Ready aim, rhetoric for fuming filmmaker
When CNN’s Piers Morgan invited filmmaker and author Michael Moore this week to vent about the lack of action by Congress to ban assault weapons and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s name entered the conversation, it wasn’t as a kindred spirit or fellow soldier in the cause of gun control.
It was to shoot that rotten, lowdown Democrat full of holes — rhetorically speaking, of course — for not stepping up to force the issue.
Morgan concluded Reid had been “cowed by the NRA.” The unabashedly liberal Moore went much further:
“If a man with an assault weapon goes into the school where Harry Reid’s grandchildren go to school tomorrow, and kills his grandchildren, would he stand in front of that microphone at 5 o’clock, and say, ‘I know how Dianne (Feinstein) had to witness the mayor (of San Francisco) getting murdered, and my grandchildren just got killed today, but we just can’t get it passed because we just don’t have the votes.’ Would he do that, really? I don’t think so.”
Fighting words?
Apparently not.
Reid’s office declined to hit back, and instead pointed to the senator’s measured public response to the failure to compel his Republican colleagues to embrace the issue.
PONZIO INJUSTICE: A settlement conference is scheduled for April 12 in Reno in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case of Afroditi Eliades-Ledstom, who filed for federal debt reorganization after losing a civil judgment in the March 2007 death of Michael Ponzio that with interest now tops $11 million. Ponzio was killed when his vehicle was struck by a car driven by Ledstom, who was traveling the wrong way on Interstate 215. She was never tried criminally in connection with the death.
Although notice of the conference is public, the meeting itself is private.
BURNING QUESTION. In the name of preserving the integrity of the process, the city has washed out 14 rookie firefighter recruits after suspecting some of cheating on an exam. Cost to taxpayers: $718,984.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right?
But did they cheat?
It’s officially unclear.
City spokesman David Riggleman said the 14 recruits were suspected of cheating on a written test that was professionally monitored, but they will be allowed to reapply with the city fire department.
What?
If they cheated, then they should be banned. If they didn’t cheat, then they should be allowed to graduate.
If the suspicion remains unproven after “an internal investigation,” doesn’t that make it inconclusive?
What if some, or even most, of those rookies were overprepared for the exam after waiting nearly four years for the academy?
Call it speculation. But what do you call an inconclusive internal investigation?
LEASH LAW: Don’t forget the 17th annual Wag-A-Tail Walk-A-Thon Sunday morning at Centennial Hills Park to benefit the Las Vegas Valley Humane Society. Registration starts at 8 a.m. with the 1- and 2-mile fun walks following at 9 a.m.
It’s a great place to walk your dog. Groups are welcome.
I hear members of the County Commission were going to walk Las Vegas Constable John Bonaventura, but instead this week they decided to make him roll over and play dead. Later, they plan to put him to sleep.
LEARNED TORTOISE: Shortly after emerging from his burrow, talented desert tortoise Mojave Max was overheard saying, “I can’t believe Dwight Jones quit the Clark County School District’s superintendent’s job so suddenly. Something isn’t right.”
Taking a cue from some school district insiders who know the full story but refuse to share it with me, Max then returned to his burrow and buried his head in the sand.
ON THE BOULEVARD: Embattled CLS Transportation limousine executive Charles Horky, under federal indictment for alleged racketeering, credit card and bank fraud in connection with the FBI’s whores-to-casino-doors investigation, was recently spotted chatting up employees inside the Olympic Garden topless club, sources report. When will we learn the names on Horky’s casino contact list?
Have an item for Bard of the Boulevard? Email comments and contributions to jsmith@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0295.
He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/Smith
