Nevada daily political roundup: Mortgage mess, $4 gas

By Lisa Mascaro

Monday, July 14, 2008 | 10:14 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Here's your Monday wrap-up of Nevada news. Check back for more updates throughout the day.

The mortgage mess is certainly the national topic of the day -- and it's especially important in Nevada, which has led the nation in foreclosures. I spent a lot of weekend time brushing up on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants, in advance of the Bush administration's Sunday announcement it would shore up government-sponsored companies that hold so many of the nation's mortgages. There's some helpful reading here and here if you’re wondering what this means to your ability to pay the rent.

Whether the voters have spoken on term limits, or not, will be the question today in Nevada as the state Supreme Court devotes 90 minutes for arguments on the issue that has tangled this election year. Sun colleague Cy Ryan, in Carson City, had this quick curtain raiser on Saturday, followed by fellow Carson-ite David McGrath Schwartz's political memo in Sunday’s Sun.

This rest of this week watch for lots of banter here in Washington about $4 gas as Republicans and Democrats wrangle over the best ways to ease the pain at the pump. Republicans see increasingly popular support for drilling. Democrats are counting the days the Bush administration refuses to release oil from the strategic petroleum reserve. If you missed it last week, Republican Rep. Dean Heller was tapped by Republican leadership to join a group of mainly freshmen House Republicans on a fact-finding mission later this week to Colorado and Alaska to learn more about energy options.

Lots of interesting stories over the weekend:

-- Check what the state's budget mess may do to the already "no frills" university, as Sun colleague Charlotte Hsu reports, being run out of a modular building in Moapa Valley.

-- Sun colleagues Tony Cook and Michael Mishak crunched the numbers and found lobbyists failed to file disclosure forms more than 170 times while visiting county commissioners.

-- The R-J's bureau in Washington had an interesting piece on Republican Rep. Jon Porter considering legislation to establish wilderness protection for the Gold Butte region about an hour north of Las Vegas. Public land bills are notoriously difficult, but Porter could burnish his legislative credentials if he got one done.

-- The Rio dealers rejected union membership, but the union says it will keep trying elsewhere.

-- And the governor was in the news for paying a lower tax bill than the county assessor felt comfortable levying.

Generally interesting reads over the weekend:

-- President Bush's interview on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.

-- New York Times' Linda Greenhouse on 30 years of covering the Supreme Court.

-- From the no-one-wins-here category: John McCain admitting he doesn’t do the Internet, and Barack and Michelle Obama parodied on the cover of the New Yorker.