The first few paragraphs of this article from today's Las Vegas Sun might give you an idea of the, uh, intellectual capacity of Nevada's new governor:

Gov. Jim Gibbons announced a major energy initiative in his State of the State speech Monday, calling for the construction of a coal-to-liquids fuel plant in Nevada that would use rail lines to import coal, which would then be converted to diesel and jet fuel.

The proposal left many legislators and policy experts scratching their heads Tuesday. Nevada has an abundance of wind and solar energy sources but no coal, and the process consumes huge amounts of water, which is in short supply in Nevada.

Lawmakers said they expected the governor to provide more details Tuesday, but his energy adviser hadn't been named publicly. Nor was Gibbons available to answer questions about his idea, which apparently derived from a conversation with Dave Freudenthal, the governor of Wyoming, a major coal-producing state.

"After visiting with Wyoming Gov. Freudenthal and seeing what his state is doing, I will encourage the creation of a coal-to-liquids fuels plant in Nevada, similar to a successful plant in Wyoming," Gibbons had said.

I hope he doesn't visit Niagara Falls anytime soon...

So the midnight swearing in ceremony of new Nevada governor Jim Gibbons gets weirder. Today's Review-Journal has an article positing that the purpose of the unusual time and hour of the ceremony could have been to manipulate a legal loophole that might allow Gibbons to undo a last-minute political appointee of former Governor (and Gibbons rival) Kenny Guinn:

Gibbons began stating his oath about a minute before midnight. His chief of staff, Mike Dayton, said Gibbons completed the oath at 12 seconds after midnight. Dayton came up with the time by checking a clock placed on a coffee table in the room.

Gibbons' midnight oath might invalidate Guinn's appointments on a technicality, according to the basis of the 2005 attorney general's opinion.

In the 2005 opinion, then-Attorney General Brian Sandoval cited an appointment former Gov. Mike O'Callaghan made to a position that became vacant at midnight on Dec. 31, 1978. That appointment was valid because "Governor Robert List was not sworn in until 10:00 a.m. on January 1, 1979," the opinion said.

Between midnight and 10 a.m., O'Callaghan was still considered governor, and the board position was vacant.

The fact that the two circumstances occurred simultaneously made O'Callaghan's appointment legal, the attorney general said.

Thus, if no time lapse between the end of one governor's term and the start of another's occurred, then the previous governor's appointments possibly would not count.

The flip-side argument is that the control board appointments by Guinn took effect at exactly midnight, while Gibbons did not become governor for another 12 seconds. Also, he started the oath before 2007 began.

This is really weird stuff. (via lvgleaner)

It's been awhile.

Brown, Ford, and Hussein died. (They need one more for a bridge game.)

Many top ten lists have been released, reminding me that movies take a long time to come out when you live in a third tier city. (Still waiting for Volver, Pan's Labyrinth, and Children of Men.) And that the music world is way too big and fractured to make any casual sense of. And that I rarely read recently published books.

Indiana Jones 4 is finally going into production this year for a May 2008 release.

Nevada has a new governor who, in a fit of ego and self-aggrandization, was secretly sworn in at midnight on January 1st: "We didn't want any word out in advance because of the security concerns... This is a new world since 9-11 and the first major change in Nevada government since then."

I now have a Mii on my brother's Wii.

And I'm a little more than halfway through Against the Day. Turns out it's hard to find any reading time when you're home visiting family.