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Vin Suprynowicz's Columns Archive

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Vin Suprynowicz

Imagine with me that you opened your newspaper today and found the following story:

“NORCO, Calif. (AP) -- More than 1 million sheets of paper, a cache of unregistered books and a tunnel were found at a man’s home after a fire that forced a ne

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Within living memory, Southern Nevada high schools had rifle ranges and competitive shooting teams. Kids brought their .22s to school; no one thought much about it.

Up until 1989, Nevada had no restrictions on teachers carrying weapons in the sch

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

From my last name, a lot of folks wouldn’t think half my ancestors were English -- Clarks and Bishops and Higginbothams, some active in the emancipation movement as much as three centuries ago.

Digging through the family archives, I find a yellow

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Last week, the Nevada Senate’s Transportation and Homeland Security Committee voted 5-2 to approve Senate Bill 61, which would allow “limited” use of robot traffic cameras to write tickets to Nevada red-light runners “on a pilot basis.” That vote for

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

One Natalie Unzueta wrote in, recently:

“On Sunday Feb. 18 I among 200 others camped out in front of the legislature in Carson City in order to support Bill 126 (which) proposes that 20 million dollars of the budget be set aside for homeless serv

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

In his syndicated newspaper column this week, John Stossel of ABC News looks into the claims of the nanny-staters that their endless attempts to regulate every aspect of our personal lives and freedoms do, at least, save lives.

It turns out they

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

As promised in his State of the State address, Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons last week unveiled his plan for local school “empowerment,” predicting it would take Nevada “off the top of every bad list and put it at the top of every good list.”

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Vin Suprynowicz

Last week, we ran a sampling of fan mail on my latest expose of the “Global Warming” hysteria.

Let’s stipulate once more that I do not side with a “No-Global-Warming crowd” — if there really is a sizable group of such folks. For the most part, th

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

If a union offers to serve as bargaining agent for the workers at a given workplace -- in exchange for considerable dues -- but it turns out that in a secret-ballot election the majority of those workers would oppose unionization, then the law should

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Last month, here in Las Vegas, the Clark County School District ballyhooed a “longitudinal” study which (officials there argue) demonstrated the effectiveness of government-run all-day kindergarten in improving academic performance.

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Four months ago, Nevada voters approved by a 54-46 margin Question 5, which prohibits tobacco smoking in nearly all public places in the state, including restaurants and bars that serve food. (Though brothels and casino floors are exempted -- the lat

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Quite a bit of e-mail on last week’s brief debunking of the current “global warming” hysteria, being promoted by the same folks who 30 years ago were predicting -- on the cover of Newsweek, and elsewhere -- that the next Ice Age is right around the c

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Boy, Las Vegas and Clark County officials sure don’t care much for free speech.

Back in 2005, two preachers were arrested in front of the Bellagio casino on the Las Vegas Strip for carrying “Trust Jesus” signs. They’d originally been informed a C

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Vin Suprynowicz

Responding to the shortage of qualified math and science teachers in Nevada’s public schools, state Sen. Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, now offers Senate Bill 52, which would hand extra tax dollars to Millennium Scholarship recipients who agree to te

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Vin Suprynowicz

A 2003 poll of 530 climatologists in 27 countries showed 34.7 percent of interviewees endorsed the notion that a substantial part of the current global warming trend -- which might see temperatures rise by a degree or two, on average, by century’s en

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Vin Suprynowicz

The story is told -- documentation seems scant -- that at the advent of the automobile, certain jurisdictions enacted ordinances requiring a man to walk in front of each vehicle waving a red flag, the better to avoid frightening the horses.

The r

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Vin Suprynowicz

Even though she admits the “problem” has not arisen in Nevada in recent memory, ever energetic state Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, now offers Senate Bill 82, which seeks to ban “price gouging” by classifying as an illegal “deceptive trade practice” t

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Vin Suprynowicz

A loyal reader writes in response to last week’s opus:

“Dear Mr. Suprynowicz, I read your columns on a regular basis, and while I don’t often agree I have never felt compelled to write. But the education issue in Nevada and across the nation just

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Sure enough, just as I predicted last week, a preliminary assessment of Clark County second-grade students released by the county school district a few days back, supposedly designed to weigh the impacts of all-day versus half-day kindergarten, weigh

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Vin Suprynowicz

Today, Venezuela has a Communist dictator. When Hugo Chavez doesn’t like the way things are going with his country’s oil, telecommunications and electric power industries -- or if he merely craves their wealth -- he simply seizes them, calling it “na

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Vin Suprynowicz

When college freshmen at UCLA were asked, back in 1966, whether they thought it was essential or very important to be “very well-off financially,” only 42 percent answered “Yes.”

By 1980, the percentage had climbed to 62.5. This year, the univers

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Vin Suprynowicz

Members of the Democratic Party have selected their latest cause of umbrage; they now line up to fume that President Bush purposely insulted them in his State of the Union address last week by referring to the Democratic Party as “the Democrat party.

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Vin Suprynowicz

This month, I find myself writing about books.

I’ve been browsing the 2001 volume “Making the List: A Cultural History of the American Bestseller 1900-1999,” by retired Simon & Schuster editor Michael Korda, the British-born nephew of Merle Obero

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Vin Suprynowicz

Incoming Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons did a competent job presenting his general fund budget for the next two fiscal years in his “State of the State” address in Carson City Monday evening -- though those waiting for an inspiring orator to move beyond the

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Vin Suprynowicz

An attentive reader points out I never filed my annual “Christmas books” column. (Nutshell version: Give the antique lover in your life a Lovejoy mystery -- start with “The Judas Pair” or “The Tartan Sell.” Buy other book lovers a gift certificate to

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Vin Suprynowicz

Since the current farm bill, written in 2002, expires at the end of this year, a Democratic Congress now contemplates writing a new one -- while grudgingly entertaining sufficient Republican input to make sure President Bush will sign the thing.

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Vin Suprynowicz

Glen from Bargain Pawn rang me up Wednesday to read me portions of a Jan. 5 letter fresh from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

“Dear Licensed Dealer,” writes Sgt. Thomas Johnson of the Tourist Safety and Firearms Section (motto: “An

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Vin Suprynowicz

Concerned about illegal aliens coming here and getting just as good a deal from our government “entitlement” programs as U.S. citizens? Have your friends and acquaintances, perhaps, gone so far as to suggest you may be a little “paranoid” on this sco

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Vin Suprynowicz

The Nevada Supreme Court has issued a scathing condemnation of Las Vegas defense attorney Phillip Emerson, addressing four civil cases from 2004 in which Mr. Emerson, defending insurance companies, made arguments such as:

“This is a case where th

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