Print edition for May 12, 2007

LOOKING IN ON: EDUCATION: By Emily Richmond; The Teachers' Bill of Rights may not be dead on arrival, but it's certainly on life support.

Editorial: Better drug oversight: Currently the FDA's involvement is predominantly one of overseeing the testing of drugs during the years of research preceding approval. But the legislation passed Wednesday would add the FDA's scrutiny to what The New York Times described as "the entire life cycle of the drug" by requiring the agency to track a drug's marketing and use, and monitoring any adverse effects that patients experience.

Editorial: The crack of the bat: As reported in Thursday's Las Vegas Sun by Rob Miech, the Scenic West, the Community College of Southern Nevada's conference, is one of the few college leagues to use wooden bats instead of the ubiquitous aluminum bats that have been the mainstay in college and high school baseball since the 1980s. The major factor for the switch at the time was cost - aluminum bats don't break.

Letter: Summerlin residents paid for peace, quiet: Facts are facts. People who chose to live in Summerlin, such as myself, paid for the "right" to live in a peaceful desert community, 25 miles from the airport. Now, the FAA has decided to bring the airport to the residents?

THE READERS SOMETIMES E-MAIL: I was reading Ron Kantowski's article about the awesome horseflesh ("A race for the ages," May 5) and when at first it didn't give a call to my horse, I said "bummer!" Then there it was, at long last - "Here comes Secretariat."

Editorial: Creating crib potatoes: A study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics shows how pervasive television is.

Dems get busy, turn state into caucus beehive: Michael J. Mishak; Barack Obama drew 3,500 people to an outdoor rally in Las Vegas in February.

FLASHPOINT for May 12, 2007: Gov. Jim Gibbons just can't catch a break. One day after he hoped to snap out of the doldrums with an attack-the-gamers transportation-funding plan, he made national news. Again. And not the kind he wanted, although the kind he is used to. NBC News ran a couple pieces about Gibbons and the FBI probe of his dealings with entrepreneur Warren Trepp. It was bad enough that the network secured an interview with former Trepp partner Dennis Montgomery, who alleged two distinct payoffs to then-Rep. Gibbons. But NBC obtained several pictures of the infamous cruise with Trepp showing putative Mormon Gibbons ...

Letter: U.S. wrecking its global reputation: Now she and her daughter are seeking asylum in the United States, but it appears that we are going to reject her plea and send them back to a land that has become, because of us, a living hell. To grant asylum, the Bush administration would have to acknowledge that Iraq is a dangerous place, and this runs contrary to their spin that we are building a safe democracy in that country.

Torched, bombed, now closed: Here lies the Black Pearl Tattoo parlor, a pirate-themed permanent ink and piercing establishment that somebody - half crazy and hell bent - wanted dead.

'Mayhem' strikes tonight in Vegas: What: World Extreme Cagefighting mixed martial arts card, one championship fight , plus a seven-fight undercard