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2009 PULITZER PRIZE WINNER FOR PUBLIC SERVICE LASVEGASSUN.COM
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TU ESDAY,
OCTOBER
19,
2010
KATS REPORT Playboy exposure produces a Strip headliner and boosts Las Vegas native’s entertainment career. PAGE 8
Yes, pundits have called Angle’s
anti-illegal immigration ad ...
inflammatory,
fear-mongering,
race-baiting,
implausible,
xenophobic,
outrageous,
insensitive,
egregious,
offensive,
and ugly.
JULIE JACOBSON / ASSOCIATED PRESS
POLITICS
Palin delivers
message to
GOP: ‘Man up’
BY ANJEANETTE DAMON
WHO HAS
THE RIGHT
RENO — Midway through her STUFF?
Las Vegas Sun
speech at a Tea Party Express
rally here Monday, former Alaska
Gov. Sarah Palin said her goal,
and that of the conservative
group hosting the event, is not to
see Republicans in general win
this crucial midterm election. No,
she is backing a specific brand of
conservative.
“These are constitutional
conservatives,” she said, running
through a list of her approved candidates for Congress nationwide
before the crowd in the parking lot
of a vacant shopping mall. The list
included Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle.
“Politicians, some of you who
are in office today, need to man
up and spend some political capital supporting these Tea Party
candidates,” she said.
Palin and her enthusiastic supporters present a particular challenge to Republican candidates in
Nevada — be seen alongside them
and risk alienating independent
voters who may see the Tea Party
Speaking at a Tea
Party Express
rally Monday
in Reno, former
Alaska Gov. and
Republican Party
vice presidential
candidate Sarah
Palin implored
her audience
and GOP leaders
to support Tea
Party-backed
candidates such
as Sharron Angle,
who is running
for a U.S. Senate
seat. She did not,
however, list
Brian Sandoval’s
name among
those she
supports in
gubernatorial
races.
[See Palin, Page 2]
But such strategies have worked in
the past. And now another group
is urging Hispanics not to vote.
CATHLEEN ALLISON / SPECIAL TO THE SUN
BY KAROUN DEMIRJIAN
THE GOVERNOR’S RACE
Las Vegas Sun
I
n the waning weeks of
the election, all eyes
are focusing on one
ethnic voting bloc —
Hispanics, who have
emerged as the make it
or break it constituency in Nevada’s tight Senate race.
The common wisdom is
clear-cut: If Hispanics make it
to the polls in large numbers,
Democrats can win. If they
don’t, Republicans stand a better
chance of victory.
As politicians and activists
scramble to turn out the Hispanic
vote, as the Democrats are pushing, or to overwhelm or suppress
the Latino vote, as some conservatives are trying, the 2010 Senate contest is turning into a race
about race.
In Nevada, accusations about
racially reprehensible practices
started flying a few weeks ago.
That’s when Tea Party-backed
Republican Senate candidate
Sharron Angle aired an TV advertisement about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s immigra-
[See Commercial, Page 3]
Sandoval: Let local
officials raise taxes
BY DAVID MCGRATH SCHWARTZ
Las Vegas Sun
HARDLY ILLEGAL
HEADED FOR INFAMY?
At issue is the use by
Republican Senate candidate
Sharron Angle’s campaign of
this photo, taken in Mexico and
purchased from Getty Images,
a photo service. The photo was
included in a TV commercial
to drum up fear about illegal
immigrants crossing the border.
The ad is no longer airing after
a copyright infringement
complaint over the photo.
Political commentators have
criticized Angle’s use of the
photo and her TV commercial .
Hispanic advocates have
likened the ad to the infamous
Willie Horton ad of 1988, and
Jesse Helms’ 1990 Senate
campaign, which featured a pair
of white hands crumpling up a
letter as a narrator said: “You
needed that job, but they had
to give it to a minority.”
Brian Sandoval has promised
that if he is elected governor he
won’t raise taxes. But that doesn’t
mean he won’t let others do it.
The Republican candidate
said Monday that he would support giving local governments the
authority to raise taxes, if the state
turns over responsibility for some
services to cities and counties.
Sandoval has not released a
plan for how he will balance the
state budget. Experts say revenue for the biennium will come
in about $3 billion below current
spending levels.
On a tour of Galena High School
in Reno on Monday, Sandoval was
asked whether he saw waste or
duplication as he has toured almost
80 schools statewide.
The candidate didn’t answer
[See Sandoval, Page 2]
LOCAL
LEVEL
Home rule
gives local governments more
say in the way
they operate. In
Nevada, those
governments
must get the
Legislature’s OK
on budget and
other matters.
The Legislature
meets every
other year, which
means quick
reaction to a
crisis is almost
impossible.
2 | NEWS
LAS VEGAS SUN
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2010
SANDOVAL, FROM PAGE 1:
FALLEN U.S. TROOPS
Since the war in Iraq began in 2003, 4,408 American troops have died,
according to the Defense Department. The latest identification reported by
the military:
Army Pfc. Dylan T. Reid, 24, of Springfield, Mo., died Saturday in Amarah, Iraq,
in a noncombat-related incident. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry
Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colo.
Since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, 1,331 American troops have
died supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. The latest identifications
reported by the military:
Marine Sgt. Ian M. Tawney, 25, of Dallas, Ore., died Saturday in combat in Helmand
province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st
Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
Marine Cpl. Jorge Villarreal Jr., 22, of San Antonio died Sunday in combat in
Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 11th Marine
Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
Face to Face
W IT H J O N R A L STO N
FLASH POINT
Now that’s a depressing thought
Want a definition of depressing? Here you go: “Gov. Jim Gibbons and
his staff continue working on a new state budget that will incorporate
the essential services required by the citizens of Nevada. While there
are periodic signs Nevada is poised to pull out of its economic doldrums, Gov. Gibbons is required by the Nevada Constitution to create
a balanced budget.” I am not depressed because of the economy — we
know it will be awhile. But what depresses me is that Gibbons felt the
need Monday to let us know he is forming the next state budget — a
budget Brian Sandoval or Rory Reid probably will adopt. Or will they?
ON TODAY’S ‘FACE TO FACE’
Three-way debate for attorney general
Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto is defending her office
against two challengers. We’ll meet them all in a three-way debate
among Cortez Masto, Republican Travis Barrick and Independent
American candidate Joel Hansen.
REID’S CAMPAIGN
SAYS SANDOVAL IS
PASSING THE BUCK
the question. But he said the
budget problems are so large
all sources of state funding are
going to have to take a hit.
He said he hoped that teachers would take a salary cut. And
he criticized his Democratic
opponent, Rory Reid, for promising to spare K-12 and higher
education, which make up 55
percent of the budget.
Pressed for details on how
he will balance the budget, Sandoval pointed to giving “home
rule,” which allows local governments to make more decisions without the Legislature’s
approval.
Asked if that would include
giving counties the ability to
raise taxes, Sandoval said, “Yes.
But it would come with responsibilities.”
Reid’s campaign said Sandoval’s position amounts to
“passing the buck.”
“Brian Sandoval doesn’t
want to make any decision,”
spokesman Mike Trask said.
“Brian Sandoval has promised
for months to provide a budget
plan for Nevada. He has refused
to do so.”
Later, Sandoval’s campaign clarified his comments
to say that home rule would
not extend to school districts,
which don’t have individual
taxing authority. Funding levels for school districts throughout the state must be equal.
In explaining his support for
more local government control,
Sandoval said local elected leaders meet year-round, the Legislature meets every two years.
“There’s a disconnect,” he said.
State Sen. John Lee, D-North
Las Vegas, last week raised the
possibility of the state shifting some of its responsibilities
to local governments, such as
parole and probation and community colleges.
Although local elected officials had a mix of reactions
to the idea, they uniformly
expressed concern that state
officials were avoiding making
a tough choice between cutting
or raising taxes.
Sandoval told high school
students that he could improve
education by giving schools
more control, creating competition among campuses by
using vouchers and giving
merit pay to teachers whose
students perform well. He also
said it wouldn’t require any
more money.
But some improvements do
require money.
At Galena High, Assistant
Principal Silvia Marin told
Sandoval about some of the
struggles and improvements
the school had made. Hispanic
English-language
learners
don’t make up a proportionate
number of the advanced placement students. She said early
last year the school had no
after-school bus, meaning students without other transportation had to leave at 2:30 p.m.
They couldn’t stay for afterschool tutoring, to use computers or participate in programs
such as ROTC.
That changed when a new
school superintendent came
in and asked what the school
needed. Marin said they got
the extra late bus, at a cost of
$9,000 per semester.
david.schwartz@lasvegas
sun.com / 775-687-4597
WHEN TO WATCH
Broadcast times
“Face to Face” airs live at 6:30 p.m. on NBC affiliates throughout the
state — KSNV Channel 3 in Las Vegas, KRNV Channel 4 in Reno and
KENV Channel 10 in Elko.
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JULIE JACOBSON / ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sarah Palin waves to a crowd at a rally to kick off the Tea Party Express bus tour Monday in Reno. The
tour will make 29 stops across 20 states until it ends in Concord, N.H., on Nov. 1.
PALIN, FROM PAGE 1:
KEY GOP CANDIDATES
STAY AWAY FROM TEA
PARTY EXPRESS RALLY
as a circus act; don’t and risk
being branded as unworthy of
the conservative stamp.
That conundrum might
explain why many Republican
candidates were noticeably
absent from the rally stage.
GOP gubernatorial candidate
Brian Sandoval was touring a
Reno high school as the Tea Party
Express rallied across town.
“We’re focused on visiting
schools, visiting nonprofits,” he
told a reporter who asked why
he wasn’t at the rally.
He wasn’t willing to be
drawn into a debate over the
Tea Party’s primary message
— that government’s role in
individuals’ lives should be significantly curtailed. “That’s a
broad question. I’m just focused
on my race,” he said.
Sandoval hasn’t spent the
entire campaign dodging such
rallies. He attended the largest,
most publicized one in Searchlight this spring.
Still, Sandoval’s name didn’t
make the list of gubernatorial
candidates Palin implored the
Reno crowd to support because
of their conservative bona fides.
To the surprise of some,
Angle, who has cultivated the
Tea Party vote since the earliest days of her primary campaign, did not share the stage
with Palin, one of the most popular figures in the conservative
movement. In fact, Angle hasn’t
headlined a Tea Party Express
rally since the group endorsed
her in April and began spending more than $1 million in the
form of an independent expenditure to see her elected.
But the reason was likely
more legal than political: Strict
federal laws prohibit candidates from coordinating political speech with organizations
operating independent expenditures, and Angle’s campaign
didn’t want to be accused of
coordination.
But Angle wasn’t the only
GOP candidate not to show.
Even some of the Republicans in attendance didn’t
appear to want to make a highprofile appearance. One longtime Northern Nevada Republican activist wore a bulky coat
and baseball cap pulled low on
her forehead.
“I’m just here to help the
party out,” she said, tugging her
hat a little lower.
The voters at the Reno rally
shared a deep skepticism of
politicians, even those who
appear to carry the conservative standard.
Even Angle, who has been
among the most philosophically pure conservatives in Nevada
politics, didn’t earn unconditional support.
“We’re going to give her a
try,” said Michelle Schneider, a
Reno Republican. “I’m not completely sold on any of them.”
Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev.,
who doesn’t have a competitive
race in his heavily Republican
2nd Congressional District,
was the only Republican candidate to jump onstage at the
Reno rally. He didn’t speak and
simply waved to the crowd.
Heller’s spokesman Stewart
Bybee said he couldn’t speak
for why some Republican candidates didn’t show for the
event. But he said Heller has
long enjoyed a strong relationship with Tea Party activists.
“Fundamentally the Tea
Party’s goals are about government intrusion in everyday
lives,” he said. “That is where
the congressman and the Tea
Party share a common value.”
Some said it’s not necessarily the Tea Party brand that
Republican candidates are worried about associating themselves with. It’s their strategy to
avoid any situations they don’t
completely control during the
final days of the campaign.
“There’s enough risk when
coming down the final stretch of
campaign even with their own
events,” Republican strategist
Robert Uithoven said. “When
you start attending events of
other groups that could cause
even more problems — especially when you can turn an
ad around in 24 hours or less.
Those images could cause a distraction for a campaign.”
Sun reporter David McGrath
Schwartz contributed to this story.
anjeanette.damon@lasveg
assun.com / 775-336-6225
LAS VEGAS SUN
NEWS | 3
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2010
SOCIOLOGY
THE RUNDOWN
‘Culture of poverty,’ once an
academic slur, makes a comeback
More local news from
lasvegassun.com
BY PATRICIA COHEN
New York Times News Service
F
or more than 40
years, social scientists investigating
the causes of poverty
have tended to treat
cultural explanations like Lord
Voldemort: That Which Must
Not Be Named.
The reticence was a legacy
of the ugly battles that erupted
after Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
then an assistant labor secretary in the Johnson administration, introduced the idea
of a “culture of poverty” to the
public in a startling 1965 report.
Although Moynihan didn’t coin
the phrase (that distinction
belongs to the anthropologist
Oscar Lewis), his description of
the urban black family as caught
in an inescapable “tangle of
pathology” of unmarried mothers and welfare dependency
was seen as attributing self-perpetuating moral deficiencies to
black people, as if blaming them
for their own misfortune.
Moynihan’s analysis never
lost its appeal to conservative
thinkers, whose arguments
ultimately succeeded when
President Bill Clinton signed
a bill in 1996 “ending welfare
as we know it.” But in the overwhelmingly liberal ranks of academic sociology and anthropology the word “culture” became
a live grenade, and the idea that
attitudes and behavior patterns
kept people poor was shunned.
Now, after decades of silence,
these scholars are speaking
openly about you-know-what,
conceding that culture and persistent poverty are enmeshed.
“We’ve finally reached the
stage where people aren’t afraid
of being politically incorrect,”
said Douglas Massey, a sociologist at Princeton who has
argued that Moynihan was
unfairly maligned.
The old debate has shaped
the new. Last month Princeton
and the Brookings Institution
released a collection of papers
on unmarried parents, a subject,
it noted, that became off-limits
after the Moynihan report.
The topic has generated
interest on Capitol Hill because
so much of the research intersects with policy debates. Views
of the cultural roots of poverty
“play important roles in shap-
THE NEW YORK TIMES FILE
A mother and child stand near the site of a Chicago housing project that was demolished in 1997. Scholars
are conceding that culture and persistent poverty may be linked.
ing how lawmakers choose to
address poverty issues,” Rep.
Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., noted
at the briefing.
Today, social scientists are
rejecting the notion of a monolithic and unchanging culture
of poverty. And they attribute destructive attitudes and
behavior not to inherent moral
character but to sustained racism and isolation.
To Robert Sampson, a sociologist at Harvard, culture is best
understood as “shared understandings.”
“I study inequality, and the
dominant focus is on structures
of poverty,” he said. But he added
that the reason a neighborhood
turns into a “poverty trap” is also
related to a common perception
of the way people in a community
act and think. When people see
graffiti and garbage, do they find
it acceptable or see serious disorder? Do they respect the legal system or have a high level of “moral
cynicism,” believing that “laws
were made to be broken”?
The shared perception of a
neighborhood — is it on the rise
or stagnant? — does a better job
of predicting a community’s
future than the actual level of
poverty, he said.
William Julius Wilson, whose
pioneering work boldly con-
fronted ghetto life while focusing on economic explanations
for persistent poverty, defines
culture as the way “individuals in a community develop an
understanding of how the world
works and make decisions based
on that understanding.”
For some young black men,
Wilson, a Harvard sociologist,
said, the world works like this:
“If you don’t develop a tough
demeanor, you won’t survive.
If you have access to weapons,
you get them, and if you get into
a fight, you have to use them.”
Seeking to recapture the
topic from economists, sociologists have ventured into poor
neighborhoods to delve deeper
into the attitudes of residents.
Their results have challenged
some common assumptions,
like the belief that poor mothers remain single because they
don’t value marriage.
In Philadelphia, for example, low-income mothers told
the sociologists Kathryn Edin
and Maria Kefalas that they
thought marriage was profoundly important, even sacred,
but doubted that their partners
were “marriage material.” Their
results have prompted some
lawmakers and poverty experts
to conclude that programs that
promote marriage without
changing economic and social
conditions are unlikely to work.
Conservatives also deserve
credit, said Kay Hymowitz, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, for their sustained
focus on family values and marriage even when cultural explanations were disparaged.
Still, worries about blaming
the victim persist.
So even now some sociologists
avoid words such as “values” and
“morals” or reject the idea that,
as The Annals put it, “a group’s
culture is more or less coherent.”
Watered-down definitions of
culture, Hymowitz complained,
reduce some of the new work to
“sociological pablum.”
“If anthropologists had come
away from doing field work in
New Guinea concluding ‘everyone’s different,’ but sometimes
people help each other out,”
she wrote in an e-mail, “there
would be no field of anthropology — and no word culture for
cultural sociologists to bend to
their will.”
Fuzzy definitions or not,
culture is back. This prompted
mock surprise from Woolsey at
last spring’s congressional briefing: “What a concept. Values,
norms, beliefs play very important roles in the way people meet
the challenges of poverty.”
COMMERCIAL, FROM PAGE 1:
CONSERVATIVE GROUP TELLS
HISPANICS TO SIT THIS ONE OUT
tion record, featuring images of
menacing-looking Mexican men
with the words “Illegal Aliens”
superimposed at the bottom of
the screen.
Hispanic activists decried
the advertisement as “racebaiting” — a charge the Angle
campaign denied repeatedly,
even up through this weekend,
when she told an assembly of
Hispanic high school students
at Rancho High School that she
wasn’t sure the images featured
were of Latinos at all.
“You know, I don’t know that
all of you are Latino. Some of you
look a little more Asian to me,”
she said, in an effort to defuse
a situation that, judging by the
renewed backlash, only reinforced the argument of those
who have charged her with racial
insensitivity, and other more
serious labels.
But racial consciousness permeates every election cycle, and
racially tinged tactics aren’t a
new practice in American politics. Because say what you will
about them — they often work.
Racial politics aren’t always,
or only, about racism. Get-outthe-vote efforts that targeted
black and Hispanic communities are credited in large part for
turning the tide in certain swing
states toward President Barack
Obama in 2008. Across Nevada,
Hispanic activists are trying to
reactivate that momentum for
the 2010 cycle.
Efforts to suppress the vote
can also come from within a
community — as is taking place
in Nevada.
On Monday, a group called
“Latinos for Reform” — an independent political organization
that is not subject to disclosure
rules — joined the electoral fray,
with two commercials urging
Hispanics to sit out the election.
The group made a name
for itself during the 2008 election cycle campaigning against
Obama, on the grounds that he
favored blacks over Hispanics.
The leader of that group,
Robert Deposada, a conservative pundit on Spanish-language
Univision who once ran President George W. Bush’s commission to advance privatization of
Social Security, said Hispanics
should boycott the polls because
Obama has not yet delivered on
his campaign promise to tackle
immigration reform.
Other Hispanic activists
immediately decried the advertisements.
“No Nevadan should be
silenced or have their vote suppressed, especially those in
the Hispanic community, who
have been disproportionately
impacted during these tough
economic times,” said Luis Valera, vice president of Las Vegas’
Latin Chamber of Commerce.
Valera was joined by other
Hispanic leaders in calling for
Republican candidates Angle
and Brian Sandoval — himself
a Hispanic — to denounce the
ads, and for radio, television, and
Internet providers to pull the
plug on the commercials.
The Latinos for Reform commercial campaign to suppress
the Hispanic vote, whether or
not by design, may complement
Angle’s efforts to turn out the
anti-illegal immigrant vote.
Angle’s commercial — which
is no longer airing, after a copyright infringement tiff with
Getty Images over the featured
photograph — isn’t the first commercial to have earned charges
of race-baiting.
David Vitter, a Republican
senator from Louisiana campaigning for re-election, is earning as much, if not more, vitriol
for a series of anti-illegal immigration commercials — one of
which used the same photo —
that juxtaposed white and Hispanic people in a way that portrays Hispanics as outsiders.
Hispanic advocates have also
likened Angle’s ad to the nowinfamous Willie Horton ad of
1988, and Jesse Helms’ 1990 Senate campaign, which featured a
pair of white hands crumpling
up a letter as a narrator said:
“You needed that job, but they
had to give it to a minority.”
Both were heavily criticized
at the time they aired for racially
motivated fear-mongering. But
in both of those instances, the
candidates airing the controversial ads won.
And Vitter? Despite a past
term that even put the senator
at the center of a national callgirl controversy, he’s leading his
opponent by double-digits.
To be sure, the Hispanic populations of Louisiana and Nevada
aren’t comparable. At 26 percent
of the state population, and 15
percent of the 2008 electorate,
Hispanics in Nevada represent
a potentially election-swinging
force in the midterm race.
Hispanic advocates have
said that Hispanics are a unique
force to be reckoned with — and
warned that the community in
Nevada will respond to efforts
to sideline, stereotype, and marginalize them by turning out in
droves to the polls.
But those numbers weren’t
visible this weekend, at a pair
of campaign rallies headlined
by gubernatorial candidate
Rory Reid and Senate candidate
Harry Reid, who commented in
his remarks at the small size of
the crowd.
Hispanic leaders admit the
ad worries them. With voters
already angry about the economy, worried about jobs, frustrated by inaction — especially
on immigration reform — in
Washington and punch drunk
from near-constant negative
campaign commercials, they
know the ad could keep people
from the polls.
“Of course I’m worried,” said
Fernando Romero, president
of Hispanics in Politics, a nonpartisan group that encourages
Latinos to be politically active,
adding that immigration trumps
jobs and the economy as Hispanic voters’ top concern. “We
should all be worried.”
“Please go out and vote,”
pleaded Democrat Assemblyman Ruben Kihuen, a state Senate candidate, at an appearance
with other Hispanic leaders to
respond to the advertisements.
“We can’t let them win.”
Sun reporter Delen Goldberg
contributed to this story.
[email protected] /
202-662-7436
County set to approve
liquor store at McCarran
It won’t be long before tourists can buy liquor in the baggage
claim area of McCarran International Airport, the first such setup
in the United States.
The Clark County Commission appears poised to approve an
airport liquor store contract today
with Lee’s Runway Liquor LLC.
At 49 pages, the contract says
Clark County will keep 15 percent of the store’s gross revenue.
An airport spokeswoman did not
know if projections for gross revenue had been made by airport
staff.
The store will be allowed to
sell liquor directly to customers or through the Internet, with
customers picking up their online
purchases in an “assigned area.”
The contract also gives the county
the right to change its percentage
after three years.
Hours of operation would be
from 6 a.m. to 1 a.m., seven days
as a week. The contract specifically says that the hours may be
increased at any time “but may
only be decreased with prior written approval.”
The liquor store must open no
later than 120 days after the contract is approved, unless an extension is granted in writing. Detailed
plans of the store must be completed by the business within 90
days of the signed agreement.
Lee’s Runway Liquor scored
higher than other applicants,
and the commission voted 5-2
in August to allow the county to
negotiate a lease.
McCarran operations are not
funded by taxpayers but by revenue from leases to airport vendors
and fees to airlines.
— Joe Schoenmann
Decision to scuttle drug
regulation under scrutiny
CARSON CITY — Two state
senators from Clark County
aren’t happy that the state Board
of Pharmacy has scuttled a proposed regulation to tighten the
storage of prescription drugs.
Sen. Maggie Carlton, D-Las
Vegas, has expressed concern
about the safety of the flu vaccine
being shipped into the Las Vegas
area. Senate Majority Leader
Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas,
is wondering why the pharmacy
board backpedaled on the proposed regulation.
They expressed their concerns
Friday at a meeting of the Legislative Committee on Regulations.
The regulation, adopted by the
pharmacy board, required that a
refrigerator storing drugs must
be kept at a temperature of 36 to
46 degrees. And a storage freezer
must be maintained at below 32
degrees.
If the temperature rises above
those levels, the pharmacist must
determine if these prescription
drugs should be discarded. But
the pharmacy board withdrew
the regulation before it could be
considered and approved.
Larry Pinson, executive director of the pharmacy board, told
the legislative committee that
current regulations are adequate
and the industry opposed the
regulation. He said his inspectors
are checking for the safe handling
of prescription drugs.
A bill is expected to be introduced in the 2011 Legislature to
clearly set temperature limits.
— Cy Ryan
Former Nye County sheriff
candidate sues over arrest
There’s more drama in Nye
County politics, law enforcement
and government, with former
sheriff’s candidate Ted Holmes
suing the county and four officials over his March arrest.
An attorney for Holmes,
whose full name is Robert Ted
Holmes, filed the civil rights
complaint Friday in U.S. District
Court in Las Vegas.
The suit alleges Holmes’ arrest
March 12 on charges of impersonating an officer and resisting
arrest caused him to lose in the
June primary election and violated his civil rights.
A Nye County sheriff’s office
news release on the arrest said
an out-of-state law enforcement
officer who was in Pahrump on
official business was approached
by Holmes at the Pahrump Nugget.
The officer reported that Holmes flashed some sort of “deputy”
badge at him and advised him he
was committing a crime by having his gun visible with a badge
from another state, the sheriff’s
office said at the time.
— Steve Green