Opinion

This is a time of serious economic recession in Nevada. Out of every 100 workers in the Silver State, 11.3 are currently unemployed. Yet, the federal government appears to think that is not enough and is driving for a change that will wind up putting even more people out of work.

Watching local governments try to go “on the wagon” and stop spending increasingly scarce tax dollars during tough economic times can be like watching a family member try to “go cold turkey” on his or her own drug of choice.

A recent column on the euphemisms used by proponents of illegal-immigrant amnesty brought some irate buzzing from all seven members of the Young Anarchists’ League.

The “fate of White House and congressional efforts to overhaul the nation’s health care system is likely to depend on the price tag, but there’s no precise, reliable way to estimate the cost,” McClatchy Newspapers reported this week.

The conventional wisdom is that Republican primary voters are more conservative than the general public and, therefore, Gov. Jim Gibbons is likely to win renomination for a second term due to his veto of all those tax hikes at the end of this year’s Legislature.

Today we celebrate that stirring day in history, July 4, 1812, when the first president of the United States, Benjamin Franklin, emerged from the old State House in Boston, held up the new Constitution freshly penned by Thomas Jefferson of New York, and announced to the cheers of the gathered throng that, “These United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent of the crown of Spain!” Who would not wish to have been there, joining in the joyous tumult, as the commander of the Continental Army, Ulysses S. Grant, promptly ordered his men to board the waiting steamships and set sail for San Juan Hill?

In a unanimous decision Wednesday, the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners lifted the 13-month medical-license suspension of Dr. Eladio Carrera, co-owner of the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada, ground zero for an outbreak of preventable hepatitis C infections that has set back the cause of routine colonoscopy screenings in the valley, perhaps for years.

To the editor:

If the captains of industry could be counted upon to champion free markets and competition, we’d all have a lot less government intrusion in our lives. Alas, businesses too often seek out government regulation to protect their profit margins. And lawmakers are all too willing to go along, growing their budgets, hiring more bureaucrats, raising taxes and placing new restraints on economic freedom — all to spare the public from lower costs and some made-up harm.