County Commission (home of political corruption) to appoint DA

I'm sorry for that headline. I apologize to all honest hard working Clark County Commissioners and their predecessors, indicted and unindicted.

But now that I have your attention, it does seem odd in the extreme that the Clark County Commission — which in the past has been one of the most corrupt political bodies in the United States — gets to pick the people's district attorney for the next three years.

You can get more info on the field to be considered here.

And you can find out more about the retiring DA David Rogers here.

Three years seems like a very long time to disenfranchise the people from electing their own DA. I don't know why the Clark County Commission can't just put the unexpired term of the DA on the upcoming fall election. Seems like a far better way to go.

In the meanwhile, we're going to need all the people and Las Vegas' best journalists to keep an especially close eye on the Clark County Commission for the next 36 months. You can bet that the finalists for the position will be promising all sorts of things to commission members to win votes to for the DA position. Also involved will be the usual suspects of powerful third parties who pull many strings with the county commissioners.

I'm not saying anything about any one commissioner or any one of the DA finalists. Fully backboned people all, I am sure. I'm just saying there are red flags flying here. The people are the ultimate check and balance in these kinds of things. But in the system about to unfold on Jan. 17, the people won't have a direct say for a very long time.