SAY WHAT?

"Everything is on the table. That is code that any tax that can be raised to balance this budget will be raised or considered -- mining, gaming, all industries are vulnerable to the necessities, the urgencies of balancing this budget. ... We don't hold back on this committee."

Nevada Senate Taxation Committee Chairman Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas, LEFT, explaining Tuesday that the new Democratic majority in Carson City intends to seize even more wealth from Nevadans and their employers under threat of force, rather than downsize the state bureaucracy.

"Hiring freezes don't have anything to do with high-level personnel, people who are necessary."

Las Vegas Mayor and Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority board chairman Oscar Goodman, explaining Monday why a hiring freeze at the tax-funded agency won't prevent the hiring of a replacement for senior vice president E. James Gans. The 58-year-old Gans, who had been supervising a tax-funded $890 million renovation of the Las Vegas Convention Center, retired "for personal reasons" last week.

"You have violated the anti-lobbying law; high executives in our government violate that law all the time. I apologize you were singled out."

U.S. District Judge Robert C. Jones, apologizing to Milton Dial of Las Vegas before placing him on probation and ordering him to pay a $2,000 fine for violating a federal law which forbids former government employees from performing consulting work for their former departments -- in this case, the U.S. Department of the Interior -- before sitting out a mandated "cooling off period." It was not immediately clear if Judge Jones intends to start apologizing to all drug defendants who appear before him, given that the majority of America's recent presidents have acknowledged consuming illegal drugs.

"We want to lend, but the regulators are flat-out telling us 'Get your capital up.' Then there's Congress telling you to lend it all out."

Greg Melvin, a member of the board of directors of FNB Corp., a Hermitage, Pa.-based bank that received $100 million in federal bailout funds.