Lotteries, torture and partisan press

States once thought it sinful to gamble even in such innocuous ways as playing the numbers. But they overcame such scruples when they realized that gambling was a painless way to fill state coffers.

Here in the Silver State many Nevadans who crave the numbers game have to cross the California border to satisfy their urges. Lotteries are forbidden in Nevada. The casino lobby won’t allow them.

Oh, we hear in the Legislature that lotteries are regressive, preying on the poor. Or, opponents argue that owners of small gambling halls would face ruinous competition. Or, we hear wails that lotteries would have an unfair advantage over casinos because they can operate with fewer employees.

But those are all smokescreens. The truth is that not one Nevada lawmaker has the guts to take on Big Gambling. It, like mining, corporations and businesses, get away with tax murder. They are the third rail of Nevada politics: untouchable.

Torture-loving judge
Don Gladstone was the last “hanging judge” in Nevada, disgracing the Sparks Municipal Court until ousted by voters in 1995.

Today another judge with roots in Nevada disgraces the judiciary: Judge Jay Bybee of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. (The 9th, with headquarters in San Francisco, hears appeals of federal cases originating in Nevada.)

Unfortunately, voters cannot remove Bybee. He has a lifetime appointment. He can be impeached by the House and removed from office by the Senate but that is quite unlikely.

Bybee, chief White House legal counsel in 2002, signed memoranda approving waterboarding, sleep deprivation, wall-slamming and box-confinement amid bugs.

Steve Sebelius, editor of CityLife in Las Vegas, rightly castigates Bybee for abandoning the rule of law, disregarding international treaties and disavowing his own humanity.

Bybee’s memo said: “Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious personal injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily functions or even death.”

Hardly a glowing recommendation for the Boyd law school in Las Vegas where Bybee taught before consorting with the Bush criminals.

Partisan media
We have a partisan media in America today. The shouters and ranters of the hard-right flood the airways with their bilge, drowning out the softer and saner voices of liberalism.

But a partisan press is hardly a new thing in America. Almost from the beginning of the republic political discourse was full of lies, hyperbole and absurdities. The Partisan Press era was woefully irresponsible.

The Jeffersonian republican press (pro-French and antimonarchial) declared that the honorable George Washington had debauched the nation, that he was evil, a great deceiver, the source of all the nation’s woes.

When Jefferson ran for president in 1800 the anti-republican Federalists said he would close all the churches, burn all the Bibles, abolish marriage, toss women into brothels and encourage murder, rape, adultery and incest.

Obviously gross falsities. Yet we find similar absurdities being mouthed today by right-wing madmen. They denounce President Obama as a socialist, a communist who will fly the hammer and sickle over the White House.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Yahoo from Kentucky, calls Obama “a threat to this country.” And the Rabid Right declares that Obama should rename the Democratic Party the “Democrat Socialist Party.”(Note the sneer. The proper adjective is Democratic.)

Great ignorant hope
The Republican Party has been reduced to irrelevancy. Sarah Palin, the Great Ignorant Hope from Alaska, flamed out. Now the GOP mantle has fallen on Rush Limbaugh. God save the mark!

Limbaugh enthralls right-wingers with his medieval mind, shouting hoary shibboleths. Even Michael Steele, reactionary chairman of the GOP national committee, calls Limbaugh’s broadcasts incendiary and ugly.

Still, torturemeister Dick Cheney embraces Limbaugh and repudiates Colin Powell, the one class guy in the Bush administration.

Cheney, like the rest of the GOP, opposes everything good for Americans like universal national health and card-signing unionism. He favors everything bad for Americans like deregulation and tax cuts for the rich.

Editor Sebelius rightly deplores the GOP hatred of unions: “Republicans hate anything that puts power in the hands of individuals over the corporation, the poor over the wealthy.”

Lapsed Unitarian

After Phil Altick, University of Nevada, Reno, physics professor, died several months ago, Professor Frank Tobin of the foreign language department, remarked at the memorial service that Altick was a lapsed Unitarian.

Funny line. But the best thing Altick said was expressed after he came back from a semester teaching abroad. He was asked what he thought about teaching in London.

“They know more than we do,” Altick replied.

“About physics?”

“No, about everything.”