on double secret probation by the State Bar by saying this. Don’t tell anyone I said it. But it’s true.

There may have been homeless advocates protesting outside City Hall Thursday evening and street campers just blocks away, but Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman didn’t miss a beat during her State of the City address in the council chambers with its “Back to the Future” theme.

On the recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—the “Nation’s Report Card—the Clark County School District showed significant improvement at the fourth grade level but no progress in eighth grade. On NAEP’s fourth and eighth grade reading and math tests, CCSD students performed about half a grade level below the national average—roughly equal to the average large urban district.

The framers of the Bill of Rights recognized that the free exchange of views and ideas and the provision of protection for those exchanges was essential to the maintenance of a free society. At the time, ‘the press’ was rather easily defined — newspapers of various persuasions. As technology has advanced, what was traditionally viewed as ‘the press’ has undergone significant changes.

When I first started my law practice in the 1990s, I’d often spot older individuals sitting in the back of courtrooms – unaffiliated with any of the proceedings of the day – but nonetheless present from the moment the judge took the bench until the end of the court calendar.

Feisty Harriet Trudell was a foot soldier for social justice and Democratic Party candidates and causes. Her progressive issues were innumerable, her energy almost inexhaustible.

We’re all used to politicians overusing hyperbole, but I think we’ve achieved some sort of a new record with the first public health epidemic of 2020. Attorney General Aaron Ford called this crisis, “an entirely new threat to public safety.” To address this problem, our government wants to spend $1.7 million dollars on data analysis and marketing.

To kick off last year, I made a few predictions. I even added a confidence percentage to express, quantitatively, how sure I was that said prediction would come to pass. How did they hold up?

Masters of the obvious, public officials and the press are calling it a tragedy. Of course that’s true. The first-floor fire on Sunday, Dec. 21 at the Alpine Motel at 213 N. 9th Street downtown killed six, injured 13, and left an estimated 75 more homeless.

In the United States, you’re an adult once you turn 18. You’re old enough to drive, old enough to get married, old enough to raise children, old enough to vote, old enough to sign an apartment lease, old enough to open a credit card, old enough to buy a gun, old enough to watch porn and old enough to serve in the military and die for your country.