Steve Sebelius

When last longtime Las Vegas journalist and author Geoff Schumacher checked in on Southern Nevada, things were going great, and it looked like that would never change.

Maybe it’s hard to understand because it’s not true?

The pledge is sure taking a beating in Nevada this year.

It may seem ironic, so deep into the information age, that a panel discussion about censorship would still be necessary. After all, the Internet has given us access to everything from the complete text of previously banned books to the gigantic document dumps of Wikileaks, a world of previously secret information available to anybody with a computer, smartphone or tablet.

Ah, presidential debates. Those special times when we learn there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, that Sen. Dan Quayle was no Jack Kennedy, that Ronald Reagan refused to take advantage of the youth and inexperience of Walter Mondale, and that George H.W. Bush was, well, kind of bored.

The first debate in Nevada’s U.S. Senate race is in the books, and it wasn’t exactly Lincoln-Douglas. In fact, it wasn’t much of anything beyond a live-action political ad mercilessly drawn out over an hour.

Democratic state Senate District 9 candidate Justin Jones, a lawyer, found himself in a quandary last year.

President Barack Obama is winning, going away! No, wait, he’s winning, but by a slimmer margin. No, hold on, he’s tied with Republican nominee Mitt Romney.