Nevada voters have absolutely no reason to send Harry Reid back to the U. S. Senate this November. He has used his position as majority leader to push the United States toward bigger, more powerful, more expensive, and ever more intrusive government — a place where American voters, and Nevada voters especially, do not want to go.

Furthermore, he has done this using all those underhanded political tricks Americans have come to detest: backroom deals, arm-twisting, bribes and blackmail. In the process, he has contributed memorable new phrases to the lexicon of political corruption, phrases like “The Cornhusker Kickback” and “The Louisiana Purchase”.

Yes, Nevada voters have no reason to re-elect Harry Reid. And Harry Reid knows it. Which is why he is doing what every self-serving politician does when he knows the issues aren’t on his side: he tries to demonize his opponent and make her the issue instead. In doing this, he is getting a lot of help from the news media. Read more »

I was planning to write something patriotic for Independence Day — you know, something about how an oppressed people living on the edge of an untamed continent stood up to tyranny; a people who, though vastly outnumbered and under-supplied, fought and won a long, hard war against the greatest economic and military power on Earth and, who, as a result of their victory, bequeathed to us a freedom that, until that time, no people in the history of mankind has ever known.

That’s what was on my mind when I staggered through the kitchen door Saturday evening after returning from a 58-mile bicycle ride that had left me utterly exhausted. I opened a Wild Cherry Pepsi, plopped myself down on a kitchen chair, propped up my sore legs, and called my son on my cell phone to let him know I had made it home more or less safely.

It was then that I noticed the winking red light on the remote handset of my landline phone. Someone had called while I was out on my ride. Who could it be? Except for telemarketers, hardly anybody calls me on that line (and telemarketers don’t leave messages).

With a great effort, I hoisted myself out of the chair and ambled back to my office to retrieve the message off the base station. It was somebody from the Census Bureau. Calling me at 5:37 p.m. on a holiday weekend. He left a telephone number and a “Case ID” with instructions to call back. Read more »