Most of the 521 bills passed by Nevada legislators this year already are in effect. But 19 of them become law Jan. 1, including one barring polling places from being located in any building named for a person who is a candidate in that election.

New fines of up to $1,000 for the first offense go into effect for the sale of "counterfeit cigarettes" -- though apparently that refers not to inadequate tobacco content, but rather to "bogus manufacturing labels or phony tax stamps" -- more a tax collection than a consumer protection measure.

And so the list goes on.

With tens of thousands of laws, statutes, edicts and regulations already on the books, how much sense does it make, any more, to assert, "Ignorance is no excuse for the law"?

Can even a current lawmaker recite from memory the 521 new laws they enacted this year? The 2,500 or so enacted in the past decade?

It's time once again for our annual call: Each lawmakers proposing a new statute should be required by constitutional amendment to specify by number two existing laws, statutes or regulations which will be repealed at the same time, effecting, over the years, a gradual reduction in the total red tape binding us all to the tarbaby of tyranny.

When the lawbooks have finally been condensed to the point where these delegates begin to protest that the existing laws being repealed may be more valuable to the commonweal than the new measures being proposed, we may finally have begun to get somewhere.