DA’s inquiry is about basic fairness in court

To the editor:

In her Wednesday letter to the editor, Paula Herwig bemoans the waste of her tax dollars on Clark County District Attorney David Roger's "petty, vindictive" investigation into Family Court Judge Steven Jones.

When Ms. Herwig worked at a law firm, would she have allowed one of the firm's clients to have their case decided by a judge who was dating her opponent? That is at the heart of Mr. Roger's investigation: fundamental fairness to litigants and respect for the court's authority. If the facts bear out that the judge was involved in a relationship with a prosecutor who was appearing before him, then not only should he be removed from the bench, he should be suspended from the practice of law.

Sadly, this type of corruption is endemic to Las Vegas. It was on display when the city of Henderson hired Sen. Harry Reid's son Josh Reid as city attorney and when the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada board wouldn't back the low bidder on the recent bus contract.

Louis Brandeis, one of the greatest jurists of the 20th century, said, "Our government teaches people by example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."

Judge Jones, you're no Louis Brandeis.

David Liebrader

Las Vegas

Economics 101

To the editor:

Barack Obama confidant and former SEIU boss Andy Stern recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal: "The free-market, fundamentalist economic model is being thrown onto the trash heap of history."

In related news, Reuters reports that the Obama administration will seek to raise the current debt limit of $15.194 trillion to $16.294 trillion. Who does the Fed think is going to buy this debt? What are elected officials in Washington, D.C., thinking?

Our once-great country is about to become Greece on a massive scale because this administration has made capitalism a dirty word. It has incentivized nonparticipation among huge portions of the population through massive entitlements and deficit spending.

The free-market economic model will be back, because history has shown it to be the only one that works. It works because, for all of its flaws, it is in each individual's self-interest to participate, and each individual accumulates wealth to the extent of their contribution.

Except at Harvard, this is Economics 101.

Skip Blough

North Las Vegas

Distracted driving

To the editor:

I see where our politicians passed a law banning hand-held cellphone use while driving. Now the National Transportation Safety Board proposes that all states enact a ban on cellphone use while driving.

I really think any distraction is wrong, such as when I was driving recently with my wife and child through Primm. I saw one person eating a hamburger, another putting makeup on using that little mirror in the visor and a teen with his stereo on so loud it looked like he was dancing, arms flailing to the music.

While I was busy looking at billboards and road signs, my wife wasn't much help, talking to me all the time. I kept looking in the back seat to tell our son, who was spilling his drink, to sit down. While all this was happening, I noticed a clown behind me flashing his red and blue lights in my mirror. Then I realized it was not a clown in a black and white car, but the law. Wonder what I did wrong?

Vernon Pechous

Henderson

Imbalance

To the editor:

In Wednesday's Review-Journal, letter writer Connie Brady mentioned that horses originated in North America to support the idea that Nevada's modern wild horses are natural inhabitants.

When native horses were living in Nevada (before about 10,000 years ago), they co-existed with elephants, camels, ground sloths, giant bison, huge short-faced bears, lions, cheetahs, sabertooth cats and monstrous dire wolves. Those animals all went extinct for very good reasons. The climate got drier and warmer, and the vegetation that supported the big plant-eaters went away. Without the big plant-eaters, the big carnivores died out as well.

I think mustangs are beautiful. But I think elk and pronghorns are also beautiful. The last two species managed to survive the Pleistocene extinctions without (or in spite of) much interference from man.

Many scientific studies show competition between horses and these native herbivores, to the detriment of the elk and pronghorns. Take a trip to the northwest Spring Mountains, hike a few miles back from the roads and you will find natural water holes trampled to mud by horses and precious little in the way of edible vegetation.

I don't ask people to forsake the mustangs. My heart goes out to those who adopt horses or strive to put them in privately funded refuges. But I ask the more extreme horse advocates to face reality. We have limited public resources. We feed the horses in hard times, then they breed and some starve. They don't have many natural predators anymore, and we won't hunt them (unlike the elk and pronghorns). There are natural consequences to this imbalance, and they aren't pretty.

Harlan Stockman

Las Vegas