Print edition for July 24, 2007

TAKE FIVE: THE NEW FRONTIER SIGN: It's never been sexy. It carried neither the glamour nor retro chic of its peers that flickered up and down the Strip and Fremont Street and now lie sleeping in the Neon Boneyard. Its Western theme was never as exotic as Arabian deserts.

Editorial: Pipeline fever hits home: For decades the Las Vegas area has been receiving all of its refined gasoline and diesel fuel from a single 248-mile pipeline that originates about 55 miles east of Los Angeles and ends at a tank depot near Nellis Air Force Base in North Las Vegas.

Editorial: Is city acting legally?: And so we have the Downtown Initiative, a program inspired by City Hall and carried out by Metro Police. The goal is to drive out people who in unspoken and unwritten sorts of ways meet the city's definition of undesirable.

Letter: Lawmakers are done, but not the lobbyists: Ralston outlines how the 2005 and 2007 state Legislatures enacted environmentally friendly "green" tax relief legislation for commercial building construction and then attempted to close huge loopholes that had allowed corporations to rape and pillage Nevada's treasury. Now the loopholes that were thought to have been closed are once again being reopened by clever lobbyists and some not-so-smart state bureaucrats.

Letter: Who are candidates representing now?: In no other profession or occupation could anyone do this and get away with it. Shouldn't their salaries be diminished by all the lost time? Apparently they're not very essential, otherwise they'd be present for the job.

Letter: No excuse for mistreating dogs: How we treat the most vulnerable creatures among us is a measure of our morality and ability to empathize. Vick blames his relatives who lived on the property, but evidence points to his own direct involvement. What a lying sub-human he is!

Editorial: Nuclear wasted: State officials say the Energy Department has been illegally using water for a drilling project at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Doing so violates a 2003 court-ordered agreement on water use, said State Engineer Tracy Taylor, Nevada's water czar.

Mix-ups put man in jail, leave him out in the cold: Sam Skolnik; Richard Ryan and his wife , Regina, were set to appear for their court date. They traveled to the Regional Justice Center in downtown Las Vegas, ready to answer to charges that he had passed a bad check at a Mesquite casino and then resisted arrest.

Eviction looms, clock ticks, but 800 renters find an ally: By Timothy Pratt; The most massive cutback of federally subsidized apartments in Las Vegas history may wind up in the courts, as up to 800 people scramble to find places to live before Aug. 1.