Vin Suprynowicz

I recently finished the second book in Allen Steele’s Coyote series, 2004’s “Coyote Rising.”

We’re eight pages from the end of this 382-page science fiction novel. The outnumbered space colonists have managed to defeat and ship home the invading earth army that tried to impose communism on the planet Coyote. Guerrilla leader-turned-president Carlos Montero walks the streets during the fireworks celebration of the first “First Landing Day” since the successful revolution, musing to himself:

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Just as the promoters of the income tax swore in 1913 it would never be more than a few percent — and then only on millionaires — so the “Progressive” congressional pimps of the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act said it was just a truth-in-labeling measure, that the government would NEVER get between doctors and patients, telling them what they could and could not prescribe and use — let alone make them take the cocaine out of Coca-Cola.

But by the time the nation was finally giving up on alcohol Prohibition as pointless, counterproductive, and a huge boon to organized crime (paging Joe Kennedy), all such sheep’s clothing had been discarded. By the 1930s a macabre cadre of racist sheriffs and about-to-be-unemployed Prohibition agents had formed a line to testify before Congress that marijuana, cocaine, and opium — favored drugs of America’s black, Hispanic, and Asian minorities — should be banned outright because they were “the devil’s drugs,” allowing minority males to seduce white women, etc.

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I heard the president on the radio, Thursday.

In Florida to attend a $30,000-a-person fund-raiser at the home of Dallas Mavericks guard Vince Carter, President Barack Hussein Obama dropped by the University of Miami and — with comic timing as good as any stand-up comic — told the following joke about congressional Republicans:

“You can bet that since it’s an election year, they’re already dusting off their three-point plans for $2 gas. I’ll save you the suspense: Step one is to drill, step two is to drill, and step three” (pause for comic effect) “is to keep on drillin’.”

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I see where two local groups have announced the largest in-kind donation ever made to Southern Nevada’s Public Education Foundation, the nonprofit that channels charitable aid to the Clark County School District.

The Latin Chamber of Commerce and Another Joy Foundation plan to give to the Foundation textbooks for which they list a value of $6.8 million.

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America remains such a wealthy nation that even our problems must cause many of the world’s peoples to scratch their heads in wonder. Take childhood obesity.

It’s an unhealthy trend, though surely a major cause is lack of exercise. Parents don’t feel as safe sending their kids out for unsupervised play as grandma did, and kids who sit around using electronic devices aren’t going to be as fit as kids who ride bikes and climb trees.

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Crime rates are down within Metro’s jurisdiction for the five major categories reported to the FBI, Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie proudly reported Feb. 7.

Most of the drops are substantial, and impressive. The drop in Las Vegas auto thefts — though attributable in part to an economic climate that finds fewer people placing “orders” for fancy car parts, once stolen on demand at a much higher frequency by sophisticated “chop shops” (street cops tell me) — is particularly good news, since those rate impact our insurance premiums.

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In the largest suburb of Las Vegas, Henderson Mayor Andy Hafen expressed remorse last week over injuries caused to the unresisting Adam Greene, who was in diabetic shock when city police beat and kicked him during a traffic stop in October 2010.

It was the first public comment on the incident by anyone on the City Council since it approved a $158,000 settlement with Greene, 38, on Tuesday, Feb. 7.

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Did everybody have fun at those Saturday morning Nevada Republican caucuses?

Actually, there weren’t many “everybodies” present at mine. I almost didn’t go myself, figuring the “Stick with the unprincipled RINO Bob Dole-George Bush-John McCain-Mitt Romney” lemmings already had their done deal.

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Pollster Scott Rasmussen told a local radio host this week that if GOP Congressman Ron Paul were to pursue a third-party candidacy next fall — which he considers unlikely — Paul would draw more votes from Barack Obama than from the Republican nominee. That is how upset the anti-war Left is with the president, Mr. Rasmussen said.

Wow.

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It was a bit of a consciousness shifting event to sit in a banquet hall at the Tuscany Resort in Las Vegas Monday evening alongside some 95 county sheriffs and a handful of deputies — most in full uniform with gleaming badges — listening to and applauding speakers you’d more commonly associate with Libertarian Party gatherings or seminars sponsored by the Austrian economists of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

The most common topic of discussion at the gathering of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association appeared to be the National Defense Authorization Act recently signed into law by President Barack Obama, condemned by speaker after speaker for gutting a huge segment of the Bill of Rights by extending to the executive branch powers previously associated only with military forces operating overseas.

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